Online Family Organizers

One of the key elements of successful travel is being organized. And one of the key ways to procrastinate about getting organized is to spend a whole afternoon looking at online family organizers and calendars. Here’s my round up of the current offerings on the web to help co-ordinate busy families.

1. Google Calendar. 
http://calendar.google.com/
OS: Online – any 
Price: $0
Shareability: 10/10
Prettiness: 7/10
Ease of Use for Kids: 5/10
Additional features: planned iphone sync, integrates with gmail, create invitations, reminders (including mobile phone notifications), agenda view and *surprise* search
Comment: Is there anything that google can’t do? In terms of functionality and price they are the rulers of all they survey. You can share calendars as a family including creating specific calendars for events such as travel. Of all the calendars this one is the most customisable actual calendar. Kids need their own google log in to view, or you need to create a family log in. 

 2. Cozi – probably pronounced like “cosy” as in snug, not “cossie” as in Aussie slang for bathing suit. 
http://www.cozi.com/home.htm
OS: Most downloads aimed at Windows users, although online aspect can be used by everyone.
Price: $0 (ad supported)
Sharability: 10/10
Prettiness: 10/10 (although it is quite orange)
Ease of Use for Kids: 8/10
Additional features: lists, reminders & messages, mobile access, family journal, syncs with outlook
Comment: Beautiful to look and and easy to use. I just want it to import my calendar data. Not Mac friendly.

 3. Glubble
http://www.glubble.com/glubble_for_family
OS: Online – any
Price: $0 although premium edition coming soon (supported by Amazon Store)
Shareability:  10/10
Prettiness:  10/10
Ease of Use for Kids: 9/10
Additional features: Safe internet browser with safe sites for kids to access.
Comment: Create a private family homepage with shared calendar, message wall and photo albums. Calendar not very configurable, only displays dates as a list of events. I was very impressed that it auto added Birthdays but SGM nearly had heart failure when it informed him how ancient he was.

 4. Famundo
http://www.famundo.com/
OS: Online – although grrrrr – didn’t like Safari
Price: $0 (ad supported – and ugh, not the most family friendly ads), ad-free is $50 US per annum
Shareability:  10/10
Prettiness: 9/10
Ease of Use for Kids: 8/10
Additional features: photo sharing, to do list, shopping list, address book, files, vaults, blogs
Comment: Fantastic calendar – looks like they’ve tarted up google cal, great options for importing and exporting both calendar and address book details but the ads are the most painful and intrusive of the lot. If you are prepared to pay for the extra features, this would be great. 

5. Qlubb
http://qlubb.com/new
OS: Online – any
Price: $0
Shareability:  10/10
Prettiness: 9/10 (What is it with orange?)
Ease of Use for Kids: 5/10
Additional features: shared to-do lists, group invites / RSVP’s, file sharing.
Comment: this could be very useful for co-ordinating more than one family when travelling 

6. iParents.com
http://www.iparents.com/
OS: Online – any
Price: $0 (supported by ads and classifieds)
Shareability:  6/10
Prettiness: 10/10
Ease of Use for Kids: 0/10 (Not intended for kids to use)
Additional features: photo sharing & printing, to do list, ask the experts, interactive family calendar
Comment: Aiming to be more of a community of parents / social networking site than a site for sharing within own family. Allows you to share photos with selected friends.

7. Family Details
http://www.familydetails.com/
OS: Online – any
Price: from $5 per month (US)
Shareability:  9/10
Prettiness:  3/10
Ease of Use for Kids: 4/10
Additional features: Instant messaging / chat between family members, basic games (space invaders, tic tac toe), photo sharing, family forum

8. My Home Point
http://www.myhomepoint.com
OS: Online – any
Price: $6 per month or $55 per annum (US)
Shareability:  9/10
Prettiness:  7/10
Ease of Use for Kids: 4/10
Additional features: Address book, home inventory, shared family notes, tasks and chores, ability to import and export calendar data
Comment: You can try a demo account without signing up

9. 30 Boxes
http://www.30boxes.com/welcome.php
OS:  Online – any
Price: $0
Shareability:  10/10
Prettiness:  7/10
Ease of Use for Kids: 4/10
Additional features: Calendar, to do list, events, tags, rss & ical feeds, sms reminders, photo sharing
Comment: Facebook app integration (as well as other blogs and social networking sites) – this may be the way to go if you all have Facebook accounts. If the words “life stream” are important to you, you will like this app. Although the calendar itself is easy enough to enter data in real words, fiddling around with themes and settings is a bit more advanced.

10. Fircle
http://www.fircle.com/
OS: Online – any
Price: $0 – currently free, soon to be invitation only
Shareability:  7/10
Prettiness:  7/10
Ease of Use for Kids: 5/10
Additional features: Job and allowance tracking for kids, family rules, growth charts, recipe collection, shopping lists, play groups, import and export ical data

11. Keep and Share
http://www.keepandshare.com/
OS: Online – any
Price: $0 (advertising supported?)
Comment: Bored with registering for online calendars now – so if you like the look of this you’ll have to try it out yourself.

12. Amy Knapp’s Family Organizer
http://www.familyorganizer.com/home.aspx
OS: Windows only – a download not online
Shareability: 0/10
Prettiness:  10/10 Although there’s that orange again. Included it because it truly is a work of art. Check out those page turning animations. Would sell at least one major organ if they made this as an iphone app.
Ease of Use for Kids: Depends if they can hack into your computer account or not.
Additional features: Weekly menu planning & grocery lists, weekly inspirational quotes, to-do list

Conclusion: I successfully procrastinated doing anything else for pretty much the whole day. After all that, we’ll probably stick to our current situation of using a combo deal of  ical events and google calendar. I’m considering stalking Cosi and Amy Knapp and sending them relentless emails until they become Mac compatible. 

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Tags: Cosi, Facebook, Glubble, Google, Google Calendar, Online Organiser, Online Organizer, Planning, Social network service