“Beep. Ding! Ring!!” Twitter is chirping, the kids just finished a dance-off with the Wii and my facebook feed is buzzing on the Blackberry. As summer approaches, Canadians have a growing social concern about the impact that digital devices and technology are having on family togetherness. Remember those long cottage days as kids when we spent hours playing Battleship, catching fireflies and beating the parents at Monopoly? (I think they let me).
Meeting with the Microsoft Office 365 team, I got the feeling that I was their perfect target market. I run the household, use many different brands of technology and need a better and more efficient way to do it all. They spoke of Canadian families’ frustrations about not being able to use programs across different platforms and how frustrating it is when calendars can’t sync, or numbers and financial data aren’t easily accessible. We are a new generation – multitasking and managing life from multiple locations. We manage caregivers, aging parents and our kids. We have great communication with teens with the advent of texting. Grandparents are on Facebook and Skype, and people learn better English with the help of autocorrect. (sometimes!!) We need to be productive and connected between all different devices at home and in the office, on PC and Mac.
With the new Office 365, Microsoft has solved a ton of issues for families and I am pretty impressed.
The rundown:
* Includes the latest and most complete set of Office applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and Access
* One license for the entire household to use Office on up to five devices
* An additional 20 GB of SkyDrive cloud storage, three times the amount available with a free SkyDrive account
* 60 free Skype world calling minutes per month to call mobiles, landlines or PCs around the world
* Future upgrades, so you always use the latest time-saving technology
* Automatic save to SkyDrive, so your documents — and even your personal settings — are always available from virtually anywhere and on your favourite devices
* As you will have a microsoft acct, you get 60 mins/mth of skype long distance free
* At CA$99.00 for an annual subscription, Office 365 Home Premium costs the equivalent of CA$8.25 per month.
I get a ton of PR pitches and therefore a staggering number of flash drives. Incidentally, I also receive a ton of CD roms filled with information I can’t access with my MacBook Air. (PR People please take note). I thought I’d follow through with Kelby Carr’s ingenious ‘Marketers Who Understand Blogger Outreach’ post with something fun before the long weekend. So I emptied my USB Drawer and found my ultimate favourites from Public Relations teams who know their brand and respect me as a writer enough to make me want to grin. Here are my favourites:
1. McCafe, who engraved my Twitter handle ‘@urbanmommies‘ on the back.
2. Honda – A clever car key (that I could make into a necklace a la Tiffany & Co and take my data with.)
3. Disney Fantasy. Rubber (waterproof I think), fun for kids to play with and very chic.
4. Ritz-Carlton Lake Tahoe. Gorgeous wood. Refined and symmetrical.
5. Dole. Because who doesn’t want to carry a banana-shaped flash drive in their purse?
6. Disney Cars Land – in the shape of a race announcer’s microphone.
7. Store Brand Formula.com in the shape of a formula bottle. Because I laughed out loud, as no Canadian PR company would ever attempt this given the volatile and judgmental Canadian nursing climate, and the most popular articles on UrbanMommies are breastfeeding-related.
8. The Victorinox 4GB super-secure flashdrive which cannot be broken into if you’re a PC user. And because it is made by Victorionox and stores information on it’s own brand, which is smart and somehow ironic. And I love the spy-like nature of it’s security.
9. The ultimate: The G. Marquis Winery flashdrive in a branded wine cork. Because it floats, it’s durable, cool, on-brand, and, well.. they did their homework.
Cheers!
It is well-established that music is beneficial for children’s mental and emotional development, even in the womb. Also, music is a great way to help baby drift off to sleep…and mom, too! Here are some of the best Baby CDs out there right now, all are available through Amazon and other outlets.
Rockabye Baby. For those of us who don’t want to sacrifice our hipness or adversely influence our childrens’ brain development by exposing them to too much silly kids’ music and cultivate some style and culture…it’s Rockabye Baby! You saw it on Ellen Degeneres and other places; celebs love these Baby CDs, because they literally rock! Your favorite songs by your favorite rock, pop and even some R&B artists, such as Coldplay, Bob Marley, the Beatles, Green Day, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, etc., are all on here. Sure, lullaby versions of your favourite hit songs can get Junior to crash for a nap, and subliminally you’ll be telling him, “Just say NO to bad music!”
Disney Babies: Lullaby Album. This is a must-have in every nursery CD player or MP3 playlist. The best Disney songs as lullabies, it doesn’t get much better than this!
Jewel, Lullaby. For those of us who love Jewel’s sweet, plaintive, ethereal yet earthy voice, this is an awesome choice. Jewel recently became a mom for the first time, but this album of old-fashioned classics and new selections is a great listen for the nursery.
Baby Einstein, Lullaby Classics. Baby Einstein is another awesome child-development audio tool, with a large body of work to choose from. All of it is ultra creative, hip, and worth buying, but if you want a lullaby collection of classical music (which has been shown to boost brain development in babies), choose this one. Mozart at his best and sweetest, your baby will love it, and you will, too!
Do you have some favourites? Please let us and our readers know below! You can also tweet us at @urbanmommies.
I recently saw an array of knives by Victorionox Swiss Army. My husband has made me somewhat of a knife snob (he worked at a butcher shop in his teens) and taught me everything I know. So I ‘investigated’ these specimen. I checked balance, heft, grip, sharpness. The plastic paring knives are great (and colourful) for everyday jobs, and I imagine that they’d be my go-to knife for most kitchen jobs. But what would make me feel like the gourmand that I aspire to be? What really got my juices flowing (so to speak) were the luxury knives. Pick up a professional forged chef’s knife from Victorionox and you’ll want to host a dinner party. All models are forged from one piece of black-smithed steel and have a seamless transition from the blade to the handle. And think of all the money you’ll save on dinners out.. Pictured: Forged Carving set. Retail: $230
www.victorionox.com
Kids love music, just like we do. Childhood is when we begin forming our musical sensibilities and preferences, and it’s also when we learn like sponges. So, choose your Kid CDs wisely: select music that is smart and fun, and try something different every now and then, since variety is the spice of life! After all, how many times and ways can “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” be done? Here are some of the best, funnest, most popular and smartest Kid CDs out there.