I know a lot of families with very complex schedules. It can be hard to keep up. But there’s a new service called Famundo that is trying to make things a little simpler.

The advantage that Famundo has is that if your family uses it as a planner, you can subscribe to activities listed by organizations that also use the service, and have their schedule added to your planner automatically. You just choose the appropriate events.

The basic service is free. You get a family homepage, calendar and address book. Each family member can have their own log on, so what they see will be what they have selected as relevant to them.

Of course, you decide what is public and what is private. But they also allow parents to see what their children have declared private, so you don’t have to wonder what your child is adding to his or her own calendar.

I can see this being useful both to families that are longer distances apart as well as those that still have young children at home. Kids always have activities, but it can be nice for the grown children who have moved away or gone to college to be able to keep up with things they might want to visit home for.

I’m thinking about that in terms of my own extended family, in fact. My uncle always hosts a family dinner a couple weeks before Thanksgiving. That one is pretty easy to predict, but it nonetheless sometimes gets in the way of other things I’d like to do. And there’s been a lot going on for the family as a whole lately, so it would be very nice to have another way to let everyone know what’s going on.

I’ve been having a lot of fun blogging for PayPerPost these past several months. It can be challenging finding things I actually feel about writing about, but earning from them is great.

They have announced that they just raised $7 million more in funding. Can I be jealous?

Nah. Much as I would love to earn more money it’s not my ambition to run my business with others looking over my shoulder. I’m enjoying being small and independent too much.

Of course, the question comes as to how they will use the money. They’ve been making big changes to the site, such as adding PayPerPost Direct. There’s the free PostieCon in Vegas on November 10, 2007.

As a Postie, my main interest is in seeing more and more advertisers posting opportunities. The more variety, the better. So I always enjoy hearing them talk about how their efforts in that direction, and if this helps continue that effort, wonderful. More companies are seeing that being able to advertise on blogs can really help them.

I also appreciate the need to get more and more Posties. This is what helps to keep good advertisers around, after all, especially when some of the more popular blogs sign on, even if they are picky about what they blog about. Can’t say I blame them when I get picky too.

I wish I could think of something really interesting that could be done with the money. I’ve tried thinking of tools that would help Posties, and things like that, but no inspiration this morning. Ah well. I’m sure they have grand plans for it.

The PayPerPost Revolution Accelerates, Sponsored
Blogging Marketplace Secures $7 Million Series B

Draper Fisher Jurvetson leads round and joins Board of Directors

ORLANDO, FL – (June 12, 2007) – PayPerPost, the leading marketplace for advertisers to reach bloggers and other consumer content creators, today announced it has completed a $7 million second round investment led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, an investor in the company’s Series A and one of the world’s leading high-technology venture capital firms. The financing brings the total amount of capital raised by PayPerPost to over $10 million, giving the company considerable resources for further development as the industry’s leading Consumer Generated Advertising marketplace. Additional participants in the round include existing investors Inflexion Partners and Village Ventures as well as new investor DFJ Gotham. With this investment, DFJ Managing Director Josh Stein also joins PayPerPost’s Board of Directors.

“PayPerPost created this exciting new advertising space and has established itself as the industry leader,” said Ted Murphy, chief executive officer of PayPerPost. “Although we’ve only used a portion of our first round capital, this added support from investors unlocks significant growth potential. Our content creator and advertiser ROI metrics clearly demonstrate the upside for PayPerPost’s model. We intend to use this capital to build the infrastructure, visibility and professional expertise necessary to reach and retain a greater network of advertisers and content creators than ever before.”

Since its founding in June of 2006, PayPerPost has signed more than 6,500 advertisers to its groundbreaking service, which has enabled Consumer Content Creators to be compensated for their efforts discussing specific companies, products or services via blogs, videos or other media. The content creators are required to disclose relationships with advertisers on their blog, providing transparency for the end reader. Over 125,000 Internet postings, most in the form of blogs, have already earned money for their creators through PayPerPost’s innovative marketplace. PayPerPost recently released PayPerPost Direct, a disruptive new service that allows advertisers to contract and negotiate directly with individual bloggers they identify through a safe, managed system.

“PayPerPost has laid a strong foundation for the future,” noted Tim Draper, founder and managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. “It continues to attract a critical mass of participants from both the advertising and blogging communities. Analogous to Overture’s sponsored search model, we believe PayPerPost’s business model holds disruptive potential and will enable the company to thrive in the evolving paid-content arena.”

To mark the $7 million dollar funding, PayPerPost has launched a new website detailing the company’s service offering at http://www.payperpost.com. Bloggers and advertisers can easily sign up at the site and begin leveraging the self service marketplace.

Being a parent can mean finding a balance between getting too much information and not enough. There’s just quite a bit of information out there.

But knowing where to find the right parenting resources is still very useful. Sometimes you really need that advice.

Talk About Parenting is run by Shirlee Smith. In addition to her website, she has a cable TV talk show and runs parent training workshops.

I haven’t been to any of her workshops, but as my daughter’s preschool requires, I have been to parenting classes, so I know that these things can be very much worthwhile, especially if they are on a topic that you aren’t having the success you would like to have.

It was my daughter’s 5th birthday earlier this month, and I’m thinking back. It’s just amazing how things have changed for me these past years, going back to my pregnancy.

And who can go back without thinking about the maternity clothes? Some great, some miserable. I look at sites that offer them, and I can envy current moms for some of the styles available yet not want to wear them. Just not ready for that again.

I also get onto this track thinking about my sister’s upcoming wedding. Last time one of my sisters got married, I was pregnant. The jokes have been flying about whose turn it is this time, especially since one of my sisters was pregnant at my wedding. And let me tell you, maternity bridesmaid gowns are not easy to find.

I didn’t get the best of maternity wardrobes, but it was certainly adequate. And for those wondering, when I needed that maternity bridesmaid dress, my mother made it. Gave up on shopping after a while. I think it’s possibly easier to be fashionable now than the first time I was pregnant. Either that or I didn’t shop enough.

Despite how easy it is to dread science, it can be a lot of fun for your children. Kids love to do basic science experiments from a very early age.

One of the easiest ways to encourage an interest in science is to buy science kits. Depending on your children’s ages, these can be simple or more complex, and require varying amounts of direct parental supervision.

Even though she’s too young for most of them, my daughter has been begging for a robot kit. At her age, a robot kit would have to be just a few quick clicks, not something really challenging. She’s 4, after all, and many are for ages 14+. Were she old enough, though, she’d probably enjoy something like the amphibious solar vehicle.

In the past we did show her how to do a crystal growing kit. It wasn’t something she could do herself, but she certainly could watch the way I mixed it for her, and wait rather impatiently for them to grow. Of course, the impatience probably lasts a while. But the nice thing about the crystal growing kit was that we managed to break them down and do it over again.

I’ve often enjoyed helping my kids with some science basics. At the ages of my kids, kitchen level experiments work well, but as they get older we’ll get more complex. It’s a lot of fun.