Things that help

So things have been cranking along very well. We are getting settled into our new house nicely and Kerry has done an awesome job with the nursery. As our lives are about to change rapidly we’ve really been leaning on some great ways to stay connected with people. I thought I would share some of the things we have found to make things easier; iChat One thing we have been doing a lot of is video conferencing with my parents in Dallas and Santa Fe using iChat. I really have to applaud Apple, this is the BEST video conferencing software I have ever used. We have never had a problem with it, the video is clear and the sound is always in full duplex. I really thing a big part of it is the iSight that comes with either the MacBookPro or the iMac. I’ve done conferencing with people who just use a standard webcam and the performance really decreases. If you are going to be doing some video conferencing and want to use a Mac, I really recommend either getting a Mac with one built-in or purchasing a stand-alone iSight, its worth the extra money. Flickr: With the move, the purchase of a digital cannon rebel, and all the ultrasounds we have had a lot of pictures we have needed to share. Flickr is a great way to do this. Flickr is an online photo repository and sharing site. With limited bandwidth you can sign up for free, or you can purchase a professional account for $40 a year which is really worth it. Uploading pictures is a snap because they offer several applications and plugins that interface with common photo applications (we use the iPhoto plugin) and a web interface. Once photos are up on the site you can organize them in sets and also tag photos based on common subjects (for example we have a tag called “cats” that associates the million cat photos we have). Of you want to share these photos people can either go to your flickr site on their own, or you can send them a Tag to view if you only want them to see certain pictures. Plus, flickr also allows you to give people RSS feeds so people will actually get notified when you upload new photos. We love it.