I forgot my phone charger!!

Ok, I admit it...that title makes me laugh.

Seriously though, has this happened to you? It has DEFINITELY happened to me. Not only has that happened to me, but sometimes, I've been about to leave the house, when I realize my phone charge is low. So at that point I have to decide, I either:
Plug my phone in and leave it home to charge, the downside is that it means I'm unreachable when I'm out, but when I'm back I can check my messages.
Grab the plug and then plug it into my car via the power converter I have so that I can charge it on the move.
If I want to walk? I might just carry the cord and plug it in wherever I end up too..."Can I plug my phone in please?"
I don't know about you but I don't really like asking to use the electricity when I go somewhere...not really a big deal in a cafe, but if I'm going to someones house? Or to one of the places where my kids take classes maybe? Not my thing.

So when I saw this cool thing called an nPower PEG that not only already exists but is available now, I JUMPED RIGHT ON BOARD. It is just about the coolest thing ever as far as I'm concerned...it is a device that I plug my phone into, and carry around. Then all I have to do is walk around. It uses the kinetic energy from my movement to CHARGE MY PHONE.

Can you really ask for anything more? I didn't think so...but wait, I have something for you too...if you look for the picture of the device on MobilizeMom.me then you will see that there is a FREE SHIPPING code for you to use ;-) I had to share that with all my lovely readers...enjoy!

Please come back and tell me if/how it changes your life if you do decide to go get one... :-)

Forget about Teachers, Forget About Books, No More Stamps OR Address Books!!!

I've been using this service called SendOutCards for some time now, it is a website where you can load your contacts once, and from there you can design and send them real old school cards in the mail... for me it has been great for keeping in touch with Grandma, particularly because you can upload pictures (of kids in this case) and have them printed directly on the card. This saves SO MUCH TIME AND STRESS!! Just look at these two scenarios and the effort to accomplish each...

OLD SCHOOL:

• Take picture
• Print Picture by
• Printing it at home with your printer 
• Ordering it online and picking up in a store
• Bringing the film canister to a photo place and having them print it...be prepared to wait!
• Collect picture and move to next step..
• Bring Photo Home
• Go to store to buy a card 
• (or make one)
• Find or go to post office to get stamps 
• At home, assemble all the parts...photo in card, stamp on envelope
• Find Address book, write address on card (make sure you don't mess up!)
• Put it in the mailbox 
• or if you don't have the stamps to the post office to mail it there

NEW SCHOOL (SOC):

• Take picture (digital)
• Load it onto computer
• Login to SOC 
• Select card
• Select picture
• Type message
• SEND

So you get my drift right? It's  so so much easier, especially if you have a Chromebook you can use anywhere and you don't even have to go home to get the pictures on the computer...and it allows techies like me to stay in touch with the non-techies in a way that they understand, via paper. If you are interested I'm adding a link to my sidebar so that it can always easily be accessed there.

Healthy Rewards Program

Have you installed EveryMove yet on your mobile device? It is pretty slick, it works along with a variety of other tools (FitBit for example) and applications to track physical activity, where it goes beyond these though is that you actually earn points towards real rewards! You can earn an adventure (I signed up to earn points towards time at an Adventure Park) or any variety of other things. It seems like a cool way to both promote your stuff (by offering the rewards) and to earn stuff you might not otherwise pay for, or not pay as much for. I figure for the promotion benefits what you get is people who WANT what you have seeing what you have to offer whenever they use the program. This means they will either have a feeling of accomplishment when they get your offering that it will be affiliated with (warm fuzzies) or it means they might not reach their goal, and decide they want it anyway, without the discount and just go get it themselves. I suppose there is a tiny risk that someone might be angry that they did not earn a reward and might hold themselves back but I hope that is the minority! I think I had better go get some exercise so I can get some points towards that Adventure Park! 

Finding Focus

When you are a blogger, for yourself or for a company, one of the best things that you can do to increase the traffic to your site is to find the people interested in your topic. Yes, I said topic. This has by far been my biggest problem in this world of blogging as my interests span the globe in things I am paying attention to and wanting to write about. I keep this blogger site up for technology tips and post when I feel I have something to share here. I also have one that is focused on Mom stuff, a garden site for all that Garden Stuff, and of course I use my KristinBennett.com for just about everything else, it is kind of the smorgasboard of me. Why I do all this is so that I can use the KristinBennett.com to collect all my content, and then I can parse it out or rewrite it to go into the topic specific blogs when needed...how do you go about doing this? How many sites do you have?

SOPA