It’s been a wonderful and busy year for us here at Kidlee. We continued to grow with the introduction of our new iPhone app, which gives users the ability to easily save and share their kids’ quotes, milestones and memories on the go.

In the spirit of celebration and thanks, we’re happy to offer a free upgrade for Kidlee Plus users to gift a friend.When you upgrade to Kidlee Plus for $19 per year, you will also receive one additional Kidlee Plus upgrade to give to a friend.

By upgrading to Kidlee Plus, your Kidlee experience will be enhanced with these additional features:

• Write longer posts – up to 500 characters
• Add photos to each post
• Back-date your posts
• Mark posts as Private
• Customized email frequency for followers

To take advantage of this offer, just sign up for Kidlee Plus, then send the email address of your friend to kidlee (at) kidlee (dot) com, and we will upgrade their account to Kidlee Plus as well. (Your friend must first sign up for a free Kidlee account.)

If you’re already a Kidlee Plus user, just send us the email address of the friend you’d like to upgrade. Please make sure they’re a registered Kidlee user first.

Thanks for a great year and best wishes for 2012!

photo from a thousand words

School has started. Hooray! So have the stacks of artwork started coming home in folders and backpacks at your house yet? We love seeing our kids’ imaginations in full color display — and we especially dig hearing what they have to say about the art work. It’s just as imaginative, if not more so, than the art itself. We used to take notes on the back of their art, to remember the fantastic descriptions and stories behind each piece.

The only problem is the amount of space the art takes up. So many people are using technology to snap and save the artwork in digital form, then making great prints like these, showcasing lots of tiny art pieces all together.

We like to use Kidlee to capture our kids’ art AND to type in the things our kids tell us about the art. Then, when we get our act together, we plan to create some frame- worthy digital art with the images AND the captions.

Here’s even more inspiration:

photo from janeleni.com

Thanks to Arizona Foothills Magazine for featuring Kidlee in their August issue! We’re longtime fans of AFM, and it’s always a treat to get it in our mailbox each month. They consistently showcase awesome local businesses, so we’re very flattered to be in such good company! Want to see a close-up of our debut in a real glossy magazine?

We love that AFM is available in an online format that you can flip through page by page just like the real magazine. Check it out here.

My business cards arrived today! Aren’t they shiny and pretty? We added a QR code on the back that links to our iPhone app download page. Yes, the QR code looks kind of huge. But the important thing is, we scanned it and it works!

My son asked me at bedtime last night if he could have some of the cards to put in his backpack “in case anyone wanted more information about Kidlee.” I love it — a marketer at age 7!

I’ll be handing lots of these out next week at the BlogHer ’11 conference in San Diego. It’s a gathering of thousands of bloggers, and the companies who want to connect with these bloggers. I’m looking forward to meeting a lot of new people, and spreading the word about Kidlee. In fact, we’re going to have a special promotion for people who sign up for a free Kidlee account during the conference (August 4-6). Stay tuned for more details!

One of our favorite blogs is Design Mom. We love the constant flow of beautiful products and wonderful ideas. Last week, Gabrielle (aka Design Mom) wrote about her idea to have her kids write letters to their future selves. Essentially, it’s a way for the kids to keep a journal, but instead of writing in a book, they send e-mails to special e-mail accounts set up for this purpose. This way, their thoughts are kept private (as opposed to keeping a blog), they can add photos if they like,  and as they get older, they’ll be able to look back and read about their thoughts and dreams as kids.

Being passionate keepers of our family memories, of course we love this idea. When our kids get a little older, we think it would be a great idea to let them sit down with their own Kidlee accounts and journal away to their hearts’ content.

photo from Design Mom

We’re oh so happy to share some recent Kidlee buzz! First, we were reviewed by the iPhone mom, and she thought Kidlee was great! She found Kidlee to be a “quick and easy way to ease scrapbooking-baby book guilt”.  She was also a big fan of Kidlee Plus, our upgraded version that lets users write longer posts, add photos and more. She recommended that parents take advantage of our 30-day money-back guarantee and try out Kidlee Plus for a month to see if they like it. We think that’s a pretty smart idea too! Read the full article here.

Kidlee was also featured in articles in the Arizona Republic and Arcadia News. We’d give you links, but it doesn’t look like the articles are online. It’s been fun running into parents  who are telling us they read about Kidlee and are now using it to track their quotable kids and share stories with out of town grandparents.

We’re going to continue to spread the word about Kidlee, and we ask our happy users to do the same! Come “like” us on Facebook here and follow us on Twitter (@gokidlee). Thanks so much!

Today is the day! You can now go to the AppStore and download the free Kidlee Baby Book & Family Journal app for iPhone and iPod touch. It’s located under iTunes>AppStore>Lifestyle>Free and you have our personal invitation to try it out!

The iPhone app is designed to complement our existing Kidlee.com web app by letting you save your memories on the go. You never know when those funny quotes or special moments are going to happen — and most likely you’re not sitting in front of your computer when they do.

With Kidlee for iPhone and iPod touch, you can tap in your memory on the spot, and it will be automatically synched with your Kidlee.com account. The Kidlee mobile app works best when used together with the web app found at www.kidlee.com. Log in to www.kidlee.com for additional features and to adjust your account settings.

After you’ve downloaded the mobile app and tried it out, we would absolutely love it if you could take a minute to write a review in the AppStore to let other parents know what you think. As always, please let us know what you think too — by e-mailing us at admin (at) kidlee (dot) com or leaving a comment here or on our Facebook page.

Thank you – and we hope you enjoy the new Kidlee mobile app!!

There was whooping, hollering, and maybe even a little happy dance at Kidlee HQ the other night. Why? We submitted our application for the new Kidlee iPhone and iPod Touch app to the iTunes folks. Yep — our baby was pushed out of the nest, and we are now anxiously awaiting the word that our app is approved and ready to take its place in the iTunes store.

Once the Kidlee app is available, it will be like having a baby book and family journal right in your pocket! That makes Kidlee the most user-friendly, accessible, and now mobile way to save and share your memories on the go.

[Before the app is made available to the public, we may be getting a limited number of promo codes from Apple, which will provide early access to the app.  If you're interested in getting early access to the Kidlee app, please send us an email to admin (at) kidlee (dot) com with the subject line "Promo Code". Make sure you're signed up for Kidlee first, in order to be considered.]

Thanks for sharing our excitement!

Did you notice our new look? We’re gearing up to launch our Kidlee app for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and wanted to look good for our big debut!

Our son asked us the other day why we have been talking about Kidlee way more than usual. I told him we’re getting ready to put Kidlee in the hands of lots of moms and dads, so they can start saving special memories about their kids too.

It’s been a great few weeks preparing for the launch –  having focus groups (talking to friends about their app usage over pizza at The Parlor), building some buzz in the community (it looks like we’re going to be featured in our local monthly newspaper), and soaking up all there is to know about marketing an iPhone app. We’re updating our media and blogger contacts, iPhone app reviewer lists, timelines, and to-do lists. Let’s just say that spreadsheets are my new best friend.

If you’re already a Kidlee user, you’ll be hearing from us as soon as the iPhone app is ready. We may even give you early access and ask for your candid feedback. Thank you in advance for your input, and for helping to spread the word about how Kidlee helps you save and share your precious kiddos’ memories!

Tomorrow is Fat Tuesday, otherwise known as Mardi Gras — the biggest party of the year in Louisiana. So what do  New Orleans moms have on their mind? Kidlee! Yep, we were (pleasantly) surprised too!

Eileen of NOLA City Mommy featured Kidlee, telling her readers this:

Have you heard about Kidlee.com??
We happen to LOVE this! Kidlee is a free, quick and easy service for parents to jot down their kids’ quotes, milestones, and stories, using a Twitter-like interface so you can share them with family and friends too. A simple and private way to create a personalized collection of your child’s memorable moments.

For more information visit
http://kidlee.com/

Thanks for the shout out NOLA City Mom – and have a blast at Mardi Gras!