We have made a number of improvements to the Kidmondo today, which we hope will enhance your experience with the site. Most of these were a direct result of your feedback from the recent survey and elsewhere (keep them coming). Some highlights…

More for less
Let’s just say that we heard you loud and clear and are happy to announce that we have increase the storage capacity on our basic free plan to 100MB. We have also simplified and reduced the price on our premium plans, which is now $39 annually for 500MB.

Bulk photo upload
In order to take advantage of the greater storage space, we also went ahead and improved our photo uploading tool to allow for bulk uploads. Go ahead and try to upload as many photos as you want in one try.

Vimeo video support
Many of you have requested the ability to host your videos on a service other than Youtube. Now you can also host them on Vimeo, which provides for a greater level of privacy

Pre-birth milestones
Addressing another big request, we have included a bunch of pre-birth milestones to make it easier for expecting parents to track events in BC (before child). We have also improved out milestones tool, making it easier to select milestones at any stage of the child’s life.

There are a lot of other smaller improvements, which we wouldn’t go into detail here. We do hope you enjoy these new features and we look forward to keep improving our service.

Today we sent out an email to all our users asking take some time out of their busy day to complete a short (and sweet) survey. The goal is help us gain a little more insight as to who you are and how we can make Kidmondo better.

I have to say that the responses have been amazing! We are continuing to go through the results and taking note of all your feedback. We don’t want to inundate you with emails, so I just want to say that we are listening and will be addressing a lot of your concerns. Stay tuned!

If you haven’t completed a survey, check your inbox and fill it out.

Thanks.

Momblogger Cybele Weisser wrote a article on On The Juggle, Wall Street Journal where she worried about the potential effects of all the public photos of her child that she and her husband posted on Flickr. I think this is a very valid concern, that many of the comments seem to agree with.

For us, the whole question of privacy was one of the main reasons why we founded Kidmondo. Our families live in different parts of the world and we were never really able to find a compelling way to securely share with them our kids stories/photos/etc. We also didn’t want to deal with sending people to different sites. We tried various solutions but in the end stuck with email…Care to guess what we use now?

[Hat tip: Daddytypes.com]

Kidmondo appeared on UrbanBaby Buzz, today!
Our favorite line of the post:

Your newborn has 300 Facebook friends, but the people who really care about her progress (Grandma and Grandpa, your social network-fearing sis) aren’t on the list.

They really captured why we built it.

We are big fan’s of 37 Signals and their book ‘Getting Real‘. We used two of their products, Backpack and Basecamp in the building Kidmondo. We really respect their work and most importantly how they work. In fact, when we were stomped on how to get a particular feature working on our site, we often asked ourselves, “what would 37signals do?”
Well, 37signals profiled us on their product blog. It will give you a good insight on us and how we went about building Kidmondo.

I read a recent article by Judith Graham from Chicago Tribune entitled A puzzle over fewer boys. She points out that while historically there are more boys being born than girls, the gap is closing and no one is really sure why. I quote:

In the U.S., the ratio of baby boys to girls has been declining since 1970, translating into 17 fewer males for every 10,000 births, or an estimated 135,000 fewer boys born between 1970 and 2002, according to a study last year in Environmental Health Perspectives.

With Kidmondo a little over 1 month old, I thought I would be interesting to compare these results with the children on Kidmondo, the vast of which were born after 2000 (we do have a few exceptions). The results of which may surprise you.
As you can see from the chart below the boys still seem to have a significant statistical lead:

What does this mean? We are not sure, but it sure is interesting.

A user sent in this tip:

I am due to deliver next month and I just started using Kidmondo am using Kidmondo to track the pregnancy. We have already decided on the name and I just put the due date as the birthday. I have been scanning in the sonogram pictures and posting photos of my belly growing…

We love to hear the different ways you are using Kidmondo. If you have a tip, let us know.

Italy
Kidmondo - Noimamme.it
Diario per bebè - Mamme del ParcoPagano
Bimbi online - Daily Luxury (Maggio 2008)
Kidmondo, il diario online del tuo bebé - DGmag.it
Kidmondo - Viva le mamme
France
Kidmondo, un journal en ligne pour vos enfants… - Fredzone.org
kidmondo : jeunes parents 2.0 [nouveaux usages] - Tapahont.info
Spain
Kidmondo - El mundo de tu bebé - Conpeques.com
Crear álbum de bebes gratis con Kidmondo - Guiapeques.com
Japan
赤ちゃんの成長を記録するサイト - Techinsight.jp

A user sent in this tip:

I originally signed up to use Kidmondo for my 3 month old. Soon afterwards I decided to create a journal for my 4 year old as well. One day as I was populating his journal with old stories, my son came over and started peering over my shoulder. Seeing his name and some pictures of himself, he realized I was writing about him and wanted to know what I was doing. I told him that I was writing ‘his story’ and started reading him some of the entries. He loved it! Now, almost every day he asks for another story ‘on him’. I can’t write them fast enough!
I just wanted to say that Kidmondo isn’t just for newborns and is also a great tool for older kids who are able to enjoy it themselves.
– Sarah

Thanks for the tip!
We love to hear the different ways you are using Kidmondo. If you have a tip, let us know.

Kidmondo Offers Robust Baby Journals - CenterNetworks.com

“parents will want to return to it over time and share it with other family and friends.”

Blog Your Toddler’s Every Step [The Startup Review] - Mashable.com

“if we may say so ourselves, it’s a real pleasure to use.”

Kidmondo.com - Online Baby Journals - KillerStartups.com

“The site is easy-to-use and the baby journals created are attractive, look professional, and are very easily personalized.”

kidmondo - Una de las más completas opciones para tu bebé - wwwhat’snew.com

“Kidmondo es la que me ha parecido más completa.”

Cool Link - Kidmondo - Kris Abel’s Blog on CTV.ca

“the best feature is the interactive timeline where you can record important milestones and really visualize your child’s early life and accomplishments.”

Keep a Baby Journal Online With Kidmondo - Rotorblog.com

“In human terms, Kidmondo is just a tot. And like any good Web youngster, this kid’s parents are willing to listen to your feedback.”

Kidmondo Is Kool! - They Might Be Curly Giants!

“I really like is the cute little growth and dental charts.”