The other day I finally went ahead and upgraded my operating system from Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium. I’m not a huge fan of the Vista operating system and I was leery of Windows 7. About a month ago, one of my professors sent me an email about being able to upgrade to Windows 7 for $29.99. In order to get the upgrade a person needs to have a school email address, here is the link to the upgrade: Digital River.

A week ago, my co-worker called me and wanted me to set up her new computer she bought on Black Friday. I agreed to set the laptop up for her and got a look at Windows 7 and I really liked the look. Windows 7 has a very clean look to it and that’s what drew me in. I finally said hell with it and purchased the upgrade.

The whole process of downloading and upgrading Windows 7 took about 4 hours. One of my biggest concerns about upgrading was the possibility of losing my data and maybe some of the programs wouldn’t work. The upgrade went flawlessly, I didn’t lose any important documents, and all the programs seem to work fine. If you’re concerned about losing any documents just back them up.

When Windows 7 started, the chime was a sounded like something from the game Diablo. I thought that was cool. All of the security software worked but Windows Security Center alerted me about not having an antivirus installed but I run A-squared, which has a built in antivirus engine. Windows Vista never alerted me about not having an antivirus.
One of the new features I like about Windows 7 is the taskbar or Superbar. The old Windows taskbar was small and I didn’t care for it but the Superbar in Windows 7 is really nice. It’s easy to scroll to the open files and programs, when there is multiple browsers open it doesn’t take up as much space as before. When the items in the taskbar are highlighted and there is more than one instance, it will display all of them.

I mentioned earlier how clean I thought Windows 7 looked so I provided a screenshot of my desktop.

Screenshot of my desktop

The background is one of the default desktop backgrounds and can be accessed by right clicking on the desktop and scrolling to personalize. This area lets you customize the look of Windows 7 by changing the theme, background, screensaver, icons, and more. If the themes are not suitable, it’s easy to go online and download a new one.

I haven’t really messed around with any other settings yet but I’m digging Windows 7. My favorite OS from Microsoft was XP and I can see myself liking this OS better then XP. If anyone knows of any tweaks, I would definitely like to know them.

What is it that you carry on you at all times? Is it one thing or several? Do you carry keys, wallet, phone, pictures, lipstick, etc? I was thinking today as I was digging through my massive purse how I wish I didn’t have to have so much stuff with me at all times.

I then stumbled across an article tonight that had just to do with that. It was about the possibility of keys, items in a wallet, and a cell phone into one “super phone”. This device could unlock your car and start it, pay for items in the store in stead of using a debit card or cash, and do everything else that a regular phone does.

I was excited about this to begin with and then thought about how much trouble it could cause if you lost your phone or it got stolen. Wouldn’t that person then have access to your accounts and credit cards? That would be worse than losing your wallet if you ask me. The things that could be done would be almost instantaneous. The person could empty your accounts without anything stopping them. What if they knew what car was yours and they could take it with such ease.

Phones get lost and phones can break either on purpose or on accident. I am not sure that having the ability to start my car and pay for things in one device is such a wise idea considering all the things that can go wrong. I think I will stick with my cluttered purse. I rather lose or break one thing and not lose all three. What about you? Would you like a device like this? Would you like the device to do something else that wasn’t described? After all….this may be in our near future.

The other day I received an email from Ryan Wade at Unique Apps regarding his Web site not being mobile friendly. What this means is that when someone visits a site that isn’t mobile friendly, the site can take up to 30 seconds or longer to load. When I am on the go, I visit my site through my iPhone and did notice the load time to be quite long but failed to act on it.

I also noticed through the Statpress plug-in that I was getting many views through the iPhone. Therefore, I went out searching for ways to make the site mobile friendly and came upon a WordPress plug-in that makes this as easy as 123. The plug-in is called MobilePress.

After installation of the plug-in, I went into the admin section of WordPress and customized how the site will render on a mobile device. MobilePress also gives the blogger the ability to change how the theme will look on a mobile device.  MobilePress currently has three different themes. The themes are iPhone 1.0 by TinyImpact, default theme, and a default iPhone theme.

I went with the iPhone 1.0 by TinyImpact because of the clean look. It is also possible to change the blog title and blog description. Once I installed MobilePress I went to see how fast the load speed would be on the iPhone. The load speed was less than five seconds. When viewing the mobile site on the iPhone, it displays the last three-blog posts, blog pages, and a search box. There is a next page section right underneath the latest blog posts so if someone wanted to scroll through older posts it would be a cinch.

If you want to view the full site, at the bottom contains a link to view full site. I think this is a must have plug-in for all serious bloggers. Smartphones are going to keep growing and users are going to want fast load times (me included). The MobilePress plug-in can be downloaded from HERE.

Is it just me or is the technology field been a bit stagnant for a decade or so?  Now, before you start going, “Dee, but you love your iPhone”, let me finish.  What was the last truly innovative advancement that had a dramatic impact on our lives and how we live?  I myself am not sure of that answer.

New advancements such as the invention of the car or the internet do not come along every day.  Yes, the iPhone is fabulous and the Wii is fun, but will they have a direct impact on people as a whole?  No.  Let us think about what cars allowed us to do.  Vehicles have allowed humans to broaden their horizons.  Before vehicles, where you were born is more than likely where you lived, worked, and died.

After the vehicle was invented people could look for better jobs that were farther away, date someone that lived farther away, affordably travel the country, and so much more.  The only other invention in history that has compared in usefulness with the vehicle is the internet.  The internet has allowed us to do the very same things the vehicle did, only with more possibilities and on a much larger scale.

Therefore, again, where do we go from here?  How do things get better than this?  What could possibly open up new doors and better peoples’ lives on such a significant level?  I obviously do not know the answer and maybe you don’t either, but isn’t it time we start wondering about it…how else will if happen if we don’t?

I was reading the news tonight and came across a story with bear and a woman. No, it is not Goldilocks and the Three Bears…it’s a tale of A Brave iPhone and a Bear. Here is the story…

“Bears have some awfully funny inclinations. Back in 2004 there were all those wackynews stories about the bear who’d downed three dozen cans of beer at a campground and proceeded to pass out.

But this one takes the cake: this summer, when Vermont hiker Kris Rowley was approached by a bear and it kept following her, it proved more interested in chowing down on her iPhone.

Rowley, who serves as Vermont’s chief information security officer, tells CIO.com: “In a semi-panic, I threw the iPhone at the bear.”

The bear proceeded to ignore Rowley and started clawing at the iPhone instead, CIO.com explains. Rowley used that as her chance to make a hasty exit. She returned two days later to get her iPhone back–bringing along a baseball bat for defense–and found it still there, but chewed and scratched up to the point where she couldn’t use it anymore.

Unfortunately, the Genius Bar support team at her local Apple Store wouldn’t take “a bear ate my iPhone” as a legitimate excuse to get a new one on the house: Rowley had to pay full price for a the replacement.

Maybe that would’ve been different if she’d brought the bear along with her. Just a thought.”

You can access this story yourself by clicking HERE.

After reading the story the only thing that came to mind was, “That damn bear could have had my arm…but there is no way in hell I would have let him have my iPhone.”

What do you think?