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Advice, Editor's Picks, Web, Social Networking

10 Tips for Dealing With Family on Facebook

It's probably the scariest friend request you'll ever get: Your mom (or dad... or, God forbid, grandparent) has joined Facebook – and they want to connect. Sure, you love them – and you're happy they're embracing the digital age – but do you really want to keep them that informed about what you're up to?

Denying the request is usually out of the question, so how do you avoid those awkward moments, when your family invades your public privacy? Switched.com did some research and talked to a few people about their own experiences with parental units, and how they dealt with them. We're keeping to just their first names, to protect them -- you know, just in case their parents are reading this article. Without further ado, here are some tips on dealing with family on Facebook.

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Cell Phones, Social Networking

Parents Now Inescapable Thanks to Text-Nagging


While cell phones and social networking provide kids with a sense of independence and maturity, that same technology also ensures that a particularly nosy and invasive group can keep a tight clamp on newly found teen cyber-freedom.

According to the Washington Post, parents are increasingly using online grading systems, Facebook, and text messaging to not only keep tabs on their kids, but, more importantly, to constantly nag their progeny into submission. Tech-savvy mother Martha McGrath told the Post that she celebrates "the plethora of nagging options," and many other parents seems to agree with the sentiment.

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Web

Move Over, Mommy. Daddy's Blog Is Now the Darling of E-Marketers.


Blogs can be substantial money-makers for enterprising mothers who are willing to describe the daily tribulations of stay-at-home parenting. According to the New York Times, blogs such as Dooce have become so successful that some writing moms have found their blogs' advertising revenue -- or outright endorsement revenue -- to be their primary sources of income.

The Times is reporting that while many companies do shill their wares via parenting blogs, they aren't just focusing on the moms anymore. Sony, specifically, is now engaged in a three-month partnership with blogging dads, "lending" the house husbands various electronic products to use with family members. The patriarchs are obligated to describe the gear to their readers, but are under no pressure to give positive write-ups. Sony spokeswoman Marcy Cohen said, "We expect the reviews to be very honest."

While that sounds good in theory, and call us jaded all you want, we have a hard time believing that a company would pay somebody to review a product without expecting a favorable review. Fortunately for our self-esteem, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) agrees. As we've mentioned in our coverage of pay-per-tweet marketing, the FTC may soon implement guidelines requiring that paid bloggers disclose the corporate sources of their paychecks.

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Editor's Picks

12 Essential Parenting Gadgets



Let's face it. Parenting is a decidedly low-tech job. But that doesn't mean you can't enlist some high-tech help to get you through that exhaustion and nervousness. To cut through the clutter, we've put together a list of gadgets to help parents survive the rough patches and better enjoy the precious moments.

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Baby Monitor Translates Cries for Parents Who Just Want to Understand

New Baby Monitor Translates Cries
Now that the gadget hordes have conquered the task of translating dogs' barks into something human understand, it's time to move on to that other frustrating non-speaker in your life, your baby.

The Why Cry Baby Analyzer (which we can only assume was inspired by a particular 'Simpsons' episode) uses something called "advanced frequency analysis technology" to translate all that crying and wailing into icons (smiley face = hungry, frowny face = bored, etc) on an LCD screen that explain what your baby is allegedly feeling. There is a handy guide on the side of course that will help you decipher if your child is hungry, tired, stressed, etc...

The Baby Analyzer is available from Think Geek for $99.99.

Now all we need is a device that will help us decipher what our pre-teen nieces are always carrying on about. [From: Walyou]

Video Games

Peaceful Video Games May Mean Happier Kids, Study Shows



Called mind-melting, violence-inducing time-killers, video games have gotten a pretty bad rap. Often overlooked are the potential advantages to having an immersive (and fun) entertainment experience. Yet, the Economist is now reporting that several different findings to be released this summer all that suggest "pro-social" games, or those that aren't based on blowing up or gunning down, actually encourage helpful and cooperative behavior.

The first study, conducted by Iowa State University, had 161 American children play helpful, violent, and neutral games, and then make decisions for their classmates. Kids who played the proactive selections made helpful decisions, while the destructive gamers picked the opposite for their peers. Similarly, a study from the University of Sussex showed that children who had played 'Lemmings' were more likely to imagine positive scenarios for problem sets than were kids who played 'Tetris.'

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Video Games

GameDr Powers Off Consoles for Parents



Just when you thought parents could not possibly become more hands-off, a new product like the GameDr ($29.99) comes along. The device is designed to limit the amount of time a child spends playing video games by forcing the console to shut down, reports DVICE. As a timer counts down, the gamer is warned when ten minutes and then one minute of playing time remain. When the time is up, the GameDr automatically shuts off power to the video game console until the next 24-hour programming period begins.

So if your parents are awful or lazy enough to purchase this product, you can forget about completing that level until the next day. We know that it's important for kids to spend time doing other activities besides video games. But come on! Couldn't a parent just ask their child to turn off the console, instead of resorting to a form of torture akin to a chastity belt for gamers? [From: DVICE]

TV

TV Hinders Kids' Language Development, Study Says

There might have been more than a kernel of truth to your grandparents' old warnings: "That TV is going to rot your brain."

According to LiveScience, new research lead by Dimitri Christakis, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine, suggests that television can in fact hinder the linguistic development of young children. Having selected 329 children between the ages of two months and four years, Christakis and his team gave each kid an audio recording device, which were worn by the children on random days over the course of two years.

According to the team's analyses of the recordings, a child -- on average -- heard 770 fewer spoken words from a parent or guardian for each hour she was exposed to television. Since the minds of young children absorb language like sponges, and depend upon actual interaction in order to do so, those effects could be grave.

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Cell Phones

Surprise, Surprise: Adults Can't Deal With Their Kids Texting Habits


In addition to death and taxes, life seems to hold at least one other certainty: The older generation will fret over the younger one's preferred means of entertainment. Over the centuries, parents have freaked out over scandalous stories, books, radio programming, TV, the Internet, and goodness knows what else. In keeping with that grand old tradition, the New York Times reported yesterday that many adults are perturbed by those dang kids and their dang texting.

Citing the opinions and research of parents and professors from the San Francisco Bay to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the article demonstrates that public opinion finds teenage texting guilty of causing anxiety, sleep loss, developmental problems and even physical harm (see repetitive stress, or strain, injury). We can hear it already: "Next up on the five o'clock news. Are text messages killing our children?"

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Web

BillMyParents Lets Kids Pretend They Have Money

BillMyParents Lets Kids Pretend They Have Money

It's bad enough that your kids can spend all day window shopping and bargain hunting online. They ask you to buy them things, send you links to Amazon at work, and are generally just huge pains in the butt. Sometimes you probably wish you could just give them your credit card and get it over with.

Well, handing over your plastic is a pretty terrible idea, but thanks to BillMyParents, there's now a simple way for kids to pick out things they want and quickly bill their parents, who have the option to approve or deny the purchase with a single click. The company is an online payment service that puts a "BillMyParents" button next to items at online retailers. Kids can pick out what they want and click the button, which will send an e-mail to their parents asking them to approve the purchase, along with a customized plea for the toy/game/weapon. Parents never have to visit the retail site, as the fate of the transaction can be decided via e-mail.

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Car Tech, Cell Phones

Study: Teen Girls More Likely to Text-and-Drive Than Teen Boys

Girls More Likely to Text-and-Drive
According to a study released by The Allstate Foundation and National Organizations for Youth Safety, teenage girls are much more likely to engage in texting and driving than their male counterparts. The organizations surveyed 605 drivers between the ages of 16 and 20. Here's a quick bullet list of some of the study's more interesting findings:
  • 87-percent of teens think that driving and texting is dangerous.
  • Despite this, 80-percent of teenage girls and 58-percent of teenage boys admitted to texting behind the wheel.
  • 65-percent have asked someone to stop driving dangerously.
  • Texting-while-driving was second only to icy roads for the most dangerous driving condition. It also beat out rain, snow, and talking on the phone.
It's good to know that teens realize that driving while texting is a bad idea, though it would be much more comforting if they actually stopped doing it. C'mon kids, put away that phone, pop in some bumping tunes, and think of all the fun you'll have in your twenties. [From: The Kansan]

Cell Phones, Computers, Summer Fun, Web, Social Networking

Camps Telling Kids to Leave the Laptops and Cell Phones at Home

Kids spend a lot of time attached to some form of technology -- be it an iPod, a cell phone, or just vegging out on MySpace. But summer is here, which means some kids will be shipped off to camp and forced to unplug.

It's not surprising that this has tweens and teens (and parents) panicking. Kids are used to being in constant contact with their peers via text messages and Facebook, and parents are used to having instant access to their children on cell phones. Still, as we've mentioned before, unplugging isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Gary Rudman of GTR Consulting, told the Associated Press, that teens were under a lot of pressure to maintain their own personal "brand" on sites like Facebook and MySpace. And, while the initial reaction to a week of bunked-beds and sloppy joes may be to recoil in horror, many teens quickly adjust. They make friends and have real face-to-face interactions.

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Web, Social Networking

Facebook Says No to Nursing Mothers, Yes to Anti-Semitism

Breastfeeding mothers who seek to share photos of their suckling babies have been embroiled in a war with Facebook since way back in 2007, when the site began removing photos of nursing mothers. Much to the anger of these "lactivists," the social networking site deemed the photos to be "obscene content," hence their removal. Michael Arrington, TechCrunch's rumorist extraordinaire, recently took a bigtime stand on the side of the lactivists, posting a vehement opinion piece against Facebook's lenient policy towards hate groups -- particularly those denying the Holocaust.

According to Facebook's terms of service, members are not allowed to "post content that is hateful" or "threatening." Apparently, groups such as "#@!$ Israel And Their Holocaust Bull#@!$" are not hateful, but instead completely acceptable -- since that group actually exists on the site.

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Computers

Man Delivers Baby With Help of YouTube

Providing further proof that the Internet is not, in fact, "good for nothing," Marc Stephens, a 28-year-old naval engineer from Cornwall, England, watched a quick how-to baby video on YouTube, and successfully delivered his baby daughter, Gabriele. According to the Daily Mirror, this all happened on March 21st, but apparently the Stephens only spilled the details about how the baby actually was born, yesterday morning.

Feeling anxious about his wife going into labor, he decided to check out some birthin' videos. Good timing, because a few hours later, she went into labor (three weeks earlier than expected). The paramedics were on the way, but, with time running short, Stephens was forced to go at it himself.

His wife, Jo, who has three other children, told a slew of British newspapers that of all her four childbirths, this was the one she enjoyed the most.

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Computers, Celebrities

Bill Gates's Dad Tells All...About Raising His Future Mogul Son


Bill Gates Sr., father of the Microsoft mogul and soon-to-be author, previewed his new autobiographical book in a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal. In the interview, the Gates family patriarch discusses seminal moments in his own life, while providing a rare glimpse into the formative years of his son, the world's wealthiest man.

Gates Sr., a World War II veteran and former Seattle attorney, now serves as co-chair of the Gates Foundation, his son's $30 billion philanthropic enterprise. The Foundation was inspired in large part by the wishes of Mary Gates, Bill Sr.'s wife and Bill Jr.'s mother, who passed away in 1994. In the interview, the elder Gates reveals details of the tumultuous relationship between his wife and son that began when Bill Jr. started exhibiting intellectual maturity and strong feelings of independence at a young age.

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Latest Reviews from CNET.com

CNET provides the latest tech news, unbiased reviews, videos, podcasts, software, and downloads, making tech products easy to find, understand and use.

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