More tech support for:
Family
Facebook your kids? Tweet your granny? E-mail your sister? However you want to connect with (or avoid) your family members, networks can help. This page has inspiration, strategies and advice on how to harness technology to creating the family relationships you want.
You’ll find that a lot of these articles reflect my current stage of life as the mother of two young kids. But I also round up news about how Facebook, FourSquare, Twitter and other social media tools affect teens, aging parents and other family dynamics.
June 3, 2011
When I first wrote this post in October 2006, LilPnut was only a few months old, and didn’t even have his twitter handle yet. (Who can blame him? Twitter had barely been invented.) Almost five years later we have lots more experience traveling with the kids, and are much less ambitious about integrating business and [...]
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May 30, 2011
This weekend Little Sweetie asked whether she can have my computer when I die. I had to explain that she is unlikely to want it: by the time I die, my current computer will be useless. “But how about this,” I suggested instead. “When I die, you can have whatever computer I have at the [...]
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May 26, 2011
The ongoing conversation in our home about how to use social media — and in particular, how to do so in a way that is both safe and enjoyable for our kids — has helped us evolve a de facto social media policy governing how we engage with social media as a family. I decided it was time to go from de facto to actual, recorded policy. Use our policy as a jumping-off point for your own.
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May 11, 2011
When you’ve got kids, business travel is especially stressful. It’s hard for them to have mum or dad away, and it’s hard for you to miss them. Here are 5 ways that technology can help.
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May 1, 2011
“What did kids do before there were iPads?” our kids asked us last week. This question was astonishing not just as an indicator of how central the iPad has become to our family life, but of how incredibly short our kids’ memories are. “What do you mean, ‘kids’?” I replied. “What did you guys do [...]
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April 30, 2011
Wondering how you can get your kids to think about the pros and cons of social media and social networking? This fairy tale introduces the joys of life online and the stakes of choosing between different online communities.
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April 25, 2011
A few years ago somebody broke into our office and stole a couple of new-in-box hard drives, a giant cake knife and a colleague’s little Cambodian Buddha. I figure the stolen Buddha pretty much guarantees the thief will get his karmic retribution, but that didn’t ease the sting of losing one other, deeply sentimental possession. [...]
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April 17, 2011
One of the Internet’s most ambitious and durable experiments in local community networking began in October 1993. That’s when the Blacksburg Electronic Village officially opened to the community of Blacksburg, Virginia, thanks to a partnership with Virginia Tech. This weekend we remember Virginia Tech in a much sadder light: as the site of an horrific [...]
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February 3, 2011
Yesterday Little Sweetie returned home without her retainer. This is the moment we have been dreading for the four months since she got it. While interrogating her about possible locations for said orthodontic appliance, I couldn’t help digressing into a conversation about possible ways of keeping track of her retainer in the future. Here are [...]
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January 28, 2011
Facebook can be a great way to share your family news with a small circle of friends — if you’re smart about using privacy settings. This post rounds up the recommendations from my series on Facebooking the kids.
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January 27, 2011
In my last post I explained how to set up a Facebook list that includes only the small number of people with whom you want to share kid-related content. That list should include only people who you know well, trust absolutely, and who are actively interested in your kids. Now that you’ve got your “kid-sharing [...]
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