To all you great father’s out there who are really involved in the lives of your kids, Happy Father’s Day to you! When father’s are involved in their children’s lives everyone, and I think even the dad’s themselves, are better off. Just like having a good mother, a good father is critical to a child’s well being. The same stuff holds true for great father’s that I mentioned in my almost record breaking viewed mother’s day post.
Much has changed in a father’s role over the last 50 years, and I think so far that change has been good!
Father’s Day is coming up on June 15! Fathers are playing an expanding role in the care and nurturing of their kids especially while they are little…more than they ever have before.
I would like to wish the many great father’s out there a Happy Father’s Day a few days in advance.
For those new fathers who can’t be there when their babies are born or soon thereafter because they are in the military, we offer free subscriptions to Babble Soft applications through our partnership with eMail Our Military. Even though we now have men and women in our military, the majority of the military is still men and often young fathers.
For all other father’s you know who want to get involved in the early care of their newborns, we are offering 15% off purchase of all subscriptions through June 15 using code FATHER#1. There isn’t a better reason for new dads to be on the Internet or their mobile devices than helping keep up with baby’s activities and milestones. 🙂
So in addition to all of those power tools, electronics, toys, and other gadgets that are typical gifts for Father’s Day, you can also give a new or expecting dad a fun and easy way to can get involved in those early days of childhood.
What do 5 White Men, Rebranding, and Dads have in common? Well other than the fact that Dads are usually men, probably not a whole lot. These are just some of the interesting things happening around the blogosphere.
5 White Men Talk About Social Media was written by Connie Reece at Every Dot Connects. Connie is a huge presence in the world of social media especially here in Austin, yet was overlooked for a panel on Social Media the Chamber of Commerce was putting on. She voices her frustration at women still being “invisible” even when they are playing a major role in the world of social media. Connie got me started in blogging almost a year ago! She is also one of the main reasons the Frozen Pea Fund initiative got started as a result of Susan Reynolds struggle with breast cancer. Here’s a quote from her post:
This afternoon I got an email from fellow Dot-Connector Brenda Thompson with the subject line: “Five White Men Talk About Social Media.” That got my attention and I opened the email right away. …
It irked me too. It’s not like the organizers would have had to look very far to find some outstanding women to speak, and I’m not just referring to myself. In less than 30 seconds, Brenda and I came up with a list of five or six local women who would have made great panelists.
See, lists are easy to make. But women on lists are still invisible if conference organizers aren’t looking for the list.
Looking Minnesota. Feeling California and The Gaping Void Between Our Brand And Our Audience were two recent posts written by Wendy Piersall of eMoms at Home. After her recent trip to SXSW Interactive, she realized she needed to rebrand because many of her readers are not eMoms or even parents! I love Wendy’s blog for a variety of reasons but mostly because she is open and honest about her experience as an entrepreneur and she readily shares her blogging and business tips. We met through our blogs, had a couple of phone conversations and when we finally met in person at SXSW, it was like we just “got each other” as entrepreneurs and as moms! I’m not sure if she has come to a decision on the new name, so go check out her posts and give her your 2 cents!
AllTop Dads launches. Thanks to Guy Kawasaki of How to Change the World my entrepreMusings blog is near the top of AllTop Moms blogger list. It’s a great place to go to check out all the top mommy and daddy bloggers. If you don’t know Guy, he was once asked to interview for the CEO position at Yahoo!take on the CEO position of Google and he turned the opportunity to interview down thinking there’s no way Google Yahoo! would amount to much. He often refers to it as his $4 billion dollar mistake, but he reflects back and realizes that instead he was able to be involved in his children’s lives, which is priceless!
So as I said when I began this post, there isn’t much in common between these links, but all are great reads!
I’m so excited to say that the first official video of Babble Soft Applications went live today on DadLabs – Gear Daddy. I have wanted to do a video demonstration of our applications for a long time now but I was cycling through my entrepreneurial hats so fast, that I didn’t have the time or money to do a really nice one. So now thanks to all the cool dads at DadLabs we have our very first one and it cost me some beers was relatively free!
Go to their site and please Digg/Stumble the post if you like it. They are fellow entrepreneurs and the more hits/visits they get to their site the more loved they feel and more importantly the more cool advertisers they can attract. Sitter City is their sponsor this week. Plus they always make me laugh which is one of my 2008 goals! If you for some reason you need even more incentive to go to their site, I’ve embedded the video below:
I also just found out that it’s on YouTube also. So you can check it out there too:
I have written about DadLabs before at DadLabs Keeps Us Laughing and I’m writing about them again because they are cool, professional, funny, laid-back, politically correct, and because Daddy Troy just interviewed me/Babble Soft yesterday for a Gear Daddy episode that will air in January 2008!
Daddy Clay also included Babble Soft in a piece in our local Austin American Statesman called Gifts for new or expectant parents that went online today and will be in the print edition tomorrow. Such thoughtfulness!
Our relationship with DadLabs is just one of the reasons I think being in Austin, Texas is so cool. It’s such a friendly, connected town that is so supportive of small companies. Many of us entrepreneurs know that it’s a long road full of challenges, good decisions, bad decisions, no money, some money, nice guys/gals, not-so-nice guys/gals until (or if) we reach our goals of sharing our products and ideas (profitably) with the world and it’s nice to be able to help each other out!
As I was leaving their studio, Daddy Owen was preparing to put on a Pregnancy Sympathy Belly for his Prego Man experience. They have a very verbally forthright video on their blog with their pitch to Daddy Owen as to why he should be the one who plays the pregnant dad at Daditude – Prego Man the Pitch that I thought would be a bit too verbally graphic to embed here. But for those who don’t have kids in earshot or want to see Dads talking about how it is to be pregnant, check it out.
I will, however, embed The Lounge – Mother-in-Law where they interview the moms who wrote Baby Proofing your Marriage, that I’ve mentioned before, sharing their thoughts about experiences with their mother-in-law. Enjoy!
UPDATE: When embedding the video it broke the layout of the following posts on Firefox (thanks Pearl for the heads up) so I had to remove it. You can always check the video out by clicking here.
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.’ “
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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!
Life With Father: What Kids Get From Time With Dad written by Sue Shellenbarger, writer for the Wall Street Journal’s Work and Family section begins with “Amid Father’s Day celebrations this week, many young dads will be harboring a little secret guilt: They feel they should be more like moms — traditional ones, that is, who spend a lot of time at home.”
You might wonder why I’m writing about this particular article and the answer is because a friend of mine, Thom Singer, is quoted in it! I’ve known Thom Singer and his wife for a few years now, and he is one of the few guys I know who actually used to be a stay-at-home dad when his kids were little. I have several friends who have stay-at-home husbands but I don’t see their husbands very often. Thom and I run in the same business circles here in Austin, and he’s proud of the fact that he was a stay-at-home dad which is refreshing in an often old-school, male dominated business environment here in Texas. I recently saw him at a local Texchange event where out of 120 attendees less than about 20 were women.
Since Thom has been a blogger for quite some time (check out his blog at Some Assembly Required) he has been a great person to talk with about establishing my blog!
Happy Father’s Day to all you great Dads out there!
Aruni
p.s. Don’t forget that our 20% off Father’s Day code, FATHER#1, is good through the end of the month (June 2007).
According to an editorial written in the Austin American Statesman on June 12, 2007 called Multi-tasking men, women arriving at the same place, “The roles that American men and women assume have been seriously battered the past few decades, enough that men and women are beginning to resemble one another. In attitudes anyway.” It goes on further to say: “A recent compilation of the research, interviews and studies about gender roles found men and women growing more alike in their views, especially about parenting. Long gone are the days when males did the work, brought home the paycheck and had little to do with the children. Just as gone are the days when women stayed home with the kids, cooked and cleaned. ”
I have certainly seen the increased involvement from fathers in child rearing within my peer group, but I wouldn’t say those days are “long gone” because I know several moms who do pretty much all the (non-paid) work at home whose husbands do all the (paid) work outside the home.
I believe we are in the midst of an interesting shift in American/Western society.
The week before Father’s Day (Sunday, June 17) is finally upon us and I thought it might be interesting to write a short post about the origination of the day as well as provide you with some other neat links. In the US, the first modern Father’s Day was celebrated on July 5, 1908 in Fairmont, WV. It is also suggested that Sonora Smart Dodd drove the effort to establish the Day to honor her father, a single parent of six children. The first June Father’s Day was celebrated on June 19, 1919 in Spokane, WA.
There are many things you can do for your father and/or father of your children and if you aren’t able to do anything really mind boggling this year, then there is always the ‘ole t-shirt option.
With all that said, remember that Dads tend to like gadgets over ties so use the 20% off special going on this month to buy him or any expecting dads a gift subscription to Baby Manager. Remember that you can take advantage of the special to buy gifts for numerous baby showers you are about to attend (subscriptions aren’t activated until the user first logs on)!
Aruni
p.s. Baby Manager’s name is derived from the well known fact that babies “manage us” and the best we can do is try to keep up by using cool, new software. 😉
Kelly Burrus recently informed me of Mommy Talk’s Father’s Day Contest. You can nominate your Dad or husband for the award and he could win a $150 gift certificate to Lowes. Your essay will also be published in the Feature section of their site. Here’s all you have to submit and how to submit it:
Profile: Name
Number of Children
How Long Have They Been A Father
Skills/Hobbies/Interests
Short Answer:
* Why do you believe he is deserving of the “Best Dad Ever” title?
* The most important lesson he has taught each individual family member is…
* Share a story that clearly illustrates just how special he is.
Once finished, email your application, along with any pictures/additions that show just how wonderful they are, to info@mommytalk.com. Submissions will be judged by our selected panel of moms. Submissions must be emailed in by June 15th and the winner will be announced on Father’s Day, June 17th.
I plan to nominate my husband because he’s a wonderful father and that $150 gift certificate will be exactly what he needs to get the Father’s Day present he wants (now that our kids are no longer babies, because otherwise I would surely get him a gift subscription to Baby Manager! 🙂
Aruni
Author:Aruni | Filed under:dad, father, Father's Day | Comments Off on MommyTalk.com Celebrates Father’s Day with “Best Ever Dad” Contest
As I was driving back from dropping my son off at his pre-school today, I heard a radio announcement by washington post.com mentioning a recent article on The Birthrate of Boys Is Declining by Rick Weiss that starts off with “If you are thinking of having children and want to have a boy, you might want to book that romantic weekend getaway soon. Boys are getting harder to make, according to a new analysis.” [You can register for free on their site to see the full article] They have observed this phenomenon is the US and Japan. Some of the reasons cited had to do with fewer males being conceived as well as the current hypothesis of greater exposure to gender-bending pollutants. What does this mean for the fathers of the future?
Interestingly (prior to hearing the article mentioned on the radio), the ‘bug guy’ as we call him came to the house this morning. The kids were with me but we left soon after he was done with the inside and he continued to spray the outside. Coincidentally, I asked him what he knew about pesticides, pregnant women, and babies. Previously I had heard that exposure to certain pesticides while in utero can result in learning disabilities (e.g. autism) later in the baby’s life. He said he has been following it closely. He said he sprays very lightly if there is a pregnant woman in the house and since he typically uses very safe chemicals he doesn’t think there is a big risk. I remember asking him not to spray inside the house when I was pregnant and when the kids were babies. I figured 6 to 12 months of having a few extra bugs in the house was worth managing the potential long term risk; he still sprayed on the outside because here in Texas we have all kinds of ants and other crawly things especially when it rains a lot. We have a boy and a girl, and I believe the bug guy has 4 girls from two different marriages. It gave me pause.
If any of you parents and/or scientists (real or pretend) out there have anything to share about this phenomenon, please leave a comment and let us know your opinions, thoughts, and ideas.
For the first time in 20 years Bill Gates (founder of Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) and Steve Jobs (founder of Apple, NEXT, and Pixar) sat down for a joint interview on May 30, 2007 for the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital D5 Conference. The interview is hilarious and awe inspiring! Bill and Steve have achieved such outstanding professional success and their companies have affected many of our daily lives more profoundly than any other high technology companies to date. Microsoft and Apple laid the groundwork and helped train individuals who have since created companies of their own that have enabled email, blogging, Internet browsing, mobile devices, and Internet search (don’t tell Google) for the masses. Being an entrepreneur, I can appreciate how much effort, energy, and passion it takes to build even the smallest of businesses and for each of them to make it from Founder/CEO and still be heavily involved with their company’s decades later (even though Jobs had a little break during his career at Apple) is down right jaw dropping!
Bill married Melinda French in 1994 and they have 3 children born in 1996, 1999, and 2002. Steve’s first child was born in 1978. He later married Laurene Powell in 1991 and they have 3 children who were presumably born after 1991. Babble Soft released its first PC/Pocket PC version of Baby Manager in 2005 (just after our second child was born) and we released Baby Manager Web and Mobile in March 2007 so it’s unlikely we will have the chance to say that two of the most famous dads in the technology world used our software when their kids were born. Oh well, maybe some other up and coming dads in the tech world will discover us before their babies are born!
I’d like to think that if the technology behind mobile devices, the Internet, and Babble Soft had existed when the children of these well known dads were born that Bill and Steve would have enjoyed playing around with Baby Manager Web and Mobile. I could just see them and/or their wives giving their nannies a mobile device and showing them how to easily input information with a touch of a screen or click of a button. Later, they or their wives could log in to a web application to see how things were going at home and leave notes to their nannies, spouses, family, and friends. Or they could use their mobile device and sync via cradle or over-the-air to Baby Manager Web and get a real time update on baby. An entrepreneur can dream, can’t she? 😀
Baby Manager was created using Microsoft technologies. The application works with the most commonly used browsers (e.g., Internet Explorer, Safari, and Firefox) and the latest Microsoft OS based PDAs and Smartphones. One of the reasons we created a web application was because expecting parents were emailing us asking when we would have a version that ran on the Mac. In 2005, I was barely holding my head above water with 2 little ones, so we put PR on hold until recently so we could more effectively use our limited resources to reach all the interested, Internet savvy new parents in the world. We do use our Mac to create graphics and design product literature. However, the PCs in our office outnumber the Macs…but if Macs start running Windows then the ratio might change.
The most interesting observation I can make about these two famous dads is that they have very different personalities, followed their own paths, have different strengths & weaknesses, and achieved financial success by being true to their own visions. As someone who also interviews people on the topic of success, this observation further affirms my belief that ‘people should follow their own path to success, not try to mimic someone else’s.’ Every second that passes the world is different, and what has worked for others in the past may not work in the present. There’s a reason we all have different fingerprints!
In honor of Father’s Day, Babble Soft is offering 20% off on subscriptions of Baby Manager during the month of June 2007 using coupon code FATHER#1.
We thought about offering 15% off for Fathers’ Day because we have noticed that dads generally need less incentive to try out new technology and gadgets. However, in the interest of fairness and to acknowledge men’s more active roles (check out Daddy Clay’s blog) in the parenting gig, we decided to match our Mother’s Day offer. Plus since about 42% of customers who purchased Baby Manager in the past were guys (who we assume were new fathers) we thought they deserved the same discount. 😎
In this day and age men are much more involved in parenting and although they can’t have babies or breastfeed (yet), overall they are generally more helpful around the house and with a new baby than their dads were (i.e., change diapers, get up at night, feed the baby, do dishes, etc.). So if you know a new or expecting dad, get them a subscription to Baby Manager for Father’s Day and give them an excuse to play around with cool, new technology while helping out their spouse (which may be you)! You can even take it for a test drive by signing up for a FREE Trial.
Dads, you now have a reason to replace your existing phone with a cool, new Smartphone; to assist the mother of your child in ways neither you nor she ever expected you could. Imagine your wife asking you when and how much you last fed the baby and you being able to drag your mobile device off the nightstand and say in a sleep-deprived tone of voice “Honey, she had 3.5 oz of breastmilk/formula at 2:42 AM and I changed her diaper at 2:30 AM.” She then replies “oh, thank goodness it’s 3:00 AM and I can go back to sleep for a little while longer…you’re the greatest!” This scene can be a reality for all the tech savvy, new dads out there if you choose wisely and give them a subscription to Baby Manager for Father’s Day! For a wonderful testimonial from a dad user see below.
Happy Father’s Day to all you Super Dads out there! 😀
Testimonial “My wife and I are missionaries in Bolivia. Our first child was born here while our extended family was in the U.S. On our own for child care, we found that waking up every few hours to feed and change the baby was challenging.
Since we wanted to put our baby on a schedule, we decided it was best to take shifts at night. My wife took care of him from 11 p.m. until 3 a.m., and I took care of him from 3 a.m. until about 10 a.m. We shared responsibilities during the daytime. We learned quickly that it was not helpful for me to get up with the baby at 3 a.m. only to have to wake up my wife and ask her when he was last fed. When we downloaded Baby Manager for Pocket PC, it transformed childcare in our house.
First, we no longer needed to bother the other person with questions about diaper changes, bottle feedings, and breast feedings. It was all there. Second, since my wife breastfed our baby and pumped, Baby Manager provided an easy way to ensure she was “keeping up” with the baby by pumping as much milk as he needed. Finally, not only did we have the answers to our pediatrician’s questions, she was actually impressed with the level of detail and information we had from the reports on bottle feedings, breast feedings, diaper changes, etc.
Baby Manager helped us get through the first difficult months of child care. We needed to develop the good habit of recording important information about our baby, and Baby Manager helped us do that. In turn, it helped me and my wife to communicate better about baby care. It is the best solution for a single parent, or for a family with multiple caretakers, who need to collaborate and share this vital information.
We are now expecting our second child and are excited that we can count on Baby Manager to help from day one!”
As I was driving back from dropping my son off at his pre-school today, I heard a radio announcement by 
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