Technology

Not Quite Insta

April 7, 2014 by Kathryn

I have a love-hate relationship with all things social media. I love the way it creates and extends relationships across distances but hate the way it distills people’s thoughts, feelings and beliefs into sound bites.

I find that often people I love and respect say thoughtless, hurtful, stressful or inflammatory things on the internet that they would never say to someone in person. For some people, Facebook seems to be a dumping ground for all their worries, fears and insecurities.

Less and less are Twitter and Facebook happy places for me. I use them as I need them, but they’re not fun like they were in the beginning. They are not my “happy places.”

Because of this, I’ve been resistant to expand my social media horizons.

Finally, about 50 years after everyone else, I joined Instagram last week and WHAT TOOK ME SO LONG!?

This is the happy social media hub. It’s a place to post small pieces of light, joy and humor in the form of photos. Little slices of life. I love it. LOVE. I’m way late to the party, but Instagram has replaced Facebook for me as a daily go-to to see what’s happening in my friends’ lives. This is the real stuff. It is 99% positive. It is visually pleasing.

Instagram – Look at the frog I found at work.
Facebook – I am suing my employer for discrimination.

Instagram – My desk is messy because I just wrote an awesome paper.
Facebook – Here’s a link to a whitepaper about how all is lost.

Instagram – Doesn’t my crazy Ragnar hat look rad?
Facebook – I’m so sick of all the crazy Ragnar people. They are a sign that the government wants to take away all of our rights and deprive us of Oreos.

So, join me on Instagram. Because it’s awesome. Because I want to know if you found a frog at work. Or what your daughter’s milk mustache looks like. These are the things that matter to me. Life is too short to not share pictures of your cat all day.

Product Review – Amplicom Alarm Clock for the Hearing Impaired and People with Little Sisters Who Need More Sleep

June 19, 2013 by Kathryn

I don’t often do product reviews on the blog because that’s not really what this blog is about, but it is about my family and if something strikes me as particularly cool or important or relevant, I’ll blog about it.

As most of you know, my oldest daughter has some hearing loss. She can hear fine *most* of the time, but if I talk softly or if she’s not looking at my mouth when I talk, she has some trouble. She wears hearing aids… when she wears them, and she should probably have an FM system at school but she’d rather not so I don’t push it with her. Our relationship is more important to me than a few missed math instructions.

When I got the chance to try out a new alarm clock, developed for people with hearing loss, I decided to do it. Enter the Amplicom TCL 200 digital alarm clock. Say that ten times fast. It comes equipped with all kinds of cool features that we don’t use. It talks to you and tells you the time. It can be turned up extra super loud and has lights to get your attention. It can even hook up to your phone to amplify the ringer.

The thing we like most about it is the vibrating pad that goes under Laylee’s pillow at night. In the morning, she’s awoken with a gentle vibration under her head. The pad is wireless and comes with built-in rechargeable batteries, and we use it without the audio alarm or flashing lights.

The obvious benefit is – it wakes a person whether they have hearing loss or not. The magical side benefit is – it does not wake up the 3-year-old sleeping on the bunk below. So, Laylee gets a gentle head massage, reminding her to get going and Wanda gets to sleep on in a drooly coma for as long as her little body desires.

Would I spend the seventy bucks to buy one if it hadn’t been sent to me magically for free in the mail? I’m not sure. Maybe in a couple of years. I think alarm clocks are going to be more of an issue as she gets older and I want her to take responsibility to get herself out of bed on time. She currently uses the hearing-loss-friendly, mom strokes your hair and your cheek and whispers loudly in your ear alarm. But she’s getting a smidge old for that.

If her hearing loss were more severe, this would definitely be a great option. I’m not sure how many of my readers suffer from hearing loss or have a loved one who does, but if you do, check out this clock. It’s intuitive to use, durable, and has enough bells and whistles without being overly complicated.

Click to Read My Product Review Policy

Pinteresting

March 25, 2012 by Kathryn

I resisted Pinterest for quite a while, not wanting one more place to waste time online but I finally succumbed a couple of months ago and I’m so glad I did.

I spend maybe 15 minutes per day on the site and I actually use things I find there. I’ve found great recipes, home cleaning tips and craft ideas and I’m making my home more beautiful and becoming a more fun mom.

But, a few weeks ago, I read about their scary terms of service. Essentially they said that by posting something, you claimed to have ownership of what you were pinning. They also said that Pinterest would then take ownership of the pinned information and had the right to sell those images or information. Further, the terms stated that if Pinterest was ever sued relating to something you pinned, you would be liable for all legal expenses.

That was scary enough for me to stop pinning but I couldn’t quite bring myself to delete my boards.

Luckily, there was enough of an outcry that Pinterest updated their terms of service and I’m much more comfortable with them now. The biggest change is that they no longer claim to have the right to sell the content you upload. To me, this was the biggest risk for legal action (you pin something, they sell the image, get sued, and then charge you for their legal fees).

With that out of the way, here are a few of my favorite Pinterest finds, big and small:

I made three of these homemade chenille blankets for my kids for Valentine’s Day. They turned out gorgeous!

Here was our Valentine’s Day wreath:

This is the best way to shred chicken. Shockingly effective.

I learned how to cook my own whole chicken in the crockpot.

I used the inspiration from this cake to make these Blue and Gold Banquet treats for our cub scouts.

For the first time ever, I found salsa that Dan enjoyed.

There are so many great hair styles I’ve found. Here is one of my favorites, simple, easy classic braided buns. It looks great on Laylee and I enjoy wearing it myself.

What are some pins that you love?

WITH Siren

February 7, 2011 by Kathryn

My parents and sister came to visit us for Christmas and it was so fun to have them here. It’s the first time we’ve ever had family up for the holiday and we wanted to make it special so we each chose a gift for each of our visitors. This year for the first time I asked the kids to use their own allowance money to pay for half of the gifts. It made the gifts more meaningful and it caused them to think more seriously about what to give.

Both kids got Auntie Meg jewelry because she is fashionable like that. Magoo got Papa a laser pointer and Grammy some chapstick.

After hours of looking, Laylee was browsing the little red boxed gift items on the end cap at Target when she came upon the Perfect Present for Grammy. She held the box up triumphantly.

Me: It’s a mini megaphone.
Laylee [grinning and nodding]: WITH siren!

I had to let her buy it, because who won’t remember the year that Grammy received a mini megaphone WITH siren for Christmas?

The gift was especially poignant considering Grammy suffered from migraines off and on for the first few days they were at our house. Yes, a siren will come in very handy for Grammy.

Lost in Fiction

January 15, 2011 by Kathryn

Someone asked me recently if I’d gotten lost on Facebook because this blog has been a ghost town the past few months. Twitter and Facebook have changed things for me to some extent.

In some ways I think they bring me closer to the people I care about. In others I think they put a wrench in meaningful communication. I’ll see a tweet about today being the best day ever, accompanied by a picture, only to find out weeks later the blurb on Twitter was meant as a wedding announcement.

I’ll go a week without checking in on Facebook and find I don’t know what’s happening in my friends’ lives. Someone will say, “Oh, you know what’s going on, I put it on Facebook,” and I’ll think, “I’ve seen you three times in the past two weeks and you didn’t even tell me you’d changed jobs because you’d put it in a status update.” Weird.

In the past when I had an interesting little nugget to share, I’d sit down to write the one sentence and it would turn into a 400-word blog post. Now it remains an interesting little nugget, just a few characters long. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. It’s concise.

But no, I haven’t gotten lost on Facebook or Twitter. I’ve gotten lost in fiction. I’m working on a novel that I’m really excited about and I find that I pour all of my writing energy out into imaginary characters whom I love watching come to life on my computer screen.

I’ll keep you posted and I’ll keep blogging. I miss it.

For the past few months when I’ve gotten a bad case of writer’s block on the novel, I’ve just stopped writing and blogging altogether except for my posts over at Parenting.com. Then the longer I go without writing, the more I start to believe it’s because I’ve lost the ability to write at all. Like a castaway living in silence on an island with a volleyball named Wilson, I lose my words.

So my plan is to blog when the fiction world grows too thick to slog through. Whenever I’m not here, you’ll know I’m a step closer to delivering my project. Mom, I’m talking to you. You’re still reading, right?

And yes, this post will appear in my feed on Facebook.

Wii Netflix Party – A Review and Giveaway

June 28, 2010 by Kathryn

***The winners have been chosen by Random.org. They are Poppa2b, Carolee and Julia. ***

So now Nintendo has asked me to be a Brand Ambassador. I’m not totally sure what it means but I do keep getting free stuff, which is nice and they have not yet set fire to my house so I think both of those things must be part of the agreement. As far as I can tell, we come in peace and bearing gifts.

Last weekend, they sponsored a little get-together at my house with some friends. We had a game and movie night with food and games provided by Nintendo. They also sent along a sweet little flip video camera to capture the fun and we did have a great time.

However, I’ll warn you that as I tried to edit this little baby together, I discovered that there’s not much in the world quite as boring as watching video of other people playing video games and watching movies. There is a really cute shot of Wanda in the middle of it all which I think makes it worth watching.

We downloaded Haunted Mansion Party with the free points cards they sent us, kind of a board game with interactive Wii-play arcade-type games along the way, and ended up playing some old favorites, Big Brain Academy and Dr. Mario as well.

Then keeping with the Dr. theme, we streamed Dr. Horrible with our Netflix disc. I think everyone enjoyed themselves. We’d do it again for sure.

Nintendo provided some Nintendo Points Cards to give out to our friends and since I consider you all friends, I’m extending the party and I’ll send cards to a few of you if you’d like. Just leave a comment listing your favorite game for the Wii and I’ll draw 3 winners to receive a couple thousand Nintendo Points each so you can download fun software for your Wii or DS.

The timing was a little funny to be throwing a party celebrating streaming Netflix because we’ve had some issues with it lately. We’d been really enjoying it until a couple of weeks ago. There are a lot of great movies and TV series available and it’s nice to have them on demand.

But two weeks ago, we left Magoo inside playing Lego Batman while Dan put together the play set in the back yard and he got into some trouble with the Netflix. He knows he’s not allowed to use it without me or Dan there but like most 5 year-olds, he thinks he’s smarter than us and he “totally knows what movies are for kids.”

Long story short, he ended up watching some really offensive content. It was animated so he thought it was okay but it was WAY R-rated and honestly I don’t know any adults who would not have been offended by it. It was awful. Luckily Netflix keeps track of what’s been watched so we could go back and see what he’d seen and address it, but it was a wakeup call.

Nintendo products tend to be so family-friendly, a big part of the reason I chose the Wii and the DS over other gaming systems when I had money to spend. However, the Netflix disc does open up a whole new can of worms. We now have the whole Wii on lockdown so I have to enter a passcode for the kids to use any game or the Netflix disc. I’ve also set our Netflix rating max to PG in case I leave it unlocked someday.

So, be wise. Use it for the good but protect your family from the bad.

Leave a comment if you’re interested in the giveaway!

Click to Read My Product Review Policy

Baffled by Facebook

May 9, 2010 by Kathryn

I cannot figure out how to make a button to get readers of this blog to “Like” it on Facebook. If you “like” it with or without the quotes in real life, will you please go and “Like” it with quotes over on Facebook?

Thanks.

And if you know how to help me make a fancy button for people to click on and you feel fairly sure that doing so won’t steal the identities or souls of those who click on it, please let me know how.

Click here if you “Like” or like this website and then click on the “Like” button at the top of the page.

With Incredible Power Comes Incredible Responsibility

May 6, 2010 by Kathryn

(Feel free to skip to the bottom for my quick take on the new HTC Droid Incredible.)

I buy capers at Costco. Sure I can only go through a few tablespoons of capers a year but I still buy the Costco-sized bottle of capers. It’s all about value. The little teeny bottle at the regular grocery store costs the same as the ginormous bottle at Costco and I cannot bring myself to buy the itty bitty for the same prices as the Jamie-Oliver-sized jar. (This is conjecture. I have no actual idea how many capers Jamie Oliver goes through in a given 3-month period. I imagine it is more than the 25 that fit into the jar at Safeway.)

Which brings me to a point. The Droid. Or should I say Droids?

In my latest adventure in selfish smartphone testing, I tried out the Motorola Droid. I was hooked almost immediately. It was fast. It was versatile. With an inexpensive app (Touchdown) I was able to sync up all my Outlook calendar and contact information using Exchange. The built-in Exchange support was lacking. It came with access to a plethora of apps that were cool, useful and fun. One of the most amazing things was the speech-to-text capability. You’d speak into the phone and it would transcribe your words into searches, text messages, emails, etc. I kept texting Dan with things like, “I just said that,” and “I’m not typing this either.” It was hot, the phone, not the texts. I loved it.

It was not as cute as the Palm Pre. It didn’t feel as good in my hand. It was not a mobile tethering wireless hotspot but it did everything I needed and more.

But wait. Then I found out that its Costco caper jar equivalent was coming out soon and I just couldn’t be happy with the Motodroid. The ~~HTC Incredible Droid~~ ~~Droid Incredible from HTC~~ Incredi-HTC-ible-McDroidy-Pants was released on April 29th and it has everything that the MotoDroid has plus and plus and plus.

The Incredible has access to the same apps and features as the MotoDroid but it also has a faster processor, more internal storage, an 8 megapixel camera, HTC Sense UI (meaning cool modifications to the Google Android operating system making it more sleek, attractive and functional), a better feel and a partridge in a pear tree.

So I could have been very happy with the MotoDroid but why spend $200 on it when I could spend $200 on the new hotness? The only reason I see to go with the Motorola Droid vs. the HTC Incredible is the slide-out keyboard. If you can’t live without it, then you’d better stick with Moto. I thought I couldn’t live without it but it took me all of a week of abstaining from using the MotoDroid keyboard by choice to convince me that I could live without it. The touch-screen keyboard is actually quite nice.

So I jumped in and bought the new hotness with my own hard-earned cash and we frolicked in the grass and synced up calendars and contacts. I downloaded known apps that were recommended to me by friends and family. I loved the phone and the phone appeared to find joy in me as well, remembering all of my likes and dislikes and allowing me to rearrange its multiple home screens to my liking.

HTC Sense has much better built-in Exchange support than the standard Android 2.1 operating system so after we figured out some weird bugs on our Exchange server, I was really happy with the way everything worked together. My Facebook contacts are now linked with my Google and Outlook contacts so anyone with a profile picture in my Facebook friends now has a photo attached to their contact on my phone and when I look at their contact info, I can see their latest status updates right there.

The first day I had the phone up and running, I took a picture of Wanda eating in a cute bib my friend had given me as a gift. I clicked “share” on the phone and chose “email” from the long list of sharing options. I then selected my friend from my contacts list, typed a one sentence thank-you note and sent it off. The entire process took less than 2 minutes and she was impressed that I’d taken the time to send her a photo thank-you.

The built-in Twitter app is lame but there are others for free in the Market. The Facebook app is alright. The internet speed with the Incredible on Verizon frequently beats my laptop. It’s very very pretty. I can point it at pictures and landmarks and it “scans” them and tells me what they are. It does more things than a phone really should do.

And there’s the hitch.

The joy of my new toy was disrupted last weekend when I was browsing the Android Market for new apps and came across several distasteful and offensive apps in the games section. I do not want to see clothesless women as I’m browsing for solitaire games on my phone. I do not want to see apps for freaky weird creepy guys with specific “interests”. I’m trying to avoid certain key search terms here but you get the picture.

So I figured if they had an app for finding my car in a mall parking lot and an app for people who like to do things to pictures of women, then they certainly had an app that would help me and my family avoid running across that junk while we’re searching for games. They might even have a filter built in so I could just say, “Don’t subject my eyes to these types of apps. I’m not old enough,” or a way to lock access to the Market altogether so my kids don’t accidentally navigate there as they’re playing a Disney Princess game on my phone while I doze next to them on the couch.

Not so much.

I searched and searched and found nothing but references to the fact that people wanted filters, locks and controls for their Android phones but could not find them or were having trouble getting Google to let them create them and add them to the Market. So basically, even though my home internet is filtered, I found myself carrying around unfiltered open season to all the junk the internet has to offer in my diaper bag without much hope of a solution.

Luckily since I’ve been working with PR at Verizon I was able to get into contact with someone at Google who spent some time on the phone with me this afternoon, listening to my concerns and answering some questions.

The short story? They don’t have an app for that… yet. The man I talked to handles among other things “child safety policy and communications” for Google. He pointed out several instances where Google has made strides to make internet usage safer for children and adults like myself who don’t want to deal with filth.

I was unaware that you can now filter your browsing experience using SafeSearch filtering. It’s a setting you can get to from the Google main page. I didn’t know about the new Safety mode on YouTube, a button at the bottom of the page that you can activate and lock to reduce the risk of seeing nastiness on that site. Neither of these are perfect by any means but they’re a good faith effort by Google to offer options for filtering and they’re working to improve them.

My new Google friend was very encouraging. The phones are still fairly new terrain for Google. They’re working on it. They know there’s a demand for this and they’ll follow their model on the web, bringing filtering and locking to their mobile phones.

He said he’d let me know as soon as developments occur. And I’ll let you know as soon as he lets me know. For now, I’ve locked the front screen of my phone so my kids can’t slip it out of my purse and play with it without me. I’ve also set the SafeSearch mode in Google Mobile’s settings to “Strict” although there’s currently no way to lock in this setting but unless the kids figure out how to change it, it should keep me from running into too much junk. However, there will still be garbage on the Android Market and for the time being I will still run into it occasionally.

To avoid it, I’d suggest sticking to the “Top” apps rather than looking at the “Just In” apps because after signing up as a developer with Google, which requires a credit check and access to the developer’s real identity information, a developer can post things to the Market with no sort of vetting process. This allows for the kind of creativity and freedom that has made Google so successful, but again there’s that whole bad-comes-with-the-good thing.

If an app violates Google’s policies by posting anything pornographic or malware or spyware, users can flag it to be taken down. Personally I’d rather not be the one to “discover” malware, spyware or pornography so I’ll stick to the high end of the Market and wait for quality apps to be tested by others and trickle up.

Daring Young Mom Quick Take – The HTC Droid Incredible is an amazing tool with huge possibilities for productivity, fun, creativity and connection. I love all of the great things it can do for me. But, like the internet itself, it’s also got some real hazards built in. I’m so glad Google’s working on them. I can’t wait to pass on the good news that they’ve implemented mobile safety solutions but for now I’d say to proceed with caution.

Click to Read My Product Review Policy

Magic

May 2, 2010 by Kathryn

Today was May Day. It was also Saturday. Saturday is a day to rejoice.

Magoo is only allowed to play video games on Saturdays. He loves them so much that he refers to Saturday only as “My Lot of Game Day.” I’m not honestly sure if he even remembers what it’s actually called.

The other night he was getting into bed on a not-Saturday night and he said, “Mom? Do you wanna know something magical?”

“What?” I asked.

Sheepishly he pulled my Nintendo DS out from behind his pillow. “Look what I found,” he grinned. “It just appeared… under my pillow… like magic.”

Now he knows he’s not supposed to be playing and he knows he’s not supposed to take the DS without asking. He knows a lot of things but I looked at that magical muffin-head and wondered what I was supposed to do.

“Did you take it from my room?”

“No. It was magic… Yes.”

There’s sort of a parental gray area where misbehavior and honesty are concerned. On the one hand, you want to give your kids credit for telling you the truth and admitting when they do something wrong. You want them to keep confiding in you so you don’t want to come down too hard on them when they tell the truth.

At the same time, you don’t want them to think it’s okay to become a heroine dealer, sleep around, and kidnap other people’s pet gerbils as long as they fess up quickly after the fact. It’s a tightrope we walk, balancing the olive branch of honesty in one hand and the hammer of “YOU DID WHAT?” in the other.

In general, my balancing act looks something like this:

Notice that as the child increases in foreknowledge that what they are doing is wrong, the seriousness of the consequences increases. Also, if the child confesses quickly, the consequences will be less severe than if, for example, they reach a 10 on the graph which involves lying repeatedly, blaming a sibling for the wrongdoing and possibly swearing a blood oath of innocence before finally confessing to the misdeed after hours of intense interrogation, including but not limited to, denying the child food while eating Mike and Ikes 3 inches from his face.

All that being said, I think any child should receive one get-out-of-jail-free card the first time he uses Magic as an excuse, but only if he does it with a huge grin on his face.

HTC Incredible – DROID

April 28, 2010 by Kathryn

So I’ve been playing around with the Motorola Droid for a few weeks and I’m gonna share some thoughts on the experience soon. However, I’m first going to jump to the end and say that I LOVE the Droid.

I had all but decided to buy one when I found out that its hotter younger brother was coming to town April 29th so after much thought, consideration, reading rave reviews, plunking down $199, squealing, and stalking the UPS package online, I am pleased to announce that our new command center is safely home A DAY BEFORE RELEASE and charging happily on the windowsill. I’m not sure if you can see but he already has a Wanda fingerprint on his face. I’m sure he likes it. I hope he doesn’t catch her ear infection.

I’ll be sure to let you know if it lives up to all the hype when I surface from the technological honeymoon.