Go Pinterest-ing! – Cool Stuff to Pin on your Pinterest Boards

A Flowerpot That’s Customized For Mom		Now You Can Browse On Curved Surfaces		Ombre Colors Create Unique Photo Collage
You haven’t started pinning on Pinterest yet and you want to get started? If so, click here. pinterest.com/jamadots

 

Sites Of The Month – Great Sites To Check Out In May

Browse Through Billionaires’ Backgrounds bloomberg.com/billionaires – This fascinating interactive site gives you a look at the world’s richest people including Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and several members of the Walton family (of Wal-Mart fame). Get net worth summaries, find out about their prized possessions, and see how the rankings change over time.

Take A Virtual Tour Of The Smithsonian mnh.si.edu/panoramas – The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History showcases amazing collections that give visitors a look at ancient life forms, rare gems, and a variety of other natural science specimens and artifacts. If you can’t make it to Washington, D.C., take a virtual tour and roam around at your leisure.

Learn The Latest Sunscreen Guidelines skincancer.org – While skin protection is an all-year issue, it becomes particularly critical during summer months when more skin is exposed. Before you shop for your next bottle of sunscreen, check out this site. It defines the acronyms (UVA, UVB, and SPF) and gives the new rules for sunscreen labels.

Don’t Settle For Ho-Hum Hamburgers allrecipes.com – May is National Hamburger Month so it’s time to fire up the grill and celebrate. If you’re hungry for some new ideas, look through this site’s hamburger recipes that range from basic to gourmet. Be sure to watch the video on how to make a perfectly cooked hamburger.

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Talking to Kids About Online Porn: How One Dad Handled it

Talking to kids about pornography has vexed parents for generations. It’s even harder today — the Internet gives kids access to a whole lot more than a Playboy magazine under the bed ever did. There are thousands of websites, many with video, and even more with scams and malware that can damage your computer.

How and when to have that conversation remains a conundrum for many parents, already trying to navigate how to raise kids in the digital age.

When he found out his 13-year-old son had been surfing porn sites, one dad chose to handle it in a rather unique way. He wrote a note to his son, left it on his computer and then posted the contents of his note on Reddit, with the question, “I found porn on my son’s internet broswer (sp). Did I go about his correctly?”

The father says he was actually removing a virus from the computer when he found the porn history. His son is shy and not one for talking, so he wrote the note instead, the dad adds. “He get embarrassed super easily so I don’t wanna make it too hard on him. I typed this up and left it on his computer,” he wrote.

What’s so striking about this is the fact many parents have no idea what to say in this situation. Some options include: talking to their kids in person, asking their spouse to do it or just pretending it never happened.

This particular father seemed to know his son well, and didn’t want to make the situation worse. “I want to start out by saying that I love ya and I’m not trying to embarrass you.” He went on to explain how he came across the search history while cleaning the computer, and let him know the porn sites caused the scamware and viruses.

The dad also tried to relate to his son, saying he was once a teenager, too. “Listen, I won’t tell your mom and I’m not gonna make a big deal out of this. In fact I’m not gonna make any size deal out of it. If you don’t wanna talk about it that’s fine and I completely understand.”

Many people would argue there’s no difference between finding porn on your kid’s computer and finding Playboy magazines under the bed pre-Internet. But there is — and that’s the part that some parents struggle to understand.

Online porn is so much more than just a photograph of a large-breasted naked woman. The concerns are not just about teenage boys. Rebecca Levey, a New York City mom and co-founder of KidzVuz says porn is now just a click away. “You can have all the controls in the world, but it’s out there.” Stories like the one on Reddit make Levey realize she needs to have that talk with her pre-teen girls preemptively, she says.

“It’s so different with girls; it’s not the same conversation,” she tells Mashable. But what’s online is so horrific, and so violent, she worries. “It’s important to tell them if you stumble upon something you don’t understand, come ask.”

Some Reddit readers point out that kids need to be told — even though they may see sex and nudity in movies and online videos — that porn is not real life. One responded by reminding the dad to inject a little reality check.

Most women do not look like the women in the videos, the reader points out. “Porn is not a great representation of how sex actually is between two people.”

It looks like the dad took some of the commenters’ advice, adding this update to the end of his post: “UPDATE: After he went in his room, he came right out and talked to me. Although it didn’t last for more than five minutes, I think it was productive. He thanked me for not getting mad or telling mom. I also talked to him about porn not being like real life and that women aren’t objects like they are portrayed in porn. I gave him the option to ask questions, but he says he didnt have any right now.”

He also let his son know porn sites can be harmful to computers, downloading potential malware and viruses.

If this has gotten you thinking about how and when to have “the conversation” with your kids, or what you would do in this situation, here are some suggestions to consider:

• Tell them you are aware that they have have been looking at some websites that may be confusing and disturbing.
• Educate them about online predators, and say that teens are targeted by predators, who “groom” them by appealing to their interest in and curiosity about romance, sex and risk-taking.
• Tell them that just as you have rules about unsafe places in the real world, you have similar rules about the virtual world.

Have you had a conversation with your kids yet? Let us know how it went. What suggestions do you have for talking to kids about online porn?

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10 Actions that Always Bring Happiness

It’s important to make someone happy, and it’s important to start with yourself.  Happiness
is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design into the present.

Starting today…

• Appreciate what you have. – If we counted our blessings instead of our money, we would all be a lot richer.  Happiness is there if you want it to be.  You just have to see that it’s wrapped in beauty and hidden delicately between the seconds of your life.  If you never stop for a minute to notice, you might miss it.  Read The Happiness Project.
• Focus on things that truly matter. – The simple fact that you are even here, alive, on this planet is a divine miracle, and you should not spend the time you have being busy, being miserable.  Every moment you get is a gift, so stop focusing on unhappy things, and spend your moments on things that truly matter to your heart.
• Define your own meaning of life, and pursue it. – What is the meaning of life?  Whatever you want it to be.  Don’t fear failure; fear a lifetime of mediocrity due to lack of effort and commitment.  There are so many people out there who will tell you that you CAN’T.  What you need to do is turn around and say, “Watch me!”
• Embrace life’s challenges. – You may think that taking a detour in life is a waste of time and energy, but you can also see the detour as a means of learning more about who you are and where you are heading in your life.  Being off the beaten path may be disorienting and confusing at times, yet it challenges your creative spirit to discover new ways to build a stronger YOU.  In the end, it’s usually the tough situations that feel like your tomb that actually become your cocoon.  Hang in there.  You’re coming out of this stronger and wiser.
• Find the balance that allows you to be who you truly are. – Your worst battle is between what you know and what you feel.  One of the hardest decisions you will ever have to make is when to stay put and try harder or when to just take your memories and move on.  Sometimes you have to step outside of the person you’ve been, and remember the person you were meant to be, the person you are capable of being, and the person you truly are.
• Love your body enough to take care of it. – You’re beautiful; but keep in mind that not everyone is going to see that.  Never be ashamed of yourself because you are born into one skin.  You can scar it, stretch it, burn it, mark it, tan it, and peel it.  But you are always in it, so you might as well take care of it and learn to love it.  Read The 4-Hour Body.
• Limit your time with negative people. – You can’t make positive choices for the rest of your life without an environment that makes those choices easy, natural, and enjoyable.  So protect your spirit and potential from contamination by limiting your time with negative people.
• Treat others the way you want to be treated. – Be conscious of your attitude and your actions.  You may be on top of the world right now – feeling untouchable.  You may have all the tools at your disposal to do and say whatever you want.  But remember, life is a circle – what goes around, comes around eventually.
• Set a good example. – If you want to empower others in your life, you need to start living the most empowered version of yourself first.  You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.  Believe in what you want so much that it has no choice but to become your reality.  And don’t ever compare yourself to anyone else; stay focused on your own journey and leave footprints behind.  Read The Four Agreements.
• Accept what is, and live for the possibilities that lie ahead. – Never waste your time wondering about what might have been.  Get busy thinking about what still might be, and trusting that however it plays out, it will leave you glad that what might have been, never came to be.

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How to Turn an Old WWII Field Phone Into a Bluetooth Handset

The EE-8 Field Telephone was used by the Army’s Signal Corps shortly before the beginning of World War II and up through Vietnam. Carried in a leather (and then canvas and eventually nylon) case by a strap slung over the shoulder, the portable ten pound phones replaced the telegraph and flag signals as a more effective and efficient way for commanders and troops to keep in touch on the battlefield. Two phones could be wired together directly, or several phones could be connected to a common operator, which could put any one phone in contact with any other in the group.

A hand-generated crank on the side of the phone was turned in order to signal another phone or the operator.  The signal range between these rugged, self-contained phones varied according to the type of wire used to connect them, and the conditions in which the wire was situated (wet, dry, in the air, or on the ground), but generally averaged about 11-17 miles. However, a direct, point-to-point connection made with copper wire could extend the range up to an astounding 360 miles.

After the war, the government’s glut of surplus EE-8’s were sold to civilian households as a way for mom to call dad out in the garage to tell him dinner was ready.

These days, there isn’t much use for old field phones, unless you have a pair or more. While I love all things vintage, unless they’re very rare, I’m not one for fetishizing antiques, insisting that they remain preserved on shelves or gathering dust in the attic. Rather than just looking at them, I love to find a way to put them to use again in my daily life. So with the help of my electrical engineer brother-in-law, Ryan Davis, we decided to mod the EE-8 for the modern age, turning it into a Bluetooth headset that could be paired with a smartphone or even your computer for VoIP calls.

You might be asking yourself, “Is there a functional reason to do this, Brett?” No sir, there is not. This project is about the pure fun of tinkering.

But bear in mind that unlike the incredibly simple shoe shine box I showed you this week, this project is not for the faint of heart. It requires moderate soldering skills and some rudimentary knowledge of electronics. All-in-all, this project will probably take up to four hours to accomplish.

Here’s how it’s done.

Materials  & Tools Needed

• EE-8 Field Phone. You can find these on eBay and flea markets. Price varies by age and condition.
• Bluetooth headset chip. We bought an Earforce PBT Bluetooth headset by TurtleBeach for $10 at Bestbuy.
• Boost converter. Available at Radio Shack for a couple bucks.
• Wire. Just plain old copper electrical wire. We used a mixture of 26 and 30 gauge wire.
• Screwdriver
• Soldering iron
• Peg board

Remove the Field Phone from Its Case & Unscrew the Top

To remove the field phone from the case, you’ll first need to remove the screws from the crank handle on the side.

See that receiver switch on the right? We’re going to remove that from the top. Also, see that plate with the three wires coming off of it? We’re going to remove that, too.

There are two screws on the underside of the receiver. Remove them and set them aside someplace safe. In this pic, we’ve already removed the left screw.

Here’s the receiver detached from the top of the field phone.

Now it’s time to take off the top plate. Unscrew that screw on the right.

There’s a screw that looks like a pin. We need to remove that, too.

Mod the Receiver

If you’ve ever used a Bluetooth earpiece, you know that whenever you want to take or end a call, you press a small button on the earpiece. The receiver switch on our field phone will take on the functions that the button on the Bluetooth receiver had. To take a call on the field phone, we simply tap the receiver switch once; to end a call, we tap it again. Pretty cool, huh?

Ryan had to hack the receiver switch a bit in order for our Bluetooth mod to work. The field phone’s receiver switch is spring loaded so that it is depressed when the weight of the handset is rested on it. In this state, the switch is open, and the EE-8 is offline.  The EE-8 comes online when the handset is lifted and the switch closes.

For our Bluetooth mod to work, we needed the switch to be open only if the handset wasn’t resting on the receiver switch. To do that, Ryan put a piece of electrical tape between the plates to keep them from making contact with each other when the handset was not resting on the switch.  He soldered a ring around the plates so that they made contact when the handset was resting on the receiver switch. This turned a normally closed switch into an open switch.

To turn a normally closed switch into an open one, Ryan put a piece of duct tape between the plates and soldered a ring contact around them.

Here’s a zoomed out picture of the ring soldered around the plates.

Top view of soldered switch plates.

We need to connect some new wire to the soldering terminals on the receiver switch. These wires will eventually lead to the button terminals on the Bluetooth headset,

Another angle of the receiver switch terminals.

Add LEDs

We added some red and green panel LEDs to the top of the field phone. Not only do they look cool, but they serve an actual function. They’ll alternate on and off whenever the bluetooth chip is in sync mode and the green light will flash whenever you receive a phone call. To add the LEDs, simply drill two 5/32” size holes and insert lights.

The panel LEDs come with the wires pre-soldered. You should have one black wire and one red wire connected to each light. These wires will eventually connect to the Bluetooth chip.

Connect New Wires to Terminals on Top Plate

On the underside of the top plate that we removed earlier, there are three terminals. There were some old wires that were worn out, so we replaced them with new ones. The terminal on the left is for the handset’s speaker. Attach a green wire to it. The middle terminal is the common terminal. Attach this wire to ground (the negative battery terminal). The terminal on the right is for the handset’s microphone. Attach a white wire to it.

There’s a terminal on top of the field phone that connects to the batteries. Connect a new red wire to it.

Here’s a pic of all the new wires we just added. Thread them through the hole on top of the field phone as shown above.

Dismantle Bluetooth Headset

Take your Bluetooth earpiece and remove the chip.

Here’s what our Bluetooth chip looked like out of the earpiece.

Connect Boost Converter to Bluetooth Chip

See that green rectangle next the to the Bluetooth chip? That’s a boost converter.

The Bluetooth chip requires a range of 3.7 to 4.2 volts of electricity to power up. However, the two DD batteries that power the field phone only put out three volts. What to do about this power gap? Answer: boost converter. A boost converter takes the three volts from the battery and “boosts” it up a voltage level so the chip gets the four volts that it needs.

We placed the Bluetooth chip and boost converter on a pegboard and connected the boost converter to the Bluetooth’s power source with wires behind the pegboard. Because the soldering terminals on the Bluetooth chip are so small, we used 30 gauge wire.

Connect Wires to Bluetooth Chip

Now comes the tricky part. We need to connect all the wires from the field phone to different parts of the Bluetooth chip. Every Bluetooth chip is different, so what we show you here might not work on other Bluetooth chips. You may have to use a scope to figure out which terminals on your Bluetooth chip are responsible for the microphone/LEDs/speaker/etc.

Again, because the soldering terminals are so small on the Bluetooth chip, we soldered 30 gauge wire to the soldering points first and then soldered the big wires running from the phone to the 30 gauge wires.

Connect Receiver Switch Wires to Bluetooth Button

Remember those new wires we connected to the field phone’s receiver switch terminals? We need to wire them in parallel to the Bluetooth button. Now the field phone’s receiver switch will do everything the Bluetooth earpiece button did.

Connect LED Wires to Bluetooth

We need to connect the two black status LED wires to the Bluetooth chips. The red wires will be connected to the boost converter.

Connect the Microphone Wire to Bluetooth

Earlier, we connected a white wire to the terminal on the field phone responsible for the microphone. We need to connect that wire to the microphone-in terminal on the Bluetooth chip. On our Bluetooth chip, the microphone-in terminal is on the back of the chip. Again, because the soldering terminals on the chip are so small, Ryan soldered 30 gauge wire to the chip terminal and soldered the 30 gauge wire to the larger, white wire.

Connect Speaker Wire to Bluetooth & Connect Power Wire to Boost Converter

Connect the speaker cable (green) to the speaker out terminal on the Bluetooth chip. On our chip, it was on the opposite side of the button’s side. Our power wire (red) connects to the boost converter. The ground wire (black) connects to the chip. Again, we connected 30 gauge wire to these wires before soldering to the Bluetooth terminals.  We’ve already connected the microphone wire (white) to the Bluetooth microphone terminal.

Wire #1: Ground. Wire #2 (Green wire): Attaches to Bluetooth speaker terminal. Wire #3: Ground. Wire #4: Connects boost converter Output to Bluetooth power Input.

Here’s what all the wires look like on the front.

And here’s what they look like from behind. “I used the pegboard as scaffolding for the two chips and weaved and soldered wire to keep things in place,” Ryan said. “It’s kinda messy, but it got the job done.” Ryan covered the wires with double stick tape (that’s the red rectangles) to protect them from unconnecting and also to stick the finished board to the inside of the EE-8 housing.

Insert Double D Batteries and Put Field Phone Back in Case

Place DDs into battery respectable. The positive ends need to both point up. Put the field phone back in its case. You’re done!

How to Use Your WWII Field Phone Bluetooth Handset

Pick up the phone! It’s the general calling!

Here’s how to use your Bluetooth WWII field phone:

• Put field phone into sync mode by holding down receiver until red and green LEDs begin alternating on and off.
• Select bluetooth device on your smartphone.
• When you get a call, green LED will light up.
• To answer call, tap receiver once.
• To speak, push and hold switch on handset.
• To end call, tap receiver twice.
• If you want to make a call out, you’ll have to tap receiver once and dial number on your smartphone.

Here’s a video of it in action:

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2012 London Summer Olympics on jamadots.com

We’re excited to announce that we will be providing our customers with 2012 London Summer Olympics online widgets. A widget (or control) is an element of a graphical user interface (GUI) that displays an information arrangement changeable by the user, such as a window or a text box. This new interactive tool has been added to the jamadots.com community website so that we can now deliver you even greater and more in-depth Olympics coverage that is available on-demand and on your terms.

The Olympics is such an important sporting event, that is watched by so many people throughout the world, for so many different reasons, that we believed an enhancement of this magnitude would be a terrific addition to the jamadots.com website. This will allow you to watch, track and interact with the 2012 Games in a new and personally relevant way that offers greater flexibility and customization which molds to your lifestyle and individual preferences.

We invite you to check out the new widget by clicking on any of the multiple links to be found on the jamadots.com community website. Just look for the word 2012 London Summer Olympics. Try the widget out today to see qualifying rounds and to get involved in the Countdown to the 2012 London Summer Olympic Games which officially begin this July27th.

http://littleurl.info/2012olympicsonjamadots

jamadots.com Free WiFi zones throughout Michigan’s UP

Free WiFi -  Please visit the U.P. businesses & locations that proudly display the Free WiFi from jamadots.com sign! 

These customer focused businesses want to provide you all the conveniences you need while traveling the U.P. and are pleased to be able to offer you FREE WiFi from jamadots.com for your internet connected mobile device, tablet, iPad/iPod, laptop. More locations are being added all the time!

Use the map tools to zoom in and find specific businesses in the areas you are visiting. Click on the different WiFi signs to see information about specific businesses.

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Watch the 4th of July events and fireworks on jamadots.com

We’ve got exciting news and want you to be among the first to know!

On July 4th, we will be streaming video of the events taking place in Bayshore Park and Munising’s impressive fireworks, as they launch from Bayshore Marina and explode high overhead.

If you have friends or family that are unable to attend Munising’s famous Independence Day activities, this is the perfect way to say “hello”. Just ring up your friends via telephone, email, text, etc. Look into the camera, smile, and finish with a wave. The events camera is located on the west end of the food pavilion, near the area where the sidewalks converge. Just look for the jamadots.com Live, Streaming 4th of July webcam banner. (The fireworks camera is set to accomodate the high exploding fireworks and is pointing over Munising Bay.)

To view the live video simply go to www.jamadots.com and click on the main banner. You will be redirected to the jamadots.com 4th of July webcam page where you will be able to view the live, streaming video.

We’re excited to be able to provide this video, made possible by our jamadots.com high-speed internet.

We hope that you, your friends, and family will have tremendous fun watching the festivities on the 4th of July webcams.

Happy 4th of July!

To access the cameras now >>CLICK HERE<<

 >>CLICK HERE<< for a schedule of Munising’s 4th of July events

If you experience problems with viewing the Fireworks camera, please click here for troubleshooting assistance.