It’s become clear to me that as busy as I think I am right now with family activities, I’ve only reached the tip of the iceberg. My oldest is in pre-school 3 times a week, karate 2 times a week, and starts all-day Kindergarten in the Fall (and I’ve heard a rumor about soccer in the Fall, too). Caleb starts pre-school next year, and Hannah will be right on his heels.

I reflected on this growing challenge one Saturday morning with my wife, Tara. She suggested we find some way to organize a family calendar, digitally. Enter, Cozi (http://www.cozi.com/).

Cozi organizes your family life into 4 sections:

• Calendar
• To Do Lists
• Shopping
• Journal

Family Calendar Feature
The calendar is easily the best thing about Cozi. You can assign each person in your family a color code, then build out the calendar as you would in Outlook or Google Calendar, only with events color coded for who is involved. Recurrence is setup (just like Outlook), making it easy to populate your calendar quickly and thoroughly.

There is a single, linear view for the calendar (scroll up and down), which honestly makes it easy to navigate, even though it has no view or navigation variety. It is also easy to organize the calendar by individual.

Family To Do Lists Feature
It’s easy to organize several To Do lists for each individual setup in the calendar. For example, when my wife and I visit her parents each Sunday I have a checklist I can go by to make sure I don’t forget to bring anything important. You can also have shared To Do lists, and lists for individuals.

Family Shopping List Feature
This works exactly the same as the To Do list feature, complete with the ability to email a list to anyone.

Family Journal Feature
The idea of this feature is nice, but it’s not something I use much. Without the ability to socially share the funny story Caleb told, or the fact that Luke just broke a board at karate, or the cute picture of Hannah, it’s a bit cumbersome and unnecessary.

Best Feature
Organizing the calendar by individual makes it easy to see who is busy and who can help!

Biggest Bummer
Push notifications are not yet setup. I use the app on my iPhone 100% of the time. Preferably, I’d like to receive calendar notifications like I do from iCal, with just a couple of the important notes about the event pushed through as a reminder.

The app does allow for email and text message notifications, but the convenience of receiving push notifications is a big miss.

Overall Score: 8/10

Bottom Line on Cozi
The developers have correctly identified 4 primary areas of a family’s life that are in need of organization and coordination. But more features can be added to make Cozi even better. For example, the Shopping Lists can be evolved on the model of Grocery IQ, while the Journal could allow for social sharing (or allow you to toggle that feature off, depending on your family’s feelings about privacy on the web).

If you have a hectic family schedule, Cozi can help organize it for you. It’s easy enough for the entire family to use and free of charge, but not yet feature rich. Let’s cross our fingers in hopes the developers will ramp up soon!

• Understand what information should be private.
• Only post information you are comfortable others seeing.
• Use privacy settings to restrict who can access info.
• Once information is online it can not be erased.
• Avoid sex talk online.
• Trust their gut if they have suspicions. Tell you if something online is uncomfortable.

http://www.onguardonline.gov/topics/social-networking-sites.aspx

When it comes to teens and texting, be aware of your parental responsibilities:
1. Keep tabs on their behavior.
2. Educate yourself about the risks.
3. Set limits with your teens.
4. Keep an open dialogue with your teen.

Watch the interview

http://www.aftab.com/

Parents that are constantly online while at home are talking to their children less. Parents attention spans are furthermore reduced. These factors plus a few others are impacting their children negatively, so as parent you need to make a decision.

I just recently heard a woman call in a radio show and say that she is addicted to a game on the iPhone called “Angry Birds”. It really looks like fun, but even I was hesitant to download it so I don”t fall into this pattern. Is there a balance or do you need to quit being online for long periods of time while your kids are up?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/garden/10childtech.html

The website says, “This website attempts to answer the question of what to do with a new baby (and what to do with your SELF) every day. For those days when you have trouble dragging your butt out of bed because you don’t know what you’d do, we have ideas. We started this site to share our own good new mommy ideas with each other and our friends. We invite you to share your ideas with us too.”

http://www.rookiemoms.com/

What is it?
StraighterLine provides high quality, better supported, and lower cost required college courses – online, on your schedule. You can knock out your required courses and earn real college credits that give you a head start on your degree.

What are the drawbacks?

• Learning online is a different animal
• Class content could vary
• Need online access

Why not take your introductory classes online for a fraction of the cost?
http://straighterline.com/

How do you feel about this campaign?

http://4parents.gov

7 Tips to Stay Safe Online

1. Protect your personal information
2. Know who you’re dealing with
3. Use anti-virus and anti-spyware
4. Update your web browser and system frequently
5. Protect your passwords
6. Backup important files
7. Know who to contact if something goes wrong

How many of these seven do you do?
http://www.ncjrs.gov/internetsafety/general.html