Try Out the ParentPower Desktop Application and Win Suri Cruise’s Favorite Shoes

May 16th, 2008 mlovings

Famous babies have famous feet, and the shoes they wear don’t go unnoticed.

In the course of her business, mompreneurer Katja Skimbaco helped a family friend of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes to put together a gift basket. And when Oprah visited the Cruise/Holmes family home in Telluride, Colorado, the cute ladybug shoes from Skimbaco came into view of the camera. Oprah noticed and Tom Cruise said the magic words:

“Ladybugs are Suri’s favorites.”

Through a very generous donation, you can win a pair of the famous shoes for your own ladybug princess, or for a friend.

Katja has generously donated a pair to ParentPower and we will give them away to the 25th person who downloads the ParentPower application between now until 10 a.m. on Monday. NOTE: We have extended the deadline until 12 midnight ET on Monday to give everyone more time! See details below.

The application is designed by parents for parents and has lots of cool features, like quick links to Flickr, Twitter, YouTube and also to the ParentPower index and headlines - all in one place. Plus, it gives you the weather and other local information.

By the way, you can read all about the winner of last weekend’s content here.

Twice the Fun

We thought it would be fun to add another pair of shoes to the contest. Why? Because Suri’s favorite ladybug shoes are also our favorites. Here is how you can get another chance to win the shoes:

• When you download the ParentPower application, the 25^th person will win the shoes, but also, we will draw one more name from everyone else who downloaded.
• Get a second chance to win by writing about the ParentPower application and this contest on your blog, then leave a comment here, or send an e-mail to us at myvoice@parentpowerindex.com for another chance to win.

We will extend the deadline until 12 midnight ET on Monday to give you more time.

Have fun!

Photo of Suri by Hollywood Kids on Flickr

Posted in Intro to ParentPower, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

High-quality parenting information highlighted in new ParentPower application

May 9th, 2008 HACK

Today we at ActiveAccess launched the Beta version of the ParentPower Index application. As many of you know, ActiveAcess develops custom-branded applications for media companies, corporations, colleges and universities, non-profits and government agencies. This application launch represents the first time we have developed one of our own for an existing community.

In developing this application (and its corresponding Index of the top 200 parenting bloggers), we have been working for several months with many bloggers in the community - gathering their input. We want to especially thank the focus group participants for their great suggestions for improvement. We are still gathering ideas on how to make the application and Index better, and appreciate the continued input.

As of today we have added over 200 bloggers into the index and hope that the community will add many more fantastic parent bloggers over the next few weeks.

We also hope that during our Beta phase you will continue to help us make a number of tweaks to our offering. Be sure to give us your feedback. We have set up a survey at PollDaddy, and you can access us directly at myvoice [at] parentpowerindex dot com, or on Twitter at Twitter.com/ParentPower.

ParentPower is broken down into two parts, the Desktop Application and the Index and Headlines. Here is a some information about each of them.

The Desktop Application and Reader

The ParentPower Desktop Application is designed to make your life easier and to help you find great content fast. In the ParentPower button you can find the index, blogger headlines, BlogHer Mommy and Family, Sk*rt Family and Parenting, and CNN Health/Parenting.

In the menu there are quick links to Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and Sk*rt. And we have put together a list of links that you might find useful such as movies, traffic, shopping and more.

On the left sidebar, the application includes games, parenting videos and podcasts - which you can find in the media feeds on the Menu. Plus, we are known for delivering the weather.

We have also included an RSS reader that you can customize. If you aren’t using an RSS reader, it is a powerful and simple tool. If you do have an RSS reader, you can use this one for specialized tasks and to cut down on clutter in your main reader.

The Index and Headlines

Rankings. Some people like them and some people don’t, but we have seen first-hand how they have enabled other communities to easily discover and enjoy bloggers. In fact, we have taken this a step further and put together a Headlines page, so that you can quickly get a snapshot of what is happening in the Parenting Blogosphere. We hope this brings great visibility for the bloggers in the index and for parents looking for parenting tips and other information. Plus, it means you don’t have to be a top-ranked blogger to get noticed. We have put together a primer on using ParentPower to promote your blog.

Index Methodology

The Index uses a percentile ranking system that uses Technorati inbound links and rank, Bloglines subscriptions, Alexa rank, Google PageRank, and Yahoo inbound links. All of these are averaged and each blog is given a percentile score. We adjusted the formula so that the blog defaults to its highest possible rank. As you will see, many blogs have identical positioning on the index. You can read more about the ParentPower methodology on the page we put together for that purpose.

Posted in Intro to ParentPower | No Comments »