Babble Soft on facebook – Please ‘Fan’ Us (Pretty Please?)
Dec 1 2007

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… 🙂

DadLabs, Mother-in-Law Video, and Babble Soft
Nov 30 2007

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.

Ah the Joys of Software Testing
Nov 16 2007

In case you haven’t heard, I am not fond of software testing.  If you want proof, just check out the following posts I wrote the last time when I had to test software.

Software Testing – DOH!!

Speaking of Software Testing

So now I’m at it again because we are about to release a new feature for Baby Insights…which is very exciting because I’ve wanted to release one of these features pretty much since we began Babble Soft.  In fact the pain we experienced from this particular issue when our son was born 5 years ago was the single driving force for creating Baby Insights.  Hint: the lack of this much needed activity (or inactivity) in our lives was often used as a means of torture back in the day.

Erin (my husband who works full time elsewhere and couldn’t help me with this particular issue) strongly suggested we do this feature with an expert in the field.  I slowly realized that given that I’m wearing a gazillion different hats, finding an expert (who is super busy but would still somehow want to partner with an unknown company) was not going to happen.  So I figured I’d do it backasswards and build something and then let an expert discover us and tweak the feature later.  Doing this violates pretty much most of what I’ve studied, been told, and read about when starting a business which is “This ain’t the Field of Dreams honey…you can’t build things and they will come.”  To them I say “Um…well…we’ll see about that!“

Now for a couple of great comics from Blaugh which I discovered from a post written by Pelf on Pearl’s Interesting Observations blog.  The first is funny and it’s even funnier because I can’t fire myself for being honest about my distaste for software testing and my ‘build it they will come’ frowned upon strategy. 🙂 The second is funny (to me) because when you test software you are pretty much glued to your computer and dream about anything endorphin related!  But oddly enough, I don’t drink coffee.

Is The Name of Your Product (or Blog) Working For You?
Oct 21 2007

Some of you may have noticed that we have changed the name of one of our web applications from Baby Manager to Baby Insights.  Well at least one of you noticed because she (Carole) emailed me asking me when that happened and wondering if she missed a blog post about it and I’m just now getting around to telling the name change story…

So here’s how it all went down.  For the last year or so Erin and I have been wracking our brains trying to figure out a better name for Baby Manager.  My intent when coming up with that name was to imply that the Baby IS the Manager and not that someone could actually Manage a Baby.  However, looking back, it was probably not a good idea to pick a product name when you have been operating on little to no sleep for quite some time!

The topic of changing the name came up every few weeks in our house and then whammy!  The Austin American Statesman ran an article called Gadgets for new parents can ease baby’s first month on September 22, and the reporter wrote “Austin-based Babble Soft LLC’s Web-based program Baby Manager (babies can be managed!?)…”  Ouch!

We were out that same evening on one of our not-frequent-enough date nights and of course the topic of the name came up again.  We now had proof in print for thousands to read that we needed to come up with a new name and do it asap!   I’m sure the waiter at McCormick and Schmick’s wondered if we were crazy.  Erin threw out the name Baby Insights and in that instant I knew that was it because it encompasses what our application does: helps caregivers gain insight into their baby’s patterns so they can make informed decisions about baby care!  Since we spent practically the entire dinner talking about business, I wrote off the meal as a business expense.  It’s good to be married to an entrepreneur!

After we got home, I did a quick search on the Internet and here’s what I discovered:

• http://www.babyinsight.com/ was taken by a Dutch company
• http://www.baby-insight.com/ was taken by a US company doing 3D and 4D fetal ultrasounds

I wasn’t too worried because we wanted to change the name to Baby Insights with an ‘s’ at the end.  I spoke to the owner of http://www.baby-insight.com/, and he was in the process of deciding what to do next with his company.  He told me that he would let me know if he planned to sell the name.  I didn’t bother contacting the Dutch company because I don’t know how to speak or type in Dutch.  The guy who owned http://www.baby-insight.com/ said he had tried to contact the Dutch company before and they really weren’t interested in selling.

I then discovered that http://www.babyinsights.com/ was taken, but it was parked.  I dug through the domain records and found some contact information for the owner.  I sent an email and left a voice message asking them if they were planning to sell the domain.  A guy replied saying he wasn’t sure what their plans were but that he would get back to me.  After a few days had gone by, he told me they would be willing to sell for what seemed to me a very large sum of moola.  Since I have only bought domain names directly from Go Daddy or Network Solutions, my jaw dropped at the price.  I told him I was too embarrassed to even give him a counter-offer because it would be so far away from what he was asking that he’d probably laugh (or cry) right then and there if I tried.  We could build an entire web application or maybe even two small ones for that price!  I told him I would get back in touch if things changed and we got overrun by millions of paying customers at once or happened upon a ton of money, knowing full well if either of those things happened, he would probably increase the price. 🙂

Fortunately, I had speculatively purchased http://www.baby-insights.com/, http://www.baby-insights.net/, and http://www.babyinsights.net/ from GoDaddy.

Add a little time pressure because we had just issued a press release on Baby Say Cheese to the intensity of the whole process and voila a new product name was born:  Baby Insights.

Now if we were AT&T, we would have spent millions of dollars coming up with the brand name Cingular only to change it back to AT&T Wireless soon thereafter.  Since we are currently bootstrapping, we don’t have the luxury of billions of dollars behind us.  Sometimes I think that’s a good thing and sometimes I think it’s a ‘how can I take this company to the next level on my piggy bank’ thing.  That’s a topic for another post.

So what do you all think of the new name?  I hope you like it!

How did you come up with your product or blog name?

$54,000 ProBlogger Birthday Bash Competitions
Oct 1 2007

Darren Rowse of Problogger fame is running a competition for his 3 year birthday blogiversary.  He solicited prizes from his readers to give away in a series of competitions.  Fortunately, I found his blog a few weeks ago and donated gift subscriptions to Babble Soft Web and Mobile applications.  In exchange, he will post links to contributors sites and/or blogs.  It seems that he will be running a series of competitions and the participants will have to do a variety of things from writing posts to ??? to win the prizes!  So far he has amassed $54,000 worth of prizes!

If you ever wanted to win a gift subscription to Babble Soft products for yourself or to give to a friend, check out his blog!

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

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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!