My wife and I welcomed our new son, Cameron Alan Chase, into the world on Tuesday, July 29th at 8:24pm. Thanks to the aid of several web-based applications, we were able to quickly announce to the world our exciting news in a lot of really effective ways. For other parents-to-be, here’s a quick guide to the fantastic services we used to share our excitement:

One of the most time-consuming tasks right after Cameron was born was trying to get in touch with all of our many friends and family to tell them the good news. Phonevite made this process a breeze by letting us record a message by phone right there in the delivery room. With our preset lists of people to call, including phone numbers and email addresses, Phonevite called and emailed them with our message. The other excellent feature was during the call, everyone’s phones showed the call as coming from us, rather than an unknown number from some company. Phonevite played the message immediately, and then played a brief identification tag at the end saying it was sent via Phonevite.

We set up several lists before we even went to the hospital with one for our immediate family, extended family, Krissy’s friends, my friends, and our work colleagues. We were able to instantly reach 54 people within minutes of Cameron’s birth with a single personalized call. Phonevite‘s website also verified which calls were successful and which didn’t go through for any reason, in case we needed to follow up once we returned home.

Phonevite‘s service has a lot of unique uses, but we saw the appeal immediately for how quick and easy it made informing everyone of Cameron’s arrival.

Brightkite‘s location services let us inform folks exactly when we arrived at the hospital, and when we returned back home using their Placemarks feature. There was even one kind soul who didn’t even know us that viewed our associated status updates of Cameron’s birth. They wished us an anonymous congratulations via Brightkite, which we received on my iPhone via SMS text message.

Since I’ve had so much luck using status updates to document our trips, it seemed natural to use the same method to record Krissy’s progress during Cameron’s labor and delivery. Although some of the multi-site updating services I mentioned previously are still excellent options, the relatively new, still-in-beta service, Ping.fm, offers even more sites to update simultaneously than it’s current competition. Ping.fm kept our friends on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, FriendFeed, Plurk, Brightkite, and Identi.ca all in the loop on Krissy’s progress, all the way through the delivery.

With the iPhone’s built-in camera, we were able to immediately take some great photos of Mom, Dad, and Cameron. In order to get those photos to where friends and family could see them right away, we used the ShoZu iPhone app to automatically upload them to our Flickr account where the world could see. It took only seconds from the time we took the photos until they were up and available for everyone to view. ShoZu supports a myriad selection of websites to post to as well, so if you aren’t a Flickr user, you’re sure to find your favorite place to post your newborn photos.

Now that Cameron’s here, we wanted a way to publish all of the photos, news, updates, and firsts to our family and friends in one place. TotSpot is essentially a blog for our baby; with the ability to post Cameron’s firsts, share his photos and videos, write daily journals, and lots of other fun things all on a single, easy to update interface. There’s no understanding of web design or HTML needed – everything is laid out intuitively and makes it a snap to update everyone on Cameron’s daily changes and activities. TotSpot is still in beta, but already has a lot of functionality that makes it much simpler than trying to configure a WordPress or Blogger blog to house all of the baby-centric news. Krissy and I can both update his profile, and changes get emailed to all of Cameron’s friends and family instantly.

It’s A New World For Parents

Without all of these great services, we would have had to wait until after we left the hospital and made it back home before we could send all the news and updates to everyone. Now that there are companies providing these services that utilize our new smartphones and mobile phones like the Apple iPhone, increasingly portable laptops, and the web, there’s no reason to not take full advantage of them and let the world know of your new arrival.

the first solo track of 2006.

take a listen.

Merry Christmas!

Our Murder Mystery Party was a success! Ended up with about 25 people at the party and everyone seemed to have a great time. I’d recommend it to anyone else thinking for something different for a Halloween party. It was easy to decorate and run. Here’s me and the wife in our “host and hostess” outfits. Lots of fun.

Standout moments:

• realizing the fans during March of The PIgs
• Right Where It Belongs visuals and live arrangement
• Aaron trying to balance on his headstock
• Gave Up (excellent vocal effects for the verses)
• Burn!

I also served as a juror yesterday for the first time, and together with 5 other strangers, convicted a man of attempted first degree murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and discharging a firearm in public.

It was a long day.

High-Definition Wireless Media Player with Progressive Scan DVD
It rules.