I'm the Dad, That's Why

Stowe Boyd: Connected Kids

I pulled some data from a presentation from the K5 Learning Blog. Kids today are amazingly connected, but less involved in the physical world:

More US kids aged 2-5 can play a computer game than ride a bike.

19% of kids aged 2-5 know how to play a smartphone app; 9% know how to tie their…

(Source: underpaidgenius, via stoweboyd)

1 year ago

fastcompany:

Fast Company asked several of the most creative ad agencies in the world to rebrand baby girls.

Agency: Cramer-Krasselt Target Demo: U.S. Couples The Ad Folks: This Chicago-based agency is America’s second-largest indie and has worked with Corona, Hilton, and Porsche. Their Campaign Strategy: Ads mock the conventional choice by presenting challenging, funny facts about raising boys. National print ads, signage in pregnancy-test sections of drugstores, and QR (quick-response) codes on boys’ clothing in retail outlets steer prospective parents to more data at hopeitsagirl.com.

(via fastcompany)

1 year ago

Just Dance 3 for Xbox 360 Kinect House Party

On Saturday night, we held our first (and definitely not last) Just Dance 3 house party, with a little help from Ubisoft and House Party, who sent me a copy of both Just Dance 3 and Just Dance for Kids 2 for review. We fired up the Xbox 360 Kinect, set out some snacks, and had a surprisingly great time.

The game was very easy to setup. No tricky calibration, or linking to profiles. We set it to the main screen, and immediately browsed the long list of songs to find our first dance. My 12 and 15 year old boys were impressed with the song list, with some of the most recent hits like “Party Rock Anthem” and “Forget You”, and some of the, uh, older folks liked “Boogie Wonderland” and “I Was Made for Loving You”.

Here’s the cool part: There were 12 year old girls that we knew would love to dance, but I seriously doubted that my 15 year old boy would be fighting for dance time, but he was. And he could really move!

One of the 12 year old girls wanted to see her dad dance, and he vehemently declined. She flashed the puppy dog eyes at him, and after a minute or two, he relented, and tore it up with Apache. Worth the price of admission!

I’ve seen the power of videogames first hand, and I’ve spent hours and hours teaching my 40-something friends to play Rock Band or DDR. But I was unprepared at how quickly everyone jumped into playing Just Dance 3, and how mesmerized we all were watching everyone dance. Kinect made it an experience that was completely intuitive to everyone, and nobody can wait for the next time we get together!

I’d highly recommend this game to anyone this holiday, and if you don’t have a Kinect, this is the game that will push you over the edge to get one.

1 year ago

9 Foods Not to Give Your Kids

Well, I guess I’ll have to completely revise my entire shopping list…

1 year ago

The new Blue October album was written from the perspective of Justin Furstenfeld shares his experience divorcing and losing custody of his daughter. This is one of the more upbeat tracks. “…Useless things, boxes labeled ‘memories,’ … ya we can leave those things behind.”

1 year ago

Groceries. My son asked what the catch was, because I brought home donut holes. It made me sad. It’s all temporary…

1 year ago

The 10 Commandments of Bad Parenting

My personal how-to guide!

1 year ago

Trash Can Jenga?

1 year ago

COPIER DOWN!

I hate it when our copier is down, but luckily, we have Seal Team Jason to fix things up…

1 year ago

Blog Post: Facebook Lists Keep Your Circles Close

Everyone is talking about Circles, but Facebook Lists are a great way to keep things private and relevant. It’s worth taking a little time to set up Facebook Lists to keep your Circle of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances separate. Just yesterday, I mentioned to a friend that I only have my Facebook Chat open to certain Lists, and she admitted that she didn’t know that was possible.

Create Lists
If you haven’t already, you can create lists under Account/Edit Friends. Think of the groups of friends you might have, and how you might interact differently with one group vs. another. I have Lists for friends, family, co-workers, people from my home town, and a couple of Lists I want to give limited access to.

Add People to Lists
Facebook makes it easy to add people to Lists. You can scroll through them one at a time, or you can let Facebook “Suggest” people to add to a List. I was surprised at how intelligently Facebook made suggestions for each List, based on who was in the List already. It quickly allowed me to fill up each List, even though I have a bunch of friends that weren’t in any Lists.

Control What Each List Sees
You’ve probably heard about Facebook Privacy settings, but if not, you should take a little time to adjust the settings for each List. Look under Account/Privacy Settings. I have a couple of groups that I don’t want to share some information with, like a few of my kids’ friends that added me. For example, I block them from knowing what locations I check into. To exclude some Lists, select Customize Settings, then select “Customize” from the drop down list for each of the “Things I share”

Select Some Lists for Chat
Once you have your Lists set up, it’s easy to narrow down those you want to Chat with. Simply turn off the slider switch to appear offline to some of your Lists.

Share a status update with a List
You might want to share some information with only some of your Lists. Under the update, select the lock icon, and if you want to exclude some lists, select Customize. Simple as that.

Taking a bit of time to set up Lists can enhance your privacy, and make Facebook a more enjoyable place to be for everyone.

1 year ago