20 Sep 2011
Here and there • Parenthood

‘I Don’t Know How She Does It’ – and what about us?

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Ye, Sarah Jessica Parker is great, but don’t we all have the same feeling from time to time? I want to invite you to MY “how she does it” moment – Looking back, it was the ultimate scene: Captain’s Blog – Startdate 29.1, Location: The largest hospital in the city, The Participants: One exhausted father with one over-3 years old girl, lying in his arms like a maiden, all sluggish from distress, bumped head from a fall at nursery school, vomiting intermittently, crying frequently, the father wandering in and out of the emergency room, since the emergency room is flooded with sick children at different stages of the flu, and the maiden in his arms is insisting on falling  asleep, and as we said previously, vomiting. Every once in a while I run to the children’s emergency room to find out when somebody can check the bump before she falls asleep or covers the floor with vomit. Me, I’ve been hospitalized since Sunday with a mysterious bug. A doctor from the emergency room has been interrogating me since I first arrived: “Do you raise poultry? Did you come back from a country that raises poultry? Do you know any poultry? [...]

Amit | | Tags: , , , , ,
08 Sep 2011
Parenthood • UX and UI

How to Photograph a Memory of Your Kids for Life

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We are all parents, and we are taking pictures of our kids like crazy, but how can we take it to the next level, and create something for life? Some of the best photographers deal with the same question, and people around the world keep trying to create new exciting ways of taking a pic that lasts forever We created Vikido exactly as we wanted to capture those moments and save them forever while our kids are in the loop.. Today I want to offer something (not) new - Typology! By its dictionary definition, Typology is something that repeats itself or is a way of arranging things, classification by color, race, look etc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typology In photography, it means capturing one or more subjects, and going back to see them again and again, checking how time, seasons of the year and life affects them – sounds familiar? Kids are classic objects for this kind of dynamics… Personally – I take a pic of my girls every morning (almost…), for example – when we’re out for school. I am a serial-elevator-photographer, trying to find other options of holding them as they grow, to help myself remember, help myself see how fast things change, how quick and brief life is… Enough said, [...]

Amit |
07 Sep 2011
Here and there

Wordless Wednesday: 2 Girls, 1 iPod

Vikido's Wordless Wednesday: 2 Girls, 1 iPod
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31 Aug 2011
Uncategorized

Conclusions from a virtual world

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For the last few weeks the girls are citing only one name, they think of it, dream of it, constantly ask to play with it – sad to say, the girls are addicted. I am talking about a virtual world designed in the style of (or should I say: very well inspired by) Club Penguin. In the last couple of months during which the girls have played this game I gained some very instructive lessons on the way children react to social conventions, on the way they are affected and the way they learn from the adult world, on the way children develop environmental understanding regarding real and fictional playmates, and on our role as parents in this equation.. (In the pic, google search for virtual world for kids) Danger, Danger, Act! Although the rules are nicely organized, bad words are immediately tracked down (“Mom, why can’t I write ‘cow’??”) and the instructions repeatedly tell the kids to refuse offers from other creatures and refrain from conveying personal details, still, young kids do not understand this. The need to explain to them time and time again that the person on the other side may not be a child like them [...]

Amit |
30 Aug 2011
How to: Vikido • UX and UI

Vikido Walk Through

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21 Aug 2011
Here and there • UX and UI

Life with feedback – an act and reaction in a children’s application

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Anyone working with designing and building websites and applications knows how important feedback is. An application without feedback is vague, mysterious and sad. When you design for children you have to pay special attention to the right feedback and internal reward. Kids aren’t small adults; they believe and trust even interfaces they see. One of my saddest experiences as a parent was the day when Tamar ran to me enthusiastically from her computer to tell me there’s a chance to win a quarter of a million dollars because she’s the 1000th surfer on some despicable game site. At that moment I was overwhelmed with sadness and fear – it’s hard to describe the feeling, the trust she had in what she saw on the computer broke my heart. Even so, kids are much smarter then we tend to think and they know much more than most of us would expect. They have small hands that need to be taken into account, and other insights about the world, they don’t have the same conception we do about the internet, its content, and the scope of information it contains. In this sense, planning an interface for children is a most wondrous adventure, [...]

Amit | | Tags: , , , , ,
18 Aug 2011
Uncategorized

The story of Vikido :) (Video)

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Meet Amit, the Co-founder of Vikido and watch the story of Vikido. Try it now and let us know what you think!

Amit |
09 Aug 2011
Here and there • Media Coverage

BlogHer 11, It Was Amazing!

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It was my first trip to the US and it was overwhelming Actually, I saw just the inside of lots of ugly jets and the beautiful San Diego, but still it was fun… I will write another post describing the convention itself but I wanted to share some pictures and some of what I felt before I will start writing about the serious stuff – and serious it was! So I arrived I wasn’t the only one with flip-flops! I had a few hours in LA so I went to see Tim Burton’s exhibition, what else can can a girl do in LA? Well, it was amazing, you MUST see it. It opens a gate to one talented, disturbing, beautiful and magical mind. I spent there 3 hours and couldn’t get  enough. It was one of a kind experience for anyone who loves art, movies, and likes it when someone is messing with their mind… But I was there for something completely different – BlogHer 11, The world’s largest bloggers convention, which took place at the ridiculously-good-weathered San Diego. To get there I took a ride with my friends and co-workers from BabyFirstTV.   Here is Kristin from BabyFirstTV, I love her! It was great to see how blogging empowers women to be far more [...]

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31 Jul 2011
Here and there • Parenthood

8 Tips To Get The Best Pics Of Your Kids

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Some of the people I know from the web know me via my girls picture, when I meet them face to face they are always looking around me, to see if I’m hiding a girl somewhere. Sometimes I think that my web presence is somewhat more “real” just because of the girls’ photos dotting and lighting up my digital life… I do have 2 amazing girls, but that’s not the only thing that makes their photos good I have 4 years of photography studies behind me and more than 15 years of experience, so here are some of MY favorite tips  - that will help all of you making the best out of your pictures, even if the only camera you ever had is your mobile phone. 1. The best camera is the one you have I’m a big believer in this phrase. Kids are like small animals at a national geographic movie, you can wait forever to “catch” a good pic, so the best way is to hunt them down whenever and wherever you (and they) are. You should look at them via the camera, take the regular point of view aside for a sec. Seeing them in new light will [...]

Amit |
29 Jul 2011
Parenthood

The Confusion of Tongues – Part 2

The Confusion of Tongues – part 1   The Connection Between Personal Identity, Self Confidence, Gender and the Internet From the moment a person has the chance to look at himself in paintings, photographs and videos, a gap is created between the way that person perceives himself and the environment. The partial control he once had when looking at his pictures becomes his representative in the world. In our case, we want to know what happens with children from whom this (imagined) control is taken. Parents spend 15 percent of their time on the web dealing with matters related to their children, including online forum discussions, uploading pictures to Facebook and various sharing websites, and more. A child that grows up in this situation is basically a child who has been documented and published since age zero, and when he reaches the age where he discovers this disturbs him (or not), it will already be too late. We can see the gap between the self perception of children (for example, insecure teenagers) and their posturing on social networks (sexy pictures, pictures from parties, thousands of pictures documenting what the child would previously have wanted to hide). We can only conclude that [...]

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