I just recently upgraded to the latest version of Apple’s OS, which also got me the latest version of their iPhoto software. Today I had a chance to play around with it a bit. There are a ton of new features, but one of my favorites is called “Faces.” According to Apple, “iPhoto uses face detection to identify faces of people in your photos and face recognition to match faces that look like the same person. That makes it easy for you to add names to your photos. And it helps you find the people you’re looking for. Clicking the Faces view shows you a corkboard featuring a snapshot for each person you’ve named. iPhoto suggests a set of possible matches you can confirm with a click.”

I found this tool to be very helpful in quickly locating lots of photos that include a particular person. Of course it’s not perfect, and it makes mistakes fairly often. But, you can “teach” iPhoto by confirming and denying whether each face is the person in question. A particularly fun use of this feature is in identifying who, among your family members, you look like. For example, when I looked for all the photos of me, I was frequently presented with photos of my daughter and my niece.

Double-clicking on those images tells iPhoto the face is not mine, while a single-click confirms the face is mine.

When I ran the tool using one of my daughter’s face, it was fun to see who in the family iPhoto thinks she looks like. In particular, it repeatedly asked me if photos of my husband’s nephew and my niece were in fact my daughter. With my other daughter, iPhoto seems to think she looks a lot like my husband, which many people indeed tell us.

If you have an older version of iPhoto, I encourage you to upgrade and check out “Faces” and the many other new features included.

Three years ago I bought a MacBook Pro. At the time, it was super fast and able to handle all my computer needs. It was a glorious machine, and I quickly fell in love.

But over time, the keys became so worn I could no longer read the letters on them. That I could overlook. But when performance slowed down, I found myself wishes for something better. In fact, it eventually got so bad I could fold two loads of laundry in the time it took to perform certain operations in Photoshop.

So in September, I started to have an emotional affair with someone else: a quad-core iMac. At the time, it was mere speculation because Apple had yet to announce such a machine. I was left to only dream about the increased speed, larger hard drive, bigger monitor, and newer operating system.

Then in late October, it happened. Apple made quad-core iMacs available for the first time. Any commitment I had made to my MacBook Pro instantly went out the window. I found my credit card, pointed, and clicked.

Yesterday, my new machine finally arrived. As I pulled it out of the box, my own children and several from the neighborhood watched in wonder. When the screen was revealed – all 27-glorious-inches of it – they all gave an awe-struck “oooo” and “aaaahhh.” When I pulled out the wireless keyboard and mouse, a chorus of amens could be heard out in the street.

Then my 10-year-old called “dibs” on the MacBook and a fight broke out, but I digress.

I spent the rest of the evening setting up my new companion. I used Apple’s Migration Assistant to copy my files and settings from the MacBook to the iMac. I did run into a snag when my user profile was ported over, as apparently the preferences had gotten corrupt on my old machine. [Tip to anyone else who might try to use Migration Assistant: run Disk Utility first on the old machine to fix any corrupted preferences before transferring your files.]

The real test came this morning when I sat down to work. I launched Photoshop and opened a 217 MB client file. What used to take a full two-minutes to load took mere seconds (15 to be exact). I can now say without a doubt that I am in love with this machine… at least for the next 2-3 years .

I’m usually a fan of the underdog. Chris Daughtry was one (he didn’t WIN American Idol, or really come that close, but look at him now). And what about poor Tom (the cat) of the Tom and Jerry duo? Of course, one of the most famous underdogs was David, who beat the giant Goliath with his slingshot. And anyone who knows me even a little bit knows I am a die-hard Apple fan. But here’s one case where I am not: search engines.

I did use AltaVista for a long time after many others came on the scene. I guess I felt a bit loyal to the first major search engine. But after Google went big-time, I abandoned the AV ship for good.

Over the past decade, many search engines have come (and gone). Remember Excite? OK, it still exists, but no one really uses it (sorry if any Excite lovers are reading this). But only one has dug in its heals and garnered 84.5% of the market share.

Sometimes clients ask about the benefits of advertising on any other search engine, and I usually say this: what benefits? When one company has 84.5% of the search engine market share, you can usually get a pretty good return on your investment by putting your money in that “basket.”

Yes, I realize that I’m telling you to ignore 15.5% of the market. It might be harder to ignore that portion if there was one other search engine with a larger percentage. But, given that the 15.5% is broken up into several other smaller portions, it just doesn’t make sense to focus energies there… at least not until you’ve “wrapped up” the 84.5% portion.

I’m certainly still rooting for a few of the underdogs (such as Bing), just not putting my money with them… yet.

OK. It’s time for a little honesty. Every parent has one of these. For some it starts with, “In my day…” or “When I was your age…” I recently read a novel in which the main character’s mom was famous for her “life-is” speeches.

Today I realized I had officially coined my own parent-phrase.

It started with my 14-year-old foster daughter telling me about a particularly “carefree” lab partner she has to work with in biology class. This other student’s carefree attitude cost them their grade on the first lab report. So now it’s up to my student to carry the weight for the team. I launched into a “speech” (oh how I hate that word) about how there will be tons of time when she’s forced to deal with difficult people. Then I said those three little words that caused my 10-year-old to grown and roll her pretty little eyes…

“In real life…”

“Yes, in real life, there will be lots of difficult people to deal with, so it’s a good practice for your future,” I began. My own daughter rolled her eyes because she’s heard several of these “in real life” speeches, whether it’s about doing her homework, handling bullies, or making tough decisions. I guess I’ve used the whole “in real life” context enough times that my children (biological and otherwise) all know what’s coming when I start with those three little words.

The problem came when it occurred to me today that I am now known for this. But what if that’s not a good thing? Is there still time to change it? Then I started thinking how my kids will talk about it when they have their own kids. Only instead it will then be “your grandmother used to say…” [Insert scream here.] That’s when it occurred to me that I am actually old enough that my kids can anticipate my speeches. You know what that means, don’t you. I’m not just getting old: I’m turning into my mother! [More screaming goes here.]

Don’t get me wrong. I love my mother. It’s just that it feels weird to be old enough to be exhibiting those “motherly traits.”

I’m talking about those undeniable characteristics of women who have been mothers for at least a decade. Sometimes those are really good characteristics. For example, many in this group of care-takers can make a sack-lunch, correct homework, fold laundry, supervise the before-school ritual, arrange dental visits, and pay bills all at the same time (without a clone). Moms like this organize car pools, deliver meals to the sick, coach their kids’ sports teams, counsel friends, and sometimes maintain other jobs outside the home. They aren’t perfect, but they recognize their mistakes and apologize for them. And along the way, they rely on their faith in Christ to carry them through. These are women I have admired and sought counsel from for years, as my own children were learning to walk. These are my mentors.

But sometimes the things we have been doing for years and years aren’t exactly the type of things we want to be remembered for. I think I’m at one of those moments where I am realizing it’s time to take a good look at my “motherly traits” to figure out what’s working and what’s not. In web design, we might call this usability testing. It can be a painful, yet hugely beneficial, process for all parties.

Even though I’ve been at this for more than a decade, I still feel – in many ways – like a “baby parent,” just floundering around a dark tunnel called parenting. I am blessed to have so many wonderful mentors to help guide me through. I can only pray that by the end of this journey we all come out with only a few screws loose. And maybe someday, I might look back and smile when I hear my daughter say, “my mom used to tell me that in real life…”