Withdrawal...

I have to be honest with you, when I won Autonet, I was excited at first because I won it, but then I was like what is this thing? Really? I am I EVER going to use it? I even tried to trade it away, but found no takers on the trade. I brought it home and looked up its value and decided maybe I could sell it and at least get something for it, but the Autonet people were so nice and would call me and email me and offered to install it in my car and give me 6 months for free, so I thought, "what do I have to lose?" Nothing really. I got it installed in my car. All it cost me was about an hour of my time while they installed. I didn't use it for the first week. I really had no use for it. Wasn't sure how I was gong to use it. From time to time it came in handy with my laptop, but the truth of the matter is that I hated lugging my laptop around just in case I might need to look something up. Then we went on vacation. We used our Autonet connection and loved it. We were so grateful for it on our road trip vacation. and then my usage declined again because I'd have to lug my laptop around. And then I lost my job and my laptop with it. hmmm.... how can I use it now? Well, my husband got a free iPod Touch with his new laptop for work and well, it is MY iPod Touch now. And I use it all the time in the car to check my email facebook, update twitter, schedule my dvr, listen to music on Pandora, etc. And for the past couple of days it hasn't been working (I think I am at the end of my free trial period) and so I am feeling a little bit of withdrawal, because I liked being able to just "check in" from wherever I was. I am so ready to be signed up and a paying subscriber!

Another Reason to Love Autonet...

image via twitterfon.net

My husband just recently got an iPod Touch and I think I have finally found the reason to have Autonet in my car! Sure, it was great for my vacation--because it was awesome, but we only go on vacations once or twice a year. I have had a hard time bringing my laptop with me everywhere I go just because I might need to use my Autonet. But since he has had the iPod Touch (which will soon be mine, btw) We have used the Autonet almost everytime we are in the car together. We use it for directions or to look up websites or to update our twitter accounts! It has been extremely handy. At this point I am definitely considering renewing my service once it is up, because I have finally found the device to use with it that makes sense in my life right now. Oh and I have to just say how much I love that iPod Touch! I didn't realize how cool it was until he brought one home. I guess I thought it just worked like an iPod except it had a touch screen, but no! Like I mentioned before, you can access websites and your twitter account and download cool games and other amazing apps so long as you have a wi-fi connection. Which I do. In my car! Thanks to Autonet!

How to Survive a Road Trip with 5 Kids!

When we went to Disneyland last month we planned on taking a road trip. Really, with 5 kids in tow it is extremely expensive to fly anywhere, but the thought of driving in the car for 13 hours seems daunting especially when they complain and fight and whine when we take a relatively short 45 minute to 1 hour trip to Salt Lake. (Your kids don't do that do they?) I wasn't sure we'd make it and still want to spend the rest of the week with eachother. But we did...

Here are some of the ideas we had to make a more peaceful trip:

• We stocked the car with plenty of new DVDs of movies they had never seen before.
• I gave them all a bare book journal to color in and record their experiences in--along with a fresh box of Disney themed crayons from the dollar store for each of them.
• We brought along the Chronicles of Narnia CD Collection (we only made it through the Magician's Nephew but it was superbly read by one of my all time favorite actors-Kenneth Branagh)
• Frequent bathroom breaks
• iPod full of music
• 3 Nintendo DS consoles
  
• Laptop for the kids to share...
  
• Mom and Dad keeping a positive attitude no matter what!!!!
  

We would alternate between music, movies, books on tape and silence which seemed to work really well. And while my kids were watching movies and my husband was driving, I was able to do several things on my laptop thanks to Autonet! I had some work that I needed to accomplish before we left town and I needed to send emails to people to give them instructions on how to take care of things while I was gone. Of course I ran out of time trying to get ready but because I knew I could shoot off a few emails on the drive I wasn't stressed. In fact I had total peace of mind. I was able to compose the emails and SEND them from my car using our autonet connection! Hurray!

I have to say when I first won the Autonet, I was a little skeptical. I had questions like "When am I really going to use this?" And when it was first installed I really didn't use it that much, but on our vacation it was a lifesaver. We ran out of time to print out a map to our destination, but it was no big deal as we got closer to Anaheim I was able to pull up google maps and find the way. Also there were several times when we were on the road and wanted to know where we could eat based on our location--we were able to find the closest restaurants and get directions all online in the car. I also got to try out eye-fi while on the trip. It was awesome! I took some pictures at our first rest stop and within minutes of being back in the car and on the road again the photos had been wirelessly uploaded to my picasa account through autonet. I can't even tell you how cool I think that is. The kids thought it was pretty cool too to be able to see the pictures instantly uploaded to the internet.

Since the kids had their own laptop in the car, they each took turns checking their email and going to their favorite websites like pbskids.org, starfall.com and sikids.com to play games online while we were headed down the road. I loved that it gave them just one more option of something to do to keep the boredom away while in the car.

Believe it or not we even used some good old fashioned non-technology based boredom busters like the classic license plate game and finding every letter of the alphabet on billboards, but I was grateful for all of the gadgetry too.

Our road trip turned out to be a lot of fun. The kids didn't complain (much) and we arrived just before dark. Tired but calm. I am glad we had such a great road trip and hopefully my kids will look back on it as fondly as I do. I am glad we are making such great memories with our kids. So between all of our advanced planning and the ability to do some spur of the moment decision making based on our in-car internet searches, we did survive the road trip and actually had a really fun time getting there and getting home again. I hope some of my ideas might be helpful for your next road trip too. What are some ideas you have for making road trips more bearable?

Online in my car?

When I attended the Mom 2.0 Summit in Houston there was a whole lot of swag and tons of door prizes to be won. I came home with a lot of stuff. The biggest prize I received was something called Autonet. I had never heard of it before and was unsure of what it was and exactly how I would use it. It essentially is the internet for your car! It was exciting to win and the people at Autonet have been so great to work with. One of the things I love about the people I have worked with is that they have been so helpful in answering all my questions. Since this was a doorprize, they had it installed in my car for me (wireless router- hidden under the driver's seat and attached to my minivan's 12v battery for power) and are giving me 6 months of free unlimited service. If I understend it correctly, it works using cell phone tower signals, so wherever you could get cell phone service, you could use the Autonet and have internet access in your vehicle! The autonet works when your car battery is on and has a range of approx 100 feet. Kind-of nifty. I feel sooo 21st century!

What makes me so excited about this is that I can give it a try and let everyone know how it is working for me. I just barely got it installed in my car last week and if the truth be told, I haven't gone hardly anywhere yet, but be on the look out for future reviews so I can tell you how its going. I am already thinking of the possibilities of being able to stay connected to work during the summer months while I run my kids around. I work from home and have flexible hours, but it is nice to be able to stay in touch with what is going on at the office, so I am hoping that even when I take my kids to their baseball & softball games this summer, I can stay connected for work. We are also planning a roadtrip soon and I am really hoping we will get some good use out of the Autonet then.

Don't worry, I won't be online while I'm driving. I'll make sure I at least pull over to the side of the road first...