As many of you may know, the majority of my friends and family live about four hours away from me. That means, that it is a long distance phone call for me to talk to them. When I found out about Tokbox, I was pretty excited to try it out.   Now, this is super easy to use.  I tried it out with a few people, and they were all impressed with the clarity of both the image and the audio.  I’ve tried other programs before (**cough**yahoo messenger **cough**) that the video was choppy.  When you’ve got little kids using these programs (which I have Madison talk to her cousins with it), they don’t understand the choppiness.  Mom doesn’t really care for it either.  However, there was no choppiness, no lagging, and really I have no complaints about Tokbox.  It took me less than 5 minutes to sign up for the service and get a chat started with one of my friends.  Now, the coolest part is that you both don’t even need to have a webcam (though the person initiating the call does I think).  Once you have your account set up, all you have to do is hit invite, and it will give you a link to pass onto the person you want to talk to.  You can even put this on your blog and/or social network profiles.  Then your visitors can click “Push To Talk” and connect to you in real time.  I’m not adding it here, because I really don’t think you want to listen to screaming kids which is usually how my day goes.  You can even record a video and email it someone too!

If you are looking to connect online, TokBox is the way to do it.  The clarity of the video and the audio can’t be beat, and it is so easy to use!

We often travel to Wisconsin to visit my family. It is a 4 hour drive, so are always looking for ways to keep the kids busy and entertained.  Bill hates to stop, so it is a long four hours.  A great item to check out for car rides, bedtime, and really any time is the Giddio Audio Adventures.  We listened to the Billy Brown Goes Hiking CD on our drive home, and it was a life saver for us.  Will was super crabby, and the only thing that made him quit screaming was this CD.  It definitely holds your children’s attention.  It is geared towards kids aged 3 – 7 (though it worked on my 1 year old too!)  This is actually pretty cool.  Instead of a narrator reading a story, there is a full cast.  Everyone has their own voice.  I love that it makes my kids use their imagination.  I’m not the only one who likes this either — it has won several awards (Dr. Toy’s Best Products 2007, several iParenting media awards, and Creative Child magazine’s Seal of Excellence).  We ended up having to listen to it more than once, because they like it so much (run time is between 30 – 45 minutes depending on which CD you are listening to).

I love that you can even try this out.  If you go to their site, you can download Billy Brown And The Mystery Package for free!  You can also print off the CD covers and have your kids color them!  I highly recommend checking this out as a great alternative to TV!