8 kid-inspired features for Apple’s iOS 7

For the past couple of years, our kids’ favorite bedtime stories have featured a feline protagonist whose best friend is Apple CEO Tim Cook. In each story, Tim Cook teleports this cat to Cupertino (Apple HQ), where Tim and cat work on various cat-friendly...

What to tell your kids about dating before the Internet

Hey, old people!  By which I mean: hey, people my age! If you’ve been wondering what dating wisdom you can usefully impart to your teenage or soon-to-be teenage kids, you should read Stephanie Martin’s thoughtful post on Dating in the Social Media Age....

Multiplication table app round-up: Blog post wanted

Learning multiplication tables ought to be a lot easier — or at least a lot more fun — in the age of the iPad and iPhone. That’s why I’d love someone to write a blog post rounding up different multiplication table apps.

Help your kids learn with Etsy and the Maker Faire

Tonight Little Sweetie was thrilled to learn that she has been accepted into the Vancouver Maker Faire, a DIY festival we attended last year. She loved it, and immediately wanted to run her own booth, based on her Etsy store,  2 Dots 1 Symbol, which sells emoticon...

Stop blaming yourself for your kids’ challenges

Today’s practice: Focus on healing your kids, not on figuring out how you’ve damaged them. In the past year a number of very important and dear people in our lives have started or grown their families in a way not everybody knows is possible: by adopting...

Make a family tech schedule

Today’s practice: Make a family tech schedule. We recently took the bold, terrifying step of pulling all the gaming consoles (Xbox, Playstation and Wii) out of our home media center, and sending them on a vacation to the closet. We took this measure in response...

Stop worrying about your kids’ online future

I’m one of more than a thousand Internet experts who contributed thoughts about our emergent digital world to the 2012 Elon University-Pew Internet & American Life study on the future of the Internet. My comments were picked up in the Globe and...

5 online calendars your family can’t live without

If you think online calendaring is for scheduling business meetings, appointments and the occasional lunch date, you’re missing out. Online calendars can also be a great way to bring order to the chaos of family life — if you create or subscribe to the...