Tech Tips — Page 7

How to project videos from your phone to any surface – #3MSummerFun

“Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose.” – The Wonder Years…. Here are a few things that I love – Family and friends, photos and videos, tech that’s simple but super smart. Combine those all into one amazingly cool gadget, and you’ve got the new 3M Mobile Projector. This is one of the most awesome ideas that I’ve seen in a very long time – and as a blogger, I get introduced to a TON of new gadgets and products every day. So when I tell you that THIS is one of the best I’ve seen, you know it’s goooooood…..

“We do not remember days; we remember moments.” – Cesare Pavese

As you can see, this baby is a powerhouse – there are SO many rad ways that you can use it!! When we got ours to test out for a couple of weeks, my big plan was to do a super fun outdoor “Drive-In” style movie night. When I was a kid, I just adored watching my fave films at our local drive-in, but it closed down about 10 years ago, so none of the kiddos in my family have had that experience. But, we’ve had a rough week around here. Every single one of us has been sick, and we’ve had crazy rain and lightening storms. {Check the news for Washington state lightening storms – it’s been a mess!} So I had to settle for checking out the fun photos from my friend Jennifer at Makobi Scribe – I was totally jealous of their kid’s Make Your Own Drive-In party. Super cool.

So I asked: “What else can you do with the 3M Mobile Projector?

And oh baby, there are SO many answers to that question! Let me share some of my favorite features of this sweet gadget, and some cool ways that we used it in my home. But warning: if you read this, you are going to be so in love that you will grab your wallet and head out to buy one of these right away too. So only keep reading if you’re ready for a little tech shoppin’….

It doesn’t get much cooler than this

So, I love gadgets, but I do tend to be a little bit tech-challenged. Since this looked so uber duber cool, I thought it would be tricky to get started with. But, all I did was unpack these few pieces that came in the package – the Projector itself, a couple of instruction guides, a cord to attach the projector to my iPhone, and a charger. That’s it. Plug one end of the cord into the projector and the other into your phone, pick a video to watch – from YouTube, Hulu, or your own personal videos – and BAM! when you hit play on your phone, you’ll see it projected! Um, that’s it??? Yep, that easy. I was in love at first byte… or something like that. {I’m not totally clear on what a byte is?? Anyway…}

“There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory.” – Josh Billings

Since I was totally unprepared for this to be so simple, I was as surprised as Abby was when a video of her and our puppy Deuce showed up on the kitchen tile. She was hysterical – she jumped right down there on the floor, pointing at our doggie, just a gigglin’ away! Honestly one of those priceless moments. So sweet. I snapped a couple of quick pics, but I had to use Mike’s phone, since my iPhone was already in action with the projector. The photos weren’t real clear, so I thought I’d get a few more to show you how crazy-awesome this is, but I really couldn’t get any to do it justice. When it’s dark enough to see the projected videos clearly – it’s too dark for his phone to take pics. When there’s enough light for good pics, you can’t really see the videos. I guess not ALL tech situations can be as perfectly put together as this projector is! You’ll have to trust me on how cool the images look, but let me share a few cool ways we used this:

Bedtime: Abby has a tough time getting to sleep lately. She never wants to stay in her crib {which is still in our bedroom until my brother moves out of the other bedroom} and usually ends up with us. But when I set up the projector to shine a movie onto the ceiling above her bed, she is able to calm down and drift off to sleep watching Tangled. Thank you 3M!
Family Videos: Grandma can’t see those bitty images on my iPhone, no matter how adorable they are. But she was so amazed to watch them projected up onto the living room wall. This is an awesome way to share fun photos too.
Running Errands: We had a couple of doctors appointments this week, plus sick kids to go to them, which usually leads to crabby demeanors. But when I projected videos onto the back of the seats while we drove, then shined funny YouTube clips onto the floor of the waiting room – I made not just ours but all the OTHER kids pretty darn happy too!

I can see this being a huge hit at our backyard BBQ parties too – to share old videos and pics of the guests, funny videos or music clips to liven things up – or a great movie beamed up onto the patio wall! Love, love, LOVE everything about this projector. {Did I tell you that I love it?}

Family fun just got epic

The 3M Mobile Projector connects to Apple products like your iPhone or iPad. You have about 2 hours of juice per charge – plenty of time for almost any movie – {if you wanted to watch a super long one, just use it somewhere that it can be plugged in to charge while playing, no worries.} You can watch your own videos, share your photos, or view flicks from YouTube, Netflix, iTunes, and more! You can even purchase an additional tri-pod to make set up even easier. To learn more about how insanely cool this is – plus get specs, and more cool visuals of it in use – visit 3Mmobileprojectors.com today!

Follow them on Facebook and Twitter too to stay updated on new products and promotions!

How to project videos from your phone to any surface –sunshineandsippycups.com/2012/07/how-to… #3MSummerFun

— SunandSipCups (@SunandSipCups) July 17, 2012

{Disclosure: I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of 3M and received a promotional item to thank me for taking the time to participate.}

Posted by Meagan Paullin on July 16, 2012 Filed Under: Tech Tips | No Comments

Creative Facebook Photo App Creates Personalized Photo Books & More!

New PhotoPad App for Facebook: I am a collector of photos and memorabilia. I love photos, I have books filled with ticket stubs, letters and cards, menus and postcards, announcements for babies and graduations… You get the idea. Holding on to those moments in life are very important to me, and I really treasure all of my scrapbooks and albums. But now that life has changed, technology has updated, and most of my photos are digital – I love finding creative new ways to share them with friends. Which led me to this fun new app – It’s called PhotoPad, and you access it right from Facebook.

“She glances at the photo, and the pilot light of memory flickers in her eyes.” – Frank Deford

This creative photo app for Facebook is super easy to use, and can make some really fun stuff – Use it to instantly convert the photos in your Facebook albums into photo books, eCards, Postcards, and more. I used it for the first time this morning, and made a whole photo book, filled with pics of Abby. Very cool, right? Here’s how it works:

Get started: Log onto Facebook, then go to the PhotoPad Facebook page to learn more, or just click through directly to their Facebook photo app if you’re already logged in.
Loading: The first time I used this app, it loaded SUPER slow. I’m not sure if my internet was running slow, or if it always takes a little longer your very first time using it – but each time I’ve logged in after that initial trial, it’s been much quicker.
Choose a product: Ok, this part confused me a little. The first screen that comes up says, “Choose a heart,” and has a bunch of images to choose from. But, I couldn’t figure out what to do with that heart? So I just skipped it, and went up to the toolbar at the top. You can make an Instant Photo Book, which will autofill pages with a selection of your Facebook photos. Or, make a traditional style book where you add photos individually, a postcard, ecard, or other choices.
Pick a theme: This also confused me for just a minute… When I started the photo book, there were 4 choices of theme to pick from. BUT, don’t let that fool ya! When you get started, there are a ton more cool layouts, themes, backgrounds and more to customize your designs. These are all under the “Change Styles” tab in the toolbar.
Load your photos: This one is simple as can be, just click “Add Photos” in the toolbar, then choose which album you want to draw your pics from. Choose the photos you want to use, check the boxes, then they’ll load into your layouts.
Customize it: You can add stickers, text, shapes, borders, and all kinds of other fun stuff to make your cards or books your own. I added a few little flower stickers to my simple layout, along with some text to describe what the photos are all about. Took me only about 2-3 minutes to create my first couple of pages, and less than 15 minutes for the whole book.

And that’s it – easy peasy! When you’re all done, click the “Publish” button in the toolbar, and decide whether to publish it publicly, send to friends, or keep it private in your own collection. The app will store all of your creations right there in Facebook, so you can access them again whenever you want them. What a fun way to share photos from events like birthdays or weddings with friends and family, right? Love it.

Check out the PhotoPad app for yourself on Facebook today too!

If you try it too, let me know what you think of it! And feel free to stop by my Facebook wall and share some of your new cool creations – I’d love to see how you use this with your fave photos.

“Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose.” – The Wonder Years

{Disclosure: I received compensation as part of a campaign with Living Your Moment in order to write my review. All opinions are mine and mine alone. I am disclosing this in accordance with FTC 16 CFR Part 255 concerning the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising.}

Posted by Meagan Paullin on May 26, 2012 Filed Under: Tech Tips | No Comments

Is Facebook Really Charging for Status Updates?

No, not exactly. But – if you haven’t noticed it yet – there is a new option available to all business page owners when you write your next status update. It’s called Facebook Promoted Posts – “Promote your page posts so more people see them in their news feed.” Sounds great, right? But there’s a catch – you have to PAY to have those posts promoted. That does not sound so great.

Did you know… only 16 out of every 100 of your “fans” actually see your status updates?

If you haven’t seen the new update about Promotional Posts yet, you should soon. When you use Facebook as your page, and begin to write your status update, it will show you a pop-up bubble with the option to promote that post. If you click for details, it will then let you know that you’ll be paying for that chance to have your post seen by more of your own fans. This feature started as a test option, where personal users could pay to have their status updates shared more widely, but they quickly realized they would have better luck getting businesses to pay. I had a feeling that Facebook would soon start charging business owners more fees, but this was still pretty surprising. And personally, I think it’s a bad move – Here’s why:

First, Facebook said that it wants brands to act more like people – interact with users, not advertise to them. They even have a rule that when you create the large banner image for your Facebook page, you cannot promote sales or deals – because the goal is to have pages to create good content, not ads. So – they will prevent you from using the graphic on your page as an ad, but will now allow you to treat the status updates that you post as ads, by paying to ensure that they are seen? That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Why not just show all of my fans my posts anyway? If Facebook is serious about their stated goal of improving the user experience, then why do they hide my posts? When I like a brand or blog page, it’s because I’m interested in following their posts, and learning what they have to say. So why hide things from me that I chose to follow?
Right now, Facebook shows your post to a limited amount of your fans – the average is 16%. How do they decide who to show it to? Well, they look at whether someone has interacted with your page before, whether the status update is popular {lots of likes and shares means Facebook will show it to even more people}, and what the content is {picture, video, links, etc}. They do this with a goal of giving you only updates that will be interesting to you. So why would they do the complete opposite, and allow people to pay to show me status updates that Facebook would not have shown me in the first place?

But, this is the way it is now, so I have to adapt. We all do. And, from what I’m hearing around the web, there will be a lot more changes coming soon too. {Isn’t there always a new change coming to Facebook? Ugh.} While they still guarantee that Facebook will never charge people to use it, they WILL be adding quite a few more features that they can charge business owners to use. I hope the next ones are better than this.

If I wanted to pay for an ad, I would. I shouldn’t have to pay to have my status shown to people who have already chosen to like my page.

Well, now that we know what this new Promoted Posts tool is, let’s take a look at how it works, so you can take advantage of it if you choose to. I mean, like it or not, working on the web means constantly adapting to new changes. So – here’s some basic tips on using the new Promoted Posts function on Facebook.

Switch to use Facebook as your page, and click on the status update box, to start a new post. You’ll see a new button at the bottom of the box, labeled “Promote.”
Click the drop down menu arrow, and you’ll see options to set your price, payment method, and other settings.
Now, you can promote your post. You can also go to other previous posts {from the last 3 days only}, and add them to be promoted as well, within the budget amount that you have set up.

When the post appears in people’s newsfeeds, it will be labeled as sponsored. I’m not sure how bold the label will be, or whether it will appear more spammy looking to people. But – I can see the appeal to this option. We’ve all used Facebook for such a long time, that our eyes are trained to kind of ignore that side of the page where the ads are. Think about it – Can you remember any ads that you’ve seen lately? But you DO notice what’s in your newsfeed, so allowing brands to add their sponsored posts right into the stream you’re reading – right in between an announcement about your best friend’s new baby, and an upcoming graduation party for a niece, then the sponsored post is pretty darn likely to be actually looked at and read. This also helps with the mobile user problem – a growing percentage of people visit Facebook primarily from their cell phones, totally bypassing ads altogether. But now, brands have a new way to reach them.

What Facebook says about Promoted Posts

“Nothing has changed about how your posts are shared with the people who like your Page.” – Facebook.com A lot of activity happens on Facebook and most people only see some of it in their news feeds. They may miss things when they’re not on Facebook, or they may have a lot of friends and Pages, which results in too much activity to show all of it in their news feed. If you don’t promote your post, many of the people connected to your Page may still see it. However, by promoting a post, you’re increasing its potential reach so an even larger percentage of your Page audience and the friends of those interacting with your post will see it.

Do you “Like” this new update?

Is this tool something that you’ll use to promote your own posts? As a user, do you think you’ll be bothered by these sponsored updates in your newsfeed? I’d love to hear some comments on all sides of this issue – I’m still trying to figure out what I think about it all. And, if you’d like to learn more, you can visit the Facebook Promoted Posts FAQ page, and a little more about Facebook advertising and it’s always changing form.

Is Facebook Really Charging for Status Updates? Yep, but there’s more to it – sunshineandsippycups.com/2012/05/is-fac… #Facebook

— SunandSipCups (@SunandSipCups) May 23, 2012