Back in November I scored this awesome deal on a camera from Amazon daily deals. I was so excited! I had been shopping around for a while. I knew I wanted something that I could toss into my purse or diaper bag. A DSLR, while they are very nice (and I’d still love to have one someday), was just too expensive and bulky. I also wanted something with high megapixels and high zoom.

I think I picked well! Don’t you agree? These are straight out of the camera, completely unedited.

What I decided on is the Fujifulm FinePix F505 EXR. It’s on sale now with an SD card on Amazon! Check it out!

Disclosure: None needed! This post is NOT sponsored in any way. Just loving my new camera and wanted to share the word.

Wouldn’t you just love to make your own ringtones? With iPhone it is tricky but it can be done. With Mobile17.com it’s actually not too bad! I like having personalized ringtones for all of my favorite contacts. I’ve always had it that way since I had my first old school Nokia about a million years ago. Ever since personalized ringtones existed, I’ve been all over it.

Wanna try it for yourself? It’s free and they have an app too. All phones and providers will work, they will hook you up with step by step instructions too. Here’s how I did it:

First, select a song from your computer

It didn’t have my song so I could type in the artist and song title or skip it. I entered it in.

Then it wants to know where to start the ringtone exactly. I typically go for the chorus.

I listened to the song in iTunes and paused it exactly where I want the ringtone to start.

After you have it where you want it, preview it. If it’s good to go hit continue.

From there you have to select your phone model.

I’m Apple iPhone 3G

After that you select your phone provider

Then you enter your phone number

From there it send you the ringtone in an email. Then you save it to your computer. For many phones it sends it to you as a text and from there you can make it a ringtone. iPhone is much more complicated, but it can be done. At the bottom of this page it has a great video you can watch that shows you the final steps of how to make it a ringtone in iTunes.

From there you’re all done! Free ringtones mobile 17. Now all you have to do is select songs that perfectly describe each and every one of your favorite people! Good luck with that!

Do you Skype? I don’t that often. I would love to do it more but it seems that I always have a house full of noisy kids making it nearly impossible to have a conversation with anyone. I’m aware that many of you use Skype for business and use it for conference calls. Do you remember everything that goes on in that call? Do you take notes during the call? I’m thinking you don’t, it’s probably more important to be in the call versus jotting down notes the entire time. Do you wonder afterwards “What was that one thing he said?”, “What was the name of that website?”, “What was the name of that contact?”
Well, now you don’t have to miss out on those important details! You can record Skype calls!!! Click here to check out Riveria for Skype and see the details of how it works! You can try it completely free for 14 days, if you love it you can buy it for just $9.99!!!

Even if you don’t use skype for Business Riveria for Skype can still be well worth the price. What about Skype calls with long distance family members? What about Skype calls with Grandma & Grandpa? Would a recorded Skype marriage proposal be cool? Conversations among friends? Cutler loves to Skype with a friend of mine and the two little ones just jabber back and forth to each other. It’s so cute!!!

Is this something you’d use? What reasons would you want to record a Skype call?

I have been burning DVD’s for personal use for years. We have a pretty large stash of children’s videos, like Baby Einstein. What is so appealing about burning your own is, I can make a copy for the car. I copy the main movie only, that way when I pop the DVD into the player it starts right where it should, skipping all the previews. No fuss!

So how does one go about burning a DVD? Well, there are a number of programs you can use depending on what you’re copying. DVDFab is a great one, as well as using DVDDecrypter and DVDShrink. If you use the latter 2 you’ll also need to get Nero. Next thing you’ll need are blank DVD‘s. Something to keep in mind is not all DVD players are compatible with certain blank DVD’s. Click here to see if your what DVD’s your player will take. That’s pretty much all you’d need!

Now keep in mind that it’s only legal to make backup copies of videos that you already own. It’s not legal to copy something for personal gain that is copyrighted.

Another great use for blank DVD’s is creating homemade keepsake videos! If you have a program like Windows Movie Maker or iMovie for Mac you can create and burn your home movies to DVD’s. On my videography website I get the honor of making videos for a number of organizations. My son’s preschool allowed me to use their photos of the entire year and put together a video to offer to the children as a keepsake. What I wouldn’t have given to have one some DVD duplication equipment. I think the hardest part of that job was the hours I put in to it making copies. I may have to invest in a DVD publisher for down the road, but for now my laptop does the trick!

Do you backup files or pics on DVD’s? What’s your favorite program? Do you have a brand of DVD’s you swear by or some to stay away from?

Yep, that’s right. I corrupted Windows 7. At least that’s what the Dell Customer Service Agent told me. Let me tell you the back story.

A little over a month ago I purchased a new laptop from Dell. My old one had become a complete pain in my butt! It was so slow! I really use mine and it’s on and running all the time. From the time it comes out of the box it doesn’t get much sleep time. I had cleaned it up, defragged it, deleted cookies, temporary internet files, the works! I think my processor was going bad. It was also beginning to overheat. Not.Good.

So I made the decision to purchase a new laptop and let the boys use my old one as a gaming computer. It already had all the programs loaded on it, so all I had to do was transfer my old files to the new computer. This took me DAYS. I have a TON of programs that I use daily and even more that I use frequently. I had to have them all, right? Oh yeah. So there I go, plugging along reinstalling all my various programs from download files, disc files and backup files.

Then, when I try to run a program that came installed on the computer I get an error that it’s missing some crucial .dll file. How can that be? It came with the machine? I tried everything I know to do, but I had to resort to calling the help line. I hate doing this. I always have such a hard time understanding the employees. Anyways. I call in, gave them my service tag off the bottom of the laptop and they tell me that they can’t help me because my laptop is from out of the country.

EXCUSE ME?!? What? I purchased it from the Dell website. So where did it come from? I have no idea.

They transferred me to Canada!!! They proceed to tell me that my laptop did not come from there and transferred me back to the US help line. Finally, over an hour later, they located my laptop off of my purchase order number that was on my invoice. Phew! Thank goodness! BUT…my laptop was not associated with the service tag yet. They hadn’t actually connected the order, with the laptop. Have you heard of this before? Insanity!!! So what do I need to do? Call back in 48 hours and they should be able to help me then.

Whatever! I was MAD at this point! So I do what I can and continue to try and fix the computer on my own. I called back 2 days later and they were able to pull up my laptop info with the service tag. Thank you! Finally! We worked on it together for almost an hour before I suggested they just take it over with the remote access, look into the registry and fix this thing already! Also, we were in the middle of a terrible thunderstorm! I thought I was going to lose power and have to start the whole process all over again. Luckily that didn’t happen.

So, as far as the service agent could tell, I had too many burning programs. What? Too many? Nah, can’t be. I mean, I really need all 7 programs. Don’t I? (LOL!!!) I guess I can understand that too many similar programs can interfere with each other, but they can completely screw up the Operating System? I think there may be a flaw in their OS and not my methods. Mind you, all 7 programs worked fine on my old computer. I used them all at different times for different things. Never had a problem before.

After all my hard work of installing my programs, music, pictures and videos I was forced to wipe the hard drive and start from scratch…again. THIS.SUCKS.

Now I only have 3 burning programs. It’s not exactly how I would prefer to have things, but I guess it’s all the computer can handle. Figures.

So there you have it…

I corrupted Windows 7.

Over the weekend my beloved LG phone died. I think I over texted and killed it. I got to be a pro at it. I LOVE the predictive text and got so used to it that I could automatically hit the 0 button the appropriate number of times to select the correct word. After sending a text to my mom the phone shut off and rebooted…BUT it never stopped!!! It was in a continuous loop of powering on and off again. Never giving me the opportunity to use it again. *sniff sniff*

I took it into my local Alltel store to see if they could flash the phone and put life back into it. No suck luck. It ended up being complete garbage! Ugh! It sucks! So my mom loaned me her Samsung phone. I don’t like it. I really appreciate the phone, but it just can’t keep up with my texting! I would get going and it would miss every 3rd letter or so and ended up misspelling a ton of words!

I bought my hubby a great phone off of Ebay, an HTC Touch Pro and it arrived this past week. He was glad to get it and I was equally glad. I am now inheriting his old phone, an LG Scoop. Citris too. It works for now. It’s in really great shape and it’s an LG (which I LOVE by the way). It has a qwerty, which I know is all the rage, but I’m just not “feeling” the love. I try to get going on it, but it just doesn’t feel natural to me. I find myself resorting to the keypad on the front of the phone entering texts with T9. It just works for me.

I’ve been looking up phones to see what I might want to get myself and I think I want the LG Glimmer. Anyone out there have any comments about it? I like the idea of having a touch screen, but not JUST a touch screen. I think I won’t be happy unless there is a keypad too. That’s the plan then, after Christmas I’ll be scouring the auctions looking for a great deal.

Have a phone you just LOVE? Tell me about it!