Cakewalk: Our cool free app of the week

by Christina Refford | Best Apps

The kids have been out of school for a bit and chances are you’ve heard the “bored” word at least once. Or maybe you have a toddler who is ready for a new activity approximately every three-and-a-half minutes. Either way, check out the free Cakewalk...

Yuggler for parents: Our cool free app of the week

by Christina Refford | Best Apps

It’s Sunday morning and your kids’ friends just had to cancel their afternoon playdate. Or, you are on vacation with your toddler, and rain has just ruined your plans to visit that cool new park you read about online. What to do? Well, nowadays, there are...

Two fun, creative, and (mostly) free apps for kids to keep them engaged when they’re stuck indoors.

by Christina Refford | Best Apps

If you’re tearing through the list of snow day activities to keep the kids occupied when you’re stuck indoors, allow us help you with two beautifully designed, really fun new apps we’ve discovered from Seedling. As in, the same company whose...

The best apps for parents of the year: Editors’ Best Tech of 2015

by Cool Mom Team | Best Apps, Editors' Picks of the Year

Next up in our Editors’ Best of 2015, we’re sharing our picks for the best apps for parents. All of these apps made their debut in 2015 and really do help make our lives as parents a lot easier. Though, the truth is, plenty of these apps are terrific for...

Make your own Star Wars BB-8 and more, with free tutorials from littleBits

by Kate Etue | DIY

To celebrate the release of The Force Awakens — you have heard of it, right? — the team behind one of our favorite tech toys, littleBits, has put together a very cool user-generated #BITSWARS campaign, generating nearly 100 (so far)  DIY project ideas...

Guitar Hero Live review: Cool updates put this classic back on top of the charts

by Nicole Blades | Games + Gaming

Honestly, haven’t we all rocked out to an air guitar at some point in our lives? (Or maybe this morning in the shower — ahem.) Pretending to be Lenny Kravitz or Joan Jett shredding the axe and professing our love for rock ‘n’ roll out loud got...

Let the StoryCorps app capture stories of your family’s history this holiday. The result is really beautiful.

by Kate Etue | Best Apps

When I’m driving around running errands, I usually have NPR on the radio, unless I’m listening to Spawned, of course. The stories that almost always end up with me in tears, searching for a Kleenex in the console, are the reports from StoryCorps which...

7 simple tips for taking photos at night, so your Halloween photos come out scary good

by Nicole Blades | Photography, Tips and Tricks

Calling all you ghosts, pirates, zombies, superheroes, and that small army of Queen Elsas — it’s time for your closeup. Because one of the best parts of Halloween for us, besides stealing our kids’ fun-size Snickers, is getting photos of the kids in...

Sling TV: Is this affordable cable alternative worth considering? A thorough look.

by Liz Gumbinner | Entertainment

I finally sat down and took a good hard look at my cable bill and…whoa. When I consider that there are probably only 4-5 cable channels I really watch, aside from premiums HBO and Showtime; I do pretty much all my watching on Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Instant...

Calendar apps for a tech house divided? Reader Q&A

by Nicole Blades | Best Apps

We are a house divided.  My husband is an Android user (but I love him anyway), and I am an iPhone user.  We need a calendar app that works with both, allows for the importing of Google calendar an iCal and automatically refreshes it.  Is this a possibility?...