Waka Flocka - DuFlocka Rant (10 Toes Down)

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Trap-A-Holics Presents: Bo Deal - The Chicago Code (Gang Related)

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Cartier Kitten - Project Gunplay

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DJ Bankroe & DJ Chronic Present: Feeding The Streets Vol. 2 (BSM Edition)

Download Mixtape | Free Mixtapes Provided by DatPiff.com

Google Tests a New Mobile Navigation Bar

Some Google users spotted an experimental interface for Google's mobile search site. The horizontal navigation bar now includes icons, just like the vertical desktop bar. While the new interface is less streamlined, it looks more like a Web app and it makes it easier to select a different search service or a Google app.



{ Thanks, Andrew and David. }

OJ Da Juiceman - Cook Muzik (Hosted By DJ 5150)

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Girls Just Want To Have Fun Class

What better way to get back into the swing of things than a crafty day with Kath, Debby and Anne. Haven't crafted for nearly a month and was getting really worried I had lost the notion altogether, all that stash lying about and didn't have any inclination to play and can you believe it, no crafty spending either!!!! Wedding looming  fast, think it was the invites that scunnered me although I did

Cartel MGM - Dancing with the Devil (Official Video)

Official Video for "Dancing with the Devil" starring Bricksquad's Cartel MGM. Shot and directed by www.gtfilmsproductions.com.

I had a dream last night...

"I was eating salad at a new house.  And as I ate, my tooth fell out.  But it didn't hurt at all when it fell out.  It fell into my salad.  I picked it up and wiped the dressing off my tooth onto my shirt.  Then I took off my shirt and put it in the washer and got a new shirt on.  That was the end."  -johnny

(Johnny wanted to blog this morning, and actually typed his own name there at the end)

Johnny playing guitar with the They Might Be Giants ABC album

BrickSquad LifeStyle (Hosted By DJ Young JD, DJ Nuk Nuk & DJ Tay Dont Play)

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Wooh Da Kid - Black Out (Official Video)

Music video for Wooh Da Kid's "Black Out"
Directed by @MVisionFilms
Track produced by Southside

Waka Flocka's Jewelry Gets Snatched & The Woman Whole Stole It Confesses!

"The story and the indiviual behind Waka Flocka Flames chain being snatched and his ring being take finaly comes to the light. Check out this video featuring an on air interview with the person who took Flockas ring and hear how much they want for it."

Giddy up!

Here's a fun video of James and the kids a couple nights ago. I'm so glad I married such a fun, playful man. My kids are so spoiled in that category :)



On another note, we are gearing up for the storms that are headed our way. I just downloaded all our recent pics/videos on our hard drive, placed it into a fire/water proof safe along with all our vital records, and put our shoes, 72 hour packs, purse and keys, radio, flashlights, mattress pads, helmets (I heard this is good to put on in a tornado), and cell phones and chargers all in our little bathroom.

We're ready!

Cartier Kitten - Bitch (Official Video)

Waka Flocka Flame C.E.O of BrickSquad Monopoly presents...
@CartierKitten The 1st Lady of BrickSquad (Monopoly)
Song: Bitch!
MixTape: Project Gunplay
Director: Shareef 'Bigg' Scott
For Booking: cartierkittenbooking@gmail.com
@bigfrazebeats @directorzinc @BNRMusicgroup
http://www.BLOCKNROLLMUSICGROUP.com
http://www.directorzinc.com
MIZAY ENTERTAINMENT: 678.272.0365

Da Kid - The Ultrasound (Hosted By DJ Teknikz, DJ Scream & DJ 5150) [Update]

Set To Drop June 26

Waka Flocka - Baby Let Me See You Do It (Feat. Wooh Da Kid & Slim Dunkin) [Prod. By South Side]

First Official Leak For DuFlocka Rant

Cartel MGM - 3 Wishes

Leaked Song of BrickSquad LifeStyle

No More Offline Gmail in Google Chrome

Chrome 12, the upcoming version of Google's browser which is likely to be released today, removes a useful feature: the built-in Gears plugin. While most Google services dropped support for Gears and removed offline access, Gears is still being used in Gmail. Google no longer maintains Gears, which is now legacy software, and focuses on implementing offline support using HTML5.


But why remove Gears support without implementing the features using HTML5 first? Google says that you'll only need to wait for a few weeks or you can still older versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer and mail client such as Thunderbird or Outlook.

"The new Gmail Offline capability is targeted for delivery as a Chrome browser web app this summer. As we move the Gmail Offline capability to a Chrome web app, we will deprecate the Google Gears-based Gmail Offline. This coincides with the version 12 release of the Google Chrome browser which no longer supports Gears. As a result, Google Gears-based Gmail Offline will no longer work with the Chrome browser as of Tuesday May 24, 2011. Google Gears-based Gmail Offline will continue to work in Internet Explorer 8 and Mozilla Firefox 3.6," explains Google.

It's not the best thing to do after convincing users to switch to Chrome and use Web apps, but it's just a temporary issue. If the HTML5 offline Gmail wasn't ready to be released, removing Gears from Chrome could have been delayed.

{ via François }

Google Tests Extended Flight OneBox

Google started to test a more advanced OneBox for flight-related searches. Right now, when you search for [flights from London to Barcelona] Google links to services like Expedia, Orbitz or Kayak. The OneBox is useful, but it doesn't show a list of flights.


After acquiring ITA Software, Google has access to a lot more information about flights and no longer have to send users to services like Expedia. Google can even provide information when you enter a vague query like [flights to Barcelona].

Here's the experimental flight OneBox, as spotted by Richard from SEO Gadget:


When you click "expand all non-stop routes to Barcelona", Google shows a very long list of cities. It's probably the biggest and most overwhelming Google OneBox. Maybe a drop-down would've been more useful.


After selecting one of the cities, Google sends you to a new search results page that shows a long list of flights.


It's nice to have all this information at your fingertips, but it's too overwhelming and these kinds of details aren't suited for an OneBox. Richard also noticed that "you get to data, with no call to action. I think this means most folks would be forced to repeat their search again on a flight provider."

Hopefully, Google will launch a Flight Search service that will also include the brilliant visualizations developed by ITA Software and the OneBox will just be a gateway to the new service.

Update: The feature is now available to everyone. "With the close of our ITA acquisition last month, we're eager to begin developing new flight search tools to make it easier for you to plan a trip. While this flight schedule feature does not currently use ITA's search technology, this is just a small step towards making richer travel information easier to find, and we hope to make finding flights online feel so easy, it'll feel like... well, a vacation," explains Google.

{ Thanks, Richard. }

Music Album Filtering in Google Video

Google started to learn more about music. After improving the Web search results for music videos by adding metadata, Google added the same enhancements to Google Video. Now you can even find a list of popular albums when you search for an artist. Select one of the albums and you'll restrict the results to the songs from the album. The nice thing is that Google's algorithms make sure that the results are diverse and songs aren't repeated too often.

Bo Deal - What The Game Made Me (Hosted By DJ Young JD & DJ Ruben)

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Google Business Profiles?

The source code of the Google Profiles page includes a broken link that has a revealing anchor text: "business profiles". The link sends you to a page that doesn't exist: http://www.google.com/_/managepages, but this feature could add Google Profiles to Google Apps and allow users to create multiple profile pages.


Another interesting thing is that Google has a new subdomain: https://plusone.google.com, which redirects to Google Profiles. There's already a Web page about the +1 button, so it's not clear why Google has a new address for Google +1. Maybe profiles will be a feature of Google +1.

{ Thanks, Florian. }

How Google Docs Killed GDrive

"In The Plex", Steven Levy's recently launched book about Google, has an interesting story about GDrive, an online storage service developed by Google. People first found about GDrive from a leaked Google document, back in 2006. GDrive (or Platypus) turned out to be a service used by Google employees that offered many impressive features: syncing files, viewing files on the Web, shared spaces for collaborating on a document, offline access, local IO speeds. But Google wanted to launch GDrive for everyone.

At the time [2008], Google was about to launch a project it had been developing for more than a year, a free cloud-based storage service called GDrive. But Sundar [Pichai] had concluded that it was an artifact of the style of computing that Google was about to usher out the door. He went to Bradley Horowitz, the executive in charge of the project, and said, "I don't think we need GDrive anymore." Horowitz asked why not. "Files are so 1990," said Pichai. "I don't think we need files anymore."

Horowitz was stunned. "Not need files anymore?"

"Think about it," said Pichai. "You just want to get information into the cloud. When people use our Google Docs, there are no more files. You just start editing in the cloud, and there's never a file."

When Pichai first proposed this concept to Google's top executives at a GPS—no files!—the reaction was, he says, "skeptical." [Linus] Upson had another characterization: "It was a withering assault." But eventually they won people over by a logical argument—that it could be done, that it was the cloudlike thing to do, that it was the Google thing to do. That was the end of GDrive: shuttered as a relic of antiquated thinking even before Google released it. The engineers working on it went to the Chrome team.

In 2009, Google Docs started to store PDF files and one year later you could store any type of file in Google Docs. The service still doesn't offer a way to sync files. Even if GDrive was never released, Google Docs inherits most of its features. The main difference is that you no longer have to worry about file formats because you can open and edit documents in Google Docs.

{ Thanks, Kristian. }

More Features in Google Maps for Mobile Browsers

One of the most underrated Google mobile Web apps is Google Maps. Most smartphones and tablets have a native app for Google Maps, so a mobile Web app doesn't seem necessary. Unfortunately, native apps aren't always updated frequently and there are many missing features. Google does a good job at updating Google Maps for Android, but Apple's Maps app for iOS rarely includes new Google Maps features.

That's probably one of the reasons why the Google Maps mobile site was updated to include most of the features from the desktop site. Another reason is that Google wants to offer "a consistent Google Maps experience wherever you use it."

The updated Google Maps mobile site has features like local business search, Google Places, driving directions, layers, My Maps, starred locations, search suggestions. If you can't find biking directions or information about businesses in the Maps app for the iPhone, you can go to maps.google.com in your mobile browser and use these features.


Just like the mobile YouTube site, "Google Maps for mobile browsers is platform independent - you will always get a consistent experience and the latest features without needing to install any updates, no matter what phone you use."

I've tried the updated mobile interface on an iPhone 3GS, a Nexus One and an iPad 2. While all the new features are great, the site is still too slow and unresponsive to be useful. Until Google solves performance issues and mobile browsers become more powerful, people will still use the native app.

Google's Black Navigation Bar

For some reason, the navigation bar displayed at the top of Google's "connected accounts" page is special. The bar has a black background and grey links. Hopefully, this is just a bug and not a redesigned navigation bar.


The "connected accounts" page lets you add accounts from services like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Yelp and use them to personalize search results. This way, you can include your accounts from other social sites without adding them to your Google Profile.

{ Thanks, Herin. }

bankity banks

I made the boys some homemade banks, patterned after the bank my dad/mom made for me when I was a kid.  Prior to this, I looked every where for a multi-purpose bank (one that could give a child the option to save for and put money toward a number of different things) for my kids and couldn't seem to find one anywhere.  I loved the bank I had growing up.  Although it isn't in the best shape, I have lots of memories as a kid of divvying up my allowance or pay check and dropping my coins and bills into the different jars and being able to save up for big things like college/mission.

My parents made us these banks when we were little.  They have a jar for Savings, Tithing, College, as well as a globe for mission.  So I decided to recreate.  I found the vintage tin globes on e-bay, and saved up baby food jars:


I love the idea of a child being able to start early saving up for these things and having a place to put their tithing so handy.  So that is why I resorted to re-creating what I had and making them (James helped me cut the holes).

Of course while I am busy working on a project, the kids also want to do what I'm doing.  They were happy to paint the wooden scraps.

Jimmy actually made a car with wheels (he hammered it all by himself) with his, and was pretty dang proud of himself.

And here's some pics of Johnny.  These days, he has no interest in the camera, unless it involves making silly faces.  He'll say "Take a picture of dis face mom"

"Ha ha, look at dis one!"

"Hey mom, now take a picture of dis face!"

"oooh! oooh! mom, look at dis face!"

I just love the smears of peanut butter he has on the side of his cheeks and the little milk-stache on his cute upper lip.  Peanut butter cheeks are commonplace round here around noon each day.  That's what happens when you are too cool for the crust.
 
My next home made project for the kids is a plywood growth chart we can hang on the wall.  Kinda like this one, but one that everyone can use and mark their height on throughout the years.

OKC

Last weekend we ventured down to Oklahoma City as a family so James and I could go to the temple (it's the nearest one to us- 3.5 hours away!).  We turned it into a little family get away.  The boys get so excited about staying in a hotel (Jimmy even said it was okay if he missed out on a birthday party Friday night just so he could be with us on the family trip and stay in the hotel).

We drove down after James go off work on Friday, and I went and did a session Friday evening while James took the boys to go get a bite to eat and check us into the hotel.  Jimmy had my camera when I hopped out of the van, and he took this funny picture of me when they dropped me off:


Then they came and picked me up after a couple of hours, and we all went back to the hotel to get a good night's sleep.  James got up early the next morning and did a session at 7:30 am, and I lounged around the hotel with the kids and took our time eating the yummy buffet breakfast (one of the boy's favorite things about staying in a hotel- they get to eat fruit loops!).

Even though James and I don't get to go to the temple at the same time and do a session together, it is still so refreshing to get there.  The temple is such a place of incredible peace, reflection and meditation for me.  And I'm reminded of the day we got married and made some beautiful promises to each other.  I always come out of the temple feeling so refreshed and resolute to be a better wife, mom and daughter of God. 

The following morning after James got back from doing his session, we checked out of the hotel, and drove back to the temple, so the kids could walk around the pretty temple grounds.

Then we took them to the Oklahoma City Zoo.  That was a lot of fun and such a big place!  I loved these big flowers.  They looked like they were out of Alice in Wonderland or something.  They were as big as lamps!


They had this cool part where you went into this netted area and got to feed birds!


They had a pretty cool aquatic exhibit:
:


The zoo also had a playground, which funnily was the most favorite part of the zoo for the boys (I told James next time, we are just taking them to a park- it would be free and they can enjoy themselves for hours on a playground!)

The kids had a blast, so it was a fulfilling weekend for all!

Here's  a cute little video of Alice having a ball on the swings.  Isn't her giggle precious?