I met a gal on twitter who tweets by the name of @MailOurMilitary and @Dayngr. Her real name is Trish. We got to tweeting and emailing and then talking.
Since Trish had gone through the hardship of being away from her husband when her first child was born, we both thought it would be a great idea to join forces to offer members of her non-profit organization, eMail Our Militaryfree subscriptions to Babble Soft applications as well as access to a discount code for 20% off purchases for non-active military and friends.
So please let the military families you know about our offer and encourage them and others to sign up at eMail Our Military. We know there is no way to make up for the lost time and touch of a parent who is away but now they have access to a free tool that can help bridge the unavoidable physical gap between two parents of a precious newborn. We wanted to give people another reason, which is often overlooked (i.e., being away from their baby), to remember all those men and women who have put their lives at home on hold and/or laid down their lives to protect our freedom.
Babble Soft and eMail our Military Join Forces to Offer Free Subscriptions to Babble Soft Applications for Active Duty Service Members with Newborns
Just in time for Memorial Day, Active Duty Service Members with Newborns now get free access to Babble Soft’s web and mobile applications through their membership at eMail Our Military.
AUSTIN, TX; MIAMI LAKES, FL – May 22, 2008 – Babble Soft and eMail our Military are partnering to offer free subscriptions to Baby Insights and Baby Say Cheese for active duty service members with newborns.
“We are very excited about the opportunity to partner with Babble Soft.” said Trish Forant, Founder and President of eMail our Military. “My husband was called into service only one week after our first child was born. I had very few friends and family to turn to for support where we were stationed and it was difficult for me to convey to him what I was going through with our new baby. I would have loved to have the online tools Babble Soft provides to communicate to him how often and when our baby was feeding, sleeping, etc. as well as important picture milestones!”
“Our goal at Babble Soft is to help strengthen and enhance connections between family members during that wonderful, yet chaotic time after a baby is born.” said Aruni Gunasegaram, founder and president of Babble Soft. “We support our troops and know how important it is for new parents who have to be away from their newborns to feel connected to what is going on at home. Partners can share experiences and photos with each other through Babble Soft’s unique web and mobile applications. As an added bonus, members of eMail our Military will have access to a discount code to purchase gift subscriptions for their other family members who may or may not have military ties.”
Baby Insights helps caregivers keep track of baby’s breast & bottle feeding, sleep periods, diaper changes, medicine doses, immunization records, as well as mom’s breastfeeding, pumping and medicine intake. Having important information stored in one location makes communication between parents, their nanny, babysitters, grandparents, or doctors seamless and reliable and gives new parents insight into their baby’s patterns to help with crucial baby care decisions.
Baby Say Cheese lets you create a wonderful online baby’s first year photo album with milestones such as ‘first crawl, first smile, first word’ and family tree that you can share with friends and family. You can even send a fun, cute picture postcards of any of your baby’s milestones to anyone with an email address!
About eMail our Military, Inc. eMail Our Military was created in 2001 as a response to the DoD’s cancellation of the “Any Service Member” and “Operation Dear Abby” mail programs. As a safe alternative, eMOM picked up where these programs left off. eMail Our Military is composed of volunteers from all walks of life who understand that regardless of our political views, our military service members deserve our respect, support & encouragement. Website visitors can join and take part in a number of support projects ranging from sending eMail on a one-on-one basis with a service member to year round support projects that are open to the public. For more information on eMail Our Military, please visit http://www.eMailOurMilitary.com
About Babble Soft, LLC Babble Soft is based in Austin, Texas and creates products that help make the transition into parenthood easier. Whether you need breastfeeding support, are experiencing baby sleep issues, are expecting twins, or taking care of a premature (preemie) baby and would like to create your baby’s first year album, Babble Soft offers unique, easy-to-use Web and Mobile software solutions that improve communication between caregivers. Babble Soft makes a great baby shower gift that you can easily send via Email to any new parent anywhere in the world! To learn more and purchase Babble Soft applications, please visit http://www.babblesoft.com.
For more information, please contact:
Trish Forant
eMail our Military, Inc.
(786) 228-7096
Info(at)eMailOurMilitary(dot)com
I saw this great post in Renee Trudeau’s recent email update and asked her if I could re-publish it on my blog and she agreed! Given what we are seeing happening around us in the economy, I thought this article was extremely relevant.
Nine Tips to Recession-Proof Your Career By Renee Peterson Trudeau
“You have the choice between being the victim of circumstances or being empowered through them.” Carol Orsborn, author, Inner Excellence: Spiritual Principles of Life-Driven Business
Many of our clients are asking how to respond to the volatility and uncertainty in the current job/economic market. Here are some insights to support you:
Move into the driver’s seat. Job stability (and loyalty) are a thing of the past. Take control of your career path. You’re in charge, don’t hand your power (or your future) over to someone else. Read the book “Work Less, Make More,” by Jennifer White.
Pause. Then, take time to plan. Now is a great time to hit the pause button and ask the important career questions: What do I most want at this life stage? What do I do best? What type of work/environment is a fit for me? (Consider attending our Career Mojo Workshop to help you hone in on how to determine what type of work is a fit for you. Click here for more information.)
Be prepared. It can take days to create a really outstanding resume. Update your resume (and cover letter) now and be thinking about references, even if you’re not ready to leap. Make sure and highlight recent awards/accomplishments/promotions.
Stay connected and make time for networking. Over and over again I meet professionals who were so consumed by their current jobs, they lost touch completely with their community and contacts. Take time to build and nurture relationships and attend professional organization and networking meetings. Read the book “Never Eat Alone,” on authentic networking by Keith Ferrazzi.
Know-and leverage-your strengths. Ideally, 80% of your time at work should be devoted to activities that you naturally excel at. Know where your brilliance lies and leverage your innate strengths. This is how you can bring the greatest value to your company AND how you substantially increase your income.
Save and live lean. Give yourself as much financial flexibility and breathing room as possible over the next 12 months. Live below your means. Cut out unnecessary expenses. Enjoy free or low-cost leisure activities (there are hundreds in Austin!). Create a budget and stick to it.
Be open to new possibilities. Layoffs, mergers, buyouts and outsourcing decisions don’t have to signal bad news. How can you take advantage of these changes? Where are there opportunities for new products/services? What niche can you fill? What problem is not being solved that you can address? Are there new internal opportunities within your company you should consider?
Stay in the loop on changes in your field/industry. What are the biggest challenges facing your current industry? How has your field changed in the last three years? Where are the employee shortages in your profession? What are the reoccurring themes or headlines at your professional conferences or in industry publications? Learn to be agile.
Take time to enhance your skills/talents. This is a great time to brush up on leadership or management skills, receive career or success coaching, reach out to mentors for guidance or sign up for in-house mentoring or training programs. Don’t isolate yourself-reach out and ask for help. People have a genuine desire to help others-we’ve all been there.
Finally, be kind to yourself. Realize that there is a lot of fear in the air right now due to all the uncertainty. Be discerning and own your feelings, not others’.
Renee Peterson Trudeau is a career/life-balance coach and president of Austin-based Career Strategists, and author of The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal: How to Reclaim, Rejuvenate and Re-Balance Your Life. Visit http://www.reneetrudeau.com/ to start/join a self-renewal circle using the Guide, receive monthly self-renewal and life balance tips or order the book. For more information on Renee Trudeau click here.
Randi Shade, a long time friend of mine, is running for Austin City Council. Check out the UT Alumni profile my writing partner and I did on her. She started a tech company around the same time I started my first tech company and now she’s running for Austin City Council. Randi has done some amazing things in her career from founding AmeriCorps in Texas to starting a company called Charity Gift, that let people give gifts that others could then use to donate to their favorite charity. She is also a mother!
She’s hosting a high-tech happy hour to inform the Austin technology community about her vision and reasons for running against an incumbent for Austin City Council. If you live in Austin and want to hear her tech related thoughts, stop by! I’m one of the hosts along with several others, including Thom Singer who did a very popular Networking and the Stay At Home Parent guest post on my blog a few weeks ago.
BlogHer is doing their annual survey and would love your opinions. This helps them attract advertisers to be a part of their network. In return, they get great ads (which I and other bloggers give valuable space to on our blogs) and they share a little of the money with us. So please click on the image above or right here to take a brief survey.
Contest for Parents of Teens at NeenMachine.com
If you are a parent of a college bound high school junior or senior, here is a contest that you won’t want to miss! NeenMachine.com has teamed up with ApplyWise (a leader in college admission counseling) to offer one lucky winner the ApplyWise College Admission Counseling package for free – (a $299 value). To enter just leave a comment on this contest post at Parenting Tips at NeenMachine.com and give your child an edge over the competion.
If you’ve been in technology start-up land for any length of time, you have no doubt heard of Guy Kawasaki. He’s a former Apple executive, founder of Garage Ventures, and author of 8 books. Now he’s doing something new which I think is very cool called AllTop, and “they have all the top stories covered all of the time.”
So if you are into Politics, Gaming, Sports, Celebrities, Tech, Automobiles, etc. then they aim to be the place to go to find out all the latest news. Since I’m a mom and love to know about what other moms are up to, I’m thrilled about their NEW Mommy Bloggers page called AllTop Moms! My little ‘ole entrepreMusings blog is currently near the top of the page. Thanks Guy!
If you are a mommy blogger or you blog on any of their other topics and you’d like your site to be included, check out their About page to get more information.
Yay, Moms! I did see some people on twitter (I’m @aruni) asking about a Daddy Bloggers page so check back frequently to see what new and interesting pages they add.
As I mentioned in a previous post (that Robert Scoble himself commented on!) I finally set up my own personal facebook account. After reading a post by Fred Wilson (the big-wig NY venture capitalist) about people setting up fake company facebook pages, I figured I should act quickly and add a Babble Soft page…before some ‘bad guys’ (as my 5 year old would say) decided to co-opt a parent/baby related site that hardly anyone knows about and make it their own on facebook [insert sarcastic chuckle here]. If you’d like to become a fan of Babble Soft it would make me ever so happy if you would click here.
I wouldn’t have been able to set up the Babble Soft page as quickly as I did without some links and support from Lee Aase. He showed me how to add Simply RSS and how to import Notes (blog posts) into both pages. Thanks Lee!
Now for a screenshot of the Babble Soft facebook page that is so new that it’s screaming please become a fan of my site… 🙂
Amazon has released a very interesting new wireless reading device called Kindle. It retails for $399 and is apparently currently sold out. I think it uses Sprint as its wireless network. If you happen to have the urge to purchase one of these devices and you use this link: Kindle or click on the image below then I will get a little commission on the sale that I will put towards developing new applications for Babble Soft.
Keep in mind that Sony also makes a portable wireless reader called PRS-500 that is currently retailing for $279.99 plus service. My husband and I saw this one on display few weeks back at a Border’s Bookstore. I don’t know how to get any commission if you buy the Sony wireless reader PRS-500 after pressing that link, but I thought you should know about it in order to make the best purchasing decision for your situation. Although it would be great to make a few bucks, I believe it’s more important for you all to be aware of the options.
Unfortunately since my blog is not one of the “More than 250 top blogs from the worlds of business, technology, sports, entertainment, and politics, including BoingBoing, Slashdot, TechCrunch, ESPN’s Bill Simmons, The Onion, Michelle Malkin, and The Huffington Post” blogs I won’t make anything if you subscribe (assuming you even can) to my feed like Scoble will if you subscribe to his feed.
I have not used either of these devices but given that people and companies have been trying for years (actually decades) to build something like this that the masses will use, I thought it was worth mentioning here. Hey for those of you who are pregnant, breastfeeding, or can’t sleep when the baby is sleeping and have nothing better to do (yeah right…) being able to read your favorite baby related book, parenting book, business book, how can I survive without sleep book, or romance novel with one hand could be quite useful!
Check out some of the posts on Kindle on these blogs I read:
Sylvester Becker (a.k.a. The German Cowboy), co-founder of Austin Business Babes sent me a link to a post called time-saving websites a while back. Well I’ve been so busy with kid stuff, blog re-design work, corporate website updating work, press release creation for Baby Say Cheese, that I have only now had time to post about it! I’m crossing my fingers that most of the current work projects will be done next week…which means it’s on to another set of projects.
Sure, the Web can be a big time-waster (gofugyourself.com, anyone?), but if used wisely, it can be a great time-saver. Check out these 12 sites every busy parent should know about. By Mark Frauenfelder. Click here to read the post. He has some neat ideas about how to save time with Travel, Activities, Shopping, etc. Check it out!
Readers and friends email me about things they are up to or in to and I thought it would nice to share some of their stories. Michelle Stern, Owner of What’s Cooking Weekly found out about our blog from a post on Mommy Track’d a while back. She sent me information on her site and what she has been up to. I just had to say ‘Wow!’
Now, I’m a person who likes to avoid the kitchen if at all possible. I can cook and I can cook fairly well, but it is not a passion of mine. My passions are making my kids laugh, blogging, and building businesses. I also have to psyche myself up to go to the grocery store. Plus after having kids, it’s much harder to cook without one of them hanging on me or needing me to get something for them.
So after years of getting frozen prepared meals from a nearby HEB grocery store, eating out, picking up, and/or having too much spaghetti, we found a college girl who comes 2 to 3 evenings per week and helps with cooking, shopping, and cleaning the kitchen. She is a wonderful cook…you can tell she really enjoys it, and I often wish we could afford to have her around every day! She even lets the kids help her and doesn’t lose her cool like I do. Maybe she can get some ideas from What’s Cooking Weekly for our family. 🙂
For those who like to cook (or don’t like to cook) and need some fast, easy meal ideas, please check out her site. It is extremely well done and based on our email exchanges, I have been very impressed with Michelle.
About What’s Cooking Weekly Don’t know what’s for dinner tonight? No time to plan meals, let alone scrawl out a thorough grocery lists? Give What’s Cooking Weekly a try. It will save your time and your sanity by providing you with healthy menus and grocery lists for 5 seasonal meals every week. It even gives you a list of jobs your kids can do to help you prepare each recipe! Subscribe to What’s Cooking Weekly or use our free Sample Menu! Also check out Recommended Cooking Tools for Families.
Author:Aruni | Filed under:food, FYI | Comments Off on FYI: What’s Cooking!
AUSTIN, TX; MIAMI LAKES, FL – May 22, 2008 – Babble Soft and eMail our Military are partnering to offer free subscriptions to Baby Insights and Baby Say Cheese for active duty service members with newborns. 
easier. Whether you need breastfeeding support, are experiencing baby sleep issues, are expecting twins, or taking care of a premature (preemie) baby and would like to create your baby’s first year album, Babble Soft offers unique, easy-to-use Web and Mobile software solutions that improve communication between caregivers. Babble Soft makes a great baby shower gift that you can easily send via Email to any new parent anywhere in the world! To learn more and purchase Babble Soft applications, please visit http://www.babblesoft.com.
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