At first you might think it is inappropriate, but just give it a second and realize that the fun is being made of Twitter and us Tweeple that use it.

If you have trouble seeing the video click here.

I just found out that the beautiful song in the video is for sale at Amazon. Here are the details:

Thanks to Peter Shankman for sharing this.

Then the trouble started. No, she didn’t do anything wrong with the phone. She just didn’t do the chores we had assigned to her for the privilege of having a cell phone. So her punishment was to have her phone taken away for a week. (We’re thinking we’re such good parents at this point.) This happened twice within a two month period.

While her phone was in exile she reverted back to using the home phone to call her friends. Her one or two friends who have text message plans realized she never texted back, so they stopped texting.

Now she never takes her phone anywhere, uses the home phone all the time and never texts anyway. OMG! Now we are paying our $9.99 extra to keep her on the family plan, plus $5 per month for 300 text messages and the phone just sits there. Can’t cancel the number, it is still under contract.

Should we ground her until she starts using her cell phone more? That doesn’t seem quite right.

Should we entice her to call her friends more often? Not sure that’s good either.

What’s a HighTechMom to do in a situation like this? Any ideas?

WAIT! I got it. I’ll just break her away from Webkinz and have her read it. That should do the trick.

Then I noticed another Twitter bud, Chris Brogan, had posted an Easter egg hunt on his blog - the idea is to find a blog that is undiscovered and link to it.

First the music discovered by motownmutt. Listen to this sound and just see if it doesn’t resonate in your cells. I just loved it:

Naturally, I clicked in the musician’s Dante Bucci’s site, but was so disappointed to see it wasn’t a blog. I really wanted to “meet” him and read what he has to say about his music, this totally cool instrument he’s playing and get an update on the CD he’s working on. With a plain one-dimensional site I didn’t get that.

Chris, my Easter discovery is not an undiscovered blog, but an undiscovered blogger. Maybe Dante will see this somehow and take up blogging. If not, at least we have his beautiful music.

Pepsi is going to launch a campaign to give away 1 billion free songs in 2008. According to my friend Tomi Ahonen (where I heard this first), this is huge - iTunes total sales were 1.5 billion songs in 2007. Free music for everyone! Well, at least Pepsi drinkers.

WebkinzInsider
WebkinzInsider has a ton of great stuff about Webkinz. I especially like their Webkinz Cookbook where you can find a ton of recipes. You can also choose an ingredient you have and find a recipe.

WebkinzMom
WebkinzMom has a lot of fun info too. Here you will like the Virtual Charm Worksheet and the Gem Hunt Worksheet.

Squidoo Lens - Webkinz
A huge collection of Webkinz sites, links and info. Love the Retired Webkinz list.

I’ll keep my eyes open for more Webkinz stuff. If you know of any good ones, comment me.

You will want to read Jeff’s post to get you started. Then you’ll end up at Twitterfeed, which will require an OpenID. If you don’t have one, just go ahead and sign up with ClaimID.

See you on Facebook!

They confirmed the worst - my phone is a goner. Thankfully, I have backed it up faithfully every week and synced it regularly. So, I’m not worried about recovering all my contacts (like my husband’s new cell phone number that I never memorized because it is so easy to just dial K-E-N and we’re in business) but I really can’t stand not having a phone. I feel disconnected and inaccessible. Which I am.

I have been paying my $7 per month insurance and so I’ll get a no-additional-cost replacement. But, are you ready for this…it could take 3 to 5 business days! Holy Crap - that could be January 7th!

I tried to ask the friendly, but ultimately not-so-helpful, repair store rep about a loaner phone. No dice. So I thought, well, I’ll buy a cheap phone to use as my back up phone. Nope. The least expensive option was $150. Thinking that maybe a pre-paid phone with my calls forwarded to it might work I asked about that. Sure, for 40 cents per minute.

Really this is quite annoying. I know perfectly well that the Sprint retail stores have Treo 700wx’s sitting on their shelves, but I have to acquire my replacement from a repair store. There is a chance I can get one from a different repair store 30 minutes drive away. If only I could call first to ask them if they have one in stock before I drive up there. No, I have to be there IN PERSON to find out.

Now I am really annoyed. What the &*#)#@$ is Sprint doing? Do they even realize how much this ticks me off? Or inconveniences me? This is craziness. Instead of being relieved that I made the right decision to get the replacement insurance and happily using up my shared minutes telling all my friends how great Sprint treated me I am blogging for perpetuity how annoyed they make me.

The really stupid part of all this is how un-capitalistic this is. We are in America right? Why can’t I buy a phone and use it on the network of my choice? It makes no sense at all that I have to get a certain piece of equipment from only a certain place. Someday we will look back on this and laugh at all the crap we had to put up with from the cell phone companies.

I’m not laughing yet. I’m too mad.

UPDATE:
I drove up to the Sprint repair store 30 minutes away. They were able to fix my phone by replacing the screen and the keyboard. Phew.

When I saw her name come up in my “please moderate” list I was so happy. It felt like a friend had stopped by my house to say hi. I have never met Ponn in person. We have never even exchanged emails. But I feel like I know her. (Even more so than other bloggers I interact with even fairly regularly.)

Today she asked in a post for her readers to post about their Brand Name Blog and gave a few starter topics. She asked us to share if she has helped her fellow bloggers to build a solid brand. Well, of course she has!

Why did I feel like I already knew Ponn when she commented here? Like she is a long lost friend? Because she is so good at building HER brand. I see her encouraging comments on other blogs, I run across her in the social networks and unlike some folks who use different names at every social networking site - she is Ponn Sabra everywhere.

Another suggestion she had was to share what keeps me reading her wonderful blog - EmpowerWomenNow. OK, here it is. She writes great stuff. Very informative. She links to interesting resources. Her blog design looks good. But so what? So do a zillion other bloggers who have not grabbed a piece of my heart like Ponn.

Ponn is empowering with every word. I can feel how much she wants to write every single post and how much she genuinely wants it to help the person reading it. She is committed to make her blog work no matter what - even writing posts that takes her hours to do because of her serious health issues. THAT IS EMPOWERING! Ponn is a brand and that brand say empowerment.

Ponn, thank you for everything! Hang in there.

They smoke in their houses, at work, during meetings at work, in their cars, while they are cooking, and in bed while their spouse is sleeping. Even the pregnant woman smokes! It is just so weird to see all that smoking.

Then I noticed how many times other TV show characters use their cell phones. Especially detective shows. In almost every scene someone is flipping open their cell phone. Or flipping it closed for emphasis.

It’s like cell phones are the new cigarette.