I hadn't realized, until today, that I needed to do a few extra things to make Google happy after I switched a few of my blogs over to one of the Typepad Advanced Templates. I noticed recently that every entry for my blog was showing up under the root URL (not too helpful if the entry in question was very old). As if anyone was going to scroll back through countless entries until they found the entry in question....

I recently followed the instructions above for One Woman. One Blog. and that took care of the problem quite nicely. (Maybe that will even solve some of the difficulties my blogs have had in showing up at Technorati.) Every once in a while I try to trouble-shoot these technical issues on my own blogs. Then I get busy again and move on.

Good thing there are technical gurus who troubleshoot these issues on my blogs at ParentCentral and Yahoo Canada Lifestyle, or you'd never be able to find anything I write....

Today was a frustrating day. Everything I wanted/needed to do on my computer really required a high-speed Internet connection -- and such a connection simply isn't to be had here at the cottage. My options are dial-up or an Internet stick (core network, two bars).

I'm trying to keep a sense of humor about the situation by selling myself on the so-called benefits of slow-speed Internet.

• It's forced slowness. I can't spend too much time online. It's too frustrating.
• I'm getting to experience the frustration that motivates young children to keep at a task until that glorious moment when they master it. (Staying in touch with her inner toddler is a good thing for a parenting author, don't you think?) Mastery when you're working with a slow Internet connection = completing the simplest of tasks. Writing a blog post, uploading an image, paying a bill, or (gasp) attempting any task involving video.

Sometimes my sense of humor goes AWOL, along with my Internet connection. The chipmunk-powered connection can only handle so much.

So now I'm trying a new approach. I'm reminding myself that I can "have it all" -- just not necessarily all at once. At least not in this part of Ontario quite yet.

I can have gorgeous surroundings and a break from my regular routine -- or I can have a high-speed Internet connection.

For now, I'm going to enjoy cottagey things. The Internet can wait.

While I was doing all kinds of searches related to mothers and blogging and mommyblogs and mommybloggers and motherhood -- and all kinds of similar word combos today* -- I stumbled across this web post from 2007 (eons ago in the life of the Internet, I'm sure you'll agree).

Normally I wouldn't even bother to mention it, but I found it fascinating because it was so hostile. I'd forgotten how nasty some of the mommyblogger smackdowns from this era were. (Of course, as Mom-101's most recent posts have indicated, there are still a lot of folks who consider mommybloggers to be swagmeisters, recipe swappers, or far worse.)

Anyway, in this post, the blogger has issues with mommybloggers in general as well as me in particular. (You'll find out why in a moment.) She's a mother herself -- but she's quick to point out that she'd never blog about her child.

She writes:

"Of course, the real issue here is why people read mommy bloggers at
all. Sentences like this are the reason I never write about my kid
here.

'Sometimes you don't know what turf you are in,'
[Canadian parenting expert Ann Douglas] said in an interview. 'You
could be reading someone's soulful portrayal of what it's like to have
a kid who's colicky, but then right beside it, there's an ad for
something? And it's the embedded things that are the most dangerous.'

[ME COMMENTING TODAY: I don't remember this interview at all and so I can't decipher what the (possibly paraphrased) quote means. (It certainly doesn't sound like me.) As for where I stand (and where I have always stood) with regard to advertising on blogs/swag etc., I support the principles in the Blog With Integrity blogging manifesto.]

"Soulful? Soulful? Gah. A 'soulful portrayal' of just about
anything would make me want to puke. But a 'soulful portrayal' of a
screaming baby? Ecch.

"If you actually do want to read about parenting, there is no need to subject yourself to bored navelgazers, when there are actual real writers out there who do a good job of covering the subject. I will confess to indulging in Dadsmacker and Neal Pollack regularly. Why? Because they make fun of people who consider colic 'soulful.'  As well they should."

[ME COMMENTING TODAY: I think soulful writing can be done about any aspect of parenting. I'll take soulful over cynical most days. (But not all days. I'm human.) I've never been bored by parenting. And a navel can be fascinating, particularly when it's a pregnant navel or a baby navel.]

POSTSCRIPT

There's an interesting postscript to this story. Just out of curiosity, I decided to check out some more recent posts to see what the blogger was up to today. Does she have the same views about mommybloggers as she did back in 2007? Maybe, maybe not. I can't tell whether she's reading any mommybloggers, but her baby has his own blog.

* I wrote four posts related to motherhood today. Two of them are live (this one and this one); and two over at Yahoo! Canada are waiting to go live.

My essay "Mom 2.0: Meet the Mommyblogger" appears
in Mothering and Blogging: The Radical Act of the MommyBlog, edited by May
Friedman and Shana L. Calixte (Toronto: The Association for Research on Mothering/Demeter Press, May 2009). Here's a brief excerpt
which highlights some of the key points raised in my essay.

"The online world of mothers is being transformed by
marketers with their own specific agendas. These marketers—who are eager to tap
into the $1.7 trillion market that mothers represent—have the budgets to ensure
that they are able to tap into the conversations of mothers, wherever those
conversations happen to be taking place online. Web 2.0 sites are eager to find
ways to generate revenue from their operations and marketers are the source of
that revenue, so their needs will often eclipse the needs of mothers in online
communities....

"Moms have always been generous about sharing their wisdom
and ideas with other mothers, but now a third party is privy to those
conversations. In the world of Web 2.0, there's a third party sitting (or
eavesdropping) at the table—a marketer who is taking notes and looking for ways
to use mothers' ideas to sell products back to mothers. More often than not, moms are not being compensated for these intellectual property contributions in any meaningful way. Rather than paying cash -- the traditional currency of business -- marketers and the mega-corporations that they front for offer fleeting fame and freebies. On a per-hour basis, these 'pay rates' can amount to lower rates of compensation than the rates paid to workers in third-world sweat shops --working conditions these meag-corporations to go great lengths to distance themselves from.

"Horizontal violence* between mothers online is the result of
the lack of respect shown to mothers by other online users. This type of
hostile activity is at its rawest in the blogging community ("the wild
west") as compared to in the highly moderated (and much less authentic)
world of social networking sites aimed at mothers. When horizontal violence does occur on social networking sites, the social networking tools that are built into the site architecture can be used with merciless effectiveness (at least until a site moderator steps in). Rumors and misinformation can be forwarded to an entire network of contact and on-site and off-site site a mouse click. Deleting someone from a list of friends can be accomplished with equal ease (and, in many cases, that former 'friend' won't even realize that they've been de-friended).

Perhaps the most important conclusion that web-savvy mothers must keep in mind is that horizontal violence will become less of a problem when the status of mothers and women is improved both online and in the real world. Until this happens, it's imortant for mothers to acknowledge its existence and to work towards collective solutions. In "Horizontal Violence in the Workplace," Carolyn Hastie recommends a series of strategies that appear to be just as practical and relevant to the world of mothers: recognizing and acknowledging that horizontal violence occurs between mothers and using the term 'horizontal violence' to name the problem; raising awareness of this issue and addressing teh cultural issues that allow horizontal violence to continue to be a problem between mothers and women; speaking out against instances of horizontal violence whenever they occur; addressing individual attitudes and behaviors; and practicing self-nurturing and self-care so that each woman ins able to 'do the things that help [her] to be healthy and happy in all aspects of [her] human-ness.' Once she applies that age-old common sense to dealing with a
computer-age online problem, Mom 2.0 will have more to give her Web 2.0
girlfriends. And it's a 100% product-free solution to boot."

View the full Table of Contents for the book.

*Note: The term horizontal violence is used when members of
groups with low status display hostile behaviors toward their fellow group
members as opposed to lashing out at their oppressors.

Related:

Mom-101: The Year that Shame Died: Mom-101 writes: "Much to my surprise however, what turned out to be the problem at
BlogHer was not how the marketers acted, but how so many bloggers
acted. Without pulling punches, I will say it was shameful...I am in no way saying that popular bloggers don't like free stuff or
that you should be ashamed for wanting some free dish soap. I publish a
site that gives away products daily and I love how happy it makes
people. What I'm saying that blogging 'success' shouldn't be defined by
the amount of stuff you get. It's about what you put out, not what you
take in."

Mom-101: Blog With Integrity: We're Taking Our Community Back: Mom-101 writes: "We've put together Blog with Integrity, a voluntary pledge, complete with blog badge,
for any and all bloggers (not just parents) who want a way to show
their readers, marketers, the PR community, and certainly the press,
that we are committed to integrity, responsibility and disclosure, and
that a few bad apples do not speak for all of us. Not even close."

Mom-101: Yep, I'm a Mother. Got a Problem With That?: Mom-101
describes the disrespect that mothers have been receiving from certain
members of the marketing community post-BlogHer'09.

Hey, moms and dads, it's back to school time again -- that crazy time of year when you might as well just camp
out in the mall parking lot rather than driving back and forth across
town in some unending quest for all the back-to-school essentials. (Of
course, if you've got a kid in that delightful "I have to visit all the
malls in town before I purchase a single item of clothing" stage,
you'll have to rethink your strategy a little to allow for multiple
treks to multiple mall parking lots.) Just remember to pace yourself,
folks: we've got the entire months of August and September ahead of us.

(Forget
what T.S. Eliot said: it's not April that's the cruelest month -- it's
September!)

Here are some tips on surviving back-to-school time as a family.

Rethink school-year routines. We may celebrate New Year's Eve on January 1st, but it's September that
marks the start of a new year if you've got school-aged kids. So take
advantage of that new school year's spirit to renegotiate chores,
allowances, extra-curricular schedules, clean out your kids' closets,
and so on. You might also want to think about whether your own routine could use some tweaking. (As your kids move from stage to stage, your day-to-day routine generally needs to evolve with it.)

Get your kids back on a school-year sleeping routine before it's time to head back to school. Otherwise, your kids will end up suffering from what back-to-school
"jet lag." (It's not exactly reasonable to expect a kid who's been
sleeping in until 11:00 a.m. all summer to be functional at 7:00 a.m.
on the first day of school!)

Establish the shopping ground rules before you hit the mall. Your
negotiating power goes down the drain after a couple of hours of
shopping. At that point, you're willing to buy just about anything your
kid wants just to make the pain stop. That's why it's important to
establish your kids' clothing budget long before you leave home and to
mutually agree on the number and price of outfits to be purchased
beforehand. Oh yeah, one more thing: avoid spending for the sake of spending (an easy trap to fall into at back-to-school time). Only buy what your kids genuinely need. The Center for a New American Dream
and its sister site IBuyDifferent.org provide practical advice on living consciously (according to your
values), buying wisely (buying green whenever possible and trying not
to get sucked into the vortex of over-consumption) and joining with
others who share your commitment to working towards a new North American
dream. (Remember the old one? It was all about acquiring more stuff.)

Keep your schedule as free as possible during the first week back at school. Not only will you want to leave time in your schedule to squeeze in
all those unpredictable errands that have to be run that first week --
like dashing out to pick up whatever school supplies you missed from the teacher's must-have list, or spending
an hour in line (or online) trying to sign your kids up for swimming lessons
-- you'll also want to be available to listen to your kids as they bring
you up to speed on all those exciting first-week developments.

Keep things simple on the mealtime front. You have enough other things on your plate without having to worry
about, well, what's on your plate. Order in pizza, pick up subs on your
way home from work, or reheat that mystery casserole that's been
languishing in the back of your freezer. The nutrition police won't
book you for cutting corners in the kitchen one week of the year.

Take time for yourself. It's easy to spend the entire month of September running around at breakneck speed, picking up school supplies,
signing your kids up for extra-curricular activities (here's why you might not want to overdo things on that front, by the way), and making the
rounds of school open houses and picnics. Don't forget to take time for
yourself during this crazy time of year. Otherwise, you could find
yourself feeling supremely grumpy by the time the month draws to a
close.

Set some goals for yourself as a parent. While your kids are busy setting some school-year goals for
themselves (or perhaps simply starting school for the very first time), take a moment to set some goals for yourself. Maybe you want to play a more active role at your kids' school or make contact with their teachers more often -- or figure out ways to ensure that your kids have lots of time for fun
and relaxation during their non-school hours? Make sure your goals are
something concrete enough to be measurable and that you put your goals in
writing so you can refer back to them during the school year.

Ann Douglas is the author of The Mother of All Parenting Books, The Mother of All Pregnancy Books and numerous other books about pregnancy and parenting. She is frequently featured in the print and broadcast media.

Photo Credit: Ann Douglas, 2009.

I received a note this morning letting me know that The Mother of All Blogs has been included in a list of 100 Powerful Blogs for Your Self-Improvement. Nice to know. Thanks for letting me know, Amber.

In other blog news, I'm blogging daily over at ParentCentral.ca this summer. I'm offering tips to help you have your best summer ever with your family. You can dive in any time and catch up on the tips that have you've missed.

I'm also continuing to blog weekly over at Yahoo! Canada. You never know what I'm going to post about over there. It's as much as a surprise to me as it is to you. (I pick my topics at the last minute.)

In between blog posts, you can catch up with me on Twitter: @themotherofall (parenting news), @anndouglas (misc everything), @litmags (small and literary magazines), @bookpubs (book publishers), @writers2follow (writers to follow).

Photo Credit: Ann Douglas, 2009.

You can download copies of this poster to share with a friend or to post at your workplace or local library. Please note that enrollment is limited to 24 girls and the VIFs (very influential females) in their lives, so please sign up early to avoid disappointment.

• Download Poster (.pdf)
  
• Download Page 2 (.pdf)
  

Curious about Twitter -- but unsure exactly what it is or why you might want to sign up for yet another social networking platform?

This mini-guide to getting started on Twitter (.pdf - single page) might help to answer some of your questions about what Twitter has to offer.

If you're a parent, you may also want to read this blog post I wrote recently wrote for ParentCentral.ca which talks about how parents are using Twitter.

So what's your take on Twitter? Is it overrated? Amazing? Somewhere in between? What do you use it for?

Babble.com has been making a splash ever since it launched its self-described website for hipster parents. But it has attracted its fair share of controversy for veering from the ethical path in a rather nasty way, one that was disrepectful to both parents and members of the creative community. That led to a nasty backlash by members of the Babble community, proving that as much as parents want their websites to be hip, they also want them to be ethical.

This week, Babble.com announced its intention to become the dominant parenting website, overtaking
iVillage.com, Parents.com, and BabyCenter.com, and other top websites. My advice
to Rufus Griscom -- not that he's likely to pay attention to what I
have to say -- is to pay attention to the small and seemingly
unimportant ethical details. These things do matter with parents. And
they can take on a life of their own if parents think that a
corporation has behaved badly. Just ask my friend Julie, who recently gave a piece of her mind to Motrin.

I'd like to be able to wish Babble.com all the best, but right now I have an ethical bone to pick with them. It's an issue they've been ignoring for the past year-and-a-half.

What bone could I possibly have to pick with Babble.com? If you take a look at the banner which was published in yesterday's New York Times article about Babble.com's plans to become the parenting website category killer, you will note that the accompanying screen shot features the Strollerderby banner. And the Strollerderby banner features a catchy little tagline: "The Mother of All Parenting Blogs."

As
you might suspect, I have a bit of a problem with Babble branding
Strollerderby with a subhead that incorporates

1. the title of one of my parenting books, with "books" being replaced by "blogs" to reflect the context (The Mother of All Parenting Books -- part of THE MOTHER OF ALL series I launched with Wiley Canada in 2000; and was published for American parents by Wiley Publishing Inc. in 2004),
2. a trademark I hold both in the US and in Canada (THE MOTHER OF
ALL) Note: there are numerous other related trademarks,
3. a blog name that is very similar to the name of a parenting blog I have
been publishing since 2004 (The Mother of All Blogs).

Strollerderbying over someone else's intellectual property rights may be the hip way to run a business. But it certainly isn't the ethical way to run a business.

Surely the creative types at Babble.com can come up with a catchy tagline for Strollerderby that doesn't involve taking something of mine.

I'm tempted to hold a contest to come up with a substitute alternative tagline for Strollerderby. What do you think? Anyone want to play for free books? (Free books for the top ten non-rights infringing names. Winners can choose from any of these titles. If you're Canadian, I'll substitute the Canadian edition, if you'd like.)