I know a bunch of you are procreating and I know you have cute babies and cute baby pictures. We want to see them, but there are three requests your family and friends have, but are too polite to tell you.
1.Resize your pictures.
We do want to see your lovely baby but we don’t need to see his pores. Open up your favourite photo software, and resize the picture to 800 x 600 pixels. This is big on screen, but not big in file size. Send the grandparents a photo CD of high-resolution pictures they can print out, but email the 800×600 pixel pics if you must email pictures.
2. We don’t necessarily want you to send pictures via email at all.
We don’t mind coming to online sites to see your pictures (especially if we don’t have to sign up for anything). Flickr is the site I use most often, mainly because it has a little downloadable dohicky that lets me upload pictures right from the folder on my hard-drive and it resizes them and lets me add tags all at once. Then I can arrange them in sets and let people look at them as slideshows (or individual pictures) online. I can also click a button at Flickr that lets me add them to my blog instantly. (I can also set it up so that pictures I take on my cell phone go straight to Flickr and from there to my blog). There are other photo services online that host and post pictures. Use them.
3.Blog!
We would love to take a break during the day by coming and dropping in, a little voyeuristically, on your new life. Use Blogger or Livejournal or TypePad and write a paragraph every day about the cute/disgusting/surprising thing your baby helped you discover today. It’ll make us laugh and make us feel like we’re involved. It doesn’t need to be great literature. Imagine you were telling your best friend (the one who is your most appreciative audience) about an incident and write it like that. Use Flickr (or another photo hosting software) to add a Cute Kid Pic Of The Day, and you’re done.
This all sounds like a lot of extra work, but imagine: instead of having to compile emails and big batches of photos, now all you have to do is pick a single picture from your vast store, upload it, click “blog it”, write a paragraph, and your devoted fans will be able to keep up with your new baby and your new life.
Welcome to 21st Century parenthood.