Packer Stuff, Anyone?

Our Sunday paper offered us the opportunity to order all kinds of Packer stuff – in celebration of their Super Bowl win.  Of course, each item is only offered in limited quantities, so we better order now.
 
First, they offered a nice-looking ring, which wasn’t too bad.  And then there was a bronze football on a stand.  Not too bad, and how about the coin set handsomely displayed on a wall plaque?  Surely those would be appreciated by any Packers fan. 
 
Then it got a little strange.  There’s the souvenir chopper, which kind of make sense because Wisconsin is the home of Harley Davidson.  Then there’s the Green Bay Packers train collection which proudly sports Green Bay Packers colors, logos and players in action!  I guess that’s good for the Packers fan who’s also a train buff.
 
And if none of those catch your eye – there’s the crystal snowman with an illuminated village in his crystal tummy and a moving train around his base!  Seriously, how could anyone resist this guy?  Only $140 plus shipping, but you can pay in 4 installments of $34.99.
 

Packer Stuff VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

When I checked out the site that was offering all these, I found out that there were many more Packer Collectibles available.  The cards in our Sunday paper didn’t begin to show them all.  OK, I think it’s funny, but as crazy as these Packer fans are around here, they’ll probably sell a bunch of these things.

Publish Your Own Newspaper (Sort of)

This is so cool!  Paper.li organizes links shared on Twitter into an easy to read newspaper-style format. Newspapers can be created for any Twitter user, list or #tag and publish every 24 hours - or change the frequency if you'd rather have morning, evening or even weekly editions.  It's currently an alpha version which means new features are being added regularly, and they welcome feedback.

It's free to sign up, and you can sign in with facebook or twitter, then choose what you want included in your newspaper - use your twitter account, a list, or even a specific #tag.  I just went with my twitter feed and came up with The bcmom Daily. The title of the newspaper can be changed, but I'm going with that for now.

What does paper.li do to make a newspaper?
Publishing a newspaper is no small task! Here is an overview of all the things paper.li does in the background for you:

• extract all tweets that include URLs
  
• extract the content found on these URLs:
  
  • text, e.g. blog post, newspaper article
    
  • photo, e.g. Flickr, yfrog, Twitpic, ...
    
  • video, e.g. YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, ...
    
• analyze the extracted text for topic, e.g. Politics, Technology, ...
  
• surface the day's most relevant articles (using paper.li magic)
  
• construct a newspaper frontpage using the filtered articles, photos and videos
  

Paper.li archives all editions, so you can go back and read them any time you want.  You can send out automatic tweets (if you want to) every time the paper is updated, include a widget on your blog, create custom papers and more.  I haven't explored it all yet.  I just thought it was super cool and had to share.  Check it out.  Publish your own paper.  Subscribe to mine.  Have fun.

A Network in Your Pocket

GroupMe lets you effortlessly group text with the people in your life that are important to you. It's your real-life network, in your pocket. It's totally free and works on every phone.

I've just recently started texting, because now we have a texting package on our cell phones.  So far I've sent a few texts to my kids, and I've updated my twitter and facebook from my phone.  And that's about it.

I may not have a use for this yet, but I can definitely see how GroupMe could come in handy.  It's a free service that lets you create multiple groups of contacts, such as family, soccer team, business associates, study group.  Then, each group gets assigned a special number.  Send a text to that number, and everyone in the group gets it, no scrolling through contacts and selecting multiple recipients.  Replies to the group number go to everyone in the group.  You can also call a group number for an instant conference call - for those times that texting just doesn't cut it.

I started a group of my own and got a number (262)528-3922 - because it was free and I could - and it was easy.  So far I'm the only person in it, so if you want to be part of my group, let me know! Or just check out GroupMe and start some groups of your own.

Reviewing a Product from CSN Stores

The kind folks at CSN Stores have offered to let me review one of their products.  Of course I jumped at the chance because there are a lot of really nice products available from CSN Stores.  With over 200 online stores, CSN Stores has practically anything you need or want.  You can buy area rugs, ceiling fans, corner tv stands, dinnerware, home decor, and so much more.  My problem is going to be deciding what it is that I want! 

If you haven't heard of CSN Stores before, be sure to check them out.  You can shop at any or all of those over 200 stores and check out with one shopping cart.  Shipping is free on many items, and their customer service is really great. 

Come back soon to see my review.  Well, not too soon - I've got some deciding to do!

Royalty Free Music

I was trying to put together a video today using Windows Live Movie Maker.  I’m not sure exactly what I did, but at some point it told me that I had not added any music and did I want to add some now.  Sure, why not.  So I started looking through my music files to find something appropriate.  How do you even know what music is appropriate for a video?

 

Well, obviously I don’t know, because the song I picked (because it didn’t have words – that was my reason) wasn’t right – or so my son said.  Then he pointed me to the Royalty Free Music available on incompetech.  I hadn’t heard of it before – of course, I’d never been looking for music for a video before – so I checked it out.  Sure enough, lots of music to choose from, free to use with attribution under a Creative Commons license.

 

I didn’t end up choosing anything because, while you can browse by genre and feel, I still didn’t know what I was looking for.  Maybe next time…