The Famundo Blog

ParentHacks

Posted by Richard Kuhlenschmidt Fri, 16 Jun 2006 02:38:00 GMT

ParentHacks is another parenting advice blog with an interesting twist. They will often focus on gadgets and other helpful “stuff” for parents that make life just a little bit easier, such as the Case Logic litter bag for the car or the Swissmar Borner V-Slicer Plus , for making those little julienne carrots the kid’s love to eat.

Editors Asha and Rael Dornfest both come from a tech background. Rael is CTO for O’Reilly Media and Asha has written several books about web publishing, including the Wiley publication, Microsoft FrontPage for Dummies.

This blog definitely is worth keeping your eye on.

Posted in Parenting, Technology, Family Life | 2 comments | no trackbacks

Collaborative Photo Scrapbooks

Posted by Richard Kuhlenschmidt Fri, 16 Jun 2006 02:10:00 GMT

Our son just graduated from a school that goes from kindergarten through 8th grade. A lot of the kids in his class have been together since kindergarten. The parents decided it would be really nice to create a memory book for the graduates with photos and stories compiled over the past 9 years.

What sounded like a very nice gesture turned into a major project, with parents digging through boxes of photos and other mementos, bringing them in to get scanned, and endless meetings and design sessions. Ultimately we came up with a very nice product.

But we had only known about this web site it would have been such a painless project. SharedBook is an online collaborative website where family and friends can work together and add photos and text and create their own published book.

They have several prepared templates for books on AYSO, Little League, New Baby, with several more planned. An 8.5” x 11” book with 30 pages is only $27.

This is one of the more interesting and useful Family 2.0 sites I have found. Please check them out.

Posted in Technology, Family Life | 2 comments | no trackbacks

Driving Parents to Drink?

Posted by Richard Kuhlenschmidt Thu, 15 Jun 2006 22:27:00 GMT

I had to laugh when I read the titles for these two new books, “Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay – and Other Things I Had To Learn as a New Mom” and “Daddy Needs a Drink: An Irreverent Look at Parenting From a Dad Who Truly Loves His Kids – Even When They’re Driving Me Nuts,” certainly give the impression that parenting requires a lot more than a healthy dose of stamina.

“Sippy Cups” is by Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, a Los Angeles writer and comedian, is described as “empathetic straight dirt on parenting, tackling everything from Mommy & Me classes, written in busy Mom-friendly short essays.

“Daddy Needs a Drink” author Robert Wilder (no relation to Wilder-Taylor), a Santa Fe, New Mexico high-school teacher, shares warmly funny stories on everything from sleep deprivation to why school-sponsored charities can turn otherwise sane adults into blithering and begging idiots.

These sound like couple of good summer reads to have along with your tall Mai Tai!

Posted in Family Life, Parenting | no comments | no trackbacks

Parenting Web Magazine inspired by Harry Potter

Posted by Richard Kuhlenschmidt Thu, 15 Jun 2006 21:57:00 GMT

A new UK-based interactive parenting magazine has just been launched. iChild is aimed at working mums who are short on time and need bite-sized information that they can access at work, at home or on their laptops.

The web site was inspired by the Daily Prophet, where photos came to life when viewed by the Wizards in the Harry Potter books.

Aimed at parents of newborns to pre-schoolers, a subscription costs £29.99 per year or £2.99 for a one month trial.

Posted in Family Life, Parenting | no comments | no trackbacks

GPS for kids?

Posted by Richard Kuhlenschmidt Wed, 14 Jun 2006 19:31:00 GMT

This is way cool. Verizon has launched a new service called Chaperone that allows parents to keep track of their kid’s whereabouts through the cell phone.

Basically the way Chaperone works is that for $10 a month, Chaperone lets a curious parent check on their child’s location, and for $20, Verizon can send alerts when the child crosses pre-set boundaries.

Unfortunately, it only works with the LG Migo at this time.

Engadget has the article for more information.

Posted in Technology, Parenting, Setting Limits | no comments | no trackbacks

More advice on social networking safety

Posted by Richard Kuhlenschmidt Wed, 14 Jun 2006 19:20:00 GMT

Here is some more helpful advice on kids and their use of social networking sites, such as MySpace, Xanga, et al, written by Grant Garrett, a Double Agent with Geek Squad!

Check it out

Posted in Parenting, Internet Safety, Setting Limits, Technology | no comments | no trackbacks

Father's Day must be right around the corner

Posted by Richard Kuhlenschmidt Wed, 14 Jun 2006 19:04:00 GMT

You can tell it is getting close to Father’s Day when more and more articles about fathering start appearing in the press.

A article in the Indianapolis Star reports on a recent government study on fathering and how better parenting skills are linked to education.

The article mentions several interesting statistics such as the fact that “32 percent of more educated men read to their kids daily, compared with about 20 percent of less educated men. About 79 percent of the more educated fathers regularly eat meals with their children, as opposed to 70 percent of those with less education.”

And this amazing statistic, “nearly half of those without a high school education have fathered a child outside of marriage compared with about 6 percent of college graduates.”

Read the entire article

Posted in Parenting, Family Life | no comments | no trackbacks

When is too young for a cell phone?

Posted by Richard Kuhlenschmidt Wed, 14 Jun 2006 18:48:00 GMT

An interesting article in the Myrtle Beach Sun News about the increasing usage of cell phones by kids.

I found quite surprising that “More than one-third of 11- to 14-year-olds have their own cell phones, representing the fastest-growing segment of the population getting cell phones, according to Consumer Reports.”

We’ve had a “family” cell phone in our houselold for a number of years, in the event one of our kids is on a playdate or spending the night at a friend’s house.

We finally succumbed to pressure and got our 14 year old his own phone this year. I have to admint it does come in handy, since there is no excuse now to not call home.

Read the entire article

Posted in Family Life, Parenting, Technology, Setting Limits | no comments | no trackbacks

New Famundo Flash demo

Posted by Richard Kuhlenschmidt Tue, 13 Jun 2006 13:35:00 GMT

We just put up a flash demo that gives you an idea of how easy it is to use Famundo.

Check it out!

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LIVE! Famundo for Organizations demo sites

Posted by Richard Kuhlenschmidt Thu, 08 Jun 2006 20:24:00 GMT

We are very pleased to announce that we have just posted two new demo sites for Famundo for Organizations. This will give you an opportunity to get the look and feel of our application, and demonstrate how Famundo can be set up for different types of organizations.

Famudo for Organizations consists of three basic components. The Home Page, with the main calendar view, the Document center for posting documents that your members need access to, and the Message center, where you can post non-event related notices and reminders for your members. .

You can view our demo which has been set up for a School here.

You can view our demo which has been set up for a Church here.

Please note that what you are seeing in these demos is the view that the public would see when they accessed your site. We’ll have an administrative version of our demo available within the next few days.

Sign up here to be notified when Famundo for Organizations is available.

Note: There are currently some issues with Safari which we are working out. In the meantime, if you are a Mac user, please view our demo sites using either Firefox or Netscape as your browser.

Posted in Famundo, Technology | no comments | no trackbacks