Web/Tech

It's not quite an ankle bracelet.

in

As a new dad I understand how overwhelming the desire for making sure your kid is safe can be, but this still creeps me out. A Japanese company has developed a school uniform blazer embedded with GPS tracking to keep a virtual eye on your kid's whereabouts. Have things gotten so bad that knowing that your child is in school isn't enough? At best I suppose it would just be for over-protective parents, but at worse it would be used as a replacement for good parenting. And isn't anyone else concerned that putting a big GPS beacon on your kid could attract the bad people it intends to protect against?

GPS-mounted blazers enable parents to locate kids. [Japan Today via Gizmodo]

Email issues.

in

No dad stuff today. I've spent the whole morning fighting MS Outlook. For some reason my email client (Outlook) keeps downloading the same email - all the email I've already received - from my POP server. I think it's a problem with the POP server (I use Yahoo), and I've sent in a message to their customer service, but it's still broken. I swear to god I'm going to switch to a Mac as soon as I can (even though it might not be a Microsoft problem, it took me most of the morning wading through the menus, preferences, help pages and all the other crap on Outlook to figure that out).

Sorry for the rant. If anyone has any suggestions or has dealt with this before I'd be happy to hear from you.

Hacking maps.

in

This doesn't really have anything to do with dads or parenting or kids or whatever, but my new favorite thing on the Internet is Google Maps. Typically of Google, it's simple, easy to use, and incredibly powerful. You can find just about any location instantly, get directions, and even see a satellite image of what you were looking for. But the coolest thing is, Google has opened up all the data (via XML) so people can make all kinds of cool stuff with it.

Green links.

in

LeprechaunHappy St. Patrick's Day. In between beers, you might enjoy checking out:

Baby deals.

in

Today is pay day for a lot of people, so here are some sites that help find good deals on stuff to buy on the Internet. First I tried to find places that had deals specifically for children (which there weren't that many of), so I've linked to those first.

Baby and Toys categories at Cheap Stingy Bastard
Babies & Kids and Toys categories at Fat Wallet.com
Baby & Kids and Toys categories at dealcatcher.com
Baby coupon and bargains at amazing-bargains.com

Not a lot of kid stuff, but still plenty of deals for dads:
BensBargains.net
Dealtaker.com
Slickdeals.net
Spoofee.com
Skimper.com
Coupon-Codes.net

Post more in the comments if I've missed any you frequent.

Hospital nightmare.

in

I was catching up on my dad blogs last night and I came across an absolutely harrowing story from Eric at MoreDiapers. He and his wife found a bump on their son's head, which (although it mercifully proved to be no big deal), led to them being investigated for child abuse - the primary means of the investigation being subjecting their son to multiple x-ray and other tests. Thankfully everything turns out OK, but it's a very real, very personal, and very scary story. If you haven't read it yet, go over and check it out (I've linked to the posts in chronological order below).

About Last Night
MRI at the end of the month!?!?
At Children's
I Apologize on Behalf of Children's

Not "elite." "Leet."

in

Well, it must be time for television ratings sweeps because all of the local news channels are running stories about how the world is ending. "The deadliest thing in your house may be your kitchen!" "Cat attacks - your pets are in danger!" "Your kids may be getting access to pornography, and we're not talking about the Internet!"

Here's one I actually saw yesterday - "Your kids are speaking a new language online that you need to know about!" A couple of weeks ago Microsoft published online "A parent's primer to computer slang", designed to help parents decipher "leet speak;" abbreviations, anagrams and typos commonly found on the Internet. If you're a parent and you've never seen it before it's probably worth checking out, but the funniest thing I thought was the first (and obviously most important) word under the section "Leet words of concern or indicating possible illegal activity."

"warez" or "w4r3z": Illegally copied software available for download."

Never mind your kids downloading porn, just make sure they're not pirating copies of Microsoft Office..

//d3rn d4y d4d r3wlz.

Name Voyager.

in

I found this little gem last night while I was supposed to be sleeping - the Name Voyager. It's this totally rad little flash applet that shows how popular individual names were by decade. The wider the band, the higher that name was ranked for that particular decade. You can run your mouse over the whole graph to highlight individual names, or type in a name (or first few letters of a name) that you're interested in to get more specific.

Looking through it made me try to figure out the reasons for the trends, like why some names are incredibly popular for a decade or two and then completely drop off. Check out "Betty." Betty was the ranked 44 in the 1920's and then hit number 2 in the 1930's. By the 60's it went back down to 104. Why? Betty Grable? Or how about the names that come out of nowhere, like Jennifer. Jennifer wasn't even ranked in the top 1000 before the 1940s and then all of a sudden by the 1970's it's the number one girl's name.  Where did that come from?

Anyway, it's kind of cool to look at, especially if you're currently considering names.

Name Voyager on the Baby Name Wizard website.

Housecleaning.

in

I just read the latest MetroDad entry, and I realized I have to seriously update my dad blogroll in the right-hand column. I'm only going to update it with stuff I'm currently reading, though with that MetroDad post it's obvious I've got a lot of new blogs to check out. New additions are:

  • Ideashak. Paul just had his beautiful baby girl and is now, officially, a dad-blogger. I could say that's why I didn't have him in the dad blogs section before, but it wouldn't be true. I'm lazy. His blog was great before he was a dad too.
  • Defective Yeti. I just realized I don't have this one in the list.  What's the matter with me?
  • More Diapers. A new blog from a dad in my old hometown of Boston that I've been enjoying.
  • Genuine. How come when I read his blog, in my head I pronounce it "jen-you-wine" and not "genuine?" Who am I, Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane? Regardless, I think it deserves the elaborate pronunciation.

Oh. And I also updated the CDs I'm listening to while I as at it.

Oh my god it's Arlo.

in

A few years ago my friends and I got kind of obsessed with this obscure sock-puppet show on MTV called Sifl & Olly. The genius behind it was this guy Liam Lynch. He's done other stuff since then, but most people probably know him from his song "United States of Whatever" that got some radio play about a year ago.

Anyway, his sister (who runs a pretty cool website called Jenville) had a baby boy recently (named Arlo) and Liam created a DVD for him of songs he'd written called "The Uncle Liam Show." One of the videos (a theme song for Arlo) is posted on Jenville and let me tell you, it's pretty awesome. Not to sound like a super-fan or anything, but I wish she'd post the rest, or maybe Liam would sell a kid's DVD or something. I have a feeling the rest of the songs are just as good.

Via ideashak (if you're not checking in on ideashak every now and then, you really should be).

When it's OK to talk to strangers.

in

I love it when people mess with telemarketers, which is why I'm pointing you all to the footnote of Russ' latest post on the Daily Yak. He says his son loves talking on the phone, so whenever he gets a sales call he just hands the phone to his boy. "Want to sell me something? You gotta get through the kid first!" Simple and perfect. This is an idea I'll definitely be using in a year or two.

In the meantime if you want some more fun stuff to do with telemarketers, print out the Anti-Telemarketing Counterscript and keep it near the phone. (And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the genius of Jim Florentine's Terrorizing Telemarketers comedy CD series.)

Hello? It's for baby.

in

MobilebabytoyA cellphone is a lot like Los Angeles. People love to bitch about it, but they could never think of living without it. Now it seems that your kid might feel the same way. I saw this article yesterday about a company called Mobile Baby Toy. It's a pretty simple idea really You download a piece of software into your (mostly) Nokia cell phone and it turns your cell phone into a beeping, flashing toy for your kid to play with. I guess the point is to give your child something to distract them in a pinch if nothing else is handy, while at the same time preventing errant calls to foreign countries.

It's not for me (I rock a Treo 600), but for 9.95€ it might be worth it. Though my gut says teaching your kid that a cellphone is a toy probably isn't the best idea in the world. Unless you don't mind it in pieces all over the supermarket floor.

A picture of baby. Made from other pictures of baby.

in

EwmosaiccoverToday's the first day of the Christmas shopping season, and I think I've found a pretty cool - and cheap - gift idea. The other day I found this program called AndreaMosaic. It's a small freeware application (Windows only I'm afraid) that takes your digital photos and rearranges them to create a mosaic version of any image you want (like the Entertaiment Weekly cover of Julia Roberts above). There are some more examples here.

I have been playing around with it with pictures of Madame and it works really well. The more images you have the better the mosaic comes out - and obviously the bigger the final image the better it will look. You could even bring one of the files to Kinkos or something and get them to make a huge print. Your friends might not want a 4x6 foot mosaic photo of your baby, but I'm betting the wife will love it.

Download AndreaMosaicSetup.exe

Stop emailing photos of your kid.

in

In my world digital cameras are about as prevalent as film cameras, and love it or not, they make it very easy to share photos. We don’t have much family in the city where we live, so posting pictures of the baby on a website is something that everyone in my family wanted. My grandma (who is over 80 and online every day) emails me when I haven’t uploaded recent pictures of Madame. I’ve got to keep it up to date, but I don’t want to spend a lot of time dealing with it.

What I’m using now to share her photos is a moblog set up on Text America. A free service, Text America allows you to set up a quick and painless website, where you can upload, post and share images. The service is really for moblogging – taking pictures of your life with your camera-phone and emailing them from your phone to share on the web instantly – and that’s pretty much all I used it for before I was a dad. Originally I was going to make a unique website just for her photos, but the Text America site is just way too easy. Now I take pictures of the baby (with my phone or my digital camera), save them on my computer, and then email the pictures that I like to the moblog. Put a caption in the subject line of the email and your image is up on the internet as fast as the email is sent – all for free. Plus you can customize the moblog you pick with a little tweaking (I replaced an image and made a graphic for the title and it came out pretty good). There is advertising on the pages, but nothing too obtrusive at all. It’s way better than sending email attachments of photos, and for free you can’t beat it.

Get your kid in an "advertorial."

in

Think your baby takes a great picture? I saw this press release today about the “Nikon Coolpix Pride and Joy Baby Photo Contest.” The winner of the contest gets a $25K US Savings bond and will be featured in an “advertorial” in an issue of Parenting Magazine. Finalists receive a digital camera package from Nikon. It’s not free though - it will cost you $9.95 to enter, though $5 of that goes to the Starlight Starbright Children’s Foundation. It’s nice they’re giving some of the money to a good cause, but $9.95 still sounds steep.

If you’re interested, check out http://www.prideandjoybaby.com/

Big day today.

in

Well, the maternity leave is over and the wife officially went back to work this morning, which means that today is my first official day as a stay-at-home-dad. To honor the occasion I thought I’d mention a few of my favorite dad websites/blogs that I’ve been reading these past few months. These sites have helped me get through a lot of the apprehension and nervousness I've been feeling about today. Thanks dads.

Daddy Types – Maybe because I seem to have similar interests, or maybe it’s because I also love my Bugaboo Frog, but this is the one blog I always make sure I read. He’s got great stories, advice, and easily the best info on the newest and coolest dad and baby gear. Updated very regularly, this is one everyone should check out.

Rebel Dad – For the latest commentary and links to everything stay-at-home dad (“SAHD”) related in the news and on the web, Rebel Dad is the source. This dude scours the internet (and who knows where else) to shed light on what people are saying/thinking about full-time dads, all the time preaching the good news of the SAHD revolution. Updated almost every day it also garners tons of comments from fellow readers.

City Pop – More a journal than a blog, City Pop manages to tell stories about his son and family that are both endearing and funny.

Slowlane.com – Not a blog but more a traditional content-based website, this is the first site I ever found about SAHDs, and probably the biggest. It’s not updated all the time, but it does seem to be the best place to start if you want to connect with other SAHDs in your city or state (they'll even host small one page websites for your local SAHD group).