kajeet Mobile Web – New!
November 13, 2009
by Carol Politi
We just launched some great new mobile web services! This new offering provides significantly more flexibility for those that want to surf the web from their kajeet device and gives parents the ability to select the level of access they think works best for their family.
The kajeet Navigator (i.e., the browser on your phone) now has a set of free sites, a set of kid-friendly sites selected by kajeet (these cost money to access), access to social networking and IM (these cost money and are in a separately controlled category), and a category that allows you to access the web freely without controls. The new Feature Manager on kajeet.com allows parents to control the access their kids will have to various sites on the mobile web. Login to kajeet.com and select Configurator/Feature Manager to see the full set of options.
What does it cost?
The web services are charged based on use – $0.35 per 0.25 megabyte (each 0.25MB expires 24 hours after purchase). What that means is that we charge you for 0.25 MB and that this is good for a day. (Some carriers charge in MB, for comparison purposes this equates to $1.40/MB).
What on earth does 0.25 Mbyte get you and why did we take this approach? First, it gets you:
- About 10 mobile-friendly web pages
- About 2-3 full web pages (i.e., non-mobile optimized pages)
Why did we take this approach? It is nice to be able to, for a very small cost, casually browse the web – e.g., look at the weather once in a while. Many of our customers just want a bit of web access and they don’t want to buy a big bundle. (For those that are very heavy users, we will add a bundle option in the future!)
Please note: it is still free to browse our Navigator store for ringtones, games, and applications – and all kajeet users still get access to select free mobileweb sites! Access to your “MyKajeet” is also free.
We would love some input on this – so please comment here on the new features. Your comments will directly reach our product team and they will listen to you! We could specifically use help in the following areas:
1. What sites would you like to see in the “free” category. Our plan is to consistently make available at least 3 sites as part of our base service. These need to be appropriate for kids of all ages. We would appreciate customer feedback to help us decide if we have made the right choices.
2. Do you know of other kid appropriate sites that should be specifically listed and made available in our “Other Great Sites” category? This is a category of sites that again need to be appropriate for kids of all ages. This category is a bit light at the moment and we would like to make it more robust.
Please comment here to let us know what you think, and to let us know how you would like to see these features evolve. Thanks!
Best Adventure Books for Kids
September 14, 2009
by Carol Politi
Outside Magazine does not typically focus on kids. However, their recent blog does a great job of profiling adventure classics for kids. The blog was spurred by the recent New York Times article on a teacher that allowed the kids in her 7th and 8th grade classroom to choose their own books.
The Outside picks? Below and on the Outside Blog:
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer- Mark Twain
- Redwall series – Brian Jacques
- Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
- Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
- Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad
- The Red Badge of Courage – Stephen Crane
- Hatchet – Gary Paulsen
- White Fang – Jack London
- The Call of the Wild – Jack London
- A River Runs Through It – Norman Maclean’s story collection
- My Side of the Mountain – Jean Craighead George
- Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
- The Black Stallion - Walter Farley
- Misty of Chincoteague – Marguerite Henry
- Into the Wild – by Jon Krakauer
- Lord of the Flies – William Golding
- Brighty of the Grand Canyon – Marguerite Henry and Wesley Dennis
- Following the Equator – Mark Twain
- Young Men and Fire – Norman Maclean
- Down and Out in Paris and London – George Orwell
- The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
- Walden and Civil Disobedience – Henry David Thoreau
- On the Road – Jack Kerouac
As you might expect, not every book is appropriate for every family or every age range. Check out the book descriptions to determine which books on the list might be most appropriate for your family and your child.
Do you have feedback on the books above or recommendations on great adventure books for tweens? Please comment and let us know! We can get the word out to kids on the phone.
Green Tip of the Week
September 11, 2009
by Carol Politi
“Recycle Your Shirts
Got a shirt you just don’t wear? Before you toss it in the trash, pass it on to a friend or a local thrift store. If it is worn out, cut it up and use it as rags around the house.”
Tips by Jenn Savedge, Author of The Green Teen
As we post these tips on the handset, I’m finding myself thinking that my mom did these things naturally when I was growing up. Reusing clothes, bags, etc. and donating lightly used items were all a second nature to her.
I also noted in a recent trip to Toronto that everyone was carrying grocery bags to the store – and that I was not even offered a bag when I checked out. People that had only a few items simply carried the items. There are great trends here that if replicated could vastly reduce the waste we generate!
Please comment & let us know what your family does to reuse or otherwise prevent things from ending up in landfills.
Weekly Green Tip – Buy Local
July 7, 2009
By Carol Politi
Here is the Green Tip published on the phone this week for kajeet subscribers:
“Buy Local.
Do you know where your food comes from and how far it travels to get to your plate? Evan organic food will cause environmental damage if it is flown from overseas or trucked across the country. If possible, buy local in-season foods.”
Tips by Jenn Savedge, Author of The Green Teen.
Surfing on kajeet Phones
June 29, 2009
by Carol Politi
Most parents come to kajeet to get access to the latest in parental control features, but also want to be sure the kajeet service contains enough fun stuff to make their kids happy. In that light, kajeet phones now provide access to a limited array of mobile web sites that provide the following information & entertainment:
- Weather
- Sports
- Dictionary
- Nature
- Wikipedia
Kids that want to check out the latest game scores, work on their homework, learn about animals, or figure out what the weather will be for practice this afternoon are all covered!
Remember, if you do not want your child to use Surfing on their phone you can turn it off using FeatureManager as follows:
- Login to the kajeet website
- Go to Configurator and then FeatureManager
- Change “ability to use” to OFF for the Surfing feature.
Please let us know how your child enjoys the service and what else you and your child might like to see added.
kajeet on Parenthood.com
June 3, 2009
by Carol Politi.
“Kajeet is the best phone for tweens, period.” NAPPA Software Judge
Parenthood.com has featured kajeet this month in its profile of award winning products for kids. The above quote is from one of the National Parenting Publication Award’s judges that evaluated the kajeet service.
kajeet has received some great reviews recently – both from our customers and from both NAPPA and PTPA Media independent judges and parent reviewers. Help us spread the word! If you are a kajeet customer, please tell your family and friends about us. When they activate, tell them to input your phone number during activation and you will get a bonus credit to spend on kajeet service.
Parenthood.com has profiled other NAPPA award winners this month as well. There are some great products on the site – and you can use their tool to search for kid products in various categories including books, DVDs, music, parenting resources, software/video games, story telling/audio books, and toys and games. Check them out!
This Week’s Green Tip: “Buy In Bulk”
May 21, 2009
by Carol Politi
kajeet customers know that we have launched a “Green Tips” channel on the phone that provides a new tip each week to kids to get them thinking about how they affect the environment. In addition to publishing the tips on our handset, I’m publishing them on the blog each week.
Here is this week’s Green Tip:
“Save money and the planet by purchasing items in bulk whenever possible. Buying in bulk is cheaper than purchasing several smaller items and it will minimize the amount of packaging that you need to toss.”
Tips by Jenn Savedge, Author of The Green Teen
English Roses
April 20, 2009
by Carol Politi
Longer term readers will know that one of our initiatives at kajeet is to find ways we can use the phone to promote tween reading. I’m an avid reader, and this particular project is a pet project of mine.
As part of this quest we have teamed up with Penguin books and have launched the news about their newest The English Roses book – The Runaway Rose – on our phone. In addition to providing a bit of information about the book, we are giving away free wallpapers that can be used as screensavers.
If you are not familiar with The English Roses series, it is authored by Madonna and is a real hit with tween girls. Here is a quick peek at The Runaway Rose from their website:
“Amy’s absolutely thrilled when her mum gets her an after-school job working behind the scenes at Marks & Spencer Teen Fashionista week; it seems a perfect opportunity to polish her design skills and cultivate her true passion for fashion! But when a talent scout convinces Amy that she should actually appear on the runway as a model for the big show, things start to fall apart. Suddenly, Amy finds herself hanging with the beautiful people, and her head gets more than a little inflated as a result. What’s worse, she begins ditching the English Roses to hang with her fashionable new friends! The Roses have to wonder if she’s getting a wee bit big for her designer britches! Will Amy abandon her four best friends to follow the fashionista crowd forever?”
A really interesting trend in tween and teen literature is to pair each book series with its own website and social experience. In this case, Penguin has launched myenglishroses.net. This tie between the book and the computer is intended to make books more relevant to kids. It is great to have a place for kids to go to get more context on the author and to generally add more depth to the reading experience. In addition to providing information on the other books in the series, this site also offers fun crafts, horoscopes, and quizzes on the book.
Madonna has actually written six picture books for children, The English Roses, Mr. Peabody’s Apples, Yakov and the Seven Thieves, The Adventures of Abdi, Lotsa de Casha, and The English Roses: Too Good To Be True. The English Roses is a series – and Runaway Rose is book number 9.
How do you get your kids interested in reading? Please let us know!
Text Your Teen
March 20, 2009
by Carol Politi
The SunSentinal had a great article recently called “Texting your teens to the family dinner table“. The article discusses more than text – it really addresses how to get kids engaged in the dinner time routine. I love the idea of getting kids involved with making dinner, and suggesting that they invite a friend over for dinner and study hour is also worth trying. They had some good ideas on how to integrate text communications in a way that could make dinner time involvement fun.
Some of these ideas might challenge parents that are not experienced texters. kajeet has a tool that can make it easy to text your kid’s kajeet phone. To text your kid from your computer, just login to MyKajeet and select “send a text message” from the dashboard (under “Phone” in your kid’s section of the dashboard).
I also recently found a a site called WuduPls that makes it easy to setup text reminders for your whole family. The site allows you to set up a list of numbers that you might want to text on a frequent basis – and allows you to write texts and schedule them for a later time.
Try texting your teen to dinner and let us know how it works out!
“Get Up Off Your Behind and Move”
March 10, 2009
by Carol Politi
That was the unlikely title of a recent NPR podcast about the benefits of small periods of exercise for both kids and adults. One of the segments discussed how incorporating exercise in the classroom (by having kids stand when they read or do jumping jacks while practicing math) was showing positive benefits – especially for those kids that have difficulty staying on task.
I think most parents are proponents of more movement – both during and outside school hours. However, many parents struggle getting kids to move while they are at home because the kids want to be connected to their friends via apps on their computers. I extended the Club Penguin timer last night because my son had discovered yesterday that he could “find” his friend – and by the time he actually found him there was no time left to play with him. Given that his friend was next door and the two of them must have run about 2 miles in the find process by physically going back and forth between each others computers, extending it was actually upside when it came to inspiring exercise. But when he gets the hang of this is he going to want to stay tethered to the computer for hours?
Does the cell phone inspire kids to get outside by allowing them to be connected while they are mobile? If we enable what many of us consider to be the “optional” apps on our kids phones – Facebook, Twitter, etc – will kids be more comfortable leaving their computer and heading out to skateboard or ride their bike?
As with most things, there is no black and white here. On the plus side, when these apps are a mobile extension of on-line applications many of the safety settings and monitoring tools we have in place will work. However, much of the safety monitoring I do consists of watching my kid in the kitchen with his computer. Taking the apps mobile certainly raises the bar a bit. How do you approach monitoring of social applications while your child is mobile? Do you restrict them, have a tool that monitors the applications, or just use your eyes in the kitchen?
The other part of the NPR segment was about the benefits of small periods of exercise at the workplace. An untethered phone definitely makes this easier – we all might need to start pacing during calls!
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