You know what a crazy dog person would do? A crazy dog person would use the free app Tango to place video calls to her husband while he travels so the dogs can say hi too. What. The dogs like it and I like it. And my husband puts up with it. So, we’re all happy.

But why Tango? Because I never know what device my husband will have while he travels and I don’t know what he’ll leave me with. Tango works with Windows Phone, Android, iOS phones and PCs and it works on the 3G networks. For folks who need to see such cute dogs in other countries, there are free international calls to other Tango members too. You don’t need to be a techie to use it too. It’s perfect for people with all technical skills and most any device to use.

Good Housekeeping wrote an excellent review of Tango. Here’s what Rachel Rothman had to say in Tango: A Better Way to Video Chat, “With its clean interface, Tango is intuitive and easy to use.” So, go and grab Tango now. Your dogs are waiting for their video chat. And by your dogs, I mean my dogs.

I’m worried about all-out device warfare in my house. See, I’m all about using my PC to be the ultimate Fruit Ninja warrior of all time. That’s a real title just so you know and it’s a lot of work. Trying to be the ultimate Fruit Ninja warrior of all time requires a lot of time on the PC. But that’s in jeopardy. Here’s why: comics. See we just released a bunch of digital comics for PC, including Archie, Transformers, and Astro Boy in the Intel AppUp℠ center. And my husband loves comics.  

I’ve not yet broken the news to him because I know I’ll need to kiss my laptop goodbye so he can relive his youth with Star Trek and delve into new titles like Cricket Mythology. I know that I will need to suspend my Fruit Ninja triumph while he (slowly) reads his favorite comics in digital format. Savoring every image (now digital) and reading and re-reading each page. While. Slowly. Enjoying. Every. Word.

{{Deep breath}}

I guess he has watched me play Fruit Ninja long enough. I guess I will share the news with him that there are digital comics at his disposal. I guess I will do that. As soon as I make it past the next Fruit Ninja level.

Justin Timberlake and I are like this thanks to will.i.am. See, here’s how it works: Justin Timberlake helped out will.i.am on his track Nature of the World and will.i.am also has an exclusive, free app in the Intel AppUp℠ center called willpower360, and I make sure all of the apps in the Intel AppUp center are family friendly. So that basically means Justin Timberlake and I are best friends. As an added bonus, willpower360 not only means I am BFFs with Justin Timberlake, I’m traveling around the world with will.i.am.

Not everyone can be BFFs with Justin Timberlake like I am, but everyone can travel around the world with will.i.am using willpower360. Join will.i.am in Tokyo where he and Verbal create a new song, and thanks to the 360 video technology you can take photos of will.i.am and share them with your friends. Each month the app will be updated with new places and photos from will.i.am’s journey.

Now, if you want to see the world thanks to will.i.am, download the willpower360 app. It’s exclusive to the Intel AppUp center. And it’s free. But it’s a big file so be sure you’re on a dedicated high-speed Internet connection. The app won’t work on XP, but it’s perfect for Windows* 7, and of course, Ultrabook™.

So go and download this awesome app. And after you do that, join me in doing some desk dancing to will.i.am and Justin Timberlake (my best friend…sort of.)

Usually I’m here writing about apps that I’m falling in love with and by falling in love, I mean totally addicted to and probably ignoring my husband and doggies because I’m a bit too engrossed in the app (I’m looking at you Fruit Ninja) but today I want to tell you a little bit more about the Intel AppUp℠ center. Here’s the deal with Intel AppUp – we want you and your PC to rock. We at the Intel AppUp center think great mobiles apps would be really cool on your PC or laptop. And because your PC has a lot of power, the apps will run even better. And we can offer apps like willpower 360 that are only available for PC. 

We have free apps and awesome games like Angry Birds and we have apps that help you strike that work/life balance like Cozi. No, I don’t use Cozi to schedule Angry Birds playing time. Fruit Ninja…maybe.

And we have willpower 360. Yes, I’m mentioning it twice. So, will.i.am (yes that will.i.am) made an app for our store. How cool is that? Download this app and prepare to travel around the world with one of the most awesome music dudes. This app is packed full of music and images so make sure you have a dedicated, fast Internet connection and then get ready to rock and travel with will.i.am.

So, that’s a little overview of the Intel AppUp center. We’re all about rocking your PC! Yes, I did listen to Joan Jett today and yes, I am doing air guitar right now.

I didn’t move to California for the pizza. I moved here so that I could snowboard and take advantage of the deep, ice free snow that the East Coast doesn’t offer.  So what happens when I buy my first season pass? There’s no snow. Sure I did find one good pizza parlor, but there’s no snow. Do I sound upset with this? Yup! On a positive note (thinking positive is a New Year’s resolution of mine) I appreciate the fact that I can still hit the trails on my bike in 60 degree temps. Okay, my mood has improved – back to positive.

While no snow is my misfortune, my family reaps the rewards of my being home both weekend days (my wife and son don’t ski or ride…yet).  No snow means movie time for the family!  We’re still fairly new here, so going to the movies is one part movie, one part sight-seeing expedition. Before we head out, we use the free app Fandango to find movies we want to see, and then we use the app to locate theaters on a map. If there's a part of town we haven't explored much, we head over there and check it out and catch a flick too.

Fandango has everything for a great movie night, except one thing: no babysitter finder. Hmmm maybe the Fandango folks are working on that one too.

I guess you could say I’ve always preferred digital to analog. Even in my arcade days I gravitated to the video games and not those old-fashioned pinball machines. See how I’m doing that? See how I’m blaming pinball machines for my total inability to play pinball? My low scores couldn’t possibly be the fact that I have a firm belief that my hitting, leaning and picking up a machine clean off the floor are not in any way the reason I trigger the tilt mechanism. No…it couldn’t be that. It’s the machine’s fault.  

I know this to be true because I’m now a high scorer thanks the app Pinball HD. It’s digital. And HD. And I’m awesome at it. Not to brag or anything. The game itself has different camera modes (ball following mode anyone?) and excellent game play and there’s no danger of me tilting. Well, there’s a little danger. But I’m able to stay in control and not hit or kick my laptop because that would be bad. And expensive and sort of hard to get my foot on my desk to do so.

So, if you’re like me and prefer digital to everything else (and/or sometimes you get too aggressive with pinball machines), I want you try Pinball HD. Let us all be Pinball Wizards!

Our two runners-up in the Wired to Learn Contest didn’t let their smaller student body stop them from drumming up the votes that led them to winning tech packages from the Intel AppUp center.

Second Prize Winner

With their student body of just 150, Arco Iris Spanish Immersion school, a public charter school in Beaverton, Ore., took home the $10,000 prize with 6,158 votes. The school receives a fraction of the funding of other schools in the area and has just five laptops. “We are so grateful for this gift. It will be an excellent start to our computer lab,” said Maureen Childs, principal at Arco Iris.

The school will use their new laptops to engage in live video chats with classrooms in other countries and improve their social studies program, and they’ll use education apps like Frog Dissection in the Intel AppUp center to bolster their science lessons.

Principal Childs has a great bit of advice to future contest entrants: “Know what you’ll do with your prize if you win so you can tell people why it’s important to vote.” The students, faculty and staff of Arco Iris are a winning example of this terrific advice.

Third Prize Winner

The students, faculty and staff at Adelson Educational Campus in Las Vegas, Nevada, mobilized their community to receive 4,856 votes in the Intel AppUp center Wired to Learn Contest. After receiving a notification of the Wired to Learn Contest, Brandi Williams, technology coordinator, entered the Adelson Campus and sought support from the community.

Abigail Moyal, Adelson Campus Upper School librarian, jumped on board and mobilized staff, students and parents. The school moved computers to the dining commons for easy voting while Williams placed a sign in the school’s driveway to keep the contest fresh in community members’ minds.

“I’m amazed that we placed in this contest. Our school is so small,” said Williams. Adelson, which has 501 students, will use their $5,000 technology package to help update their mobile and handheld technology.

Congratulations to all of the winners! Here’s to keeping kids wired to learn.

Click here to see our profile of the grand prize winner.

Click here to see more winners of the Intel AppUp Wired to Learn contest.

Car dealerships, “I voted” stickers, and a whole lot of Facebook shares and email blasts led to Great Oak High School winning the Intel AppUp℠ center Wired to Learn Contest. The Wired to Learn contest encouraged schools to tell their story about how a technology package would benefit their students. Schools from around the United States shared their stories and the public voted for the schools that would best benefit from the technology. The school with the most votes won a $25,000 technology package while two more schools won a $10,000 and $5,000 package. Great Oak High School received 8,529 votes while the runners up clocked 6,158 and 4,856 votes. So how’d they do it? And what will sort of technology did they choose for their schools?

The large student body at Great Oak helped get the word out about their contest entry for Wired to Learn. Their 3,400 students, 150 teachers and 40 members of the support staff rallied parents, friends and colleagues to get votes for Wired to Learn. Administrator Ingrid Taylor led the charge. She posted about the contest on their school’s website, on Facebook and on the Facebook pages of local businesses, including car dealerships. She created “I voted” stickers and a Wired to Learn how-to video for her Facebook page.

Great Oak’s technology is eight years old and the school has no wireless capabilities. The technology group faced a tough decision between new technology and wireless hubs. They chose new computers. “We often have to wait ten minutes or more for our computers to log on. Faster computers will make us a lot more efficient,” said Taylor.

The local papers showed their support for Great Oak with several stories, including this article in the North County Times about the schools in the area participating in contests to raise money.

“It was a lot of work, but the competition rallied the students,” said Taylor. All of their efforts paid off. The students at this grand prize winning school will benefit from the speed of new computers featuring powerful Intel processors.

Congratulations to Great Oak High School on their win!

So…I just took a picture of will.i.am in Tokyo. No biggie. It’s just what I do. Except I didn’t leave my desk and I don’t actually know will.i.am, nor have I ever been to Tokyo. But he is my colleague here at Intel. He’s the director of creative innovation and he’s been contributing a lot of cool ideas for mobile technology.

He built willpower360, a very cool app for the Intel AppUp center, that lets fans like me follow him around the world and take pictures and video of his adventures. After Tokyo, he’ll be adding locations as he travels so not only will fans get to see the best sights all over the world, they’ll be able to travel (virtually) with one of the coolest dudes around.

Want to know more about will.i.am and his vision of the future of technology? Check out this video with will.i.am and our own futurist, Brian David Johnson.

Download willpower360! It’s free and exclusive to the Intel AppUp center.

The Intel AppUp℠ center is offering an awesome discount on Easy Flyer Creator, one of the top desktop publishing software apps. Normally this app is $39.99, but we’re offering it for $4.99. How often do you get to save $35? Not every day.

What’s cool about Easy Flyer Creator? You don’t need any sort of design experience to create a beautiful flyer or invitation or certificate or coupon. Easy Flyer Creator offers lovely templates and features, like built in ticket templates, mail merge or image editors.

Here are a few things I think you should create using Easy Flyer Creator:

1. Baby shower invitation — Personalize it with baby pictures of the lucky couple.
2. PTA announcement – Get creative with headlines. Send it out using mail merge.
3. Valentine’s Day coupons – Nothing says romance like a full week of washing the dishes and folding the laundry, am I right? Create a personalized coupon for your loved one with the extremely romantic promise. And hey, the roses and the chocolate are a bonus.

Head over to the Intel AppUp center to learn more about Easy Flyer Creator and to grab it for just $4.99 for a $35 savings. Go now!

The eighties brought us several influential women in music. I’ve covered my love of Madonna, my childhood mistake of dissing Cyndi Lauper and I (somehow) managed to fit a Joan Jett reference into a blog about apps. But you know who we’ve not chatted about? Spinderella.

I have a distinct memory of wearing bicycle shorts and attempting the moves I learned from Salt n’ Pepa after repeatedly playing “Push It.” What. Like you never wore bicycle shorts for activities other than cycling. We all did it. It’s okay. This blog is a safe place for our eighties fashion mistakes.

Anyway, I tried dancing like Salt n Pepa, and I broke a few items in our living room before deciding that I could play the Spinderella role in my imaginary Salt n Pepa tribute band. I’d scratch my records and dance occasionally. And not break anything.  

My love of Spinderella is rekindled with the exclusive app now in the Intel AppUp℠ center, Mixman Spin Control. It’s an awesome app that lets me make music on my Ultrabook™. Yes, me. The one who, in the previous paragraph, broke things in her living room. I am not musically talented, but even I can create a cool song using this app.

This app is built by the great people at Mixman. You use the keys on your PC like an instrument to create your own remixes with features like WARP FX, scratching and cross-fader. Fancy!

So go you budding DJ’s – go make Spinderella proud.