Its part of Googles Chrome stories they started telling online a short while ago. If you haven’t checked out the rest of the Chrome videos I suggest you do, they are clever, fun and like “Dear Sophie” emotional.

I’m not one for being overly emotional, yet this video stung me in the right places, my love for my daughter Emily and technology. The understatement that this video was just another few minutes spent on You Tube would be just that, an understatement.

Upon completion as I attempted not to get all choked up at work. I fired up my .ca registrar and secured my kids personal .ca domain. This got me to thinking. As a parent I’m often thinking of ways to introduce technology into my kids life in a meaningful way. I’ve long been saying that Emily will learn to type not on a keyboard, but in fact; the visualization of what a keyboard is. Her concept of computer input isn’t necessarily a mouse, but the gestural nature of iPhones and iPads. But lets save that for another post. Back to grabbing digital usernames, emails and domains for kids who don’t really understand what they are.

The concepts of email addresses, .com’s and twitter handles escape kids. However, as a parent should you collect these things when they don’t matter to your kid so that when they do you can have them ready? For me I am going to say yes. Maybe for selfish reasons and obvious reasons but reasons none the less.

yourkidsname.domain
It’s true, Emily has no real daily use for having her own domain… or does she. Shortly after registering her.ca I found myself with options of what to do next. It’s true that in her future she might not have much use for her own personal domain. But what if she becomes famous? What if she becomes a photographer and wants to show off her work. In 10-15 years from now will she go to register a .ca and not be able to since somebody else did before her? I believe that the investment now can prevent what happened to me… I don’t own my own .com, I do own my own .ca (thankfully I’m Canadian) If I only had the foresight to grab the .com before somebody else. It’s a silly regret yes, but one that for 20$ a year I can nab up for Emily. Even if she never uses it, I know its there.

For now her domain will serve as a way to get in touch with her parents and subsequently her. Emily recently finished her first year of school, and while its nice to have phone numbers for parents I barely know, she connects mostly with her peers via paper notes. So why not make a little paper note with her email on it so parents can arrange playmates. You say an email for a kid? I digress, this first year of school was full of firsts and one thing that has changed from when I was a kid was the birthday invitation, now I’m RSVPing via email to kids parents and having lists of gift suggestions emailed to me, this is perfect and seemingly so perfect for parents of other kids. Why can this extend to emailing kids about playmates? It should.

Your kid on a social network.
For now, Emily is absent from any other network online save for twitter. My reason for this is that I want to use twitter as her way of learning to compose messages to a void, get her comfortable with posting short bursts of her personality. It might break some rules along the way but that doesn’t seem to have stopped even some of the twitter founders from getting their own kids on twitter. Plus it took close to 15 minutes to get a proper handle for Emily. Who surprisingly was quite picky as to what would pass and not pass when it came to deciding on a username.

What next?
For me the big crux for getting Emily online was having an email, sure I could have set up a gmail account for her (and I still might) but I like the personality that comes with having your own domain. Granted the nerd in me will eventually route her email through Google apps

I think for now she’s pretty set up and I’ll enjoy the years ahead when I know that I’ll be collecting usernames along the way, just in case. More importantly I’ll really enjoy the collection of memories she gets to create and that’s the magical part for me, most parents would agree.

Kudos john you made me laugh.

p.s. read from bottom to top… I’ve numbered them for you.

Vol 2.

Jen Matthews – http://twitter.com/jenmatthews

Yep thats my dear wife, I left her out of the first list, honestly not thinking anybody would care. apparently she did. Shucks. SO yeah she tweets about her love of all things Edward Cullen, people who fart on the train and an assortment of other stuff.. dance related as well as rantings about work. Doesnt tweet that much, but quality I suppose over quantity. I suppose you could follow her if you are friends with her. Tho I dont think most of the people she knows are on twitter, BB messenger maybe but twitter … no… Love ya.

Cheryl McKenzie – http://twitter.com/cherylmckenzie

I work with Cheryl, she takes the same trains I complain about all the time. I didnt even know she was on twitter and tweets quite a bit. She likes to make cupcakes and not bring them to work to share. She has also invented her own language and its documentation can be found on http://www.cherylese.com want to learn a new language or stuff about cupcakes and the weather then follow her up.

Wil Wheaton – http://twitter.com/wilw

Yes that Wil Wheaton. Wesley Crusher himself is on the internest and on twitter. If you liked TNG then you should follow him. Do you enjoy reading stories about being a nerd? Follow him. Enjoy play by play commentary about Kings games? Follow him. Nuff said. Engage!

Chris Hardwik – http://twitter.com/nerdist

Chris Hardwick is a musician, television host, stand up comic, and actor. I know him from G4′s Attack of the Show. Where he co-hosts from time to time. One of the funniest people I watch on TV which isnt saying much since I rarely watch something with hosts. He was also the host of PBS’s Wired Science which was an awesome show. Tweets about travelling and general nerdyness. Will converse with Wil Wheaton from time to time about TNG and hockey etc… Generally a fun follow if your up for it and especially if you watch AOTS.

Notorious BIG – http://twitter.com/NotoriousBIG

Its biggie speaking to you. Hes alive you know it. Hilarious. One of the premiere tweeters that makes me chuckle constantly. Did you love Juicy in high school. Did you want a shiny ass suit? Did you think MA$E was just crazy. Follow him up.

Well thats it. pretty straight forward. As of this I’m currently following 130 tweeters. Not bad way more that I thought I would. More next week!

So i’ve been meening to do this type of post for a while and thought that I would do it today or rather I would start it today. I’m going to go through my list of who I follow and write a bit on why I follow them, things I’ve learned etc. I’ll link back to their profile so you can check them out if they sound interesting to you. I’ll also rate their tweeting style on a personal level, that relates to me, you might find this interesting or not.

Lets get the Show on the road

Vol – 1.

micah barrett – http://twitter.com/micahmicah

Micah is a friend of mine. Brilliant designer and avid seahawks fan, which can be proven by his often tweets “fucking seahawks”. Sometimes I wish he tweeted more so I knew what was going on in Seattle, but maybe it just rains all the time? I value his tweets and his random thoughts, since hes a friend its good to know hes still alive when he does tweet.

veronica belmont – http://twitter.com/Veronica

Veronica is a co host of the revision3 show tekzilla. Honestly bonus points in my book for having a show with “zilla” in it. Smart and whitty she tweets about gadgets (which I like) and other technology things she covers (again I like that) also inserts ramblings about cats (which are funny even tho I’m allergic) and links and updates about the various things shes involved in like tekzilla and posting on her blog. A good follow if your into tech and especially if you enjoy tekzilla.

cobra commander – http://twitter.com/CobraCommander

Honestly who doesnt love cobra commander. Get insight on how to run your own evil organization. Witness the glory and the luster of having access to weapons that are far superior to that of your enemies. One of the funniest and therefore awesomest twitter accounts to follow and while the updates arent often, this is a good case of quality over quantity. If you are a fan of GI JOE then folow em up.

popeyes chicken – http://twitter.com/popeyeschicken

I have a warm spot in my heart for fried chicken, especially if its popeyes. I found out about this twitter account after twittering about enjoying some popeyes for lunch. Less that 3 hours later I had a personal message from popeyes and they had a follower instantly. The way that popeyes chicken is handling their social media responsibilities is in my book almost without fault. Tweets on brand and just generally great content for its followers, many companies could learn from the likes of these guys. If you enjoy bonafied chicken then follow.

al gore – http://twitter.com/algore

Yes this is the “REAL” al gore. At first his twiter account was squatted by and imposter and now the real al gore tweets semi weekly about the environment and things hes doing. Al started twittering shortly after his current interview with digg’s kevin rose. His non so often tweets are a nice break for me from the randomness that comes through my tweet stream. If you enjoy the outdoors and want to know whats going on with al specifically then a follow might be a good idea.

ok so thats it, a quick run down of 5 people I’m following on twitter. Another 5 shortly.

So you got a fancy smartphone and while you really enjoy the device as  a phone the qwerty keyboard for SMS messaging and email ypu really are only skinning the surface of what you could be doing with this great piece of technology that just sits in your pocket.

No matter what device you have, be it an iPhone or a blackberry, a treo or a windows mobile device you can have a great deal more fun with your phone than just talking texting and getting the weather. Since I’ve been using a smartphone for some capacity I thought I would tell people how I’ve been using my device for the last 4 years some of it specific to actual hardware but generally you can accomplish most if not all of the stuff I’ve done with any smartphone.

This all really relies on the fact that you have a data plan with your phone without a data plan you might as well to pick up a pay as you go phone and just get talk and text. The real nice thing about a smartphone is that it’s got the data. I’ll breakdown different general applications or uses into sections and speak to devices I know.

Photos
If your phone is equipped with a camera chances are that you’ve been taking pictures already. Maybe you’ve been sending them to friends via mms or maybe you’ve been using them as desktops for your phone. Better yet why not share them right away with your friends via some of the more popular sites that allow for mobile uploads ?

Flickr
Did you know that Flickr serves up somewhere close to 35 million photos a minute? That’s slot of photos why no get in on the action and sign up for a Flickr account? First off it’s free secondly if you have rogers Internet at home then you can use your rogers/yahoo email account and get a free Flickr pro account which means you save 24$ a year an get all the perks of the Flickr pro account.

Once your set up you’ll want to configure your account to accept mobile uploads once you do that you can add the special email address to your contact list and then the next time you take a picture when your out and about you can send that photo directly to Flickr when it  happens instead of leaving it on your phone only to get lots and forgotten in the shuffle better yet you can have Flickr auto tag all your incoming photos from your mobile device.

Facebook
Why not post photos to your Facebook profile for all to see. It’s really simple just set up your profile to accept mobile uploads. On your computer if you go to your faceboook home page > hit settings,  > then at the setting screen click the mobile tab, > you can then add your phone number to use the sms features of facebook or head over to the facebook mobile page https://register.new.facebook.com/mobile/ and set up your phone from there. You can then start emailing your pics to mobile@facebook.com as long as your emails come from your same email you’ve registered with Facebook you should be providing all your friends with great pictures via your smartphone.

Staying connected.
I personally stay connected via a few of the social sites out there, mostly via twitter and facebook and by posting to my own blog via an iphone app that helps me out. I’m in a slightly different boat since the iphone has an abundance of apps available in addition to the ones that ship with the phone, I’m finding that I’m doing more with this phone than I ever did with my treo, wether thats a good thing or not remains to be debated, I sure am having fun tho.

While I’ll cover things that have to do specifically with the iphone most of the following will rely on the fact that you have an internet enabled device, obviously you’ll need to have a dataplan but you probably already know that. Did you know that there is an abundance of mobile versions of sites  out there for smartphone? Sure the iPhone has great web rendering and windows mobile devices do a somewhat decent job rendering popular  sites. Blackberries have it the worst when it comes to rendering web pages. But what about sites that are specifically designed for mobile screens. Sites that are stripped down and light weight for over the air use. There are a bunch and more pop up all the time. Let’s check a few out of the more popular destinations online.

MSN/hotmail/live
iphones can by default get hotmail delivered via the mail app tho this shouldn’t stop you from using the mobile version of hotmail.

Ever try and get hotmail via a web browser on your phone? Its painful, yet most people don’t know that Microsoft has a mobile portal for their mobile users hit up http://mobile.live.com and you are greeted with a simple menu of the MSN offerings made specifically for your scaled down screen size. from here you can access mobile versions of all the MSN properties like hotmail, messenger, and MSN (news, sports, more) if you use hotmail or any other MSN properties you should be using this site as a starting point.

Google
I think you’ll start to notice a theme from here on out. Google has a mobile homepage as well similar to MSN its a stripped down version of google made for small screens. http://m.google.com takes you there from here you have access to the whole google lineup of apps.

Everything from search to maps and gmail. plus if you use other google things like calender and docs you can get there too. the best part is that all of these services have been designed to work well on your mobile device, even simple things like search has been refined. Google also has the google app for the iphone which lets you get to all of the google products. As well you can set up your mail app to handle gmail accounts.

Facebook
While I’m personally spoiled with a neat little facebook app for my iphone there is an alternative for people on other smartphones. Its important to note that Blackberry also has a facebook app that you can get by going to http://www.facebook.com on your BB the page should prompt you to download and install the app, there is a catch however. If your BB is given to you by a company they may (and more and more IT departments are doing this) not allow you to download 3rd party applications to your device.

Have no fear since facebook has a mobile version of their site… I used it pre-iphone days and its a snap. go to http://m.facebook.com and login like normal (see the re-occurance of the m. in the URL) here is a simple version of facebook that lets you send messages and change your status, and even upload photos via either MMS or email. you’ll have to set those things up on a computer however, like I stated above.

Flickr
thats right… you guessed it http://m.flickr.com is where you can sign in to check out the mobile version of flickr. Check on the recent activity of your photos or check out pics by searching…. fun.

Yahoo!
Since flickr is owned by yahoo it totally makes sense that http://m.yahoo.com is the mobile version of yahoo. similar to that of the mobile msn yahoo lets you check mail and messenger as well as the rest of the yahoo offering, if your down with yahoo then this place is for you. its also good to mention that their mobile site on an iphone is quite different from the mobile version other devices will see.

Twitter
Spoiled am I with multiple twitter clients on my iphone like twitterific and twinkle other devices can get their tweets on with http://m.twitter.com. Twitter was best summarized to me by a friend who likened it to updating your status on facebook, which is prolly my most used portion of facebook. Your tweets are reduced to 140 characters maximum and you can follow friends and receive their updates in your twitter stream, you can reply and have micro conversations.

Twitter began by the notion of asking you a simple question in “what are you doing” and has exploded from there. you can reach me and follow my own tweets at twitter.com/regalbear/ You can also access twitter via sms.

Myspace
Are you still kicking it oldschool and refuse to let your myspace account die. You can check your myspace by rocking http://m.myspace.com in your mobile browser. Or for those with the jesus phone you’ll have the myspace app.

digg
http://m.digg.com takes you to the mobile version of digg.com the popular social news website. Great for killing time on a commute to keep up with whats going on.

cbc
http://m.cbc.ca will redirect you to a super simple cbc site with canadian news and other happenings.

You see that there are quite a lot of different mobile versions of sites for mobile devices, and while it only takes experimenting with some clever URL configurations to yield the sites out there. Most of these I found on my own knowing that they might or might not exist, its clever what a little m. can do in-front of a URL and even more clever that you can do much more on your internet enabled phone than just use the built in weather app or the GPS. What you really want to do is start exploring other things that you normally do on a computer at home or at work and extend those to your mobile device.

Conclusion

Myself I pretty much only twitter on my iphone and read an enormous amount of news on my phone via digg. I post photos to my flickr account, mostly of my sleeping kid or of XM songs that appear on the radio while the kid sleeps. If anything its fun and its engaging and lets me communicate to the people in all my social communities that I openly contribute to. Is this kind of mobile connection necessary for me? Probably not but I’m enjoying the fact that I can be this connected in this day and age even if I’m physically alone. People with smartphone need to start using them as smartphones not just as phones with keyboards for easy text entry, with the prices of handsets dropping, data-plans becoming reasonable to most people and mobile taking off in strides online people need to get with the times and really explore all that these devices have to offer. Its only then that true progress is made when it comes to hardware. Sure there are the Apples and the Googles of the world that are constantly pushing the envelope, but if the public doesn’t realize that these devices are truly great then its all for not.

Do you have a favorite site that you use on your mobile/smartphone/device? Let me know I’m always looking for better sites or great iphone apps that let me do neat stuff with my phone. Please leave them in the comments. Cheers

So add me to your list or whatever your supposed to do.

http://www.twitter.com/regalbear/