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Posts with tag parenting

Parenting 2.0: Mom pranks son's MySpace as punishment

cookies
A sassy 13 year-old Virginian laid the smack-down on a vacuum instead of doing his chores and then was caught looking at porn by his tech savvy mother, who stumbled upon some very suspicious looking cookies (not pictured above) stored on the computer's browser. Unhappy with his recent behavior, how does a mother punish a boy in this day and age?

Grounding him to his room would only be a blessing: video games, TV, the Internet, movies, phone, etc. Getting him to do chores has already proved fruitless. Perhaps in another time-period, she would've beat him into a coma with a yard stick, but today's politically correct nation requires Parenting 2.0 -- officially trademarked, copyrighted, and owned by T-Mobile.

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Filed under: Internet, Kids, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Productivity, Web services, Commercial, Freeware

Active Allowance - the business of running your family

Active AllowanceAnyone with school age children has probably struggled with the problem of what to do about allowances. More and more these days there seem to be legitimate (and not-so legitimate) reasons for kids to be spending money, but you probably want your children to start learning about money management a bit themselves as they start becoming little consumers.

One way to go about managing this process is to use a site like Active Allowance. Once you sign up, you can set up accounts for your children and checklists of tasks they must accomplish throughout the course of a week. If you pay for a Full account ($49.95/yr) each child gets a virtual bank account, and amasses virtual cash each week. You can choose whether to tie a monetary value to each chore, or simply require that all tasks be done for the child to claim their weekly allowance.

While it seems like a bit of overkill to use a web application to manage allowances, it may well be that children will enjoy the measure of control it gives them. It's certainly more neat and tidy than using a whiteboard on your fridge.

Filed under: Internet, Kids, Productivity, Web services, Social Software

OpMom brings moms together for social networking and more


Moms looking for a neat way to meet other mothers to compare notes and swap stories really ought to check out OpMom.com. A cross between iVillage and MySpace, OpMom -- shorthand for Operation Mom -- bills itself as a social networking and web service site for busy mothers. Though clearly in its infancy, OpMom already has sections filled with reader-submitted recipes, theme party ideas, and "circles", groups where mothers with common interests can gather and get to know one another in smaller settings.

Registration is easy and doesn't require users to cough up a lot of personal information. After registration, users have the option of creating a profile with as much (or as little) information as they are comfortable sharing. You can opt to simply provide a screen name for other users to see, or you can detail the ages of your children, your hometown, and even your religious affiliation. Privacy levels are easy to set as well, ranging from full access by all the site's users to only those whom you specifically allow to view your information.

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Featured Time Waster

Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

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