Archive for the ‘web & technology’ Category
How we keep the kids offline after bedtime
It’s a common problem, yeah? How to help our kids resist the temptation of the Internet when it’s supposed to be bedtime.
I remember when my kids were little and we parents would ask each other: Would you ever let your kids have a TV or computer in their room? My answer was always an emphatic NO. But here we are in this crazy age, barely a decade later, and my kids are gadgeted to the hilt with wifi-enabled devices: Nintendo DSi, iPod Touch, netbook. For the purposes of entertainment, who needs an actual TV or wired computer anymore??
For awhile I had a policy of collecting all the devices at night and redistributing in the morning. But that was back in the day when the only gadget they owned was a Game Boy, and those were not wifi-enabled.
So this was Scott’s brilliant idea: Our household wifi access is controlled by MAC address (every wifi enabled device has one)…
1. Wifi is open to any device from 5 am – 6 pm
Hey, if the kids want to get up at 5 am, I do not have a problem with that!
2. Children’s devices lose wifi access at 9 pm.
Yes, they hate that. (And when their friends come to sleepovers here they are appalled. Ha!) But they have gotten used to it. I kind of wish we’d decided on an earlier time in the first place, but for now this suffices.
3. Scott/Betsy devices never go down.
My husband would love to take our net access down as early as 6 pm. But he realizes that would be cruel and unusual punishment. Maybe someday I will be strong enough! But for now I really look forward to a little Words With Friends each night before I turn out the light. 
Motivation
Even if the kids turn up with a wifi-enabled device that they’ve borrowed or have been gifted with, they won’t have wifi on it after 6 pm unless they give Scott the MAC address.
Those extra three hours prove very motivational in their desire to make full disclosure about devices. From the parental point-of-view it’s a beautiful system. And so far none of my kids are quite geeky enough to cross cyberswords with Scott and subvert this system.
@SheKnows: 3 Reasons to check out Twitter
Twitter: 3 reasons to check it out!.
Just put a new article about Twitter up on SheKnows…
Check it out!
What is Twitter?
Twitter describes itself as a microblogging service where you simply answer the question, “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less. But of course, Twitter is so much more. Major news outlets and trendy magazine sites (follow @sheknows and @pregnancybaby!) feed their headlines via Twitter accounts….
QotD: On The iPhone…
Over a million iPhones have been sold. Have you: bought one, considered it, or decided it's not for you?
Bought it this weekend! Scotty has one, too. 
All photos in previous two posts taken with my iPhone. Not only that, but it is SUPER easy to email the photos right from the phone. I was whipping them off to grandmas and friends and family (and vox) as soon as I took them. Fun! So much easier than dealing with uploads off my digicam. Of course the photo quality – while not bad for a phone camera when there's adequate light – has nothing on my digital cameras, but it's super convenient and I always have my phone, so I'm likely to use it for that purpose quite often. Resolution of photos is 480×640 (4×6 prints). Not bad for everyday snaps.
I wish it interfaced better with the google suite, but now that google is IMAPing, I can access my email off the iphone as seamlessly as any other web machine!
I also love how it is also an 8G iPod! And how I can download music directly from iTunes onto the iPhone AND it synchs the music with my desktop automatically.
Surprising, there are no games on it. And no GPS like blackberries have (although it does have google maps).
I'm very satisfied with it for my needs (which is more pleasure vs. business). If I had to type a lot of email on a smartphone, I would have gone for a blackberry, I think.
The only thing (for me) that would make iPhone perfect is if it could synch with my google calendar like it does gmail. I CAN easily access my calendar from Safari on the iPhone, but certainly not as ideal as having the phone's main menu calendar button link directly to my google calendar. (It does link directly and synch with the outlook calendar, but I abandoned that for google a couple years ago.)
Also, I was able to import my google contacts into the phone. It was a bit of a hassle – had to export to CSV and then import to outlook and then synch, but it was doable and it is lovely to have everything so nicely consolidated now. Before I had phone numbers on my phone contacts and email addresses on my gmail contacts. I took a little time on Sunday to get all the phone numbers entered on my gmail contacts before I did the export.
First try at moblogging
Photos taken and sent by (new!!!) iPhone. What fun.
Jake: A work in progress
This is a cool use of the Vox Collections tool: An ongoing way to show – in side-by-side pictures – how Jake is changing during his beautiful babyhood!
I'll try to update this every week or two – it's a neat way to digitally scrapbook. Plus it's easy (the photos were already there), plus it can be done retroactively.
Maybe sometime when I'm looking for something to do (ha!), I'll scan photos of the girls and put together a similar collection for each of them. If I even did just one photo for each year of their lives, it would be fun, but not TOO daunting of a project.
Anyway, I thought fellow mamas (or daddies) might enjoy putting together their own little baby retrospectives. Comment me with the link if you do – it's so fun to see how babies grow.
Watch it unfold: Jake Growing Up
Vox Hunt: Scott is a True Fan
Show us what makes you[r spouse] a die-hard fan.
Yep, some daddies are all about their favorite team. Jake's daddy is no exception – he's all about Team Open Source, and he made this shirt for his boy. Rah rah!
Merry Christmas to me!
Lookie what I got for Christmas!
My old digital camera (top of the line in 2000) was wonderful, but too big for a pocket or a purse, so it turns out that I ALWAYS forget it and NEVER have it when I need/want it. So Scott stuffed my Christmas stocking with the “purse camera” I’ve been wanting for ages.
Some purse camera! Technology has changed so much, that this itty, bitty beauty far outshines my old camera in quality. Plus! It’s shockproof to 5 feet – critical for a klutz like me (Scott has watched me fumble my cell phone oh-so-many times. He’s a savvy boy.) And it’s waterproof, too.
Anyway, this gift inspired me to start this blog. I’m digging the easy organization tools and privacy features on Vox, so thought I’d give this a go.
I’ll upload some pictures soon!
Mom to 4 kids and 2 stepkids, I work at home in the heart of the chaos. Founder and executive editor of SheKnows.com and various other sites. Homeschooling. Knitter. Family chef. Gadget geek. Wordphreak. LAZY BLOGGER. 