Monday, February 12, 2007

Geek Tools for Parents

I won't deny that I am a computer geek so I thought the least I could do is share some of my geek finds with the other parents out there. These are some of the tools I use/plan to use for the blog and for digital photography/memories. Since I have all the things bookmarked why not start with that...
Del.icio.usIf you've ever had a hard drive fail you know what a pain it is to lose all your bookmarks. Del.icio.us (Delicious) is a social bookmarking site. You can store your favorites and organize them with keyword tags. You can also view other people's bookmarks and share with friends. FREE.
BloggerIt's what powers this blog...duh. FREE.
Google AnalyticsThis tracks how many people visit your blog. It's pretty cool because you can not only see how many visits but where the visits are from. There is a map of the U.S. and the dots are larger based on how many people visit from that area. FREE.
FlickrOnline photo management and storage. FREE(limited uploads) or $24.95/year (unlimited)
BlogCollectorBackup and Publish your blog. I haven't tried this yet but it looks pretty cool. It will download your blog and convert it to a PDF. You can then use the PDF on an online publishing site to make book out of your blog. Multiple versions FREE/$68/$198
LuLuSelf publishing. Print hard cover and soft cover books, calendars, photo books and more. You can even create a store to sell your books. I haven't actually published anything yet but the online tools seem to work well. This would should work together with BlogCollector. Prices vary depending on the product. Registration is free.
PicabooCreate picture books. I haven't tried this either but it has lots of templates to create scrapbook style photo books. Software is FREE. Books start at $9.99
Windows Photo StoryCreate photo slide shows with transitions and music. FREE
WinkflashPhotoCard Announcements and photo prints. This was the only place I found that let you do a completely custom design for the PhotoCard. Prices seem reasonable and the quality is pretty good.

1 comments:

Dan Isaacs said...

Em, Picasa is probably the best option for managing your local copies of images, and has all the slideshow/html generating features you'd expect. Been using it for years. It's also free.

http://picasa.google.com/