Jotspot Family Site
The latest in organizing families. The features are becoming the standard for these social offerings.
- Share family calendar
- Build your family tree
- Plot your family locations on a map
- It's free and you generate the content for your site
- You can plan your family reunion
The only thing I did notice with this offering is that the Jotpost Family Site, is not branded as a separate business with no logo and I can't log in from the main page to get to my account. I am assuming I have to find my special website address that comes with my account. ie. http://familyname.jot.com
It does appear to be really new and so I think more features will be coming out soon. It does appear to be an offering that is available as a product of Jotspot. It will be interesting to see if this family site becomes a brand of its own, such as [xyz] – Powered by Jotspot.
Blogher Conference ‘06
I am going to Blogher… let me know if you are. What is Blogher? I’s a two day conference for women bloggers. Women Bloggers generate such interesting content and many are mothers. I think mommy blogging has helped the Family 2.0 space and the Family 2.0 space creating exposure for mommy bloggers. I believe getting involved in generating content and sharing on mommy blogs develops into an extended need to find Family 2.0 tools to sharing advice, photos and organize the family etc. What’s more we are making friends with like interests, that is the most satisfying.
Here’s a sneak peak (source Blogher.org)…
Day One’s Conference Schedule: Day One is a day of hands-on instruction on a variety of topics, most technically-focused.
Day Two’s Conference Schedule: Day Two focuses on community, conversation and the culture of blogging. Day Two also includes our Room of Your Own sessions. Room of Your Own sessions are sessions that were created, staffed and proposed by BlogHer Conference attendees. More info on Day Two is here.
Minti – New Release Launched
I have been waiting like a week before the baby’s due date. It’s arrived, the first stages of our member community and some enhancements to the front page.
What you can do as a member…
- You can add to your blog from the member page, write your post and click save and your done! (steps faster than traditional blogs, from my experience), so you can talk more. Currently, you can’t get hyperlinks, pictures or trackbacks in the posts yet, it’s planned for the next release. However, your blog can be subscribed to via an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed and if you click on the subcribe link you will automatically have the feed added to your “My RSS Subcriptions” link in your account to keep up-to-date with your Minti friends.
- Avatars; you can now add your own photo image (like you can at myspace) instead of a cartoon Avatar. So you can decide if being a ’secret agent or pilot’ isn’t your thing and have cool mag-like photo of you instead. (The word ‘cool’ and ‘parent’ can work together – hehe)…
- Be my friend! Parents don’t have hoards of friends, unless you have so much time to socialise!!! This feature allows you to ask a member to be your friend, which you can grant 
or deny friendship 
- You can start a friends forum discussion going amongst your friends, as well as comment on members blogs, send a private message, as well as email members via your mailbox.
I found it really useful when reading a members article, and wanted to get to know the author more, I could add them as a friend from the article page area. I like this ability to explore the world of ‘Friends at Minti’…
- Homepage; starting to add features so that there’s more to do here, hope you like the changes here at Minti
Stayed tuned for the next release worth getting excited about. I plan to do the same for other Family 2.0 applications I talk about here…
More on the release:
Famundo – It’s your family. It’s your world.
How exciting is this space getting? Is anyone hot! I have no idea what this site will be about, but the family blog is a great read (yes Minti gets a cool mention), but the reason why I like the blog is the (I think) founder, Richard Kuhlenschmidt sharing stuff like how he attended a pesentation on drug prevention at his kids middle school. It so great to hear about things like that. Hopfefully, this Family 2.0 space will not only bring out cool 'stuff' but also make a 'real' positive impact on our childrens lives.
On their development blog, they are using some really cool Web 2.0 stuff. We are also thinking of doing the same with our social technology that Minti is powered by, ('VIBEngine') as we have called it and thinking of getting a blog going talking about development…sorry Yumsus I promise that you'll only have to do short posts or rather we would have to set post limits 
..
Back onto Famundo, like Maya's Mom they have a landing page where you can enter your details in to be notified about Famundo and it's impending launch. I am getting a feeling from their family and development blog that it has an educational bent leaning towards the mangement of families and organisation, using social media. (ooh its fun guessing)…
I think the market is sooo big out there to avoid having to bring out competing UPS and get motivated to find something new…
Stay tuned on Famundo…
Maya’s Mom – For Parents (to be launched)
The latest soon to be launched Maya’s Mom, I am guessing will join us in the Family 2.0 space. Michael Arrington has mentioned that it will be another “collaborative/community resource for parenting” (techcrunch April 12, 2006). I am not sure yet as to Maya’s unique proposition, however, I think it’s great that sites are starting to pop up offering families the ability to do more interactive things online.
Stayed tuned till they launch.
Airset
Just a really quick buzz about Airset, which I plan to review down the track. Here's a bit from the site…
Take the stress out of staying organized
Easily manage yourself and the groups in your life
:: Share calendars, contacts, lists and more
:: Manage all your groups from one place
:: Sync with Outlook and Palm desktop
:: Relax. Your data is secure and private
Product VisionAirSet puts you in control of your complicated life. Using a web browser or mobile phone, you can manage family, work, and social group schedules and communications.
It will be interesting how my road test goes.
Amiglia – Family Tree + Photo Album
Amiglia what an interesting name, I am getting used to pronouncing it. I have just road tested the site and I must admit I am getting hooked…It's a great geneology site. What? you say… well it's has a cool family tree feature that allows you to build your current family tree and also create extended family members in separate trees. What's unique is that the family tree is dynamic in that you can move your mouse over the tree and it grows and moves in the direction you are looking at, fantastic when you have added in so many family members!!! What's more is each member has a photo and their own profile… It really motivates me to now go in and add in our ancestry and that of other family and extended members.
Photo sharing
As I upload photos to my own album and family, and I am part of other related families or albums my photos also get uploaded automatically to those related families albums. I like this, this is real time sharing.
I am also impressed by the idea of capturing your travels, with photos, animated maps and share this with others. I would see this in the future been a tool that could be syndicated to other travel community sites, like Virtual Tourist. Similar to the ability to import your flickr photos into Amiglia. I will test this out if I travel to the Blogher Conference (a big trip from where I will be coming from)…
Facebook feature is nice, it gives you the ability to look at all your family members, pets etc, some sites do incorporate this at some level, like at myspace.com and at Minti however it's a neat social networking feature that enhances the community feeling.
Don't forget family birthday's
The family calendar is very useful, you won't forget family members birthdays, their kids birthdays (or your pets) and you also have a chronological view of your photos. It's well thought out logic about what families want in organizing their photos and family profiles. In a sense it gives families a greater meaning and uniqueness. We should be proud of our family and linage and be excited to share this time capsule with future generations.
The slideshows are awesome! With music, pictures, tag photos…Amiglia has put a lot of thought into offering meaningful Family 2.0 features. My wishlist would now have to be a look and feel design flavoring Web 2.0 and Social Networking dressings, ability to see the entire famly tree including related trees, ability to move the top position on the tree if it's not correct and add music files to my profile so others can see what music I like or what music my kids like. Another awesome feature on my wishlist would be the ability to create a podcast/video and have access to the parent to parent advice-opedia info, like my Minti articles and introduce Amiglia to other families I have met on Minti. (but it's my wishlist…
I think now, gaining traction and membership is really important for Amiglia and hopefully Family 2.0 sites can work together on this. You are doing great things for making family important and giving it a face!!! Well done!!!
Trixie Tracker – baby tracking software
Trixie Tracker has been around from what I can work out from the company blog, since May 2005?? I have just road tested the account and put my son's sleep details in. It's a fantastic site to track the habits of your child. It also really helps to develop a pattern of what is happening with your child and changes in things like sleep…for one the sleep tracking tab allows me to see how teething has affected his sleep patterns. It's a great tool, I can then write an article on Minti to explain my experiences to help other parents who may be experiencing this same sleep pattern. It gives more data and real life stats so parents can see with some certainty and make up their own minds as to follow the advice or not. That is just one application of how to incorporate the data and graphs from Trixie.
Although, when entering the data, I would love it to be a little easier and a bit more simple to add sleep patterns in. I would love to be able to have a section to put in back dated data to set up a history base and then set the real live data going forward. As a parent I remember at least 3 days of patterns eg. sleep so this ability would be awesome. It took me a while to undestand how to add in a split nap time and I wasn't sure if the data was skewed from not putting in the previous days sleep events in?
Overall it's extremely useful, you can add different children at any age…an RSS feed to this data would be great and an ability to have a "quick entry" via your mobile phone would save time (especially if you have your hands full with kids) would be a dream come true for me!! Go Trixie
Chalksite, expand your classroom
Chalksite is an excellent tool for teachers, parents and students. "What is Chalksite? It's the quickest, simplest route to expanding your classroom onto the internet. Teachers, students and parents have a central point to access grading, assignments and messaging." Ever thought of a classroom online with a greater meaning? Schools are increasingly looking at ways to keep connected at a greater level with their students and parents. If anything parents are able to stay connected. It's a fantastic tool. I remember when I wish I could have asked my teachers more questions, but was to scared to in front of the class (generally because I was a bit of a daydreamer and was bored). As a parent now…this accelerated inter-communication, saves us from those parent-teacher evenings and you hardly(really) know the teacher who is shaping your child's educational future.
Oh well, kids there goes the fib that you are getting good grades, it'll be easily checked out on the site
"Bi-weekly, teachers are to send home GPA's along with individual assigment grades (i.e. progress reports). Teaching 5 different classes with approximately 25 students in each class is a lot of paper!!! By utilizing the Grades tool, students/parents can see averages right when I post them on my Chalksite. I believe parents will be thrilled that they can monitor grades on a daily basis." Last edited by LaurinB (2006-03-27 22:59:30)
This would be even more powerful for Montessori playgroups, daycares and other educational classes kids go to in the years before attending real school.
CE My Family 2.0
"CE My Family is a Read and Write Genealogy Solution for the Pocket PC. View and edit your family information whenever and wherever convenient!"…I think the best application for this would be, the ability to keep track of which parents belong to which child. Already my son has over 20 friends from playgroups etc and it's really difficult to keep track of names and family members of my son's friends. You can add notes, met at Gymbaroo etc and the best thing is you have the information with you on your phone. The other great use is storing all the info you have on your family ancestry, if your the tracking kind or are planning to travel, tracing your ancestry's history as you meet extended family. Beats having to work it out under pressure for your kids school assignment hehe. The only bummer about this is that you have to order it for $20 and it's not compatible with Blackberry ("CE My Family is a Read and Write Genealogy Solution for Pocket PC 2000, 2002 or Windows Mobile 2003.") It has had 902 downloads so it sounds like a winner to me.
See "source"
