5 Exciting New Tech Products for Parents and Families

biz, tech, & social media • home management • home management

by Mom It Forward on January 20th, 2016 | No Comments »

Most of us are pretty in-love with technology. You don’t have to be a nerd (like me) to have a slight panic attack at the thought of going a day without your iPhone, Microwave, or Netflix subscription. Most technology gadgets that started as “nice-to-haves” for us have transitioned into “essentials” as we’ve used them, and found how many problems they help us solve on a daily basis.

5 Exciting New Tech Products for Parents and Families

Every year in Las Vegas, a huge gathering of technology enthusiasts and brands gather to show-off and salivate over the latest and greatest technology. The mission of these brands is to convince us that we need to add their new gadget to our iPhone, Microwave, and Netflix as the next “essential” thing we can’t live without.

That gathering is called CES (the Consumer Electronic Show) and as a nerd, I was in attendance last week. While I was walking the show, I came across five new tech products that stood out to me as a parent as gadgets I could actually see myself, other parents, and families really using. Here they are:

Motorola Baby-Connect Baby Monitor

If you’re like me, before your first baby was born you spent hours researching baby monitors. Since I wouldn’t be able to physically stand over my baby and watch him 24 hours a day, the function and purpose of a baby monitor was pretty clear to me. The problem? After buying the absolute best one I could find and our son was born; we never used it. We didn’t need the monitor to tell us if he was crying, and it’s not like I was going to look at the monitor to tell if he REALLY needed us; if he was crying we would just get up and take care of him. I couldn’t watch the monitor while I was sleeping, so it couldn’t help me know if he was ok while I wasn’t paying attention. And it’s not like the monitor could help me make any decisions, sometimes I could hardly even tell what I was looking at on the screen.

So that was why when I saw the Baby-Connect, I knew this was the future of baby monitoring. The Baby-Connect is super smart and is actually helpful because it doesn’t just show you what’s happening with your child, it alerts you to situations you need to be involved with, and automatically fixes situations you don’t need to be involved with. For example, by connecting the Baby-Connect with it’s humidifier companion device, if it gets too hot or hold in the baby’s room, it will automatically start the humidifier which has the ability to produce hot or cold mist. Or if you’re baby is having trouble sleeping, the Baby-Connect can automatically start another music-playing device that can play soothing music or sounds to help your baby relax and get back to sleep. How about something truly game-changing? The Baby-Connect can actually tell if your baby stops breathing, and can send you an alert. That is huge.

Tribly

How many of you still have a landline at your house? We don’t, and something I hadn’t really considered (because my son is still just a toddler), is that when he gets older and wants to get a hold of my wife and me when we aren’t at home, he is going to need a cell phone. Either that, or he is going to need Tribly. Tribly sits on your fridge and connects to the internet in your home to allow you to make calls from Tribly to a pre-set phone number, without a monthly fee or any additional costs. In addition to that, I can send a text message to Tribly that displays a note on the screen and triggers a yellow flag to appear on the side of the device, alerting my kids that there is a message from me on Tribly. Maybe I’ve asked them to pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees, which when they complete my request, they can push the yellow flag back into device and it will alert me that they saw my message and completed my request. Pretty cool stuff.

Withing’s Thermo

Look, there is nothing new about a thermometer. Most of us have one and they work fine, assuming there isn’t much trouble placing or keeping the thermometer under the tongue until it gets an accurate read. What makes the Thermo cool is how easy it is to use, and how it helps you keep track of the data about the temperatures you are measuring.

This thermometer isn’t used under the tongue; instead you place it against the temple. A complementary smartphone app keeps track of the temperatures you measure over time and sends alert of when you should take the temperature again. Based on the data, you know if the illness is getting more or less serious so you can make decisions.

In addition to its functions, it’s beautiful and super fun to hold and use. Assuming you care about that sort of thing.

Plug n’ Play

The Internet is incredible, and is also becoming more and more dangerous by the day for our children and families. There are lots of options for filtering and monitoring your home Internet, but most of them are software-based. The problem with that is it really means you need to have separate software and monitoring for your home computer, tablets, cell phones, and any other internet-connected devices. That leaves a lot of room for holes or vulnerabilities in what is being filtered, and how to monitor it effectively.

The Plug n’ Play is a Wi-Fi router with the filtering built in. That means that any device that connects to your home Internet is automatically protected, so all of the devices you own and that your children could use are protected. It also means you can set up different rules of filtering for different devices. For example, maybe your home computer can only display education sites during the times your kids are supposed to be doing homework. Checking the activity on your network is also easy since it’s all of the monitoring is being done from one place.

I thought it was genius to control what comes into your home over the Internet from the router level, rather than the device level. So smart.

Whiteclouds’ 3-D Printed Toys

3-D printing has become more popular, and available, to the general public over the past few years, and this year Whiteclouds’ taking 3-D printing to a whole new level for the average person with their line of personalized action figures.

They have licensing agreements with some of the largest franchises in the world like Star Wars or Marvel, to make it so that this time when your child wants an Iron Man toy, they can order one with their face as Iron Man. Have you or your children ever wanted to be a Jedi or a Storm Trooper from Star Wars? With Whiteclouds’ 3-D printing, you can be.

The process for uploading your photograph to Whiteclouds and them rendering your face so that it can be added to the toy is super simple. I’m excited to see what options continue to be added in the future and see this tech as something kids will really get excited about.

And that’s it! Are you into tech? Did you see news for any other cool new tech at CES? What are your thoughts about the products I listed above? Let me know in the comments. Thanks!