I just recently joined Pinterest after hearing about its awesomeness. For those who don’t know, Pinterest is basically a virtual corkboard. You pin the things that interest you so you can find them later. For example, here are a bunch of recipes I want to try that I found:

You can create the boards to represent whatever you want. I’ve got one for cute house ideas, and you can even make yourself a virtual shopping and/or wish list! I will warn you though — it is highly addictive. However, I don’t know why I waited so long to sign up!

If you are interested in an invite, please leave a comment below letting me know. Just leave your email address in the email field (which will remain private), and I’ll get an invite out to you! Make sure you follow me there too!

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Robert Scoble wrote a post about why your mom won’t be using Google+.  If you read my post from last week, you know I’ve had the ability to play with Google+ for a bit now, and I have to disagree.  Why?  Well, I’m a mom.  And I use Google+.

1.  I love Circles.  The argument seems to be that non-geeks won’t understand circles and won’t use them.  I can think of many reasons why they will.  Let’s say you want to vent about your inlaws or your job or pretty much anything you don’t want the whole world knowing.  You can easily just send a message to your friends complaining (make sure you disable the share option) and you don’t have to worry about the world knowing.  (Yes, I know they can still screenshot it, but if they are your friends, do you really think they will?)

2.  The mobile app is beyond easy to use.  I downloaded in the car on the way to a camping trip, and used it in the car (Need to add that I was not driving).  I was able to easily have the picture appear in my stream (it was a picture of how full my van was packed!).  It was a great test post and I have even been told how great the pictures looked on Google+ versus Facebook.  They just have a much more crisp look to them.

3.  Hangouts.  If you are like me (a mom) and your family lives far away, this is a great feature.  I can talk to my sister and my parents (who both live 4 hours away) and they don’t have to be at the same house!  We can be a family together even though we are in 2 states.  It just makes it easier to get online and talk.  As long as I can write directions on how to use it, my parents (who aren’t all that tech savvy) can figure it out.

4.  Simple interface.  Makes writing direction to use things much easier (see above).  Remember the saying, Keep in simple stupid?  That’s what Google did with this interface.  Simple makes it much more friendly to nongeeks.

5.  Adults are here.  This is exactly what the doctor ordered for us stay at home moms.  Facebook limits you to your friends.  On Google+, you can expand your horizons and follow those who you may not personally know however find interesting.  You can have adult conversations with people who may have opposing viewpoints and you don’t have to worry about whether or not somebody you knew in high school is going to read your insightful comment.

6.  One stop shopping.  Moms need our lives to be as simple as possible.  We are busy.  I like having my email, social networking, documents, etc all in one spot instead of having 20 bookmarked sites to do the same thing.

7.  Sparks.  This looks for videos and articles it thinks you’ll like, so “when you’re free, there’s always something to watch, read, and share.”  If your bored, have a go in there

8.  With a Google+ account, you get unlimited photo storage on Picasa.  I love being able to take a picture with my phone (which I have available to me most of the time.  I don’t normally carry my camera all too much), upload it, and not have to worry if I’m going to exceed my storage space.  And who doesn’t like free?

9.  You control your privacy unlike Facebook who doesn’t bother to tell you that they sold your information till after the media catches it.  Google Plus also makes it easy to control your privacy settings.  You don’t have to dig through 20 menus to get there.

10.  I’m here, and your mom loves me.  Why wouldn’t she want to hang out where all the cool people are?

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As some of you may have noticed, I’ve changed my template.  Again.  I got bored after a while.  Plus, the other template was broken in some browsers and some other places too.

Now, I’d love to know your thoughts on this new template.  I also would love to know if you see anything looking funky, not working correctly, etc.  I think we’ve got most of it fixed, but somebody usually finds something.  ;)

(PS I know that the buttons up there on these posts don’t work.  It has something to do with the page being coded in php but the buttons are html.  If anybody knows how to fix that, please let me know!)

Happy viewing!

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I read a really interesting article in the Chicago Tribune yesterday.  It was about who pays for campaign ads.

Now, as a blogger, if I receive a free item or payment for something I write, I must disclose it per the FCC.  That way, people know who sent the item even though I write impartial reviews anyway.  Whatever.  I do it, because I have to.  I happen to think my average reader is pretty smart, and this is completely unnecessary.  But whatever.

However, what gets my goat is that the identity of who is paying for all the nasty election ads is shrouded in secrecy.  You have no idea who is paying for these ads.  Business groups, unions, and interest groups had spent $264 million as of Tuesday.  You heard me right — $264  million!  At least $128 million of that came from groups that are not required to disclose their donors.  According to election law experts, loopholes and lax enforcement by the FEC, corporation and wealthy donors can donate huge sums confident that their identities will not be disclosed.

Now, why did this happen.  Well, the Supreme Court ruled that Americans would know who was paying for these ads.  Really?  They can’t figure out if a post on a blog is sponsored but they can figure out who is paying for election ads?

Am I the only one confused?

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As a blogger, I know how important my child’s safety is in this online world.  However, what can a parent do to protect their kids online as well as off?  It’s scary that your kids ”friends” aren’t just the kids hanging out in your family room – they’re also the hundreds of contacts on their online “friend” and “buddy” lists. Did you know that more than 50 million teens (ages 13-17) are online worldwide? Or that the average number of “friends” on a list is 130? The totals are much higher for many teens.

SafeSocial, a new AOL product that launches today, can help you protect your children, even if you aren’t a social media expert. SafeSocial helps you:

• Find out where your child has online accounts
• Know who your child is “friends” with online
• Get notified if your child is in a conversation about violence, suicide or drugs
• See photos your child has posted online, and others’ photos in which your child has been tagged

Another benefit? You can monitor all this activity without being a “helicopter parent.” Your child will have to agree to be monitored, but you won’t need to connect with them on the social media accounts, or hover over their shoulders in person.  (Which I personally think is great).

Since this is a tool that I think is great in your arsenal to help protect your kids, I wanted to let my readers know about it and let you also know that you can sign up for a 30 day free trial!

How do you protect your kids offline and online?  Is this something that you’d use?

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