I Love Technology!

My friend Kristi wrote a blog post about the advancements in technology with microwaves and computers. I started thinking & realized that I have been around long enough to have seen a lot of change.

• I can carry around 50 kajillion songs on a device that is 2"x3" and listen to them with headphones of amazing quality.
• I have been working on my family history - the newspapers of Door County, Wisconsin have all been scanned & made accessible on the internet to search. I easily proved that "those people" were related to "my people" when I found them in a newspaper article. 
• Genealogy on the internet is another thing - remember the days of microfiche & dusty books?!! Now Ancestry even searches records and helps match people, places, and documents. Family trees are posted online for everyone to compare.
• Just seven years ago I drove across the country without a GPS or a smart phone!! I called my friend Bonnie every evening to find out the next nearest town to stop at.
• Video games have changed. I don't play the new-fangled contraptions but I did spend a lot of nights playing Pong and Centipede with my friend Wendy.
• I learned how to type on a typewriter. Mistakes had to be blotted out with Wite-Out or the whole page had to be retyped. We had a manual typewriter before converting over to electric.
• LDS Tools is one of the coolest apps ever. I can look up everyone's phone number & address in the ward (congregation) by logging in.
• The iPad is amazing. I can surf the internet, check email, play games, log food & exercise choices, read magazines and books (that I can download in an instant!), write blog posts, and see the last thousand pictures from my desktop computer & my iPhone in the photo stream.
• I can purchase a twin XL comforter for a dorm bed off season online.
• I can search Craigslist for a car or a sectional sofa, determine value at KBB, and then check the CarFax to make sure I am not buying a known lemon. 
• I can take digital photographs and check the results immediately. I can tag photos and easily search for everything "Jared" or Christmas or Florida.
• I can use Picasa (a free Google download) to match faces between photos with facial recognition software. The technology is so good that it can match my kids to the grandparents that they resemble and match an older picture with the young picture of the same person.
• I can use Skype or FaceTime to see and talk to family members that are far away.
• My iPhone 4 can take pictures that are good enough quality that I can use it as a photocopier. I take a picture of a document & print it out at letter size.

The list is really endless. Every day it seems there is a new invention or creation. I am thankful for all the advances in technology. What technology are you thankful for?