The Famundo Blog: Category Family Life

True Stories - Making Life a Little Less Complicated

richard.kuhlenschmidt@famundo.com (Richard Kuhlenschmidt) — Thu, 08 May 2008 20:34:00 -0400

True Stories - The Life of a Busy Family

richard.kuhlenschmidt@famundo.com (Richard Kuhlenschmidt) — Wed, 07 May 2008 12:52:00 -0400

Here is another true story about how Famundo has helped a family manage their busy lives.

My family has used a calendar program, cell phones calendars, and paper calendars for years to try to keep up with each other’s activities. Up until we found Famundo, the paper calendar with a different column for each family member worked best for us. The drawback was that when we were away from the house, we were unable to check availability of different family members as the calendar was at home in the kitchen. I have a small family, there are only 3 of us, but we are all always running in different directions since our daughter is now a teenager. Whether it be band, cheerleading, late work schedules, parent conference night, basketball, or girls night out, when something came up when we were away, we were unsure of each other’s availability because we couldn’t check that calendar that was at home in the kitchen.

Famundo allows us to keep all of our calendars in one place – easily accessible from any computer – or even from a cell phone. We can see if there is somewhere we’re supposed to be, check ahead for upcoming events, and add new items to the calendar from afar.

We can also give our password to extended family members so they can see our calendar to know if we’re busy before making any plans that involve us. Everyone knows how busy we are and how little time we spend at home. This is a valuable tool for everyone!

It has definitely made our life easier and we will continue to use it in the future.

Thank you, Famundo!

Kim Davis

Thank YOU Kim!

We are looking for more user stories on how Famundo has helped your family control the chaos. Please send us a note to info@famundo.com

True Stories - Keeping our distributed family in touch

richard.kuhlenschmidt@famundo.com (Richard Kuhlenschmidt) — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 15:33:00 -0400

We are a very close family of seven adult children and our dad and are spread out all over the globe. We are using Famundo to keep our family in touch with each other and have found a lot of creative ways to use it.

Naturally we use the calendar to let everyone know if and when we are traveling. The Address Book is great for keeping the address and phone numbers of our mutual friends and family. We use the lists for projects that we are working on together and plan to use it for gift exchange help this Christmas. The photos albums are a real treat, each one of us uploads recent photos of our respective families. Thanks for making it easily for our family to stay closer!

True Stories - Managing our carpool

richard.kuhlenschmidt@famundo.com (Richard Kuhlenschmidt) — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 14:14:00 -0400

We have been using Famundo to manage our carpool. There are four families involved and in the past we would get daily calls with questions about who is picking up in the morning or who is picking up after school.

We solved this problem by adding a carpool calendar to our Famundo site, with View access set to Public. Since the View access on the other items on our calendars is set to Family, only the carpool schedule is viewable by the public.

Now we set the carpool schedule over the weekend and enter the events for the upcoming week. If the schedule is the same, it is very easy to use Famundo’s Copy feature to copy events from one week to another.

Everyone else in the carpool has our public URL so they can pull up the calendar anytime they wish. We even have the phone numbers available in the events so if you need to call a driver, it is right there at your fingertips.

Here is a screen shot of our carpool calendar.

True Stories - How the Vault Saved Us a Lot of Pain

guy.naor@gmail.com (guy) — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 15:14:00 -0400

Here is an example of one of those True Stories I mentioned in the previous post. This is from one of our users on how Famundo came to the rescue while on an overseas vacation.

We are just back from a family vacation, and our older daughter (14 years old) was to stay a bit longer and come back with friends. As she was to come back alone, we prepared a notary signed document allowing our friends to have her fly with them.

Before leaving for vacation, we scanned all of our documents in to our Famundo vault using the library assistant really easy to use scan to web feature.

The night before we headed home, we made sure our daughter has all the documents she need to be fly back with our friends. Imagine the pressure when we discovered that we can’t find the notary signed document allowing our friends to take her with them.

All was not lost! A quick login into Famundo, opening the vault, and in less than a minute we had a copy printed and ready for her.

I don’t want to even think about the amount of time we had to spend on a foreign country trying to recreate that document. Or the heart break for my daughter if she had to come back with us instead of staying a bit longer with our friends.

Thanks Famundo!

Thank you! Please send us your True Stories. We love hearing about them.

Getting your family hooked on Famundo

richard.kuhlenschmidt@famundo.com (Richard Kuhlenschmidt) — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 17:00:00 -0400

I have to admit, it even took some time for me to get my family hooked on Famundo. But now they’re hooked. In fact, we’ve even turned Famundo into a verb, “Why don’t you Famundo that” or “Would you Famundo this for me?”.

Here is how I got them hooked. We have a main computer in the family room which is always on. Everyone in the family uses it for various activities.

I made my Famundo calendar page the homepage for my browser, FireFox, and I leave the browser open all the time.

Now, everyone can easily glance at the calendar if they need and since Famundo is already open, it’s a snap to add something to the grocery list or look up someone’s phone number.

To make your Famundo calendar your browser’s homepage, you can follow the instructions below.

1. Log into Famundo. (I logged in as myself, since I don’t have anything private and this gives full access to everyone)

2. Do the following, depending on what browser you are using:

FireFox

Click on Tools > Options on the main menu.
Click on the Main icon
Click on Use Current Pages button
Click on the OK button.

Internet Exlporer

Click on Tools > Internet Options on the main menu.
Click on the General tab
Click on Use Current button
Click on the OK button.

Safari

Click on Edit > Preferences on the main menu.
Click on the General icon
Click on Set to Current Page button
Close the Preferences window. .

A day in the life of a professional organizer

richard.kuhlenschmidt@famundo.com (Richard Kuhlenschmidt) — Thu, 24 May 2007 00:06:00 -0400

Famundo is all about personal and family organization, so it goes without saying that I have been following the work of Valentina Sgro for some time now.

Valentina is a member of the Golden Circle of the National Association of Professional Organizers and a Certified Chronic Disorganization Specialist. She is the owner of SGRO Consulting, Solutions for Getting Really Organized.

Her first book, Organize Your Family’s Schedule…In No Time, was an iParenting Media Award winner.

Her latest book, Patience and the Porsche, is a novel about the life of a professional organizer.

Patience “Pat” Oaktree is the self-proclaimed most successful professional organizer in the State. Never mind that she’s borderline chronically disorganized herself and can’t seem to start, much less complete, some of her own projects. She uses her silent mantra of “Patience, Patience” to remind herself not to get frustrated.

Now I know what you must be thinking. A professional organizer? What could possibly be interesting about a professional organizer? But think about it. When someone hires an organizer, they are basically opening their life to a complete stranger.

Hmmm…this could be interesting.

Check it out.

The Dangerous Book for Boys (and Girls?)

richard.kuhlenschmidt@famundo.com (Richard Kuhlenschmidt) — Tue, 08 May 2007 09:40:00 -0400

This book is very cool. It is unforunate though that the title seems so exclusionary, since my daughter thoroughly loves it, as I’m sure a lot of girls will.

The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden, reaches back to an era before Xbox and Gameboys, when kids would spend their summers building forts, shooting tin cans with slingshots and skimming stones on a clear lake.

This book was a bestseller in the UK last year and this release has been revised for an American audience.

Included in the American edition are topics such as

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
Stickball
Slingshots
Fossils
Building a Treehouse
Making a Bow and Arrow
Spies-Codes and Ciphers
Making a Go-Cart
Navajo Code Talkers’ Dictionary
Cloud Formations
Skimming Stones
Making a Periscope

It is a lot of fun for everyone in the family, even girls!

Save the planet, save your energy costs!

richard.kuhlenschmidt@famundo.com (Richard Kuhlenschmidt) — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 11:56:00 -0400

Now you can save money as well as saving the planet by replacing your burned out incandescent bulbs with energy-efficient compact fluorescent (CFL) light bulbs.

Imagine if people all over the world mobilized to replace one billion standard incandescent light bulbs with energy-efficient compact fluorescent (CFL) light bulbs. What would that mean? It would mean that those people would save money each month on their electricity bill. It would mean they would save enough energy to light tens of millions of homes for a year. It would mean the prevention of greenhouse gases equivalent to the annual emissions of millions of cars.

If you want to join the Famundo group and add your changed bulbs to the 5 bulbs I have already replaced, click here.

Our stats are displayed on the Famundo OBB sidebar graph.

Helping kids while you're drinking your cup of joe.

richard.kuhlenschmidt@famundo.com (Richard Kuhlenschmidt) — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 21:12:00 -0400

This is a really nice idea.

Mission Grounds Gourmet Coffee sells gourmet coffee grown on “Fair Trade” farms and 100% of their profit goes to support children living in orphanages in Russia, Costa Rica, Venezuela and South Africa. .

We offer gourmet coffee in simple bags that will make a difference. You have the opportunity to purchase an exceptional bag of coffee at a great price and help a child at the same time. We currently have no overhead to speak of and 100% of our profits go to support children missions. Since we are a Non-Profit Corporation all of our proceeds will go to other non-profit mission organizations.

Check them out.