family travel Archives | Cool Mom Tech

Postagram makes sending camp letters a snap. Or, a click.

by Liz Gumbinner | Fun Apps, Photo Apps, Travel Apps

If you’ve got kids in summer camp, you may know that each day they don’t get a letter from home is another reason they grow up to resent you. Kidding. But they do like to get lots of letters — and I admit, I am not the best daily letter writer. At...

Facial recognition is the new boarding pass. Privacy, much?

by Kristen Chase | Travel Essentials

If you’ve traveled by plane, you know how much patience you need to have to make it through check-in, security, and finally onto the plane. And that’s not even counting travel with kids. So is the convenience of facial recognition why it’s showing up...

6 ride sharing safety tips that parents should know

by Kristen Chase | Tips and Tricks

As someone who uses ride sharing apps like Uber and Lyft pretty frequently (and is often distracted by what’s happening on my phone), I know how easy it can be to just hop in a car that pulls up in front of me without checking everything out. But as many of us...

Amazon FreeTime Unlimited + Audible are about to make your holiday travel so much happier!

by Kristen Chase | Helpful Services

If you’re fans of Amazon FreeTime Unlimited, you’ll be thrilled to hear they just added over 1,000 Audible books for kids into the mix, with tons of popular titles ready for listening. Related: Here’s what you need to know about the Amazon Echo Dot...

Why the new MacBook Air has family written all over it: The features we’re excited about

by Liz Gumbinner | Computers, iPads + Tablets

We’re so excited watching Apple’s big announcement today about the brand new MacBook Air. With the title of Apple’s most affordable MacBook (the price tag starts at $1199) we imagine lots of parents are going to be considering this for their families...

A clever Google Maps trick you’ll be very glad to know about if you travel

by Kristen Chase | Tips and Tricks, Travel Essentials

As I was prepping for our family vacation to Iceland, I found myself searching for information about cellular signals — not so I can check my email while I’m gone, but so I can use Google Maps. While I found several posts that assured me my service...

The new Highlights Hangout podcast brings your kid’s favorite magazine to their ears

by Kristen Chase | Kids

As someone who grew up on Highlights magazine and took everyone opportunity to introduce it to her kids, I was so excited to hear that they were launching a podcast for kids, and from the makers of Wow in the World! I loaded it up on my son’s phone as soon as it...

Summer travel news: What you need to know about the smart luggage ban

by Kristen Chase | Travel Essentials

With summer travel season right around the corner, and many families, including ours, planning vacations, we wanted to take a moment to talk about the smart luggage ban that came down earlier this year. While it might only affect a few of you, we think it’s...

Web cool: Game controllers for users with disabilities, a gold Royal Wedding iPhone X, and the smart luggage ban

by Cool Mom Staff | Link Roundups

Here are some of our favorite tech links from around the web. We hope you enjoy them too! Some of our favorite tweets about the Royal Wedding. Yeah, we’re capitalizing it. Speaking of which: got Royal Wedding fever? Check out this gold iPhone X to commemorate...

This new luggage collection helps an awesome cause – girls in tech!

by Kristen Chase | Travel Essentials

We are loving what Karlie Kloss has done to support girls in technology, with her popular Kode with Klossy coding camp and scholarship program. Well now, she’s launched a luggage collection with the female-run company Away, to help get more girls involve in...

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.