First photo I took with original iPhone in 2007. Kitchen of our new home.

After having a late lunch at Olive Garden on July 1, 2007, I walked over to the AT&T store and bought my first iPhone. All that was left from the biggest launch in Apple’s history was a 4GB model and I took it. (No waiting, no lines)

I must admit, my friend Andy twisted my arm to give it a chance.  I have to thank him for pushing me to try it.  Who knows, I might have given Android a chance like most of my other friends avidly use & recommend. Yuk!

I was undecided at the time because I didn’t want to give up, of all things, the QWERTY keyboard on my Blackberry Curve. Can you believe that? Makes me chuckle everytime I reminisce about it.

Needless to say, the iPhone was the best electronic device I’ve owned by far!   I’ve kept my original iPhone thinking it will some day be a collector’s item.  I have it on display in my living room, since it is the most expensive art piece I own.  Well, other than the other Apple products in my home.

I have been upgrading every two years to the latest model.  I currently own a 32GB iPhone 4 running iOS 5.0.1 with 1,709 songs, 10,273 photos and 91 apps.  Waiting for upgrade eligibility in Feb. 2012 for the 4S.

I won’t make this into a post of why I believe the iPhone is simply the best choice out there.  There’s about 90 million iPhone users and countless stories on the web to convice you of that. 

It’s about a question I’m asked from time to time:  What phone do you recommend?  I simply say, “Get an iPhone”  and it usually results in one of two things:

1) A follow-up visit a few months later thanking me for the recommendation and them sharing their favorite features they didn’t know a phone could do. (Demonstration included)

 or

2) A text message asking me to guess what phone they just bought.  This is my favorite of the two. Since iOS 5, it’s been a pleasant surprise to receive that first iMessage from someone who just switched to an iPhone. It’s made it easier to identify the switch.

By my count, the number of converts is at 15 and rising.  Their ages range from 17 – 58 years of age.  The list includes friends, family, married couples, college students, teachers & my mom.

Thanks to subsidies, owning an iPhone has become fairly affordable.  For those new to the iPhone, there was no such thing when the original came out.  It was either $499 or $599 cash money! Also, it’s now available on all relevant carriers with a variety of plans to suit every need.

So if you’re in the market for a new smart phone, just get an iPhone! I’ll see you or reply to your first iMessage soon.

Baby Amanda

She weighed 5lbs, 13.5oz and was 19in long.

Baby Amanda with her parents

Sarah Shaffer and Pete Covitz are happily parenting baby Amanda at home.

Catch up with them online at their blog: http://lilsharpie.blogspot.com/

Born: March 4, 2011

Baby Carlitos

Baby Carlitos

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• Check out my restaurant reviews on Yelp.

For example, to get to Pueblo High School’s website you have to type the URL www.pueblowarriors.org in the web address box in your browser.

Example of a URL in address box. (Circled in red)

It’s a short and simple address so that our visitors can memorize it easily and return to our website.

From time to time we are on a website we would like to share with our students or colleagues that unfortunately looks like this:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Pueblo+Magnet+High+School&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=38.22949,61.787109&ie=UTF8&hq=Pueblo+Magnet+High+School&hnear=Pueblo+Magnet+High+School,+Tucson,+AZ+85713&ll=32.186945,-110.978994&spn=0.039952,0.060339&t=h&z=14&iwloc=A

That’s the web address for driving directions to Pueblo. What you normally do is copy and paste the URL into an email or document. Unless they all have photographic memories, they will not be able to memorize that URL for future reference. That’s where URL Shortening comes in handy.

What basically happens is that these online services assign a shorter, easier to remember URL to the long and complicated like the one above. I personally use bit.ly for most of my needs, but what I like about tinyurl.com is that I can personalize my own name to the address.

Screenshot of the Bit.ly website

I went ahead and copied the long URL above and pasted into tinyurl.com since I wanted to personalize it and this is what it looks like now:

http://tinyurl.com/pueblomap

or

http://bit.ly/8Ie3NH

What a difference huh?

This comes in handy when you want your students to visit a specific URL on any given assignment or when you want to share a web address that you want them to easily remember.

There are many online website that offer this service for free and offer additional paid features that you don’t need. Here’s a few:

• tinyurl.com
• bit.ly
• is.gd

Here’s a link to the Top Ten with a nice breakdown of the services they offer.

Once logged in to Outlook, go to Tools in the Top Menu & select Options.

In the Options panel, click on the tab labeled Mail Format and select the box that says Signatures. Your panel should now look like this:

Example of Signature Panel

You will be clicking on New to add a signature on the panel above. It will ask you to name it. If you see in my example above, I created two signatures.

One is my MAIN signature which goes on every new email I send.

The second is a REPLY signature that is used whenever I reply to an email.

I do this because I don’t want my main signature every time I reply. My reply signature has only my name on it. It’s good email etiquette, you don’t want you main signature all over the place. Especially on those emails you go back and forth with the sender. It can make it difficult to read.

You have the options of adding a picture, a link and to format the text as you wish. Always remember that simple is better.

Make sure to set your defaults on the right side as shown on the example. Those options designate which signatures you want Outlook to use for the specific tasks I mentioned above.

Now, every time you type up a new message your customized signature will automatically appear.

Madeline Michele Hackett was born to proud parents, Stacey and Ben Hackett, and proud brother, Logan James Hackett at Northwest Hospital at about 8:35 a.m. on Friday, October 2, 2009. She weighed in at 9 lbs. 2 oz. and measured 21 inches long! Wow!

Logan holding his Baby Sister Madeline Michele

Mom, Grandma and Baby Madeline Michele

Congratulations!

Video:

Wendy Hug had her baby over the summer and wanted to share these pictures with us:

Baby Benjamin

2 Days Old

Benjamin Kawasa was born June 14 weighing 6.9 lb and stretching 18 1/2 in.

Congratulations Wendy!

It’s been around for quite a while now, but check out MP3Panda for downloading legal music. At 5 cents,  a nickle, you can download some of your favorite tunes.

I know what you’re thinking, is it legal?  Apparently yes! I copied the following text from Cheap and Legal Dowloads which offers other downloading alternatives too.  CLD states:

Legality of MP3Panda
It’s worth highlighting MP3Panda is perfectly legal. Russian legislature enforces compulsory licenses, which means that a company can get the license to distribute and sell music as long as they pay for it somewhere. In the US if you plan to sell a certain CD, you have to negotiate with the labels, and that’s why the original Napster got shut down by the courts – they violated the law by not obtaining the licenses from the RIAA mob.

In Russia if you prove that (a) you keep track of what you’re distributing (log number of downloads) and (b) you pay to the collection agency, you’re legal to distribute any music you want. The collection agency (ROMS and FAIR, quoted in the Wall Street Journal article) will then re-distribute the money to the copyright holders.

The only catch, if you want to call it that, is that you must pay upfront. When you register you must select the amount of money you want in your ‘bank’.  If you select the $20 option, it basically means you have $20 in your account to spend on music. In iTunes it’s the opposite, you pay as you download.

Lets do the math, at 5 cents a song that equals to 400 songs! Compare that to 20 in iTunes. It’s even cheaper when you purchase entire albums. Purchasing entire albums is more cost effective when downloading “Greatest Hits” or “Best Of” type albums which most artist release.

Also note that the selection is not as big as iTunes. (10 million compared to 2 million)  Browse the site first and see if most of what you like to listen to is on there. Interested? Read on–>

Registration

The registration process is simple and secure. All you need is an email address and credit card.  If you select the higher dollar amount options, you will notice you get additional dollar bonuses for music.

Downloading

Purchase Entire Album or Single Song

After you log in, start browsing for the song you wish to download. (Entire album if you wish too) You can listen to a 30 second preview of the track by pressing on the litte panda next to each track. (Please note that the preview is NOT the quality of your download) Click on DOWNLOAD button and it will prompt you the amount that will be deducted from your account.

Window that prompts you for payment

You will then need to go to your DOWNLOADS section and  right-click the link Download and choose Save Target As…(or Save Link As…). Select where you want the file to download and depending on your connection speed an MP3 file with the song name will appear. All the ordered files are available for download within 48 hours. You’ll have to order these files again to be able to download them after that period.

Download Link

After your file downloads to the location you selected, you can import it to the music player of your choice. If you import to iTunes, usually the album artworks pops up automatically. If it doesn’t, follow these instructions to do add it.

This service certainly makes listening to your favorite music more affordable. Here’s a blog that explains it a little more.

A friend of mine emailed me the Gizmodo Post on instructions on how to do this. I read them over and they were the first instructions that seemed simple enough to make me do it.

It took me a few downloads and restarts on my iMac and I was ready to run QuickPwn for Mac OS X. After about 10 minutes the iPhone rebooted and I started loading programs on Cydia. A weird feeling of betrayal comes over you for a second. Then you start using programs you’ve been missing and you feel like Neo from The Matrix. Jailbrake = Unplugged! Why has Apple or AT&T decided to keep us from these basic features you find on every other phone?

The final process of the Jailbrake

The #1 reason I Jailbroke my iPhone was for video capabilities. (Come on Apple! Probably AT&T…) The first programs I installed were Qik and Cycorder. Both programs are just what I was missing from my iPhone. Instant satisfaction!

I played around with other applications like Snapture, which I will purchase, and Winterboard. I like some of the features of Winterboard but I don’t want my iPhone looking like a MySpace page. So I kept my default Springboard.

I also tried the Cut & Paste application called Clippy. Although it’s in Beta, it works remarkably well. (Again, Come on Apple!)

This comic describes how I feel about my improved iPhone:

Before you start passing judgment, I also Jailbroke my wife’s iPhone and she loves that she can now play her childhood’s favorite game Mario Bros and record her dog Cochi playing around.

For now I am happy with the 4 apps on my Jailbroken iPhone. I haven’t seen any lag or experienced any crashes on my iPhone. If you are debating whether to Jailbrake or not, the Gizmodo post is easy and harmless. I encourage you to try it. In keeping with the Matrix theme, Morpheus compares it “to trying to free your mind.”

Make sure you run a new back-up on iTunes of your iPhone before trying this. Worst comes to worse, you can ALWAYS RESTORE.

Thanks for the URL himess33.