Surfing the Net with Kids: Family Web Collaborations

June 13, 1999

Dear Readers,

Welcome back. Your response to the two newest sections of my site (Reader Reviews and
Postcards) has been
fabulous. I’ve posted over 100 reader reviews so far. That’s the
equivilent of twenty additional weeks of work for me — since I review five
sites a week in my newspaper column.

What’s your favorite site? What bookmarked sites do and your family
return to time and time again? Let us know by posting your own Reader Review.

This week’s newsletter is sponsored by:

• 
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• 
  
  Father’s Day
  Gifts
  A large selection of gifts for the Dad you love.
  

Family Web Collaborations

Looking for a fabulous (free) gift for the Dad who has everything? How
about the gift of family? Here are five free sites that offer families a
way to keep in touch across time zones, across oceans and across town. A
place to post your graduation photos, your award winning artwork, your
poetry and just plain keep in touch. Now instead of joining a chat room
full of strangers, you can enjoy regularly scheduled family chats. Happy
Father’s Day!

Like "Surfing the Net with Kids?"


Recommend-It to a Friend!

Family Point

Where does your family post party invitations,
exceptionally good schoolwork and frequently used phone numbers? If you
answered "refrigerator door," you’ll feel right at home with the
fridge door metaphor at Family Point. Family Point provides a Fridge (for
posting notes), Calendar (birthdays, anniversaries, family BBQ’s), private
chat, bulletin boards for asynchronous communication, and a photo gallery
(baby pics, anyone?) All this and more in an incredibly simple and
appealing package. Created specifically for families (not for businesses
or professional associations), your Family Point is password protected and
not open to the public. My pick of the day!

Family Shoebox

At Family Shoebox, the whole process is a bit confusing, with many
details (such as creating a URL that incorporates an easy to remember
nickname) to attend to. Unlike Family Point, your Shoebox defaults to
public access, but you can make some parts private. Most areas, such as
the newsletter and home web page, are created with the use of templates,
giving you some control over the look of your page. Shoeboxes also
include chat and threaded discussions.

Homestead

Click and drag your way to Web site success, with your choice of two
Homestead editors: Homestead Online ("offers complete power,
flexibility and ease of use") or Homestead Express ("an easy
starting point for beginners.") Choices abound, but are clearly
described and easy to make. In addition to family pages, Homestead can be
used to create any kind of Web site (and as such
competes with other free homepage sites such as GeoCities and Xoom) and is great fun! Optional features
include a password for privacy, chat room, newsletter, and guest book.

MyFamily.com

"With 850,000 members in 140 days, MyFamily.com is the hottest new
Internet service around." Created expressly for families, MyFamily.com
comes with the usual assortment of features such as privacy, calendar,
photo album, and chat. But MyFamily.com goes beyond with two unique
capabilities: Family Tree and Book/Movie Reviews. As the family
historian, I already had my family tree on my computer in standard
genealogical format (GEDCOM), so it took only seconds to add it to my site.
Presto, a graphical clickable family tree I can easily share with
relatives. If anyone in your family has an interest in genealogy, this is
the only collaboration site worth considering. Wow!

Yahoo! Club

Although Yahoo! Club is not specifically designed for families, it has
enough of the right features to be included. A Yahoo! Club is easy to
create and can be either private or public (but you can’t change from
private back to public.) A club includes free email addresses, chat,
calendar, message boards, photos, favorite family links and one-click
access to news headlines.

Related Book
(in association with Amazon.com)

More
Surfing
the Calendar