Everyone told me to take lots of pictures of my baby boy because before you know it, he is going to be all grown up. My wife being the photographer that she is has taken numerous photos and videos of our son. When we first started to do this, we looked at different ways to organize everything and yet share them with my parents since they live so far away and wanted to get as many pictures as they could. We were deciding on whether we should have gotten a baby book and put pictures in there, but in the end, we decided to create a blog and chronicle his life that way.
A couple of weeks ago, I came across an app named 23snaps, which lets you document your child’s life and share it with others either privately or publicly. After I started to play with it a bit, I kind of wish we had started out with this app as this seems a little more flexible for us. If you are a parent that wants an easy way to capture your child’s moments, you are going to want to read further.
Set Up
When you first start using 23snaps, there are a variety of things you need to do to get started. You first need to add your children as well as your spouse so that they can also contribute to your timeline. Then you are going to want to invite people that you want to share your posts with either through your contacts, by email or via Facebook. The nice part about this feature is that you only invite people you want to share your timeline with; no one else gets to see it. Once you send out the invitations, they are asked to sign up for an account so that they can access what you post.
Adding your child (left) Inviting friends (right)
Using The App
Once you get everything all set up, you can now start to use it, and this is where the memory making begins. To share something you click on the “+” button and you are given the options to either take a photo, video, write a status or update your child’s measurements. Either you or your spouse can both add to your timeline, assuming they have the app as well.
Adding child’s height (left) Adding a status message (right)
Once posts are created, emails are sent out to the people that have access and they can also interact by leaving comments of their own. Specific posts can also be sent out by email to people that you want to share them with that may not be a part of the group that has access. These can also be posted to Facebook.
Options for sharing a post
Access
What I like about 23snaps is they don’t limit you and the people you share with by only having an iPhone app. There is also a web service where people can access what you post, but they still need to log in so that it is secure. They can leave comments there and view your timeline, which is great because some of the people I share with don’t have iPhones. I wish you could post from the web app as well, but maybe that may come later. The one thing I noticed was that there was no dedicated iPad app, which was somewhat of a let down as this would be a great one to have on it. Again, that may be something they look to add in the future.
Web view
Reconsidering
After using 23snaps for a couple of weeks, it has me reconsidering changing our strategy of using a blog to chronicle our child’s life. There are a variety of reasons why I am rethinking this, with privacy being first and foremost. As much as we are in an age of “share anything and everything,” there are just some things that I really don’t want everyone to be able to take a look at, this being one of them. I like that I have to give access to people in order for them to look at and comment on what we post.
Secondly, this app is geared toward sharing your moments of your children, which is exactly what our goal was when we started the website for him. As you start to use the app you realize the little things that make this easier to use than posting to something like Tumblr or WordPress. It is geared so that you can quickly enter in a moment of your child’s life in a way that is easy and portable by using your iPhone.
Conclusion
Overall, I thought this was a well done app, that was not only easy to use, but fun as well. It was very well thought out and for parents that are looking to capture memories of their children, this is a great way to do it. Yeah, you can use sites like Tumblr, WordPress, Posterous, etc., but 23snaps is geared toward this very thing and so it has the tools you need with minimal setup. Go and get it from the App Store for free and start making some memories that will last a very long time.