Marc Andreessen’s 11 lessons learned about blogging
Jul 10 2007

I think I’m a blogger without a niche.  I started this blog to help build awareness of Babble Soft.  People typically think that I should spend my time reading mommy blogs, but I find that I gravitate to business, technology and entrepreneurship blogs.  For instance, I happened upon Marc Andreessen’s blog a few weeks ago and simply downright enjoy what he writes about!  Marc was a co-founder of Netscape, and his blog raised in the ranks so quickly that he recently got overwhelmed with the time it takes to moderate comments so he’s no longer accepting comments.  He writes on entrepreneurship, lessons learned, venture capital, his experiences and his new venture Ning.  Reading what he writes reminds me of my first entrepreneurial endeavor and all the ins and outs of working with VCs and large customers.  I was even able to contribute a few things to the discussion.  I hope he opens up comments again but in the meantime check out his latest post on Eleven lessons learned about blogging, so far.   I really need to learn more about StumbleUpon.  Oh where or where does the time go???

I still have a lot to learn about blogging myself and right now I’m trying to figure out where I fit in.  I like to write about babies, parenting, business, entrepreneurship, women, and random funny stuff.  I’m not particularly drawn to the stereotype mommy blogs.  I am attracted to blogs written by knowledgeable women whether they are mothers or not.  You can see from my blogroll that the women-led blogs I visit frequently are: eMomsatHome, Burningbird, and The Lactivist.

Now if I can just figure out how to make sufficient money from blogging to put towards future development of applications for Babble Soft, this just might work out!

 Aruni

Breastfeeding Tip: Use Two Boppy Pillows – Baby Tip by Babble Soft
Jul 9 2007

Here’s a tip on breastfeeding a newborn:  Use TWO boppies.  When I had my son in 2002, I received a boppy (breastfeeding pillow) at my baby shower.  I really liked using it but discovered that I often had to put cushions or pillows beneath it to get our newborn son at a comfortable position for feeding.  The cushions would slip out or somehow (I don’t know how) he would kick them out.  I would then find myself hunching over and my back aching a bit after a while.  When my daughter was born in 2005, I received another one and happened to try stacking them and putting them both around my waist.  It was great!  Since I’m a bit short-waisted having the two breastfeeding pillows made me sit up straight thereby forcing me to maintain good posture (a plus).  Having two boppies was helpful to me in the cradle, cross-cradle, and football positions.  In the football position, I would put both boppies stacked on each other to my right or left and then I would place my daughter with her head toward me and her body/feet behind me resting on one of the sides of the boppy.  I used two for the first probably 12-16 weeks of her life.

Of course it’s not that easy to take a boppy with you when you are breastfeeding/nursing-in-public so on those occassions I propped them on our big, fat diaper bag because I always had it handy. 😉

If you can’t afford another boppy, try to find a really sturdy/hard cushion that you can place under the boppy for the football position.  You’d have to find two slightly firm cushions if you want to use them for the cradle and cross-cradle positions.  You can also ask a friend if they are done with their boppy…I just gave one of ours away to a friend.  We also used our boppy for tummy time, sitting support, and all sorts of fun things that I’m sure you are not supposed to use it for. 🙂

Aruni

 ***

Note to new readers: these tips are based on our experiences, as well as those of our friends and readers.  Please always consult with your doctor before implementing any tip that might impact the health of your baby.  If you have a tip you’d like to submit please send an email to babblesoft blogger for possible inclusion.  Please check the ‘baby tips’ category to make sure your tip (in some form or fashion) hasn’t already been posted.  If it has been, feel free to comment on that post and support the tip.  We also welcome respectful challenges to the tips because as is noted in our inaugural baby tip ‘everything is relative!’  We will, of course, give anyone who submits a tip we publish credit and a link back to their site!

The cell phone as a baby monitor and a hand knitted iPhone
Jul 6 2007

The Browser just ran a short piece on Babble Soft today, July 6, 2007.  Maybe that’s the reason our Technorati rank broke 1,000,000!  See below for the full article…

July 6, 2007

The cell phone as baby monitor

A few years ago, when the price of wireless airtime plummeted, wireless executives sometimes talked about customers who used pairs of mobile phones as baby monitors. (The Browser suspects this is the stuff of urban legend, but a few websites do explain to the technically impaired how to perform this trick.)

Now along comes Babble Soft, an upstart that can turn a number of so-called “smartphones” into a different sort of baby monitor. (Company founder Aruni Gunasegaram, a mother of two, prefers the term “baby manager.”) Gunasegaram has created a web-based application that helps new parents keep track of feedings, sleep schedules and other newborn activities and milestones that pediatricians often ask moms and dads to track. A mobile version of the application, available for many smartphones, such as the Treo, allows users to access their baby data on the go. (Think Google Calendar for the diaperpail set.)

Gunasegaram says she came up with the idea shortly after her son was born more than four years ago. She found herself keeping track of his feeding schedule on assorted scraps of paper. She and her husband scoured the ‘Net for an online service that could help them. They couldn’t find one, and a business was born.

Now it isn’t clear to Browser exactly how many new parents, mom’s especially, will have the inclination (or presence of mind) to go online and enter data about baby’s every move. But Babblesoft’s product does have one nifty feature any new mom will love: It can provide tallys of how much time she’s spent taking care of her little bundle of joy. “Sometimes you think, ‘What have I done all day?’ ” Gunasegaram says. “You can look and say, ‘Oh, I spent five hours today nursing.’ “

****

Interestingly, they also ran a piece called Will the soccer moms buy it? in reference to soccer moms buying the iPhone by Apple (sooo much hype about the iPhone and sooo little time to read all about it).  According to their source, 60% of soccer moms would not buy one.  I’m not a soccer mom (yet) and even if I wanted to buy it, who has $600 + peripheral fees + monthly service fees laying around?!?  I’d rather spend the money on my kids, a day at the spa, or building Babble Soft!  Or better yet we could spend it on making our application iPhone compatible!  But here’s something soccer moms probably would want to buy for their kids:  a hand knitted iPhone!  Daddy Types‘ mother created it.  What a cool mom!

Babble Soft’s Blog breaks the 1,000,000 mark on Technorati
Jul 6 2007

I was just (10:30 a.m. CST, July 6, 2007) checking out our page on Technorati and was pleasantly surprised that Babble Soft’s blog was ranked at 967,771.  I know we still have a long way to go but nonetheless it is a milestone. 🙂

If you go here and favorite our blog, I think we will move up in the ranking…next stop 750,000!

Now if we had 967,771 users of Baby Manager, I would be ecstatic, opening up a bottle of wine, and throwing a party right here in my home office all by myself!

Inside Out Teddy Bears?
Jul 5 2007

I recently subscribed to a blog called Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things and saw a post on Inside Out Teddy Bears.  How interesting.  As stated below, I agree that people will tend to feel more empathy for these creatures than feel comforted by them.  I wonder if Build-A-Bear workshop will start offering the option to create these inside out stuffed animals?  See below for the entire post: 

Here’s an interview with artist Kent Rogowski, about his “Bears” photographs. Furry, huggable teddybears, gutted and inverted. 

Q: I love these bears so much. They remind me of my early sewing experiments. What happens when you take such a beloved and iconic toy and transform it by literally turning it inside out?

A: (…) Teddy bears are designed to be innocuous and non-threatening creatures. Inside-out the bears are still sometimes recognizable but are now much more complicated and contradictory. The seams of the bear now look like scars, and some bears lose their limbs and other appendages depending on how they were constructed. When you look at the inside-out bears they appear to have a history or a past. They no longer offer comfort but instead seem to want our empathy.

These are phenomenal. I think this one’s my favorite — the poor li’l guy looks like he’s all tubed in to a catheter or an oxygen tank. Link to interview by Nicole Pasulka at The Morning News, here’s the gallery show in NYC through August 10, and here’s an Amazon Link to buy the book (thanks Rosecrans!).

MomFacts.com – For Mother’s of Kids: Pregnancy to Toddler
Jul 5 2007

I recently received a blind email from MomFacts.com.  The email encouraged me to submit our website and blog for inclusion in their site and newsletters.  I checked them out and it seems like their primary business is selling funny t-shirts surrounding pregnancy and kids.  So I joined and submitted our blog and company websites…we’ll see what happens.  I feel kind of odd submitting for sites like this on a blind email, but if it helps more people find us, then I suppose it’s a good thing to do.  Right?  I guess time will tell.

Aruni

Rain, Rain Go Away – Happy 4th of July
Jul 3 2007

It seems like it’s been raining here in Texas pretty much non-stop for the last several weeks.  I’ve never seen so much rain the entire time I’ve lived in Austin, which has been 14 years on and off.  I just got back home (now I’m in the home office) after a lunch meeting.  It was drizzling with the sun breaking through the clouds for the last couple of hours and now it’s pouring!  We have had record levels of rain, the lakes are high, AND they have canceled 4th of July Fireworks shows around town due to excessive rain.  People can’t even go boating on the lakes.  If this keeps up they could have filmed Evan Almighty here and saved a bunch of money! 🙂

We will be heading to a friend’s house who lives on the lake for their annual 4th of July party (despite there being no fireworks tonight) this evening so hopefully the rain will let up a bit for the kids to run around outside and play.

Here are some pictures of the rain that was just coming down outside of our house….

View from the front door:

 View of the patio floor:

View from the playroom window:

Use a Liner When Changing Diapers – Baby Advice by Babble Soft
Jul 2 2007

For the newbie parents out there, here’s a tip on diaper changing: use a liner on top of your changing pad/cover for those inevitable messy situations.  It will help you avoid having to wash your changing pad cover 5 times per day.  We had 2 changing pad covers (terry cloth) with our son and 3 with our daughter and let me tell you if you don’t have a liner you will be doing laundry twice a day!  We used PeeWees Disposable Multi-Use Pads and found them to be thin enough to put on top of a changing pad, easy enough to take with us when we were traveling, and very cost effective.  They were so useful that you might even want to check out the 3-pak because you’ll probably need them for at least the first 6 months of baby’s life.  😯

Aruni

 ***

As a reminder, these tips are based on our experiences, as well as those of our friends and readers.  Please always consult with your doctor before implementing any tip that might impact the health of your baby.  If you have a tip you’d like to submit please send an email to babblesoft blogger for possible inclusion.  Please check the ‘baby tips’ category to make sure your tip (in some form or fashion) hasn’t already been posted.  If it has been, feel free to comment on that post and support the tip.  We also welcome respectful challenges to the tips because as is noted in our inaugural baby tip ‘everything is relative!’  We will, of course, give anyone who submits a tip we publish credit and a link back to their site!

Twins – Twice the Mess and Twice the Fun
Jul 2 2007

I can’t imagine having twins given that our eldest barely slept the first several years of his life!  I learned about blog carnivals from Wendy at eMomsatHome and submitted a post to be included in the Twin Carnival and The Twinkies were gracious enough to include it!  Baby Manager is ideal for parents of twins because it’s probably twice as hard to keep up with their activities and remember who did what when.  We are working hard on adding a sleep feature that if all goes well will be out by end of year or early next. :-Zzzzz

Aruni

Mom-To-Be Depot Launched June 26, 2007
Jun 28 2007

Mom-To-Be Depot just went LIVE this week.  I wish they were around when I was expecting.  What a great resource for expecting moms!  Mom-To-Be is Your one-stop-shoppe for everything you need when you’re expecting – “must-have” products, expert advice and more!  See below for their review (4th one down) of Baby Manager!

We LOVE This product!!
Baby has arrived – how do you track feeding, pumping, medicine, etc.?
BabbleSoft keeps you right on track.  They created “Baby Manager” – a web and mobile software that helps you track all the important things – from diaper changes, to feeding times, and more. You can take notes, upload photos, allow your healthcare professionals access to this.  It’s so cool because now you finally don’t have to write everything down and keep things organized in a notebook.  Join the 21st century and have it all tracked for you. We think this is a pretty cool tool.  When the doctor asked me how often the baby ate, when I was nursing, how long on each side, etc. – I hadn’t a clue.  I guessed – and was probably way off.  When you’re at the pediatricians office and they ask how many ounces does the baby drink in a day – I hadn’t a clue.  Some quick math made me guess way beyond what the real number actually was.  Now, I can give accurate information – and know what’s going on.  Why do you need to know all this?  Because babies develop patterns and cues to ensure their health and happiness.  This tool helps you accomplish that.  Go to www.babymanager.com for a free trial!

I don’t know about you but when looking at the review above ours for My Lacy’s panties, I wondered if the woman who is modeling the underwear has ever been pregnant. I know my tummy doesn’t look like that after having had 2 kids.  😕

Aruni

Babble Soft and Rackspace Partner Up
Jun 26 2007

Some of you may have heard about our webhosting issues, but in case you haven’t here’s the scoop:  We have gleefully left our old host and their bad technical support behind and moved to Rackspace!  Rackspace is one of the top managed hosting companies in the world.  I have to say they have been amazing to work with…a true 180 from our prior host.  They are so responsive!  They even called us on a weekend to help us figure out a support ticket we submitted that ended up being a configuration mistake we made.  At first we were like “who are you and why are you calling us?”  It didn’t even cross our mind that they would call us to help fix the problem ASAP!  Oh so sweet.  I like working with them because their emphasis on customer support matches what we strive for.  Check out some of my thoughts on customer support on Glenn Ross’ Customer Service Experience blog.

Rackspace is a living example of ‘you get what you pay for’ and yes it’s not cheap but for our new parent users who are relying on 24/7 access to our application, it was a critical move.  We are currently boostrapping (i.e., using personal savings and borrowing from future savings) Babble Soft so please tell all of your friends and family about Baby Manager so we can continue to pay for our wonderful, powerful, consistently available, new dedicated server. 😀

If you are looking for a new webhost and would like to check out Rackspace, tell them you were referred by Aruni Gunasegaram/Babble Soft.  You will get a discount and we will get a referral fee if you sign up with them!  If you’d like a personal introduction, please email me at blogger at babblesoft dot com and I’ll put you in touch with the sales person directly.  It’s a win-win if you ask me. 8)

We are still working on getting some of our money back from our prior hosting company.  If we can’t work something out with them, you will most likely see a blog post about which hosting company NOT to use!   We have tried several times to get them on the phone but no such luck.  One time we waited over an hour on hold until we got so frustrated we hung up!  After much pain and them completely disabling our site right before and during the time we were interviewed by a local TV news station, we have thpfftd them goodbye.  Yay!

Now for the press release (pdf):

For more information, please contact:                                    

Halli Hollimon                
Rackspace Managed Hosting                                                                                                                      
(210) 447-4617                
hhollimo@rackspace.com

Aruni Gunasegaram
Babble Soft, LLC
(512) 799-8789
aruni@babblesoft.com

Babble Soft Looks to Rackspace for Managed Hosting 

Managed Hosting Specialist to Support Website Infrastructure That Helps Make New Parents’ Lives Easier 

SAN ANTONIO – June 26, 2007 – Rackspace® Managed Hosting, a leading global provider of managed hosting services, today announced an agreement with Babble Soft, a leading supplier of software solutions in the baby market.                                                                                                                                

Babble Soft’s Baby Manager Web and mobile software application is a new and innovative way to relieve some of the day-to-day pressures of new parenthood. Baby Manager, a software program that is accessible through either a computer’s Web browser or through Windows-based mobile devices and Smartphones, keeps families connected and focused on their newborn’s health and well-being by helping parents maintain records of breastfeeding times, bottle feeding times and amounts, pumping times and amounts, medicine doses, and diaper changes. Users can share access to their accounts with family and friends around the world.  They can even upload pictures and exchange notes with each other. 

“A newborn baby is a challenging and life-changing event. By choosing Rackspace’s secure and reliable infrastructure, we believe that we’ve helped to ensure our customers can access our Baby Manager application anywhere, anytime,” says Aruni Gunasegaram, president, Babble Soft. “When choosing Rackspace, we wanted a provider who could work and grow with us. With our product, scalability and capacity are keys to our success as our product continues to mature and we work on creating new products down the road.” 

“Because their IT infrastructure is Microsoft-based, they found Rackspace’s Windows expertise and Microsoft Gold Certification a true advantage,” said Glenn Reinus, senior vice president of worldwide sales, Rackspace Managed Hosting. “Babble Soft is a new business venture in the baby market that demands constant web-to-mobile synchronization availability, guaranteed uptime and a rock-solid infrastructure, which Rackspace provides through Fanatical Support.” 

About Babble Soft, LLC
Babble Soft creates brain-saving software solutions to help families stay connected and help parents ensure that new babies get what they need, thereby making the transition into parenthood a little easier. To purchase Baby Manager or to activate a Free Trial, please visit www.babblesoft.com or www.babymanager.com. To learn more please visit Babble Soft’s Blog at www.babblesoft.com/blog.

About Rackspace Managed Hosting
A recognized leader in the global managed hosting market, Rackspace Managed Hosting delivers enterprise-level managed services to businesses of all sizes. Serving more than 13,000 customers in eight data centers worldwide, Rackspace integrates the industry’s best technologies for each customer need and delivers it as a service via the company’s award-winning Fanatical Support™. Through trusted relationships, Rackspace serves as an extension of its customers’ IT departments, enabling them to focus on their core business.  Since its inception in 1998, Rackspace has grown more than 50 percent a year. For more information, please visit www.rackspace.com, or call 800-961-2888. 

Baby Sleep Ideas – Baby Advice by Babble Soft
Jun 25 2007

Many seasoned parents probably know this: When all else fails to calm your baby down (i.e., mylicon drops, gripe water, walking around the house a million times (with your baby next to your chest, in a sling, on your shoulder, or on your back), putting your baby on a running clothes dryer, standing by the refrigerator in a semi-comatose state, yelling at your partner, yelling at yourself, yelling at your baby, all sorts of herbal/homeopathic medicines, giving him/her a pacifier, giving him/her food (bottle or breast), and/or pinching yourself, try a) putting your baby in the car and driving around or b) walk outside.

Several people will tell you (they told us) that putting your baby in a car and driving them around would create bad sleeping habits.  We finally figured out we were screwed no matter what we did since our son (who is now 4 1/2) was born with the questionable ability to sleep so driving him around so that he could fall sleep would calm us down and in more cases than not put him to sleep so we wouldn’t totally lose it.   Driving around in the car was a much better solution for us than being in the same room with him while we were extremely sleep deprived and irritable (caution: don’t drive when you think you too might fall asleep!).  If you feel sleepy and your baby has fallen asleep stop the car somewhere safe and take a nap yourself.  If you are close to home see if you can take your baby out of the car (keep him/her in their car seat), bring him/her inside and crash on the nearest couch.

Several well meaning folks might also tell you that you shouldn’t take your baby outside when it’s cold.  Here in Texas it doesn’t get cold too often, but we found even on cold days taking him outside for 2-5 minutes made him look around and calm down.  The only trouble with this tactic is he would cry for a bit when we first walked outside making us (or mainly me) worry about waking the neighbors!  Thankfully, our daughter was born a wonderful sleeper because otherwise I might not have survived to write this tip!

Aruni

 ***

As a reminder, these tips are based on our experiences, as well as those of our friends and readers.  Please always consult with your doctor before implementing any tip that might impact the health of your baby.  If you have a tip you’d like to submit please send an email to babblesoft blogger for possible inclusion.  Please check the ‘baby tips’ category to make sure your tip (in some form or fashion) hasn’t already been posted.  If it has been, feel free to comment on that post and support the tip.  We also welcome respectful challenges to the tips because as is noted in our ‘inaugural’ baby tip ‘everything is relative!’  We will, of course, give anyone who submits a tip we publish credit and a link back to their site!

Yahoo! Search Marketing Ultimate Connection Competition
Jun 24 2007

I submitted an application for the Yahoo Search Marketing Ultimate Connection Competition several weeks ago in the hopes of winning $25,000 in search marketing dollars and introductions to Ivanka Trump and other top business people.  I got the automated reply saying they had received my application, and I thought they were going to notify me when the voting began but I never heard anything.  So I went back to the site to see when the decision would be made, and I discovered they had already picked the finalists and Babble Soft was not one of them.  🙁

I was hoping we would be selected because I could sure use a lot of help with picking keywords and optimizing our online advertising.  Online search is all new to me so any help I can get in making our online awareness strategy better is hugely appreciated!  I even took off the Google AdSense ads from our site (because they said no competitor ads could be running on our site during the competition).  Apparently there were over 8,500 applicants and judging from the finalists it looks like they are much more established than Babble Soft.  Oh well.  Maybe next time…

Of the 5 finalists, I decided to vote for Moms on the Edge because they had some pretty neat products plus they have a blog but it had been a while since their next to last previous post.  After submitting my vote, I noticed that Kid’s Crooked Houses was in the lead and they have a pretty neat product too.

I was disappointed that we weren’t notified of the beginning of voting especially since I am pretty sure I checked the option to be notified, but luckily I checked back and was able to submit my vote for one of the cool companies who made the first cut.  Check it out and vote for who you think should win such a fabulous award!

Aruni

Baby Manager User Stories
Jun 21 2007

To help illustrate how different people use Baby Manager (i.e., the baby is managing you!), we have begun creating user stories/case studies.

We appreciate that many new parents are uncomfortable with having their picture online or don’t want to even think about the possibility of being mentioned in print or being on TV the first year or so after they have a baby.  But if you are the type of new parent who loves the spotlight, doesn’t care about being in the process of losing those baby pounds, and loves Baby Manager, we welcome your participation with open arms!

If you are interested, please activate a FREE Trial of Baby Manager and get familiar with it. If you find that it works for your family, you want to tell the world about your great experience using it, and you are interested in being a part of our media campaign, please email us at blogger@babblesoft.com for more information and a hook-up.  It’s not as big as the Harpo Hook-Up by Oprah, but it just might be what you need. 🙂  

We will be posting all future case studies in this blog and on our Testimonial page.

So now for our very first user story about the Hayes family…drum roll please…ta dah (as my 2 year old would say)…

The Top 10 Blogging Mistakes by Wendy Piersall
Jun 20 2007

A couple of weeks ago, I ran across a wonderfully helpful post by Wendy Piersall of eMoms at Home called The Top 10 Blogging Mistakes I Made in My First Year.  Since I’m pretty new to blogging, reading her list of mistakes was an eye opener for me.  They all make great sense and the ones that I still need to figure out are:

4 – I did too much self-promotion

I’m not sure how much self-promotion is too much self-promotion because I’m not really promoting myself but my company, Babble Soft…which at this moment consists of myself, my husband (part-time), a development team in India, and a publicist (part-time).

8 – I didn’t promote my feed

I honestly don’t really know how to promote my feed.  We have some email subscribers and some RSS subscribers but other than joining MyBlogLog and Technorati and sending out a mass email inviting my friends/family to join, I haven’t had time to figure this one out.

9 – I waited too long to learn about SEO

I have heard a ton about SEO, but I also hear to get great SEO results you have to hire a guru who can be quite expensive, and we are all about keeping expenses low right now.

A picture of Wendy

I have signed up for Wendy’s 10 Days to a Better Blog free e-course and look forward to seeing more traffic to our blog in 10 days!  I’m already a day behind and I’m only on day TWO! 😯

I have one more blog post to write today and a user case study to finalize before getting to work on the e-course!

Aruni