Tag: Kids

Photo Journaling with Pressgram 2.0

Driving home from work yesterday thinking about all the new features in Pressgram, it suddenly struck me that two new features, Drafts and multi-photo attachment, when used together turn Pressgram into a photo journaling application. This makes the changes John added a more powerful than at first glance.

Let me explain.

A photo journal is series of photos that chronicle a person's days, trips or special events. It is a way of keeping chronological memories of an individual's events. Photo journals may be kept in different ways depending on the person.Ask.com

The original Pressgram functioned more like Instagram with a WordPress publishing option. A great combo but maybe not what John had in mind. Snap a photo, apply a filter, publish. If I wanted to post a series of photos, with the old version I created a new Pressgram post for each one. I could use this for photo-journaling but the results are a bit disjointed. There was no way to piece together a series of photos in a way that told the story. Pressgram 2.0 changes that.

Now imagine that I'm out in downtown Philly hanging out with friends or family celebrating a birthday. Or maybe I'm traveling to Manhattan with my family for a trip to the American Museum of Natural History. We decide to hop on a train from Princeton Junction and when we get to the platform I launch Pressgram to snap a photo of the kids sitting on a bench, waiting for the next train. I title my post "A Day at the Zoo"1, add some descriptive text to the photo and save the draft. A few minutes later I open that draft, click the "Add a Photo" button and capture a photo of the train approaching the station. We get into Penn Station and I snap a photo of my wife and kids looking alarmed at the mass of human being while we walk to the find the subway train. My kids love riding the New York Subway.

I open Pressgram again and capture a few more photos of our subway ride. Maybe I capture some photos of the zoo animals getting on/off the train. We get to the museum and we visit the dinosaur exhibit, and the hall of Native Americans. I use Pressgram to add a few shots of my son standing in front of T-Rex. All of these photos I am adding to the same draft I started back in New Jersey.

A few hours later, before we are too exhausted, we walk across the street and take a stroll through Central Park. There are lots of trails and little semi-private nooks and climbing rocks. A bit of civilization the middle of the zoo. The kids are having a blast and I capture a bunch of cool photos to for my photo-journal. As the sun sets we get back on the train for a ride back to New Jersey. It's been a wonderful day.

On the ride back I open up Pressgram and edit my draft post. I revise the title, add some text for each phot and maybe edit my the photos to get the artistic effects I want. I add filters, change contrast and maybe add a frame. Then with a few more clicks I send my post to my blog, Facebook and Google+. I just created a photo-journal of my day.

I haven't used this as yet but, I think this is just one of the subtle but powerful creative features that Pressgram 2.0 brings to the user. What do you think of the new features of Pressgram? Do you plan on using Pressgram as a photo-journaling app? Leave me a not with your thoughts in the comments section below.

  1. A friend of once referred to New Yorkers as zoo animals due to their famed rude and obnoxious behaviour. ↩

Technological Worldviews

Similarly to consumers in emerging markets, we now have generations of consumers who know nothing but being constantly connected via a mobile device and are extremely comfortable with technology. My kids, for example, have no frame of reference of a world where they can not use a smart device for real time communication, information, and entertainment. This will shape their technological worldview which will open doors for new challenges and new opportunities.
Ben Bajarin

I do see this difference in world views between my kids and some members of the local computer users' group. For some of this past generation of technologist a computer is a box with a keyboard, mouse and display attached. They have very little in smart phones or other mobile devices. My kids on the other hand spend more time on their iPads than our brand new iMac. For my kids a computer is a compact portable device with ubiquitous network access. Being tethered to the electrical grid is an annoyance.

Not a Christmas tree?

We don't celebrate Christmas. My wife is Hindu and I'm a Deist. We're raising our kids with Hindu traditions but allowing them to find their own path.

When our kids started school we made a pointed decision to teach them about Hindu traditions and customs to help give them a cultural identity. This is important to children especially when they are surrounded by a more dominant culture.

We started celebrating Diwali with Bhavna's family. The Hindu calendar is based on lunar cycles, so Diwali either occurs in October or November of the year. Each year we make Diwali a big deal in our family. We've got Christmas to compete with so we make Diwali a vey big deal.

Since Diwali is colloquially known as the "festival of lights", we decorate our home with Christmas tree lights and small electronic tea lights -- a substitute for the traditional open flame diyas. We clean out our home and prepare delicious foods.

The kids know that Diwali is the time of year for gift giving and receiving. This is the time for wish list.

Despite all that our kids want to feel included in the events going on in the larger culture around them. So, each year we setup and decorate a Christmas tree. It has no religious significance to the kids. They just like the twinkling lights. Over the years they've collected little decorative trinkets to place on the tree. Each one represents some milestone in our lives. The Thomas the Tank Engine phase, the “I made it in school” stage, the Pokémon phase (okay that one never ended), the cute panda and fairy princess phase, etc.

So guess this isn't so much a Christmas tree as much as it's a “down memory lane” tree.

Happy Holidays!