A place for moms who like technology to gather, learn and share. Dive in!

This video is simply amazing. As I watched it I found myself happy and almost in tears for no particular reason.  Does it do the same thing to you?

If you have trouble seeing the video click here.

I just found out that the beautiful song in the video is for sale at Amazon. Here are the details:

Thanks to Peter Shankman for sharing this.

I’m sure my complaint is not going to stay true forever, but it is certainly how I feel right now. Sure, it all started out fine the first few weeks she had it. She took it with her to school (kept it off during class - after all she is just in 5th grade), called her friends in the evenings and texted her one or two friends who have their own phones with text message plans.

Then the trouble started. No, she didn’t do anything wrong with the phone. She just didn’t do the chores we had assigned to her for the privilege of having a cell phone. So her punishment was to have her phone taken away for a week. (We’re thinking we’re such good parents at this point.) This happened twice within a two month period.

While her phone was in exile she reverted back to using the home phone to call her friends. Her one or two friends who have text message plans realized she never texted back, so they stopped texting.

Now she never takes her phone anywhere, uses the home phone all the time and never texts anyway. OMG! Now we are paying our $9.99 extra to keep her on the family plan, plus $5 per month for 300 text messages and the phone just sits there. Can’t cancel the number, it is still under contract.

Should we ground her until she starts using her cell phone more? That doesn’t seem quite right.

Should we entice her to call her friends more often? Not sure that’s good either.

What’s a HighTechMom to do in a situation like this? Any ideas?

WAIT! I got it. I’ll just break her away from Webkinz and have her read it. That should do the trick.

This morning I jumped on Twitter to see what my Twitter friends had to say. One of my favorite Tweople, motownmutt, had gone on a video sharing spree. Basically he finds cool videos on YouTube and GoogleVideo and shares them. This is perfect for me because I never seem to find anything even remotely interesting when I try.

Then I noticed another Twitter bud, Chris Brogan, had posted an Easter egg hunt on his blog - the idea is to find a blog that is undiscovered and link to it.

First the music discovered by motownmutt. Listen to this sound and just see if it doesn’t resonate in your cells. I just loved it:

Naturally, I clicked in the musician’s Dante Bucci’s site, but was so disappointed to see it wasn’t a blog. I really wanted to “meet” him and read what he has to say about his music, this totally cool instrument he’s playing and get an update on the CD he’s working on. With a plain one-dimensional site I didn’t get that.

Chris, my Easter discovery is not an undiscovered blog, but an undiscovered blogger. Maybe Dante will see this somehow and take up blogging. If not, at least we have his beautiful music.

You heard it from me first…watch the Super Bowl commercials extra close this year.

Pepsi is going to launch a campaign to give away 1 billion free songs in 2008. According to my friend Tomi Ahonen (where I heard this first), this is huge - iTunes total sales were 1.5 billion songs in 2007. Free music for everyone! Well, at least Pepsi drinkers.

Do your kids do Webkinz? My daughter does and boy does she love it! I have to confess that I am a bit caught up in the craze myself trying to figure out which ones are retired (we scored two St Bernards this weekend for her and her best friend visiting from Wyoming) and which are the newest ones.

WebkinzInsider
WebkinzInsider has a ton of great stuff about Webkinz. I especially like their Webkinz Cookbook where you can find a ton of recipes. You can also choose an ingredient you have and find a recipe.

WebkinzMom
WebkinzMom has a lot of fun info too. Here you will like the Virtual Charm Worksheet and the Gem Hunt Worksheet.

Squidoo Lens - Webkinz
A huge collection of Webkinz sites, links and info. Love the Retired Webkinz list.

I’ll keep my eyes open for more Webkinz stuff. If you know of any good ones, comment me.

I’ve recently become hooked on Facebook and also signed up for Twitter, but I really didn’t want to update my status in both places. I found that I was more likely to update regularly in Facebook, so tonight I searched for a way to make my FB status updates automatically change Twitter for me. Thanks to Jeff at JeffSandquist.com, I figured out how to do it, here. You rock, Jeff!

You will want to read Jeff’s post to get you started. Then you’ll end up at Twitterfeed, which will require an OpenID. If you don’t have one, just go ahead and sign up with ClaimID.

See you on Facebook!

This morning as my alarm sounded on my trusty Treo I accidentally dropped it from the bedside table onto the carpeted floor - less than a two foot drop. I’m sad to report it did not survive this fall. The light never came back on and when I called myself from my home phone I couldn’t answer it. Since today also marked the demise of our refrigerator (long story, don’t ask) I couldn’t get to the Sprint repair shop until late this afternoon.

They confirmed the worst - my phone is a goner. Thankfully, I have backed it up faithfully every week and synced it regularly. So, I’m not worried about recovering all my contacts (like my husband’s new cell phone number that I never memorized because it is so easy to just dial K-E-N and we’re in business) but I really can’t stand not having a phone. I feel disconnected and inaccessible. Which I am.

I have been paying my $7 per month insurance and so I’ll get a no-additional-cost replacement. But, are you ready for this…it could take 3 to 5 business days! Holy Crap - that could be January 7th!

I tried to ask the friendly, but ultimately not-so-helpful, repair store rep about a loaner phone. No dice. So I thought, well, I’ll buy a cheap phone to use as my back up phone. Nope. The least expensive option was $150. Thinking that maybe a pre-paid phone with my calls forwarded to it might work I asked about that. Sure, for 40 cents per minute.

Really this is quite annoying. I know perfectly well that the Sprint retail stores have Treo 700wx’s sitting on their shelves, but I have to acquire my replacement from a repair store. There is a chance I can get one from a different repair store 30 minutes drive away. If only I could call first to ask them if they have one in stock before I drive up there. No, I have to be there IN PERSON to find out.

Now I am really annoyed. What the &*#)#@$ is Sprint doing? Do they even realize how much this ticks me off? Or inconveniences me? This is craziness. Instead of being relieved that I made the right decision to get the replacement insurance and happily using up my shared minutes telling all my friends how great Sprint treated me I am blogging for perpetuity how annoyed they make me.

The really stupid part of all this is how un-capitalistic this is. We are in America right? Why can’t I buy a phone and use it on the network of my choice? It makes no sense at all that I have to get a certain piece of equipment from only a certain place. Someday we will look back on this and laugh at all the crap we had to put up with from the cell phone companies.

I’m not laughing yet. I’m too mad.

UPDATE:
I drove up to the Sprint repair store 30 minutes away. They were able to fix my phone by replacing the screen and the keyboard. Phew.

I remember the first time Ponn Sabra commented on my blog.

When I saw her name come up in my “please moderate” list I was so happy. It felt like a friend had stopped by my house to say hi. I have never met Ponn in person. We have never even exchanged emails. But I feel like I know her. (Even more so than other bloggers I interact with even fairly regularly.)

Today she asked in a post for her readers to post about their Brand Name Blog and gave a few starter topics. She asked us to share if she has helped her fellow bloggers to build a solid brand. Well, of course she has!

Why did I feel like I already knew Ponn when she commented here? Like she is a long lost friend? Because she is so good at building HER brand. I see her encouraging comments on other blogs, I run across her in the social networks and unlike some folks who use different names at every social networking site - she is Ponn Sabra everywhere.

Another suggestion she had was to share what keeps me reading her wonderful blog - EmpowerWomenNow. OK, here it is. She writes great stuff. Very informative. She links to interesting resources. Her blog design looks good. But so what? So do a zillion other bloggers who have not grabbed a piece of my heart like Ponn.

Ponn is empowering with every word. I can feel how much she wants to write every single post and how much she genuinely wants it to help the person reading it. She is committed to make her blog work no matter what - even writing posts that takes her hours to do because of her serious health issues. THAT IS EMPOWERING! Ponn is a brand and that brand say empowerment.

Ponn, thank you for everything! Hang in there.

Last night I was watching AMC’s new series Mad Men. It’s the show about the comings and goings of the Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency set in the 1960s. I have a love/hate relationship with this show. I love the ad guys and how they think about marketing. I hate the way the women on the show are treated. But what really fascinates me is how much everyone smokes.

They smoke in their houses, at work, during meetings at work, in their cars, while they are cooking, and in bed while their spouse is sleeping. Even the pregnant woman smokes! It is just so weird to see all that smoking.

Then I noticed how many times other TV show characters use their cell phones. Especially detective shows. In almost every scene someone is flipping open their cell phone. Or flipping it closed for emphasis.

It’s like cell phones are the new cigarette.

OK, that was fun. This How Geek Are You quiz showed me to be 54% geek. You?

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