Along with entertaining all of you fine people, this blog is supposed to be an online scrapbook about my kids. The hope is that one day, Mazzy and Harlow will look back, read all the good, the bad and the ugly, and decide whether they love me or hate me for it.
I'm hoping, love??
But… as my blog has grown (it's almost three!), I find less and less of my content is exclusively about my kids. And I've stopped uploading random photos and videos of little things only I'll appreciate.
As exciting as I find things like Mazzy putting on her own shoes (three cheers for Crocs!) and Harlow throwing her hands up on command (she started doing that this week! GO HARLOW!!!!), I feel a responsibility to make sure each of my posts are worth you all stopping by.
Social media isn't a great place for minor milestones either. Facebook only cares if I can weave it into a clever status update. Instagram only cares if it's accompanied by a great picture. Sometimes you just wanna shout, "Harlow finished her can of mashed peas!" and be done with it.
Sadly, this means a lot of the little stuff I'd like to record (or the stuff Mazzy and Harlow might like to know one day) never gets posted.
If I do post something, it goes in one of many different places and I'm starting to realize that a hard drive of several thousand uncurated photos, hundreds of stories on my blog (only some of which are about my kids), a continuous stream on instagram and years of status updates on facebook aren't something my daughters are ever going to be able to piece together to get the story of their lives.
In short, everything I record has become more for me NOW, than for them LATER.
In olden times (back in the '90s maybe?), people kept baby books. I bought a beautiful book for Mazzy and ended up filling only half of it before it got buried in her closet. I didn't even bother with Harlow. I haven't printed out a photo since I started posting my favorites on Instagram. Mike finally stopped asking me to create a tangible album. Who has time for tangible albums? That's what computer hard drives are for!
So, I was very excited to find out about a site called Blinkbuggy, which pretty much solves all my problems.
Blinkbuggy is an online baby book.
That is, if your baby book was on a steady cycle of performance enhancing drugs designed to make it THE GREATEST BABY BOOK OF ALL TIME.
Let's start with Blinkbuggy's privacy features, which I think are really important (and the reason I recommended it to my sister, who won't even post a picture on facebook). You can opt to share your posts with no one (except hopefully your kids at a later date), share them with everyone or just share some of them with some people (like the grandparents, for instance). Each and every upload gives you a choice.
What are you posting exactly?
In addition to photos, you can upload quotes, milestones, artwork and longer letters, creating a highly searchable stream of written and visual memories, listed by date.
You can upload straight from your computer or you can upload from facebook, instagram or google +. One of my favorite things is that every photo you upload comes with a pre-embedded date, so it automatically takes its place in your stream chronologically.
Once uploaded, you are given the option to share it on any of your social media sites or email it. You can also give access to family members so they can see your memories as you make them.
Another great feature is that when you scroll over a photo, it reveals the date and caption.
The point is to that simple updates, like a quote or a funny story, get a place in your child's life that's just as important as the photos.
As it should…
So let's say, oh I don't know… Harlow says "Ma-Ma" for the first time. You can upload that little factoid as a milestone. Then you can tag it "Harlow" so that in the future, you can easily pull-up all the entries for each child.
The tags are one of the coolest things about Blinkbuggy. You might have noticed the more you use social sharing sites like facebook, twitter and instagram, the harder it gets to find stuff you've posted there in the past. Hashtags are used across the entire platform so something like #Harlow on Instagram pulls up 18,325 photos including other children, puppies and *ahem* naked ladies.
On Blinkbuggy, your tags are used within your own account only, so "Harlow" only pulls up items that I posted about my own child.
You can tag something like "birthdays" and then twenty years from now, easily pull up pictures and anecdotes from every birthday your kids have ever celebrated. Or you can tag "Grammy" so she can see only the photos and stories that involve her. I even tagged "mommy" so I can see I was there too.
Also- you realize you now have a place to store digital photos of your kids artwork so you can throw the hard copies out?
Once you start using Blinkbuggy, you'll realize the possibilities. Remember that Google commercial where the dad opens the email account for his baby girl and then records everything she does in a series of letters to be opened up one day in the future?
What if you posted all the photos and milestones publicly but then kept monthly letters to your children private?
The only thing Blinkbuggy can't do for you that a regular baby book can, is store an envelope of your child's first hair cut.
But really. Why do we think we need to save that again?
If you'd like to open a Blinkbuggy account, it's totally free and you can do so here. Please come back and let me know if it's made as much of a difference for you as it has for me.
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UPDATE: I reached out to Blinkbuggy to answer some of your questions. They say, "We are thrilled to report that the iPhone mobile app, the ability to print and the ability to upload video are in the works and should be available in the October-December timeframe. We love getting questions and ideas from users – please reach out to us anytime at info@blinkbuggy.com." Woohoo!
This is a sponsored post by Blinkbuggy but I love it and wouldn't talk about it otherwise.
I suck at printing out pictures.. i havent got an album for Rio yet i really must though!! This looks like such a fab site..like you i used my blog as a kind of keepsake for Rio ๐
WTTP – The little lady with a baby!
Genius. I have unfilled photo albums—just albums, mind you, I abandoned the baby books—that I had hoped to simply fill in chronological order. Nope. That, as you said, is what hard drives are for. But this looks fabulous.
Thank you so much for this! I was just thinking about this the other day, wishing there was some sort of internet based baby book. I am going to try it this weekend. I will let you know how it works out. So excited!
Oh, wow, thank you so much for this! I have a Google Drive word doc that I record milestones and quotes in, this will be so much better! I’m definitely signing up!
I loved the idea, I signed up immediately but I don’t think I’ll ever use it (or not as often as I’d love to).
I wish it could be an option to have it as an app on my iphone, I take 99% of the pictures with my phone and i’d love to be able to quote funny phrases right on the spot rather than wait until I’m online…
If they ever come with an app I’d gladly buy it!
Thanks for this! This looks awesome! So far I have a pregnancy journal that’s partially filled out, so I am already forgetting to keep up with this stuff. lol. So that online book looks great! And, maybe it will be just the ticket to finally convince my Mom, who lives in another state, to please get on the blankety-blank internet already so we can keep in touch better. Being able to see her grandbaby’s pics like that might finally get her out of the stone age. lol.
I love you for making my life easier! and how nice that it’s private! I hate FB because I don’t want creepers seeing my kid. this is awesome!
This is one of those things I never knew how much I needed! Awesome!
@mommyshorts – does this site have the ability to turn it into something tangible? like a photobook? or does it only live online?
Does it only work in the US? I can’t seem to sign up for anything ๐
Yes, so much is on our phones these days! The iPhone app is coming this Fall and will be followed by the Android app – stay tuned!
My poor 2nd, at 7 1/2 months, has not a single printed out photo at home. No framed picture. No wallet sized to carry around. To be fair, all of Sweets’ framed photo’s are from when she was 1. She just turned 4. I have a stack of photos in frames laying on the floor…they are from when Sweets was 1.
I’ve just started Blinkbuggy and I am sure once I get some time I’ll be able to get stuff in there. But I still need to print out those photos!
Hi Katie – it absolutely should work everywhere across the globe. We’d love to help you get set-up! Would you mind sending an email to us at info@blinkbuggy.com?
Though I have a great baby book going for my 8month old so far, I myself am a third child and know from experience that only the first kid gets their memories captured in a cute little package!
Hopefully this will spare my future kids from the horrible baby-book-neglect I’ve felt all my life… Great post/partnership!
That was the same question I had. I’d love to be able print out a booklet.
Hi Shaina – it’s Emma from Blinkbuggy. Thanks for asking! Printed albums are coming soon! We will be launching a basic printed album option around November. Stay tuned!
Oh my goodness, this couldn’t have come at a better time. I’m expecting my first and have already started frantically searching for which way I’m going to save memories, and when I’m honest with myself a hard bound journal is really just likely to sit abandoned! I’m SO thrilled now you have no idea! Thank you, thank you thank you thank you…
I came across this dilemma a few weeks ago but gave up to a solution. It hurt my head and my heart just thinking that I started my first child’s baby book 8 YEARS ago and have yet to finish…then there’s my second with a bunch of uncaptioned and nonsequenced photos in her First Year book, she’s 6 now btw, and my 3rd child who’s 3 has an empty book with a bunch of loose picture stuck between the pages…I think I’ll give this a try.
Seriously? I wish you had posted this 2 weeks ago! I’ll totally give this a try…I have spent any free minute trying to catalog and upload all of my daughter’s photos from the last 16 months (yes, she is 16 months old and I haven’t printed a single photo including the ones from her baby photo shoot!)to create a jam packed photo book from shutterfly. It has been a nightmare of my own making. I swore I’d find a better way- and keep up with it. This may be my solution!!!! Also- I am learning not to take quite so many photos…
meant to say every free minute of the last 2 weeks…(the guilt of not having done this for 16 months was killing me…)
I personally LOVE the posts about Mazzy and the pictures of Harlow. I share them with two of my 4 daughters 20 and 14. We laugh so hard about the adventures you share with Mazzy. Tha is for the info, sounds like something I’ve been looking for to share privately.
It’s as if you are living inside my head with this post. I have been feeling HUGE guilt for not recording my second daughter’s milestones as often as I did with the first. And I too do not have ONE printed photograph of her since the birth announcement. I fear the day will come where she will ask why her older sister has so much of her life documented while she doesn’t. I am definitely checking this site out and am hoping this solves the problem. thank you SO MUCH for this post ๐
Just signed up and I love it! Hope someday they’ll add a video option!
I agree, the video option would be great! I have no actual photos of my daughter’s first steps, so I took a screenshot of the video to use.
Omg! THANK YOU!
I currently upload all my pictures to my private fb page but all my non-baby having friends make fun of me and say it bugs them! I’ve been looking for a solid way to store images after a computer crash. My son is 2 now and I’m pregnant with #2, so hopefully I can start her off right and catch up with the boy-child!
Love love love.
(and this is how I’ll be spending the rest of my day, lol)
This website sounds absolutely amazing! I still keep a baby book, but I get really behind and sometimes I forget things.
Since I’m always on the computer, this sounds like a perfection resolution for me : )
Looks pretty great! Is there a way to back date things? or would I need to upload everything in chronological order?
I signed up, and it’s great!
my only issue with it is that it can’t load all the pictures to import over from my FB albums. I usually have over 200 or so per album and each time I try to import is stops halfway through the album. then I have to load pictures I want from my computer then date them, etc.
Hi Laura. It’s Emma from Blinkbuggy! Sorry to hear you’re having some issues with the FB import. Could you email us the details of what’s happening to info@blinkbuggy.com? We’ll look into it ASAP. Hope you’re enjoying Blinkbuggy otherwise!
Hi Melissa! It’s Emma from Blinkbuggy. You have full control of the date! When you import images from FB, Instagram or G+, the date will auto-populate with the original date the image was put up on social media. You can always override that date by going into the edit screen for any memory. When you upload images from your computer there is a “Date” field that you can set manually and again, can edit from the edit screen if needed. We are working on having the date pulled automatically from the image data for uploaded images so stay tuned!
Thanks to this post, I created my own account this morning! Navigating (via firefox) was a little spotty at first, but once i got the hang of uploading pictures, it was a breeze! I’m looking forward for them to linking up with tumblr and windows phone!
I don’t have kids, but I think this would be awesome just to document all the little photos I take of my husband and our dogs to capture our day to day life so we have something to remember when we get old and forgetful! New product idea, Blinkbuggy? Call it Winktruck.
Thank you so much for finding this! I’ve been trying to maintain a family blog to keep these sorts of things in it for my two little ones, but it’s too much! I usually just end up posting a little blurb and a picture on Facebook, and only a small percentage of my family gets to see it. Shutterfly’s Share Sites are okay if you’re just posting albums upon albums of pictures, so that didn’t work either. This looks like to be the perfect mix of social media sharing and ease of getting it to a wide audience.
On the surface, it seems like a great service. But I have a large caveat:
From their Terms, it looks like Blinkbuggy owns your picture and has the right to promote them however they choose for the purpose of advertising their services.
Which I do not like.
Hi Barbara. This is Emma from Blinkbuggy. We hear your concern loud and clear. As parents ourselves, we are very sensitive to privacy especially when it comes to our family. Our philosophy is that the content you put on Blinkbuggy belongs to you, not us. In building Blinkbuggy, one of the key tenants we subscribe to is that you, the user, control your content, especially the privacy of that content. Any content that you deem private will remain so and will not be used or shared by Blinkbuggy for any purpose without your permission. You are putting a lot of trust in Blinkbuggy by putting your family and children there and that trust is paramount to us not only as the founders of Blinkbuggy but also as users.
My blog is a terrible baby book too:) I think email might be a better modern one: http://hintmama.com/2013/09/04/todays-hint-keep-a-baby-email-or-a-more-modern-baby-book/
I love this! Started an account ๐ I’m always online these days so having an online memory account is just wonderful. My son’s (now four) babybook has maybe a 1/4 filled in.
Awesome! I’m all over it.. And now glad someone else has done all the work! Because I have no clue how to create an app!
Incredible photos I just love them and you made awesome baby photo albums, I am waiting for your next blog. thanks for sharing.
I think the little moments are precious ๐ Bless you