Posted on March 25, 2009 by Danielle Donders
Looking for a simple way to teach your kids about geography, and stamps, and good-old-fashioned letter-writing? Look no further than PostCrossings, a clever little site where you can sign up to receive an actual paper postcard in the mail from some random location anywhere in the world, all for the price of sending one [...] [...more]
Posted on March 12, 2009 by Danielle Donders
Remember when you were a kid, and someone in your family had a polaroid camera? My grandad had one and I remember being fascinated by the instant photos it spat out. We used to fight over who got to pull the photo out of the camera, and spent long hours debating whether waving [...] [...more]
Posted on March 5, 2009 by Danielle Donders
Now that my boys are five and (almost) seven, and are regular users of the computer and the Internet, I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about online safety. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about NetSmartz and its efforts to keep kids safe online, including a list of tips for safe [...] [...more]
Posted on February 26, 2009 by Danielle Donders
I’ve been blogging the exploits of my three boys for more than four years now. When I started, the oldest two were still babies at one and three, both still in diapers and sucking pacifiers at night. No topics were too personal, too intimate, or too full of bodily fluids to be examined [...] [...more]
Posted on February 19, 2009 by Danielle Donders
I like to consider myself a full citizen of the online generation. There’s little doubt that the Internet plays a huge role – a huge and beneficial role – in my life. But many’s the time when I’ve thanked my lucky stars that the Web didn’t exist when I was a teenager. [...] [...more]
Posted on February 12, 2009 by Danielle Donders
I’m not much of a gamer. Aside from passing addictions to Mah Jong and Spider Solitaire and Scrabulous on Facebook, the only video games I really got into were Sim games: from Sim City to Sim Farm to the circa-1999 classic, The Sims. I knew, though, that with three small boys and one big boy in [...] [...more]
Posted on December 18, 2008 by Danielle Donders
Dear People Who Design Computers: I would like to bring to your attention a design flaw that has been bothering me. Over the years, Bill Gates has trained us to use the Start menu to shut down our computers. (Heck, does anybody actually turn their computers off these days, anyway?) Even when the three-fingered salute [...] [...more]
Posted on December 11, 2008 by Danielle Donders
It’s a brave new world for all of us, now that the Internet has permeated every last corner of our lives. Even Santa and his elves have had to embrace social media to keep up with the generation of kids who are connected to the Internet via their umbilical cords. I have a soft spot [...] [...more]
Posted on December 4, 2008 by Danielle Donders
Tips for bloggers This is the last post in a short series about marketing and mommy bloggers. In today’s finale, we veer off on a bit of a tangent with some tips to consider about monetizing your mommy blog. *** There are a lot of ways to get your blog working for you, most of which will [...] [...more]
Posted on November 27, 2008 by Danielle Donders
This is Part 3 of a series on Marketing to Mommy Bloggers… *** The first time somebody offered me a free book to review on my blog back in 2006, I thought it must be some sort of scam. Free book? Seriously? I was so paranoid I had them deliver it to my work [...] [...more]
Posted on November 20, 2008 by Danielle Donders
Part II — Memo to retailers: Don’t mess with moms! I’m taking my own series on marketing and mommy blogs on a bit of a tangent. Last week, I talked about the buying power of the mom demographic. This week, the pain reliever Motrin made a case study out of why marketers should tread [...] [...more]
Posted on November 13, 2008 by Danielle Donders
Part One: Why mommy bloggers? When I started my ‘mommy’ blog almost four years ago, internet advertising was still in its infancy. It was around 2006 that advertising stormed into the blogosphere, causing (seemingly) endless debate between the, “Selling out will suck the authenticity from the marrow of your bones!†bloggers and the, “Hey, gimme [...] [...more]
