SOMEWHAT FRANK

Sk*rt A Social News Site For Women

Women looking for a place to find interesting content recommendations should look no further than Sk*rt. Sk*rt offers a social news site of "pure goodness" which is geared towards topics and interests that women might like. The platform which could be deemed a Digg-clone offers content discovery via social recommendations.

Trixie Tracker: Log A Baby's Every Move

Trixie Tracker offers a simple online application for parents to keep track of their baby's various activities. While this may sound a little obsessive, I would have to say it may help parents to organize their baby's lives. Trixie Tracker aims to help parents keep better tabs on the various activities surrounding a baby so that they have a record to analyze and gain a better understanding of their baby's habits.

Trixie Tracker, which logged its 100,000 nap in 2006, is organized with a number of tabs with each set up for a different tracking category. The tracking categories are sleep, diapers, bottles, solids, nursing, pumping and medicine. Trixie Tracker is currently offering a free 2 week trial and then is $14.95 for 3 months billing periods or $8 per month if you go month to month. The current logged numbers are shown in the image below.

I do not expect to use this site anytime in the near future, as I do not have a baby, but a colleague of mine is preparing for twins so this might be the web's gift to him and others expecting an arrival soon.

Parenting Social Networks: Parents Connect & Share Advice Online

Joseph Morgenstan once said, "Children are gleeful barbarians." So how do parents handle "gleeful barbarians?" Parenting is not an easy task but parents are no longer alone. With the web 2.0 movement there have been a number of parenting sites that have been introduced to help unite parents to do battle with the "gleeful barbarians." In this article I will profile a few of the more prominent parenting social network sites.

GotKidsNetwork.com a social networking site for people that have "got kids" is geared towards finding deals, nannies and advice online. Though the site has a lot to offer, I found the sites design of the site to be less than desirable.

Maya's Mom, Palo Alto-based a social networking site for parents, launched recently to to enable parents to connect and share parenting experiences and knowledge. Maya's Mom focuses on allowing parents to share information. The site is made up of parent submitted kid's activities,  a Q&A section called talk and groups focused on various topics. Maya's Mom was founded by Ann Crady Kennedy as the site gets its name from Ann's daughter. Also Maya's Mom recently received an angel round of funding.

Minti, a parenting social network founded by Clay Cook and profiled previously on Somewhat Frank, offers a place for parents to meet other parents in addition sharing parenting advice. Minti enables parents to create blogs, harness the simplicity of RSS updates, discussion forums and group creation.

MothersClick, a social networking site for mom's that may never be profiled by TechCrunch, launched recently with similar features to Maya's Mom. The site offers a question and answer section, groups that are plotted by location on Google map, blogs for moms and fun stuff which includes podcasts and other parenting related partner blogs.

ParentsConnect, a social networking site for parents produced by Nickelodeon, offers a local guide, message boards and video blogs for parents looking to trade advice. The site is lead and moderated by a group of 21 "host parents," who also share their own experiences in raising kids by overseeing the message boards as well as contributing to blogs. Seeking to encourage interaction, the company has already added blogs for users based on feedback recently during the beta test, and may also eventually give users the ability to sell items on the site.

Bottom-line: If you are a parent looking for answers, there are a galore of solid parenting advice options online.

Disclosure: I do not have any children and do not think they are "gleeful barbarians." :)