I received a message from a two-time HOF’er (who often provides great advice in blogs ) the other day who was concerned about some of the newer ladies on the site having a difficult time talking to their doctor about MyFreeImplants. Jason had written an excellent How-To article a while back with tips and tricks on how to talk to your doctor about payment from the site, which can be found here:

How-To: Talking to your doctor about MyFreeImplants

To supplement the above article, I thought it would be a good idea to post a first-hand consultation experience as well. This helpful HOF’er has been kind enough to let me share it as a News post below:

How I brought up MFI to my surgeon’s office.

When I booked my consult, I contacted support and asked for a MFI payment pamphlet available to the ladies, which I brought along with me to my consult.

I first talked to the office manager, and we went over my medical history. After seeing the surgeon, trying on implants and making our final decision of what type of implants and the amount of cc’s (600 cc’s silicone), it was time to talk about payment.

The office manager asked me if I wanted to finance my surgery through their office. I handed her the payment pamphlet and let her look at it and read through it. She asked my how the site worked. Before answering her, I thought for a minute and said this…

“MFI is a cosmetic surgery financing website who pays for the full surgery amount.”

I had close to $7500 at the time of my consult (I was quoted at $8700). I told her I was going to have to raise my goal on the site. She then kind of looked at me like there was something wrong with me.

“I have $7500 in my account right now. I will have to make up the difference.”

Hmmm…. I explained, without going into detail, that MFI has paid out over $2 million toward implant surgeries, that the site was founded in 2005, and it was a legitimate company.

“How do we get paid?” She asked. My first response was. “I never touch the money, it is held in an account in my name until I have the full cost of the surgery. MFI, upon releasing the funds, will send the deposit and any other costs directly to you.”

“The company will send a certified check to your office when my payment release date comes up. Which if all goes well, you should be receiving it by the beginning of June. If the cost was under $7500 the site would pay via credit card along with all the appropriate identification!” She said it was fine as long as it was all legitimate!

I never brought up exactly how the money came into my account. But I did say: As a social network, people sign up and become friends, they then pay to send messages to the girls and give us lovely donations. At that she said… “Sounds good to me!” She wished me luck and asked me to keep her up to date when I reached my goal.

I never told her the inner workings of MFI. It was enough that she had the information she needed. She now has my payment agreement papers and Jeanette’s email and phone number, if any questions arise. So ladies.. that is how I mentioned MFI to my doctor.

My advice would be to get your consult BEFORE reaching HOF. For a lot of reasons! But also discuss MFI with the patient coordinator at the time of your consult.

My consult did cost me $100 out of pocket, but that is coming off the total cost of surgery. I will never see the money again… But it is what it is. And I am happy with my choice of surgeon and they are happy with my payment agreement!

Good luck ladies!

We are often asked the question: How much do breast implants cost?

The cost of implants really depends. Different doctors, different patients, different medical history, different implants, different methods of surgery, different clinics, different parts of the country/world. All of these things factor into the costs.

However, if you are just looking to estimate your goal before you receive your consultation, you may want to check out the following link:

View Average Price By City

These reviews may help you estimate the price of implants in your city, but it is important to get a few different consultations from a few different doctors, in order to find the right doctor with the most accurate price quote for you.

From a recent post on thatsfit.com, fitness writer Liz Neporent addresses the topic of weightlifting after breast implant surgery. One reader asked if she could finally stop exercising her chest muscles with weights and push-ups now that she has implants.

For the purpose of enhancing the pectoral muscles, chest exercises seem less necessary after implant surgery, but are not unnecessary. Neporent explains that continuing chest exercises will actually keep the breast implants looking youthful and lifted for longer.

Implants are either placed on top or underneath the pectorals, and the type of implant procedure depends on several variables such as age, activity level, leanness, and the size of the implant. Regardless of the type of implants, the pectorals are the muscles that hold them in place, and it is important to maintain these muscles so they aren’t saggy and weak.

The only exception to this is if you are into hardcore body building, which could cause an array of problems if the lifting goes overboard. Lifting too much iron could increase the odds of implant displacement or an implant blow out, which is why good lifting techniques are even more important than ever after surgery.

Whether natural or man-made, all breasts perk up when the underlying supporting muscles are in shape. Most doctors will recommend waiting at least eight weeks after a breast implant procedure to exercise, but women who have had the procedure should always check in with their doctor first before engaging in any physical activity.

[ From: www.thatsfit.com ]

Having trouble finding the right bra fit? Below is a short clip from sizing expert Alison Rubke outlining the correct way to fit yourself for a bra:

Wondering what your bra size is in a different country? Check out this international converter that corresponds to the sizing scale used in your country, and the equivalent sizes in all other international standards:  Bra Size Converter

If you have an iPhone, here is a simple app you can download that also can help to convert your bra size into international sizes:  “a Bra Size Conversion”

Good luck, and happy sizing!

We’ve shared this information before but we thought it would be a good idea to revisit topic of performing a breast exam on yourself. Catching any abnormalities as early as possible can make all the difference.

UPDATE: You should be aware that it’s possible to have multiple wish lists on Amazon.com. You can only have one of your wish lists associated with MFI however. We recommend that you create a specific wish list just for MFI, and to keep the items relevant.

We’ve had some requests in the past from benefactors that said they wished there was a way they could send gifts to their friends. This is especially important to them when their friends were about to go in for surgery, and they wanted to send them a care package or a get-well-bouquet of flowers. Anything that can help make their surgery recovery a little more comfortable goes a long way to showing your friends that you care about them.

Originally we were going to make this feature only available to the ladies in the Hall of Fame. However, there’s another group that we didn’t want to leave out…

Sometimes girls will tell us that all the have a crappy cell phone camera and they feel at a disadvantage because their photos aren’t very good quality. They don’t have the disposable income to buy a new camera so they tend to give up on their dreams because of it. MyFreeImplants was created to help people realize their dreams despite their economic situation! So wishlists is just an extension of that concept.

Wishlists are a simple way to address both of these scenarios by linking your Amazon.com wishlist to your MyFreeImplants profile. You can literally add anything on Amazon to your wishlist and if your friend wants to treat to something nice and send you a gift, he/she can easily do so by browsing through your wishlist and then purchasing the item on Amazon. You can even include gift wrapping if you’d like. Amazon will then send the item to her on your behalf without the need to exchange addresses or billing info*.

I went ahead and recorded a couple of screencast videos to demonstrate how to use the new Wishlists feature.

In this first video I go over the process from a ladies point of view:

And in this second video I show the process from a gentlemans point of view:

*
Third-party item shipping
At Amazon.com, third-party sellers (i.e., sellers other than Amazon) offer many items. If you instruct Amazon to share your Wish List shipping address with these third-party sellers, then customers can purchase items for you off your Wish Lists that are sold by these sellers and have them automatically sent to your confidential Wish List shipping address.

If you choose to enable this feature, you acknowledge that Amazon will provide the seller of your item with your Wish List shipping address, and the seller may disclose this address to the buyer (for example, when sending the buyer a purchase confirmation). Further, because an item may often be purchased from more than one seller, the sellers offering the item at the time of purchase may be different than the sellers offering the item when you placed the item on your Wish List.

If you decide not to enable this feature, customers will not be able to purchase these items for you and you will be limited only to items that Amazon.com sells.

More from our Help section:

Can I set up a wishlist even if I live outside of the US?

Yes. But you will need to use the Amazon.com website. Not Amazon.co.uk. Not Amazon.ca. Not Amazon.de. ONLY Amazon.com.
When you set up your wishlist on Amazon.com you can enter an international addresses as the shipping address for your items.

Amazon has a “Universal Wishlist” feature, how come those items don’t show up?

Universal Wishlist items are not supported and therefore are now allowed on your MFI wishlist. Sorry but you’ll have to stick with things that are sold through the Amazon.com website.

I am trying to add my wishlist, but it doesn’t seem to be working.

First of all, make sure that you create a wishlist on that Amazon.com website. Then when you add your wishlist to your MFI profile you will need to enter the email address that you use for your Amazon account in order to find your wishlist. If you recently created the wishlist, please be patient. It can take several hours before Amazon publishes the wishlist to us.

For the last installment here, I will be going over publishing your final project in Windows Movie Maker. As a quick review, in the first article we went over setting up your project by importing video, audio and picture files. In the second article, we went over basic editing of your project including simple fades and transitions, and overlaying a second audio track.

At this point, all of our editing should be completed. if you’re not sure about how your project will look or feel, this is the time to do a final review. Using your preview pane in the upper right side watch the video all the way through to see how the finished project will look. The idea is to look at the project from the end viewers perspective. Does it take a long time to fade in to the video? If multiple video clips were put together to make the project, do the clips flow well with each other? If the volume on your computer is set to medium, does the audio in the video crackle or boom out too loud? If you added secondary audio, does it match up well with what’s going on in the video? All of these things can put a real damper on the final product if they feel out of sync. as a best practice, I usually preview the video in full screen mode to see how it looks before I publish it. Especially if I will be publishing it in a full screen format.

Once you are satisfied with the final project, it’s time to publish! At the top of the screen, you will see the “Publish Movie” button. when you click on this, you will see the various options for output of your video – your computer, DVD, recordable CD, email and digital video camera. For our purposes, we will be publishing to the computer, so that the video can be uploaded and shared.

The next screen gives us the options of what to name the video and where to save it on the computer. As with any file, you want to give it a unique name that has some reference to what the video is. The drop down menu option will let you navigate to a recently used folder, or you can use the browse button to navigate to any folder on your computer and if desired create a new folder to save the file in. for those of you who are using Windows Vista – I recommend that you save the file in a new folder in your public documents. this will keep you from having issues with uploading the file to the internet for sharing, as Vista’s built in security features may ask you repeatedly for administrator permission to upload this from your regular documents folder. As a best practice, I will generally create a master folder (such as videos for upload) and then create a new sub-folder for each video project I am saving.

The next screen let’s you set the quality settings of the output video. by default, it will choose best quality for your computer. The second option is to select a specific compression for the file. This is more for advanced users, and it is very possible to really degrade the final video if you are not careful with this option. The last choice let’s you decide on a specific format that it will be saved in for playback. Since the file is meant to be shared, this option will be best. these presets will automatically compress your video and set the output quality. Lower quality will mean a smaller file size and quicker download, but it will also be just that – a lower quality playback. I recommend that you use the DVD quality option. This will create a file that is manageable to download even by people using a wireless air card or dial up modem, and still produce a good quality video.

Once you have selected your output option, click on the publish button. Depending on how long your video is and the speed of your computer, it will take anywhere from five minutes to an hour. Most videos will complete the publishing process in twenty to thirty minutes. Once publishing is complete, remember to view the final product. I can’t tell you how many times I thought I had a video project exactly the way I wanted it, only to send it out and have the end user contact me to say that the playback was horrible or jumpy.

As always, I am happy to answer any questions that you may have. I do hope that this article has helped make your project a little more bearable. I will be putting out some new articles on photo editing soon, and would also be happy to take suggestions for dealing with other software for video editing. Have a great day!!!

MediaFire is the preferred (and only supported) tool for uploading content for sharing on MFI. Below is an official step-by-step guide on how to use their file sharing service so that the sharing links are compatible with MFI. Each screen below is clickable to see a larger version with the important areas/buttons to pay attention to.

At first you may be inclined to create an account with MediaFire. We strongly suggest against doing so. It’s not necessary, and by skipping the sign up process you maintain a certain level of security and privacy. MediaFire works just as well without signing up for an account, so there’s no need to spend extra time filling out the registration form. Skip it! And instead, start of by clicking the big green button in the middle that says “Upload Files To MediaFire”

In the next step, they may ask you again to sign up. Once again, skip it and let’s just jump right in and start uploading a file! Click the gray “I want to upload without an account” button.

Up will pop the “Select File” window on your computer. This will let you browse your local hard drive for a file to upload. Once you have found it, select that one file and then click the “Open” button. [Note: your 'Select File' window will look different if you are using an Apple computer]

The next screen will have a few other options, but ignore them and just click the green “Start Upload” button.

Next it will ask you to choose a folder. Just select the “My Files (main folder)” button on the right side.

Now go grab a glass of wine, and wait for the file to upload. Once it’s completed the progress bar will light up at “100%”

Below the file upload progress bar, is a link to the “My Files (main folder)” that you just uploaded your file to. Click the “Copy Link” button and the website address will be copied to your clipboard.

Paste the website address into your browsers address bar to go to the page. You will need to do this in order to get the very important file sharing web address.

You DO NOT want to share the entire folders web address. That won’t work… so keep reading…

Once you open the website address from the above step in your web browser it will display your newly uploaded file name. Next to the file name is a button to “Share” that file. Click that “Share” button…

… and it will open up a “File Info” panel with various options to share your file. You will want to pay attention to the “Sharing URL” option. Click the “Copy Link” button for the “Sharing URL” and that URL will be copied to your clipboard.

Now you just hop back over to MFI and paste that URL in the “MediaFire Video URL” field. Add your own title in the next field and then click the “Send The File” button.

That’s all there is too it. Simple & anonymous file sharing that’s 100% compatible with MFI.

If you are having problems uploading to MediaFire because your video is too large, be sure to read the tutorials on compressing your video file so it’s not so large. Or some other tutorials on video editing.

In my last posting, I went over the basics of creating a new video project using Windows Movie Maker on your PC. In this post, I will touch on some of the basics for editing your clip including fades, transitions, titles and credits, and replacing or supplementing your existing audio with music.

Previously, we had created a new project by importing a video clip as well as a couple of music files from a folder on our PC. With that project open, we can now start putting the elements together. To begin with, make sure the video clip has been dragged to the storyboard at the bottom of the screen. If you are viewing the added items in the stroyboard view, you will see that Windows Movie Maker places any additional video clips in the next open large box. If you add a music file however, it does not “appear” in this view. Don’t worry – the music clip did get added. at this point, we are going to change to the “timeline” view.

Looking at the project in the “timeline” view, we can see the individual elements, and an actual time track showing how long each element is. Each element also has it’s own track inside this view, making it easier to work on them one at a time. Next to the video track, you will see a plus sign to expand this view. Clicking on this will show you the audio currently embedded with the video clip. All of the items on the storyboard can me quickly edited by right-clicking the individual track and selecting the option you want. Let’s start with the embedded audio (if you have any) first.

Quick note – from this point on, I will refer to some things as “best practices”. These aren’t requirements, just useful things that I have picked up on through my own work and through input from others in working on my own projects at home and at work.

If you right-click on the audio track, you will see a couple of options – mute, fade in, fade out and volume. the mute option will do just that – mute the entire audio track embedded with the clip. Fade in and fade out will automatically adjust the volume of the audio track at the the beginning and end with a two second fade. Selecting volume will allow you to change the ENTIRE volume level of the track. this is something that you will have to experiment with based on the clip you are working with. as a best practice – you never want audio to start or stop abruptly. you also never want audio to be “booming” in a track. Keep in mind that most people leave their speakers on a low to medium level, so try to keep your audio or music for the final project to a 3/4 or 2/3 setting.

As you make changes to your project, remember to preview the changes. the preview pane on the right hand side of the screen works just like Windows Media Player. You can play, pause or use the drag bar to move through the clip to a specific portion. One item that will help you immensely is the “split” button. This let’s you split the clip in to smaller pieces to work with. if you are running a slower PC, this can be really handy since it takes less time for the changes you make to get processed and to review. Note however that if you split a clip with embedded audio, it will split that audio as well. this does not effect the final clip though, and play back will still run seamlessly.

What about adding background music to a video clip, or even replacing the embedded audio with music completely? This is actually a lot easier than it sounds. Any music files that you want to use – either stored on your PC or from a CD – can be imported in to the project and dragged to the audio / music track in the timeline. The same basic controls apply (mute, fades, volume) as they did with the embedded audio. But you can also “drag” the files along the time line to a specific part of the movie. As an example – we have all seen on videos and TV shows where they have background sound or music set in to match the scene for dramatic effect. Say you wanted to go from you talking in the clip to dancing, but the mic on your camera isn’t picking up the music from your CD player that you are dancing to? You can mute the embedded audio from the point where you quit talking, import the music to the project from the CD you were dancing to, and drag the music to the point in the video to where you start dancing. This takes a little practice to get just right, but the effect is worth the time.

The last thing we are going to talk about is adding fades and titles / credits to your video. Just as you did with the audio tracks, right-clicking on the video track will give you quick options. In this case it is effects, fade in and fade out. Fades are a wonderful thing! just as you don’t want audio to abruptly start and stop, you also don’t want video to do this. By right-clicking and selecting fade in and fade out close to the beginning and end of the clip, the software will add a two second fade automatically for you. You can edit the length of the fades if you wish, but as a best practice you generally don’t want to have a fade exceed four seconds. As for effects, well there are a lot of great ones that are included with Windows Movie Maker. Time and space don’t allow for me touch on all of them. But a word of caution – effects can do wonderful things for your projects, but using too many effects is just like having too many cooks…it ruins the meal.

The last thing we will touch on today is titles and credits. This is purely a personal choice to add or not. Titles are great for identifying your finished video to the person watching when either the file name that you save the final video to is something obscure, or the person who downloaded the file has changed the saved name to something else. Windows Movie Maker give you the option to change the text, text style, text size, background color, font color and scrolling options. The same applies for credits. but remember – simpler is generally better.

As with my previous post, I have embedded a YouTube video going over all of this information (with the exception of titles and credits).

I am also including a link this time to project I did a couple years ago for some friends here. This was done completely using Windows Movie Maker, just to show some of the interesting things you can do.

Sample Video

As always, I hope this has made your project less of a chore, and feel free to contact me with any questions. until next time…

Since my post about working with Windows Movie Maker, several of you ladies have asked me if I know anything about Mediafire and can give them any tips on using it. Since this kind of goes along with my postings on creating video clips and such, I decided to offer what advice I could since I use the site myself.

Q: If I upload several files, the link I send out let’s the person see ALL the files. Can I fix this?

A: If you are using a free account, then your options are a little more limited. Free accounts cannot use a “direct link” to the file they are trying to share. Rather they can only link to the general folder they are in. the only fix I have found to this is to make a Seperate folder for each item, and then make the folder “private”.

Q: Some of the people I have sent links to have told me they had problems getting the file to download. Did I send them the wrong link or type it wrong?

A: It is possible that you typed the link wrong, but odds are good that it is how their internet browser is processing the link that is the problem, especially if you are using a free account. If people tell you they are having a problem getting the file to download, let them know to click the link, copy it from the address bar and then open a new window to paste the address in to. This usually resolves the problem. If it still isn’t working, re-check the link you sent to make sure you didn’t type it wrong.

Q: Is there any real difference in a pro account and a free account? Is it worth the cost?

A: This is really a subjective question. If you are going to be doing a lot of photo set uploads or video uploads, getting a pro account can be worth it. The pro account allows for larger uploads, direct linking to the files instead of just the folders, and gives you reports about how many downloads you are getting from each file. You also don’t have to deal with pop-ups from the site, and you get better file security. But please, don’t take this as an endorsement for either type of account.

Q: Do I have to “zip” the files before I upload them?

A: No, you do not HAVE to compress the files. Again, this is a subjective thing. Generally, I only compress a file or folder if it is over 12MB in size. compressing the file or folder only results in a quicker download for the person getting the file and doesn’t effect the quality. Just remember, a lot of people now use wireless cards for internet access, which is a slower connection, so bigger files take a long time and can be frustrating.

As always, I hope this information helps. and feel free to message me with more specific questions or if you need help. until next time…