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Give Your Children Larger Location Boundaries With A Top Notch Family Locator App for iPhone

family locator iphone app

The MamaBear App offers several benefits as a family locator for iPhone and other iOS powered Apple devices. The most popular MamaBear feature is, quite simply, locating family.

The MamaBear family locator for iPhone allows families to locate each other quickly and efficiently.

This can help both day-to-day parenting as well as during family outings and vacations. Parents and kids can both save themselves time and trouble by using the MamaBear app to communicate their location. Parents can use the app to check on the child’s location at the tap of the app and can selectively share their own location with their children when they choose. Children can check in with parents and notify them of a variety of needs and situations with a simple three button interface.

Families of all sizes can benefit this spring and summer from the MamaBear family locator features and alerts for iPhone. When parents can readily locate their children across a large area, it opens up a wealth of options on vacations and family trips. Parents can allow children a lot more freedom on playgrounds and parks, as well as on larger trips like beach vacations and amusement park visits. The GPS features and location alerts from MamaBear allow parents to watch their children’s location from a distance, and receive an alert when they have entered or left a specified location. This makes letting the kids have a little adventure that’s worry-free for parents.

When used as a family locator for iPhone, MamaBear gives children a measure of extra freedom and safety.

Children don’t need to call to check in when they have the MamaBear app. Parents simply receive alerts for programed destinations. Or children can choose to check in with parents with a single button tap, saving time and alerting parents when they have arrived somewhere new. Children can also use the one touch app to call for a ride, or alert parents of an emergency situation. This means mom and dad aren’t calling or texting often because they’re worried. We encourage parent to open up their children’s location boundaries with this new knowledge in the palm of their hands.

The MamaBear app is easy to install onto iPhones, iPads and other iOS powered devices running iOS 4.3 or later. The children’s version of the app works best on an iPhone 4 or better, which offers advanced GPS functionality that MamaBear uses for optimal results. Parents can use any web enabled iOS device to monitor children but should also use a phone with advanced GPS to effectively share their own location.

The MamaBear app is available in the App Store and can be used to track and communicate multiple children via email and push based alerts. This makes MamaBear an excellent solution for a wide range of summer activities for families of all sizes. With MamaBear, the kids can learn to grow and explore places, events and social situations while we parents maintain a watchful eye from an unprecedented distance.

The MamaBear app is also available for download on Android-powered devices in the Google Play Store.

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Using New Technology to Contact Loved Ones in a Disaster or Emergency Situation

The sickening tragedy in Boston has made the MamaBear app team pause and reflect on how thankful we are to go home every day to our families. It also makes us consider how vital it is for us to know where our family members are when disaster strikes. Disasters and emergency situations can evolve rapidly. When they do, standard communications simply aren’t good enough when we desperately need to check on the well-being of our loved ones.

Here are some technology pointers from a recent Wired article as well as our top tips to help communicate faster and easier when trying to locate family or share your location with family during an emergency situation:

1. Stay off the cell phone.

While calling is the obvious choice for many parents, rely on other types of communication during an emergency. The fact is calling doesn’t usually do very much good in most disaster situations. First responders need an open phone line into danger zones, and cellular service may be blacked out entirely due to interference. Calling over and over again can actively slow down rescue or relief efforts, while causing unnecessary stress as we wait.

Try to rely on a data connection and reach out through social, email or text if at all possible. Texting is almost always a better option than calling as it uses less data and can be far faster.

*But, it’s also important we remember a phone number, and teach our kids a phone number – don’t rely on saved contacts. Should you or your family get to a landline, know which number to dial by memory.

2. Conserve your battery.

  • Make sure you close out unnecessary apps running in the background – games, multiple social or location apps will use battery life. Only run necessary apps when needed – texting or locator apps. Mulitple apps running in the background will undoubtedly eat up battery life.
  • If you’re not firmly connected to a WiFi signal and your phone is constantly scanning for connection, turn off WiFi – reducing the constant scanning can help conserve.
  • You can also change some device settings – lower the brightness of your screen and reduce time lengths of screen lock.
  • Have a back-up. Use or carry a battery case and try to bring a charging cord with you as much as possible should you have access to outlets.

3. Apps are Your Friend in a Disaster.

Apps sometimes use entirely different communications protocols than standard digital options. It can be vital to teach our kids to use social media apps, and run locator apps like MamaBear during a disaster. Social media sites are monitored by thousands of users in disaster situations, and reaching out through social media apps is continuing to prove effective in a huge range of emergency and disaster situations. The MamaBear family monitoring app provides one touch options to check in with parents quickly and parents can share their location quickly with their children as well.

The MamaBear App works hard to protect our children and honor families everyday and our sense of urgency and importance becomes greater in emergency situations. Have a discussion with your family about what to do in an emergency situation and have a plan. Stay Safe.

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The MamaBear Family Monitoring App Can Help With Parental Anxiety About Teen Driving

anxiety about teen driving

It’s totally normal for parents to dread certain phases of their children’s development. It’s only normal that we fear letting our young ones out into the world and as they grow that anxiety can grow with the freedom our kids experience. A difficult and common one of these anxieties are when we first let our kids behind the wheel. The combination of an expensive automobile, a young and excited teenager, the very real risk of other drivers and a potential accident make us all understandably nervous about handing over the keys for the first time.

The good news is there are options to help significantly lower this anxiety. Options like the MamaBear family monitoring app can help ease parental anxiety when their teen is driving. The combination of MamaBear driving alerts, location alerts and nearly real time monitoring provides parents the ability to keep a much closer eye on a newly licensed teen. MamaBear lets parents know where they are going, and that they are obeying programmed speed limits.

The MamaBear location based alerts can inform a parent when their child is at a dangerous location or isn’t a place they are schedule to attend. This feature ensures that parents know their children are going to pre-approved locations. If a parent wants to monitor more frequently, active GPS monitoring can allow parents to watch an entire trip and confirm the kids are on route. Driving speed alerts give parents relevant information to talk to their children about vehicle responsibility and safe speed driving.

By providing parents with this nearly real-time data regarding location and vehicle speed, the MamaBear family monitoring app lets parents rest easy when the kids have the car. Many parents are reporting that the MamaBear app is facilitating conversations about car usage that they never expected to have. With MamaBear, a young driver can be trusted to run errands, help parents and even use the car for their own devices, all while allowing parents input and peace of mind about their teens’ driving habits.

The MamaBear app is available for download on Android devices here and Iphone devices here.

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The ages at which children receive a mobile phone

track your kids

With news that the number of mobile phones that exist in the world will exceed the current global population in 2013, it makes us wonder why mobile phones have made such a huge impact on our lives over the past ten years.

I remember my very first phone- a hand me down from my mum, then sister- and strongly recount how grown-up I felt for owning my very own mobile device. However, at 9 years old, I used the phone for nothing but playing games, especially as none of my friends had a phone for me to text or call.

But things today are already very different from when I was 9 years old; it was just last week that I witnessed my 3 year old cousin successfully unlock her dad’s iPhone and navigated her way to a particular app. With children having more and more exposure to technology today, it is hardly surprising that toddlers are capable of handling mobile phones and tablets.

But what age is too young when it comes to children owning mobile phones?

A recent study suggested that 47% of teenagers now own a smartphone, with over half of them considering themselves addicted to their mobile device.

Teenagers activating and looking for the best mobile phone deals on smartphones such as BlackBerrys, iPhones and Androids was at a record high last Christmas, suggesting that the number of young people being bought a mobile phone is increasing year on year.

The report found that over 20% of 13 year olds now own a mobile phone, though the majority of these teenagers don’t have the latest smartphone models such as the iPhone 4S or Samsung Galaxy S3. Many parents even admitted that their children as young as 10 owned a mobile phone, though a high proportion of these owned hand-me-down devices rather than brand new phones specifically purchased the for child in question.

The increase in young people owning a mobile phone can even be seen in the way that contracts have changed. For instance, while pay as you go devices may have become less popular over the past 10 years, pay monthly contracts that can be capped have become more so. In this way, parents find that they are able to track their children’s mobile phone usage insofar as checking which numbers they are calling, and how much money they are spending.

The Pros of young people owning a mobile phone

While critics often focus on the negative impacts of children owning a mobile phone, it is clear that there are obvious benefits of young children being able to navigate their way round technical devices at a young age.

The main pro of a child or teenager having their own mobile phone is an issue of safety; if they can contact you and if you can contact them at any time, it lessens the anxiety that a parent feels if their child is out with their friends, or on a school trip, for example.

Also, by allowing young people to have their own mobile phone, it teaches them the art of budgeting, as well as making them responsible. As mobile phones aren’t always cheap, entrusting a device to a young person is key to their personal development and transition into becoming an adult.

Cons of young people owning a mobile phone

On the other hand, recent reports suggest that out of the all mobile phone thefts last year, a high proportion of them were targeted at teenagers. For example, of the 1,223 mobile phones that were stolen in Nottinghamshire last year, 40 per cent were taken from young people under the age of 21.

However, while this figure may be high, it doesn’t necessarily represent the crime rate throughout the UK. Also, teaching young people about how to stay safe when using their mobile phone is a good lesson learning how to prove their ability to take care of their most prized possessions.

Summary

So there we have it; while the number of young people owning a mobile phone might be on the rise, it doesn’t necessarily mean that our children are failing to learn how to communicate. With the technology dominating our society today, it only seems fitting for the future generation to be at the forefront of the hi-tech revolution. And with ‘text speak’ well and truly out of fashion, mobile phones could even get young people writing the English language more frequently, thus enhancing their education. What is clear, however, is that the pull of mobile phones to young people today seems to be getting stronger for parents to resist.

 

By:

David Khan

http://www.mobilephones.com

The article above was from a MamaBear guest blogger. The MamaBear blog is now accepting guest post from reputable bloggers on a variety of subjects. If you are interested in guest blogging for MamaBear simply contact us here.