Cool Mom Staff, Author at Cool Mom Tech

5 free online parental controls you can put to use right now to keep kids safer.

by Cool Mom Staff | Family Safety Apps, Internet Safety

As parents, we try to keep an eye on what our kids are doing online to help keep them safe, but we can’t be over their shoulders all the time. Nor should we be! That’s why we’re always grateful for online parental controls of all kinds, and why...

5 free parental controls for cable TV that you may not know about

by Cool Mom Staff | Entertainment, Tips and Tricks

One of parents’ biggest concerns about kids today, is the access they have to inappropriate content. Parents are often asking us for parental control devices, services and apps to help them moderate what kids’ can see and keep them safe. And there are...

Back to School Tech: The best apps to help kids with reading

by Cool Mom Staff | Back to School Tech, Best Apps

Every year on Cool Mom Tech, we review and recommend the best reading apps for kids of all ages. This year, we’re putting all of our guides in one handy place, so you can bookmark them and reference them more easily. Whether you’ve got pre-readers or...

This fun, safe new app from KinToons lets your kid play DJ….with nursery rhymes!

by Cool Mom Staff | Educational Apps For Kids, Fun Apps for Kids

This is a sponsored message from KinToons Music! Singing! A flying turtle with a jet pack! An ice cream-eating duck! It all comes together in the wonderful new KinToons Nursery Rhyme DJ app, a fun, colorful, and totally safe environment for nursery rhyme-loving kids....

Are the video games your kids love safe for them? We can help.

by Cool Mom Staff | Games + Gaming, Internet Safety

If you thought your kids tech-savvy as toddlers, it’s amazing to see how quickly they pick up video games when they get a little older. They know what’s hot and what’s not faster than Mario with a super star power-up. Turns out there are tons of...

Web Coolness: Turning off an annoying Instagram feature, a new Snapchat feature you should know about, and more

by Cool Mom Staff | Link Roundups

Here are some of our favorite links from this past week. We hope you find them interesting and useful! Here’s how to turn off the Instagram activity status feature. Did you know about this new Google Maps feature? (Plus, more Google Maps features you should...

Get your Amazon Prime Day tech deals right here: The best of the best, with updates!

by Cool Mom Staff | Sales, Whoo!

It’s Amazon Prime Day, a shopping extravaganza for Prime members that starts today at 3 p.m. EST/12 p.m. PST and runs a full 36 hours this year. So we’re updating all day (and night and day) with our favorite of the Amazon Prime Day tech deals as we find...

Web coolness: Big changes to Netflix, how passwords get stolen, and more!

by Cool Mom Staff | Link Roundups

Here are a few cool tech links from around the web. We hope you enjoy them as much as we did. Running out of space on your iPhone? (And don’t miss how to save battery life on your iPhone.) This airline is using facial recognition technology to speed up security....

Web coolness: Photographing fireworks, driverless grocery delivery, and more!

by Cool Mom Staff | Link Roundups

Here are a few cool tech links from around the web. We hope you enjoy them as much as we did. Here’s how to photograph fireworks so you’ll actually enjoy the pictures later. [Photo: colink on flickr via Wired] And if you aren’t seeing them in person,...

Web coolness: Unlock your car with your iPhone, a major legal decision on privacy, and more!

by Cool Mom Staff | Link Roundups

Here are a few cool tech links from around the web. We hope you enjoy them as much as we did. Good news for privacy: yes, police must obtain a warrant to seach location data on cellphones. [photo: Alex Perez on Unsplash] The future is here: use your iPhone to unlock...

Hi! We’re Kristen + Liz

Kristen Chase + Liz Gumbinner of Cool Mom Picks

We started Cool Mom Tech in 2010 to help make our increasingly digital lives easier, more organized, more meaningful, and more fun, however old your kids may be.

We love that it's grown to become the go-to source for millions of parents who want commonsense info about tech delivered with a smile.

We even have the privilege of sharing our tips + tricks with The TODAY Show, CNN, HLN, GMA, Nightline, newspapers and magazines around the country, and our favorite -- regular parents who stop us at PTA meetings and ask us how old kids need to be to get a smartphone, and whether they really need to panic about Snapchat.

(Answer: It's complicated.)

We're so glad you're here! And we hope we can help you too.