“Family” collection
Navigate the intersection of family life and technology with expert advice on household gadgets, digital parenting, and home safety. This section focuses on tools and strategies that enhance family connections and simplify domestic logistics in a digital-first world.
HTD Tech Briefs
View all →May 25, 2011
Time For Some Fun – My New Site Celebrating Technology Failure – Tech-Fail.com
Last week I decided that I needed a bit more fun in my life, or if you look at it another way, to add some more workload to my already busy day. Since I cover technology all of the time in the form of reviews, how-to's, fix-it's and other musings, often with a family spin, I needed a way to…
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May 18, 2011
How to Pre-Populate Twitter Status Updates the NEW Way via Links & Web Intents
About a year and a half ago, I posted a "How To" article to teach people on how to tweet out messages from your website via a URL or web link. Unfortunately, that method no longer works as of a few days ago. Twitter has updated the process for doing this. However, I now have the NEW way to do…
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May 16, 2011
Traditional Fans are NOT Safe, Fans Have Evolved, And Now I’m a Fan of the Dyson “Air Multiplier” Fan
When you think of Dyson, you think of those techie-looking vacuums that don't have a bag and look like they are an exercise of a engineering design firm coupled with a SciFi set designer. But, did you know that they also made fans? Enter the Dyson Air Multiplier. These aren't ordinary fans though, and I would expect nothing less from…
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May 13, 2011
How to Write & Blog Efficiently with Free Tools like Evernote, DropBox, Picasa & Live Writer
A while ago, I wrote a blog post about how I do blogging. That was over a year ago. Times have changed, tools have evolved and processes have gotten better, at least for me. I still believe that how your blog or write is extremely personal in nature and what may work for me, might not for others. I would,…
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May 11, 2011
Sony, Ford and NYC Auto Show Videos from the Cast of Dads Roadtrip
A few weeks ago, Ford and Sony invited the Cast of Dads on a really cool experience – a road trip from Boston driving a 2011 Ford Explorer down to New York International Auto Show. Unfortunately both Max and I were not able to attend, but Jeff, CC and Brad produced a ton of content from the excursion. I posted…
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May 10, 2011
Ooma VoIP Adds Innovative Feature to Assist in 911 Notifications
Today, I learned that Ooma, a VoIP company who I recently reviewed, has added a pretty interesting feature to their telephony service. In the past, there has always been a bit of a question around the reliability of 911 calls using a phone service that uses an Internet connection for it "digital dialtone". Advances have been made and now most…
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May 9, 2011
LocalMind Makes Social Check-ins Engaging, Interactive and Helpful
We all know about social check-in services like Gowalla, FourSquare and even FaceBook Places. These services allow you to announce that you are at a particular venue, event, company or location, quickly and easily all via your mobile device. With some, the more places you go, the more credibility and achievements you get (e.g., badges). Some people might question why…
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May 4, 2011
‘Twas the Night Before Mother’s Day – A Poem
Mother's Day is just around the corner, and me, being a HighTechDad, wanted to celebrate it in my own techie way. Obviously, I'm a big fan of Apple and the products that they have produced. So I thought that I would write a little twist on "Twas the Night Before Christmas" with a bit of an Apple and Mother's Day…
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May 3, 2011
Video Gaming – Ballerina Style!
People play video games in all sorts of ways. And there are many gaming consoles and devices available to use for it. As a parent, it's a fine line to walk when it comes to your kids playing video games. When the weather is nice, how do you pry them away from the game controllers and get outside and enjoy…
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May 2, 2011
10 Ways to Use FaceTime with the iPad 2, iPhone 4, iPod Touch or Mac That You Might Not Have Thought Of
If you have a Mac, or an iPhone or now an iPad 2, you probably have heard of FaceTime. This is Apple's foray into video conferencing but with a heavy consumer focus. FaceTime was first launched with the iPhone 4 and the iPod Touch, and then rolled out to the Mac as a beta. Then the Mac version made it…
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April 29, 2011
Ford & Sony Bring “Cast of Dads” Members Together (Almost) – “Family Road Trips”
I'm encouraged that big brands out there are starting to listen. There is a difference between simply pushing your product traditionally, and using real voices, people and opinions to create stories around these products and brands. The first is a traditional method that frequently gets lost in the clutter of all of the other brand chatter out there, and the…
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April 27, 2011
Hang In There Sony…And Thanks for Your Continued Innovation
It happens to the best of us. We plan for the worst, do all of our due diligence, prepare for the unexpected, test and re-test and cross our fingers a lot. But inevitably, there is always something that we didn't think of. I could be talking about the recent Amazon Web Services outage or the napping by the Air Traffic…
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