Techie Mama

4 Tips for Sharing Photos of Your Children Online

Posted by Michelle on Oct 7, 2010 in Family, Media, Parenting, Photography, Social Networking, Techie Mama | 0 comments

Being a shutterbug, I couldn’t wait to show the world photos of The Little Empress. The very first photo of The Little Empress was posted a mere three hours after her birth.

We’re definitely not the only family to do so. A recent article on CNN talks about a study that shows that 82 percent of kids under 2 have an online presence.

While the Internet makes it easy to share photos of your newest family member with far flung relatives and friends, the fact remains that these innocent photos of your child can also be a privacy risk. Here’s a few ways to keep your little one’s identity safe from the very start.

Use privacy filters. Photo services like Facebook, Flickr, Shutterfly and more have privacy filters that allow you to control who sees your photos.

Do not label photos with sensitive information. Sensitive information can include your child’s full name, birth date, birth place, etc.

Obscure any personal information that may be visible in the photo. New parents may want to rethink sharing the photo of their newborn the hospital isolette as information including the baby’s name, family surname and even delivering doctor may be in full view. Choose to share another photo that does not contain any sensitive information.

Ask friends and family NOT to share photos of your little one without your permission. This is harder to control — especially with excited grandparents — but (gently) explain why you would like to control where your child’s photos are seen.

BONUS TIP: It is popular on some parenting communities to share the names and ages of your children in your signatures. If you do this, use nicknames to identify your children rather than their names.

Mobloggin

Posted by Michelle on Feb 27, 2009 in blogging, Techie Mama | 0 comments

Testing out the WordPress iPhone app, complete with a gratuitous TLE photo. Have to test the photo feature after all This is fun! More when TLE isn’t messing with things she shouldn’t be…

RAW Christmas memories

Posted by Michelle on Dec 26, 2008 in Photography, Techie Mama | 3 comments

Despite having had my dSLR for over 2 years, it has taken me until now to even begin experimenting with shooting in RAW. I knew the magic of shooting in RAW really lies in the post-processing power but I didn’t really appreciate it until I actually got a trial copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements and saw what you could do with RAW. Here is a really good example of what you can save by shooting in RAW

The straight out of camera (SOOC) shot was completely underexposed — my flash was running out of battery and hadn’t recharged when I took this shot. A quick adjustment of the white balance in PSE while opening the original RAW .CR2 file completely saved this photo (as well as some other photos that suffered the same flash malfunction.) I will never go back to shooting in JPG ever again!

Wow! WordPress 2.7 – Coltrane

Posted by Michelle on Dec 10, 2008 in blogging, Observations, Techie Mama | 0 comments

So WordPress just came out with a new version — WordPress 2.7 Coltrane. While I haven’t updated this blog yet, I have to say that Coltrane is quite sexy looking.

Yes, I called a blogging app “sexy”. Sue me, I’m a geek. Obviously, I need to get out more.

Anyway, 2.7 has a wonderful new customizable dashboard as well as post page, easier comment management and you can move the little boxes to suit your need. COOL… and more importantly, useful. I like useful.

So why haven’t I upgraded, you ask? Simple. First rule of anything IT related — before implementing any change, test, test and hey, test again. Of course, in the real world, sometimes it goes more like…

Management: It’s something we don’t fully understand but it is NEW! Implement NOW.
IT: No. We need to test it first.
Management: NOW.
IT: But we really ought to test it first….
Management: NU TEKNALOGEE NAO!!!!
IT: *sigh* *implement*
– And then everything breaks in the most spectacular fashion ever. –
Management: WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?! FIX THIS F*CK UP NOW!!
IT: *grumble*

(And some people wonder if I miss my former career )

Besides, I learned my lesson with upgrading before testing to make sure all my plugins worked. I rely on plugins for several things so I’d rather make sure they worked before moving on to new, shiny technology.

But oh baby, when all my necessary plugins are 2.7 compatible, I am so upgrading.

Bay Area Moms Like Me

Posted by Michelle on Nov 30, 2008 in Parenting, Social Networking, Techie Mama | 0 comments

If you’re local to the SF Bay Area — check out Bay Area MomsLikeMe! It’s a local community for Moms to get together online and share. This is a national site with local sites set up for lots of metropolitan areas. The San Francisco one covers the Bay Area.

And if you’re an AP mama, check out the group I made — Attached Mamas @ Bay Area MomsLikeMe!

Martha can show you how to blog…

Posted by Michelle on Sep 18, 2008 in Observations, Techie Mama | 0 comments

It seems that Martha Stewart has now jumped on the blog bandwagon. Never mind that she’s had a blog on her official site for awhile now so it’s not actually something new. Nor could you make me believe it is all that personal as it is so very obviously a scripted, corporate blog.

Then again, these days, what isn’t? Call me bitter.

Thanks to Martha’s directions, I’m sure the blogosphere (who made up this word?) will be filled with even more folks. To which I say the more the merrier; gives me more things to read while procrastinating