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So Kristi hasn’t done her rowing yet (She starts on the 18th). BUT, turns out that rowers are good in Canada. One gold, one silver, and two bronze in rowing! AND, a bronze in swimming and a gold and a bronze in wrestling! Ah ha! Our sports just hadn’t come up last week.

Note: Turns out Kristi is a kayaker. Who knew? Other TinyPic users, apparently. This photo is tagged “kayak 01″:

As the title may’ve tipped you off, I’m Canadian. And when you live in the USA, television coverage focuses on the USA. Unless a Canadian is really good at an Olympic sport, I don’t get to watch many Canadian athletes. Naturally, the reverse is true about the television coverage in Canada. All Canada, all the time, unless the USA is good at a sport. Hmm. Canadians are seeing a lot of U.S. athletes (Search for Olympics at TinyPic to see the photos and videos!)

BUT, what I find depressing is that although Canada sends athletes to the summer Olympics, you’d never know it from our medal standings. We’ve won…oh, right. NO MEDALS. Even Togo has a medal (their first ever! – “On August 12, 2008, Benjamin Boukpeti (a Frenchman representing the nation) won a bronze medal in the Men’s K1 Kayak Slalom, the first ever medal for Togo at the Olympics.” 1. Wikipedia). Not to diminish Togo’s accomplishment. It’s fantastic and exciting for them. I’d just like to see Canada get a medal or two in the summer Olympics. We won 12 total in the 2004 Olympics. Maybe our events haven’t happened yet.

So, I’m pinning my hopes on my cousin’s girlfriend: Kristin Gauthier! It would be amazing to know someone who’s won a medal. Not that it’s not amazing to know someone who’s so good at something that she’s IN the Olympics.

So we’re looking at moving; me and my spouse, not TinyPic. And it sure is hard. How do you know you are buying the right location? I know we are buying the right house. We’ve been looking on and off, with different degrees of desire, for the last eight years. You’d think in eight years we could find something, but sadly, we have champagne tastes on a Gruet budget. That’s not all bad. Gruet is a great, dry sparkling wine.

To make a long story, well, probably still long, we wanted to do something on the piece of land we currently own. We have a 2 bed/1 bath house, with an enormous elm tree (on the right).

Check out the house album at: http://tinypic.com/useralbum.php?ua=tQj3BUoTqy17cc0bbG%2FTrA%3D%3D

It’s smaller than most people’s apartments. We wanted to add on to our house, or scrape our house and put up a new house. But the process is daunting. Find a good architect. Like a house that fits on your lot and is big enough that it will sell for what you put into it. Move out for 6 months to a year. Put most of your stuff in storage. Move twice. Hope your builder doesn’t go over budget. You get the idea.

But now that we’ve found a place and put in an offer, we’re second guessing ourselves. Should we wait for a year, save up more money and THEN do something with our house? Will we hate the new location? (It’s only 0.5 mi from our current location). Will we like our neighbors? Is the neighborhood as good as our current one? The house is certainly WAY better. Will the house appreciate at the same rate? It’s all very stressful.

And this is before our offer’s been accepted! Provided it is, there will be the stress of closing, packing, moving, selling our current house (or maybe holding onto it b/c I really wish we were still living on that specific piece of ground, but not in that house). On the bright side, we’ll have a house that’s actually big enough to have guests, and a dog, and our wedding presents upstairs instead of on a shelf in the basement! And no furniture (that could be a plus or minus, depending on how much I like furniture shopping), and a patio, and space for entertaining. After I get used to it, although I’ll think fondly of our old location, maybe I’ll be fond of the new location, too.

Occasionally, we like to learn directly from our users what they like about TinyPic, what they don’t, and what they would like to see TinyPic become. To do this we have implemented a survey that you can see from the main page.

Please help us to make this a product that is helpful to you by taking a few minutes to take the survey. You can click here to do so.

I can hear you thinking NO. But what if you did decide to give up a kidney for someone? You would only have one kidney left, which is fine, unless something goes wrong with your kidney. But what a generous gift you’d be giving: life. If someone needs your kidney, it’s because their own are no longer functioning, and they’re likely surviving on dialysis, hoping someone has chosen to be an organ donor or will choose to be a living donor.

It’s probably not the kind of thing you think about, unless you know either a donor or someone whose kidneys are failing. As it turns out, I know a living donor. When he said he was going to be in the hospital because he was donating a kidney to a friend’s daughter, I thought, “Wow, there are only 5 or 6 people to whom I’d give a kidney, and that includes my spouse, mom, dad, and sister.” And here was someone I know giving up a kidney to a person that he wasn’t even related to!

So, you make the decision. You’re going to give your kidney to someone because…your reasons will be your own. Then what? Lots of tests. Not every kidney will work for every person. You should have:

• A compatible blood type with the donor.
• Tissue antigens that are close to the recipient’s antigens.
• A healthy kidney to donate and a healthy kidney to keep.

You also need to be in good general health because this is major surgery. If you want to see pictures of the surgery, hosted on TinyPic, click the kidney bean!

And after all that, sometimes it doesn’t work. Despite anti-rejection drugs, blood, tissue, and cross-matching, the recipient’s body can create antibodies and kill off the donated kidney. After the recipient recovers from the removal of the failed donation, there’s a waiting period for the recipient’s body to clear all the drugs before s/he can accept another donation.

For in-depth information on being a living kidney donor, see http://www.livingdonorsonline.org/kidney/kidney.htm

Our new video player is pretty cool! Not that the old player was bad, of course. But as with most things, there’s always room for improvement. Do you remember the old player? You could link to it and view videos on it; it was a vanilla video player. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. After all, a video player that has too many bells and whistles is likely to hog up lots of resources on your computer. However, there was room for improvement. And so…

Introducing the new, improved TinyPic video player! Ta da!

The first thing you may notice is that the function bar at the bottom, which used to be hidden when you watched a video, is no longer hidden. And while you are looking at the function bar, the second thing you may notice is that there are more icons in the function bar. In addition to the typical play, stop, and volume buttons there are two new buttons:

• hyperlink
• view full-screen

When you click hyperlink, the quick post functionality displays over the video view so you can click a button to post the video to the website of your choice, choose to bookmark or email the video using the links at the top of the quick post display, or copy the code to embed the video within a web page. When you view the video on TinyPic, you see the same quick post links at the left in the Tools or Your Toolbox.

When you click view full-screen, as you may have guessed, the video display takes up your entire monitor (some videos look REALLY BAD at a larger resolution ). You can press the Esc key to close the full-screen view or click view full-screen again — Hey, check it out! The function bar still displays in full-screen view! And all the functionality on the bar works, too!

As always, when you click the TinyPic logo at the top of the video display, the TinyPic website displays.

Making what? Tiny Effects! As in, special effects for the images you upload on TinyPic. The TinyFx feature from Flektor lets you add all sorts of special effects to your images. The special effects you can add change from time-to-time, but they include fun stuff like mug shots, floating hearts, a dance beat, a motivational poster…the list goes on.

Some effects are seasonal. For example, the option to add shamrocks to a photo may only be around in the month of March, for St. Patrick’s Day. However, the more popular a special effect is, the more likely it will remain in the line-up.

But, why? Why would you want to make TinyFx from your images? Well, you might be bored. Thinking about how much you love your dog. Hey. You DO love your dog (cat, bird, snake—insert appropriate animal, vegetable, or mineral). And you have a great pic of your dog that could only be improved upon if it had floating hearts or was used in a motivational pic.

Yea! Now you have a reason to create a TinyFx

1. Sign into your TinyPic account, and find that pic of your dog.
2. Click the image on your Home or Your Stuff page, then click Add TinyFx in Your Toolbox.
3. Pick an effect. (Well, you love your dog, but forget hearts. Your dog needs KISSES!)
4. Customize your effect. Not all effects are customizable, but if you choose Kisses, you can customize the number of kisses, the size of the kisses, the delay between kisses, the opacity of the kisses, the opacity of the glow on the image, and the lipstick color for the kisses.
5. Adjust the position and size of your image.
6. Click Save & Share! when your special effects are complete. Now you can share your TinyFx with everyone else who loves your dog!

You asked, we listened….You can now upload media to your TinyPic account from your mobile device!

If you’ve been to TinyPic in the last couple of days, you probably noticed the yellow caption at the top of the window that calls attention to the new service. But we thought it would be nice to explain the ins and outs of using your mobile device to upload media. If you don’t already have everything set up:

1. Sign into your TinyPic account.
2. Click Settings. Your Account Settings page displays.
3. Select Allow uploads via E-mail in the Uploads via E-mail field.
4. Enter your Mobile Number.
5. Click Save Changes. Your new settings are saved.

Now what? Well, there are two things you need to know. First, you can only upload from the e-mail address that is on your Account Settings. Second, you can only upload from the mobile number that is on your Account Settings. But that’s fine. They are your e-mail address and mobile number after all.

OK! You’re ready to go. You have media that you want to send from your mobile device. Find your media. Send it to m@tinypic.com. That’s it! Now, you can sign into your account and see the media you uploaded in your My Stuff page. The last item you upload is the first that displays in your My Stuff page.

What makes TinyPic better than the competition? Well, let’s take a look at features that many media storage sites have in common:

• Registration: Registration is often required, and it often comes with extra perks such as larger file uploads or the option to delete your media.
• Subscription: For a fee, many sites offer even more options than registration, like being able to FTP files or purchase merchandise.
• Searching: Many sites allow you to search for images (and maybe videos) by keyword.
• Ads: Without ads, free media hosting would likely not exist.

So, if that’s what most sites have in common, what makes TinyPic stand out from the crowd? Location, location, location! Not really…we aren’t selling real estate What really makes TinyPic stand out are the additional features that we offer, such as:

• Uploading without registration: Upload an image or video without registering. On TinyPic, when you choose to register, you do get access to more features (see Registration at TinyPic: What’s in it for me?), and you may find it convenient to have all your media in one spot.
• Language selection: View TinyPic in a language other than English. If you register, your selection is saved with your account.
• Full image editing: Upload images then fully edit them, including resizing, color correction, blemish removal, and many other options.
• Special effects: Add special effects to images you upload.
• Featured images and videos: Always see the latest images and videos.
• Media upload sizes: Whether you register or not, the same media upload sizes apply. (Hint: We’re pretty generous compared to our competition)

Plus, TinyPic is totally FREE! Given all that, and the ease of navigation on TinyPic, why would you consider another site?