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If you have an iPhone… you needed to purchase Hipstamatic yesterday. Now I’m sure this is old news to so many people out there, especially all of you insanely creative readers (yes you!), but I didn’t take the leap until my iPhone was capable of taking non-grainy photos.
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Basically, you choose your camera lens, your flash, and your film type, and take photos that remind you of your family’s old dusty albums. The best part, is that when you take the photo, you have to wait 3 seconds for it to develop, and you have no idea how it will turn out. Imagine that… savoring that magical moment of opening your photo envelope and seeing what was inside for better or worse. It’s a feeling I’d forgotten until this app appeared and revived the spirit of photographic mystery again.
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The app is $1.99, and you can buy extra “hip packs” for $0.99 each that add to your library of lenses/film/flashes. You can upload the photos directly to your Flickr account or share them on facebook as well! Nice on the pocketbook for such a fun and useful little app!
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So who has more fun Hipsta-prints that they want to share?!?

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With my new iphone, I found myself testing out its videotaping capacity quite a bit over the past few weeks. It’s a new toy… and having a video camera at your beck and call 24/7 is a pretty sweet option to have! Then, I decided to buy into Steve Job’s hype and download the new iMovie app for OS4.0. Many of the reviews were quite poor on the original release, but the update they provided on July 6th allegedly fixed most of the problems that people were encountering.
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Now can you guess what happened? Yes… I made a movie on my iphone. It’s definitely not the best movie ever made, it has definitely has a lead actress (not me), and might just eat up 2.5 minutes of your life that you’ll never get back. But it’s Friday… and you probably want to be home as much as I do right now… so procrastinate and watch it if you like!
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p.s. it features my 2010 summer anthem  as well!

I had a Gen 1 ipod. It had no click wheel. It lived a noble life until it died three years later, at which time Apple awarded me with a class action lawsuit settlement of $100 for my time/trouble. I used that credit to buy my first matchstick shuffle, which accompanied me on many  workouts at my star-studded gym. My parents got me my second Shuffle… it clipped on my clothes and made the neckstring of the old shuffle obsolete. Then I got my Gen 1 iphone… which will stay with me until nature or lack of nuturing does it in… maybe in time for a Gen 4?

But… I never owned a Nano. And now, thanks to the generosity of my hubby, I do. It’s my new pocket radio (hello “Talk of the Nation” on my lunchbreak… how are you?), my personal pedometer (we’re only at 2400 steps as of noon), silly video camera, and music player all in one. It’s pretty awesome all around, and super super blue. It also fits in my pocket without notice, which makes it wonderful for its pedometer use… reminding me how much more I need to be walking every day! I’m hoping it’ll also capture a couple of vlog attempts, some bunny face-washing cuteness, and general M family antics as well.

Ah… new toys… get me out of a funk everytime…

Thanks to the magical balance board and Wii Fit… I’d really started to forget what “Wiibow” (or wii tennis elbow) felt like. That is, until they invented this amazingly magical contraption known as Wii Motion Plus, and suddenly that sting in my right elbow is back like it’s Christmas 2006.  I blame it squarely on the new Wii Sports Resort games… mainly canoeing & ping pong… but if I were into golf I’m sure I’d be swearing up a storm at Tiger Woods as well. You see, the Wii suddenly requires more than hand/eye coordination… it now needs you to balance and twist your hands and body properly in order to get the right digital result.

I can’t in any way say this group of games is as awesome as plain ‘ol SPORTS (GameSpot gives it an 8.0/10)…. but it’s definitely a great addition to the library and great because you get a “Motion Plus” sleeve to add to your controller. And who doesn’t want to challenge a group of friends to a competitive canoe race in your living room?!?

Everyone seems to be perking up over the iphone this week with the new release of the 3.0 software today (voice memos are awesome!) and the new 3GS phone this weekend.  It’s old news that I adore my phone (did you know that 2% of the US population owns one?!?), but what I love is that with the applications your love for the phone can grow everyday!

My latest “oh my how did I live without this?” application?  OpenTable for the iphone.

Imagine driving through Manhattan with the Fodors book being flipped in the front seat and others looking wide-eyed at the streets for any sign of restaurants that may be having a Sunday dim sum brunch. A name gets shouted out. The review is found in Fodors — too new to know what it is. YELP is activated on the phone — people rave about it. Open OPENTABLE… check for reservations…. one ready for 12:15 for a party of four. Instant relief… and time to wander to find street parking.

Regular OpenTable is awesome too…. but I think the phone app is even faster than the old-style way to go. And it finds restaurants that surround you, whereever you are.

Chronicle Books just released one of the coolest new apps for your iphone: excercise decks!!!

While these wonderful books are $15 yeach, you can get the Strength and Toning Deck, the Chakra Deck, and the Walking Deck for only $2.99 each. How nice to have these great images at hand whenever you want them… as I’m sure your iphone will be many more places than your little books!

Airfare

My first stop for all flight needs was my favorite travel search site: kayak.com. I love the way you can alter your search terms while you’re browsing the flights, by adding/subtracting airports (super important if you’re flying into the NYC area and don’t care which of the 3 airports you land at). changing your flight time window, and more. It really helps to see that your cheapest possible flight might be one low price, but for $40 more you can spend less time in the air or on stopovers and get your ideal flight times. You can even add in “baggage costs” to the estimate to see which flight is cheaper after that cost is incorporated (yes…paying for 3 legs of baggage… for a 10-day trip… not fun!)

From there, I used the flight information I gathered to visit united.com to book our tickets. We’re lucky to have Premier status with United, so I knew if we could find all UA flights… we’d luck out with comfy seating and no baggage feeds on our flights. It was our luck that the cheapest “ideal” flight on UA was only a few dollars more than the overall flight… hooray!

Hotel

Now onto the hotel booking… which was pretty simple since we wanted to stay at the Embassy Suites, as designated by the wedding party, in South Carolina. I just needed to see how to get the lowest price on that hotel, and we’d be set!

The wedding couple was kind enough to set aside a room block (and nice online web portal to reserve that rate), so I already knew what the “price to beat” was ahead of time. My first stop was biddingfortravel.com, to see if our hotel was available for bidding at a super low price on priceline.com. It wasn’t one of the available hotels, so I checked out kayak.com again to see the range of room rates. I ended up finding a rate at cheaptickets.com that was $30/night cheaper than the blocked rate.

Before visiting the site, however, I went to evRewards.com to see if there were any rebate portals I could visit from and sure enough there was both a reward site AND a coupon code! So I logged into fatwallet.com, clicked on the link to cheaptickets.com, entered my coupon code (ENTERTAIN50) and found and booked my hotel for a total savings of $120 for a couple of extra clicks. 

Car

I’ve booked lots of rental car deals for Mr. M on his work trips, and I’m always amazed with the variation in prices that will come up. I’ve gotten him a car on priceline for $8/day one week, and then struggled to find a rate under $30 on the next trip for the same car/airport/etc. Yet, this is another travel expense that I’ve worked into a “deal” system. First two stops: biddingfortravel.com and hotwire.com. I like to see what prices people have paid at the same location for a car on priceline, and then see what the “rate to beat” is on hotwire. Then… I head over to priceline to start the car bidding process.

Cars are really easy on priceline, because you get 3-4 bidding chances each day, one for each class of car you’re after. If you can settle for a compact, start there with your lowest bid price and move up, and as long as you can beat hotwire’s price you’ve usually gotten a deal! I usually start around $13 and bid up by $2 until I hit mid-size… then try again the next day at $14. (For some people, this is frustrating and they just want a car the first time around or need to go through a certain company, so there’s always this discount code list for reference as well)

I know that lots of people have money headaches when it comes to travel (esp. for wedding weekends), so I hope some of my bargain tips can help you in the future!