Geek parent tip: Use Gmail as a baby book

Someday my son will hate me for this, but I just implemented a new way to record his daily achievements: A dedicated Gmail account. I got the idea for this tip from John Girard, CEO of Clickability, who sends tagged emails to his Outlook account. Anything with his special code in the subject means it's news about one of his kids, and he has filters to archive those notes into an offline file.

But it's so easy to set a new Gmail account, I thought, why not just do it this way? Plus, I can give account access to my wife if she wants to see the archive.

You can set up Gmail to forward all emails it receives to another account, which I'm doing as well. This other account is read by a PC-based email client and archived to my hard disk, which is backed up on Carbonite, so if the Gmail account goes offline I still have the emails saved.

I had been using Twitter a bit to record the cute moments of my son's development, but this solution is better: It's more private and more archival.

Of course, one could use this tip for archiving almost anything. Although it's not elegant, it sure is easy.

See also: The Parent Hacks blog.

[etcook]

You may be off using the new Notes feature of Google Reader rather than Gmail.

[Oakraidr]

I started email accounts for my kids too(they are 4 and 2 years old). If something cool happens or i want to tell them a story, i send them an email. I use gmail/picasa and I can send photos with a story attached or a link to an album. Plus I can add ALL the photos of them to their picasa web albums. A storage of sorts of their digital baby pictures.

Their mom can make a photo book for them to hold. i just hope google is around when they grow up and I can pass on their passwords to their digital past.

[lht1999]

I built a simple web app to do this, using google app engine:
http://my-life.appspot.com/

[Raina28]

This is GREAT! Thank you for sharing this!

Do you know if you will be making this into a mobile application? That would be really useful for capturing information on the fly.

Again many thanks

[briwatkins]

@lht1999 thanks for sharing that! I started one already. Very simple

[rafe]

@lht1999 Cool. Where is the info archived? How can I offload it?

[lht1999]

All notes are now saved in Google's bigtable database. I am working a new feature to enable downloading your own messages in a few formats (html, CSV and XML). Emailing to self also sounds interesting.

[cshell]

I just checked out you Life Log. Very nice - quick and easy. I like it. Have you considered creating a gadget for iGoogle?

[zildjianpilot]

Isn't this what Google Notebook is designed for?

[rafe]

@zildjianpilot Goog Notebook is a very good solution for grabbing quick notes, but it's a new product and interface to learn. If I want my wife to enter stuff in, it's easiest to just tell her she can email [ourbaby]@gmail.com when something cute happens.

[jmayson]

I have been doing something similar for months to keep track of notebook entries, a journal, and other odds and ends, things I want to record and remember for later. I use the "+" feature in my email addresses, that is placing +topic between my user name and @sign in my email address (e.g. [e-mail]). This allows my filters to process the message more easily.

No, this isn't elegant but it's mindlessly simple which is why it works so well.

[verycheeky]

Notice the big push to get everyones data online? little by little, here and there it will become normal practice. not me! I really think Lifehackers goal is to get everyone to post personal data to remote servers sometimes. great articles though..
Alternatives to journal.
I just use onenote or notepad with LOG.
access 2007 is even better! well, if you want to pull your hair out of course learning VBA or and macros!

[Hallson]

very cool hack, but seriously... Sites like Kidmondo.com have some very cool features (charting anyone) that make keeping a baby book easy.