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.
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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January 27, 2011
Our kids are, empirically speaking, the most charming and fascinating children in the entire world. Yet I am nonetheless forced to admit that, again speaking empirically, not everyone wants to hear about the last adorable, precocious or goofy thing they just said or did. To spare these people from my endless supply of delightful child-related [...]
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January 25, 2011
When deciding how much to share online about your kids, there’s no right answer. Some people are hyper-vigilant and post nothing. Others are super-relaxed and post anything. We fall somewhere in the middle. When we talk about our kids online, it’s using pseudonyms (“Little Sweetie” and “Little Peanut”) and taking care never to disclose schools, [...]
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January 11, 2011
Today’s paper has an article about how hard it is to preserve tight family relationships in a world where we have so many other relationships. It offered 10 signs your friendships might be hurting your family relationships: You can’t get through a meal without having a friend join you. You enjoy talking with more than [...]
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December 9, 2010
Many parents focus on preparing their children for a digital future by working on their basic math skills, helping them use a computer, or even teaching them the basics of programming. These parents are fools! If there is one thing I have learned from working with loads of developers and Internet geeks, the fundamental driver [...]
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November 22, 2010
Bill Caraher’s post on Historical Figures in Social Media drew my attention to a bevvy of ancient worlders now tweeting away: iTweetus (a Roman soldier), iHerodotus (Greek historian), and Plutarch (ditto). I love the mashup of old-nerd-meets-new-nerd, which reminds me of my own family: although as a social media geek I qualify as a new nerd, [...]
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