Family Life. Simplified

Published 8:30 am Sunday, September 12, 2010

Not long ago I had an alarm system installed in my home that came with an unexpected benefit. My daughters dislike the loud siren sound of the alarm system. Right after I set the alarm to leave and the alarm begins its slow and steady beep that says, “You’d better get out of the house before the siren sounds” my girls move into high gear to get their backpacks and go to the car. Setting the alarm miraculously stops all dilly-dallying, lolly-gagging, and unexplained episodes of sit-stare-and-do-nothing. Amazing. And for only a few dollars a month, they’ll monitor the alarm, too.

    If only I could keep that frenzied pace all day. Then I realized it IS my pace all day. We are a frenzied, overly busy society. Between soccer, football, cheerleading, church activities, homework, fundraisers, doctor appointments, and oh yeah, work–and this goes on ad infinitum–how do you manage all that? I wish I could say technology is the answer. Hear me again, technology is NEVER the answer, it’s only a tool to facilitate the answer. The real answer for most of us is to simplify, and simply do less. That said, whatever your family schedule and commitment level, there’s an innovative tool to help you reduce stress and be more organized as a family.

    So how do you reduce the family frenzied feeling? Cozi’s (www.cozi.com) tag line is “Family life. Simplified.” It’s free, which should send up a red flag that says, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” More on that later. Cozi offers a shared family calendar with each member having their own colored appointments and a filterable calendar so you can see all, some or one family member at a time. And yes, it will sync with Microsoft Outlook.

    Another feature Cozi offers  is lists–to do lists, shopping lists, emergency numbers, whatever you want. You can create lists for others in your family (my mother would have loved this for my Saturday AM chores). You can access your list from any device with a browser and even have the shopping list sent via text to your phone or read to you via Cozi’s toll-free number.

    My favorite features are actually secondary ones: the family journal, collage screen saver and web publishing. I work fairly hard to chronicle my children’s lives so we’ll have lots of fun memories to laugh about. Cozi has useful tools for capturing those memories and photos and what better place to do it than where you’re already planning family life. Cozi makes it easy to create a screen saver collage of family photos and share memories with others, too.

    Cost? Again, it’s free. Red flag. Cozi states plainly that they use don’t use third-parties unless you signed up for Cozi via a partner which, although IS a third-party, is not considered one by Cozi. The common sense bottom line is this: someone has to pay for hosting this site and for all the work that went into creating it and maintaining it. And if it’s free, it will be paid via advertising and advertisers will pay a great deal to know where you go, what you do, what you value and who you are.

    Cozi’s privacy policy TODAY seems friendly and to mostly respect privacy. I doubt it will stay that way. Cozi won’t be the first company to lure you in and then sell you out.

    Greg’s professional experience includes consulting for Price Waterhouse, working as a

Program Manager for Microsoft Corporation, and serving as Chief Technology Officer for

several companies. He has a Masters in Software Engineering from the University of Texas and has presented at technical

conferences across the world. Bott Technology Solutions helps small to midsize businesses with computer technology needs. Greg may be reached via e-mail at gregbott@bottinc.com or at

601-207-0509.