This post has moved to Teach Better.

For those readers who didn’t know why it was a big deal, Google Reader was two really cool but distinct things. First, it was a web site where you could specify a large number of other web sites (aka “feeds”) that publish articles you might want to read. It would then present those articles all together in a neat list. It would keep track of what was new, what you hadn’t read yet, and what you’d already read. And it was far far more efficient than going from site to site hitting refresh like a rat pressing a lever for another hit of crack. This is especially true for people (like me) that read a lot of sites that don’t publish very often or can go through long dry spells.

I found the Google Reader web site kind of clunky and ugly, but you didn’t actually have to ever visit it to experience the benefits. Google Reader also provided a service so that third party apps could access the same data and keep your subscriptions in sync if you used apps on different PC’S or post-PC devices. This is what I used to do, and it was fantastic. I would use the beautiful/fast/powerful Reeder app on my phone, Mac, and iPad to browse my feeds wherever I was. I even used the Google Reader website occasionally.

And then Google announced they were shutting it all down on July 1. Panic ensued, but the nerderati told us to be patient–they promised even better alternatives would quickly blossom to take its place. It took a few months, but they were right. Unfortunately, I’ve had a busy spring and summer and haven’t had the time to try them all to find the best one. Luckily, lots of other folks have invested their time and I think there’s a decent consensus for a winner.

David Sparks at MacSparky, Federico Vittici at MacStories, Shawn Blanc, Marco Arment, and Dr. Drang have all settled on Feed Wrangler. It’s a service that offers all the features Google Reader did. It costs $19.99 per year, but that’s a small price to pay for stability. With paying customers, they won’t have nearly the temptation to just turn it off if they don’t feel like running it anymore. They won’t be shoving ads down our throat either which I always felt was just around the corner with Google Reader.

Feed Wrangler has a web site for reading and also provides free client apps for the iPhone and iPad. The iPhone client has some serious flaws. It’s definitely slower to sync new stuff than Reeder was. It doesn’t support gestures to mark things read or unread. And worst of all, the default (unchangeable) font size is too small for me to read unless I’m wearing my reading glasses. Thank goodness my old standby Reeder will be supporting Feed Wrangler soon. I don’t read much on my iPad, but Mr. Reader already supports the Feed Wrangler service.

Perhaps the best part about Feed Wrangler is the two things it does that Google Reader never did. Smart Streams let you define “collections” of articles based on keywords and sources. It’s much more powerful than a folder and will let me sip from the high volume feeds that I would normally stay away from. Filters are the opposite–you can define key words that will cause an article to be automatically considered read and thus ignored. This way I can subscribe to the ESPN feed and never have to read another story about hockey or NASCAR. Bill Simmons’ ESPN Outsider has arrived!

Google Reader is dead, but it was stagnant for years. I’m legitimately excited about a new era of innovation. Feed Wrangler has just won round one.

I loved the Wizard of Oz when I was a kid. Not the movie and not just the book, but the whole series of books and the whole world of Oz and the whole host of amazing characters. L. Frank Baum wrote 14 books and by the end of second grade I had read them all. The Scarecrow, the Patchwork Girl, the Gump, the Cowardly Lion, and the Hungry Tiger (just to name a few) were some of my best friends. Given that my daughter R has a wild imagination and a voracious appetite for books, you can’t blame me for introducing these stories as soon as possible. Actually, it was too soon.

We started reading a seriously condensed picture book version when she was about two years old. She thought it was terrific and for months all she wanted to do was to act out the story. She was Dorothy for Halloween last year, and right around R’s 4th birthday, we read a chapter of the unabridged Wizard of Oz every night. She loved it and even though it revved her up a little right before she was supposed to go to sleep, we finished it and dove right into the Land of Oz. Jack Pumpkinhead and the Sawhorse were as fun as the original characters and we zipped through Ozma of Oz where we got to meet our first Oz princess.

We hit a wall with Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz. The invisible bears were just too scary. That night it took a little longer than usual to get to sleep and the next night, R wanted to read something else.

Last weekend we had a similar experience. As soon as it got warm enough, R has been zooming around on her pink Dora bike with training wheels. We would go as fast as we caould around the block and I would run down the hills to keep up with her. She was looking a little cramped and since the seat wouldn’t go up any higher, I thought it was time for a new bike. Our awesome local shop (The Devil’s Gear) had a used 16” bike that was perfect and we picked it up. It didn’t have training wheels and R said that was fine with her.

I also thought since B just turned two, she was ready for her first bike. We decided to pick up a Burley MyKick. It’s got two wheels and no pedals so you learn to balance right away. My friend Google tells me it’s easier to transition to a “real bike” from one of these than from a bike with training wheels.

Unfortunately, we did not have the fun-filled weekend of bike-riding that I was hoping for. As soon as we got home, we learned that both kids were too little for their new bikes. Seats only go so low. The only short term benefit was that R enjoyed racing the MyKick up and down the driveway.

This weekend things got a lot better. R decided she was ready to ride her new bike and this evening we did 4 laps around the block! It didn’t take long for her to master the straight-aways up hill and down hill. But the seat is still too high and she needs support to start or stop. She’s going to be a menace to herself and our neighbors for a while yet.

Books and bikes are pretty low stakes things, and I don’t feel so bad starting them on the early side. We’ll return to Oz at some point. Our new bikes will be be there when the girls are totally ready. But some decisions are a lot harder to recover from if you make a mistake. Parents of kids who were born late in the year know where I’m going with this: When is the right time to start school?

I’m a December birthday and I started first grade when I was 5. My mom had to convince the principal to bend the rules since technically I was supposed to be 6 by September 1. Throughout elementary, middle school, and high school I was the youngest kid in the class. I was pretty emotionally immature. I had regular “accidents” until third grade. I always had trouble with girls and I think at least part of that was being younger than they were. And yet I feel strongly that it was the right decision for me. I was curious and intellectually ambitious and competitive. I would have been bored silly if I had been held back and even as it was, I wish I’d been challenged more.

I’ve also met lots of people with late in the year birthdays that were pushed into school early, and they’re bitter about it to this day. They really believe they would have had a more comfortable and successful school experience had their parents waited. And maybe their parents should have waited.

The trendy thing to do now is to wait. I swear it all started when Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers came out in 2008. In the first chapter, he tells a story about how elite Canadian hockey players were all born in January or February. When these guys started playing, they were the biggest, most skilled kids on their age-graded teams and so were plucked out and given additional training/coaching. Maybe being the oldest kid in kindergarten or first grade helps with academics too. Maybe.

I strongly believe the “right” answer about when to start school depends on the kid (and the school). R was born in late November and will be starting kindergarten next year (before she turns 5). We will be watching her closely. The academic part of school will be no problem. She’s already got great reading and math skills and she loves to learn. On the social/emotional side, she acts her age. That might be hard when most of her friends are older. We are definitely open to having her repeat kindergarten at a new school. We’re also open to her moving on to first grade. We’re not open to doing something just because everyone else is doing it. We’ll make the decision based on her.

This post has moved to Teach Better.

Last night I dreamt I was at my high school reunion. Near the end of dinner, one of the organizers came to my table and asked if everyone who was gay would raise their hand because they were planning a separate meeting just for gay alumni. Six attendees from our table of 26 raised their hands. I had no idea about five of them, and while my first reaction was surprise, my second was pride in the social change that’s happened over the last 25 years.

In just the last year, we’ve had the first male American athlete in a major sport (Jason Collins) come out with near universal acceptance. The number one draft pick in the WNBA draft (Britney Griner) mentioned she was gay and hardly anyone noticed. The Supreme Court seems on the verge of legalizing gay marriage (or at least banning the states from banning gay marriage). And my (almost) alma mater¹, Framingham High School, now has a club called the Gay/Straight Alliance.

The reunion and the casual statements about sexual orientation by my old friends may have been a dream, but the reality is much better. Some of the healthiest and most loving couples I know are gay. Some of the best parents I know are gay. And it’s so nice that this is finally being recognized by a majority of Americans.

I am frustrated and I know I’m not the only one. I want want a photo management system that requires minimum maintenance and gives me maximum flexibility. I’ve complained about this before, but I’m tired of waiting for Apple to hand me a gift-wrapped solution. They didn’t last summer in iOS 6 and I have no faith that they will in iOS 7.

In my household, we take most of our photos with our phones, but we also have a big digital SLR which we break out for big events (if we remember to). Ideally, all our pictures would be automatically whisked away into a shared database in the cloud as soon as they are taken. From there we should be able to browse, organize, edit, and share them from any of our device, be they Macs, PC’s, iPads, or iPhones. In 2013, I don’t think that’s unreasonable to ask for.

In the next few weeks, I’ll be looking at several products and hopefully finding answers. Today the journey starts with two separate app/service combos. One is Adobe Revel and the other is Everpix.

Adobe Revel

I was super-excited when I heard about Adobe Revel. The service stores all your pictures in the cloud, and they give you free iOS and Mac apps to edit and manage them. Pictures are streamed to your iOS devices as needed freeing up a whole lot of space. The apps are (supposedly) built on top of the same editing/browsing engine powering LightRoom and they are (actually) very well done. The service is expensive ($5.99/month) but it promises a lot.

Unfortunately, it’s missing some important features. First, it won’t store video clips and that means I need an entirely different workflow for them. With two little kids, we take lots of these “long photos” and I like having them mixed in with the traditional photos. Second, my wife lives in a Windows world and Revel doesn’t provide a Windows app or even a web app. That means she can only browse our library on her phone and that’s a show stopper.

Everpix

After my experience with Revel, I was cautiously optimistic about Everpix. It also stores all your photos in the cloud and has terrific iOS apps for browsing your collection, but it differentiates itself in three ways:

1. They automatically import photos from lots of places you might care about including your photo roll, Facebook, Instagram, and Flickr. That’s nice, but not terribly useful for me since I’m not exactly tied into the social network world.
2. They have a terrific web app that works well on Mac and Windows.
3. They don’t allow you to create albums or tag photos but instead rely on “science” to organize your photos for you. Since I always plan to do more manual organization than I actually do, it’s nice that this is done for me. I tend to take several pictures of the same thing but never delete the bad ones–Everpix does a decent job picking the good ones and showing you those first. In fact, I have Everpix configured to email me “random” “reminder” pictures from my collection everyday and it’s a lot of fun.

The package is expensive ($4.99/month) if you want them to store more than the previous year’s worth of photos, and I’d be happy to pay if it weren’t for the downsides:

1. They don’t store video clips.
2. You can’t edit pictures within the apps.
3. They don’t store original images. Instead, Everpix stores compressed versions. I’m no photo snob, but I also don’t like losing information.
4. You can’t easily export pictures. Once your pictures are inside, you can only get them out piece meal. I hate lock-in.

I’m keeping an eye on Everpix because except for the editing, these issues seem eminently fixable and I’d consider using an external editor if I had to.

The quest continues.

I spend a lot of time on this blog raving about great kid books, great music, great writing for grown ups, and even great teaching, but don’t get the idea that I think everything is all sunshine and roses. There are plenty of things I don’t appreciate. Here are just three:

1. The Grateful Dead

When I think of the Dead, the first things that come to mind are dirty feet, ugly tie-dyed shirts, drugs, and silly annoying songs that just go on and on and on. If you’re into that sort of thing, then I’m really sorry you can’t follow them around anymore. At least you’ve got Phish.

2. Ezra Jack Keats

This is Ezra Jack Keats week at my girls’ preschool and besides Eric Carle, there isn’t a more over-rated children’s book author/illustator. I’m not an expert on Jack Keats, but I have read The Snowy Day and Whistle for Willie and thus feel perfectly justified generalizing to his whole body of work. I like that he his stories take place in cities. I like that he’s got African-American characters. And I’m not arguing he wasn’t an important trail blazer–he was. I’m just arguing that the books themselves are uninspired and boring. In the last forty years lots of authors have taken the torch and done a better job with it. My favorites are The Rain Stomper (by Boswell Addie, illustrated by Eric Velasquez), Corduroy (by Don Freeman), and Bear on a Bike (by Stella Blackstone, illustrated by Debbie Harter)

3. New Orleans

For some people, New Orleans is a great city. It’s got world class sea food and its own brand of jazz. It’s got a casino downtown and a whole street full of daiquiris and debauchery. But for a vegetarian who doesn’t drink, doesn’t gamble, and whose musical tastes are a little less hip, New Orleans doesn’t have much to offer. I used to think the best thing about the city was voodoo and while that sounds all cool and mysterious, when you take a closer look, it’s not. Chicken blood, bits of hair, and stabbing little dolls to hurt real people is just creepy. Of course, there is the Insectarium which is also a little creepy, but was a lot of fun with the girls when we visited a couple weeks ago.

OK, I’ll admit it: I’m not usually such a Debby Downer, but accumulated sleep debt from a busy winter and spring has taken a toll on my normally sunny disposition. Hopefully the end of the semester will take care of this I’ll soon be back to being a Cheerful Charlie!

We haven’t read much new in the last six months, and while I’d like to take the blame and say it’s because we’ve been busy with work and other commitments, I’m instead going to throw my almost two year old daughter under the bus. While R (who is 4.5 now) is an extreme reader, L has not been very excited about reading. Or about anyone else reading. So instead of all of us enjoying a long cuddle on the couch working through a stack of books, this would quickly devolve into yelling and then R going off to read on her own, L going off to cook in her kitchen, and just me and Curious George sitting there wondering what to do next. I’m happy to say we have recently turned a corner and L now actually seeks out the social reading experience and we’re back to moving big stacks of books back and forth from the library.

Our last two trips have yielded some keepers, some honorable mentions, and even a couple dishonorable mentions.

Keepers:

• Cowboy and Octopus (by Jon Scieszka, illustrated by Lane Smith) This collection of 7 very short stories about two good friends has something for everyone. L loves the characters and how the cowboy says “Yee Haw!”. Roxana loves the knock-knock joke and when Octopus gets hammered by Cowboy. I love the adult layer of humor and the style that is a combination of collage and old-school comic book illustration. Win win win.

• Mrs. Crump’s Cat (by Linda Smith, illustrated by David Roberts) A hungry stray cat shows up at an annoyed Mrs. Crump’s door. But as soon as she describes him as “exquisite” and “golden” you know how the story is going to end. So cute.

• Cook-a-Doodle-Doo! (by Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel, illustrated by Janet Stevens) Rooster is tired of the same old food and decides to bake a cake. Turtle, Iguana, and Pot-bellied Pig “help” and along the way we learn a whole bunch about baking. It’s a great combination of funny, sweet, and truly educational.

• A Frog Inside My Hat: A First Book of Poems (compiled by Fay Robinson, illustrated by Cyd Moore) Both girls love the simple fun poems collected in this book and L especially loves flipping through it on her own and looking at the pictures–she calls it “the froggie book”. At these ages reading poetry is completely normal and I hope we can keep it that way.

• At the Supermarket (by Anne Rockwell) L’s favorite of the bunch is about a boy who goes to the supermarket with his mom. The big twist is that they buy the ingredients for his birthday cake and make it the next day for the party. The author wrote and illustrated a similar book called Supermarket in 1979 and this “updated” version was published in 2010. My favorite part is that it still seems like a 1980’s period piece: There are no laser scanners. No one uses reusable shopping bags. Everyone’s driving station wagons. I can’t wait until Amazon sends me a copy of the original so I can see what actually got updated.

• Our Yard is Full of Birds (by Anne Rockwell, illustrated by Lizzy Rockwell) Both girls love looking at birds in our yard and this helps them identify who is who. Only downside is it makes them want a bird bath even more than they already did. And when your kids are little, bird bath = extra dirty outdoor kid bath.

Honorable mentions:

• Jim’s Lion (by Russell Hoban, illustrated by Ian Andrew) On the first page, Jim says from his hospital bed that “People who have what I have, mostly they die, don’t they?” It gave me the chills and I immediately realized that neither of my girls are old enough for this story. But what a vivid and hopeful story it is. Wow.

• Dawn (by Uri Shulevitz) The art is beautiful and the story is subtle–The sky and the silence are the stars and the grandfather and his son are just supporting characters.

• Hero Cat (by Eileen Spinelli, illustrated by Jo Ellen McAllister Stammen) I am a sucker for true stories about animals helping other animals. This one has a mom cat rescuing her babies from a burning building. If you read it with feeling, it’s pretty dramatic.

• Sarah’s Little Ghosts (by Thierry Robberecht, illustrated by Philippe Goossens) This story is very creative and has a great message. Sarah sneaks into her mom’s jewelry box, breaks her favorite necklace, and then hides the evidence. She feels terribly guilty and everytime she lies about it, another ghost flies out of her mouth. Finally, she can’t take it anymore, comes clean, and feels a lot better. R and I read this one very carefully, and I think she even understood what was going on. Score one for the good guys!

Dishonorable mentions:

• The Big Elephant in the Room (by Lane Smith) This story revolves around two donkeys. One says they need to talk about the “big elephant in the room” and the other is sure he is asking about the myriad of terrible things he’s been doing and confesses to all of them. These include eating all the ice cream, breaking the computer, stealing a video game, and even telling a mutual friend about a pee accident. My girls do not need books giving them more ideas for bad behavior–they’ve got that covered already.

• Ladybug Girl at the Beach (by David Soman and Jacky Davis) I like Ladybug Girl, R loves Ladybug Girl, and we own several Ladybug Girl books. She’s curious, creative, and adventurous. Our best guess is that she and R are both about the same age (between 4 and 5) Her parents are mostly absent, and that’s OK when the story takes place in the backyard or at the playground. At the beach, however, very bad things can happen when parents aren’t around. Like kids drowning bad. In this book Lulu wanders all around the beach by herself and almost gets pulled out to sea without anyone even noticing. As far as I can tell, the message is that you shouldn’t be afraid of sneaking off by yourself to play in the waves when you’re four years old. My four year old already thinks she can swim–I’d rather not encourage that delusion.

My first introduction to My Little Pony wasn’t terribly positive. I was about eight years old and this “girl stuff” was advertised relentlessly on Saturday morning cartoons. I was far more interested in being a pawn of the corporations that marketed branded soldiers, spaceships, and robots to boys.¹

Then in my early twenties, I ran across this Internet quiz that gives you names like “Daisy Sweet” and “Misty Rain” and asks you to identify each as either a My Little Pony or a porn star. I failed miserably and while I was horrified at the quiz’s difficulty, I was also a little relieved that I was not an expert on either topic.

And now, it seems that the third time is the charm. The girls have been in a serious MLP phase the last few weeks and our collection now includes 12 little Little Ponies, each with its own colors, personality, and cutie mark. Apple Jack is the hard working farmer with the southern drawl while Rainbow Dash is the adventurous one with the mischievous streak. You might have guessed we’ve also watched a couple tv episodes.

On our last long distance trip we expanded our collection to include a couple iOS apps. The first was Gameloft’s My Little Pony - Friendship is Magic and it is an awful scam. You create a magical pony land by buying gems for real money–your parents’ real money to be specific. And if you don’t invest, you can’t actually do anything fun.

The second app (Twilight Sparkle: Teacher for a Day) gets pretty mixed reviews on iTunes but frankly is pretty cute and has no crazy-making in-app purchases. It’s a 40 page appified book that you can read with your kid or will read itself. It has a few built-in animations and four mini-games. Two of the games are simple tilt the iPad to negotiate a maze and two are point-out-the-difference between two picture games. R likes all of them though she sometimes accidentally hits the home button when tilting the iPad and that starts the whole thing over. The story itself filled in some history of the pony’s homeland and could have been titled MLP: Origin of Equestria. Did you know the unicorn ponies, pegasus ponies and earth ponies started out with cold hearts? And of course, there is a positive message about friendship since (as everyone knows) friendship is magic! R’s favorite part of the app is the set of pony bios that includes pictures and descriptions.

There are three distinct groups of MLP fans. First, little girls, second, parents of little girls, and third, the bronies. That third group is mostly adult men who self-identify as straight and just love the MLP stories, characters, and positive messages.² For all these fans, I think this app will be a lot of fun. I doubt it will appeal much to a broader audience, but I’m also glad that we live in a world that’s big enough for that to be OK.

Every morning we drop the kids off at day care and walk about 5 blocks to our offices. In those 10 minutes I walk by Trinity Lutheran Church, Trinity Baptist Church, and St. Mary’s Church (Catholic). Just a block off our route are the three big churches on the New Haven Green: Trinity Church, Center Church, and United Church. All these old churches are pretty much empty during the day and even on Sundays they don’t get nearly the traffic they used to.

Even with all the excitement about the new Pope, the Catholic Church in particular seems to be in decline. While membership has held steady at about 25% of the US population since the 1950’s (largely due to the influx of Latino immigrants), the fraction of members attending mass every Sunday has dropped from 80% to less than 25% over the same period. This has led to huge numbers of parishes closing and lots of hand-wringing on the part of priests and bishops.¹

How has this happened? The economist in me says a big part of the answer is competition from newer more exciting denominations and religions. Fundamentalist churches are doing well. The Mormon church is growing like crazy. Around the world Pentecostal and Baha’i faiths are siphoning off members. It also seems that more and more Americans have issues with some of the conservative stances of the Catholic church on birth control, homosexuality, and evolution/creation. Of course, many of the popular new mega-churches are also quite conservative and liberal views haven’t helped the more progressive older denominations.²

The financial cost of losing active members is larger for some denominations³, but I believe the major concern within most denominations is a loss of relevance in the community. I also think most churches don’t want to adapt their principles to gain larger market share. Instead, they’d like new ways to reach out to the community and let them know what churches have to offer. And while I personally am not interested in joining a parish, I do like the idea of other people going somewhere once a week where they are reminded to be nice.

I believe these churches should reach out to their communities by renting out their buildings as office space during the week. They would do it in such a way that it could be converted back and forth in a few hours and so have no effect on weekend services. Imagine office partitions and pews on wheels. If big arenas can have basketball games during the day and hockey at night, this kind of conversion must be easy.

While these churches are beautiful on the outside, the interiors are often breath-taking and always unique. This would induce serious corporate demand. Bigger companies could rent the whole space and break it up into cubicles that could slide in on Monday morning and out on Friday afternoon. Another option would be to turn the sanctuary into an espresso stand and substitute tables and comfy chairs for the pews in the nave. Who wouldn’t rather work there than a cookie-cutter Starbucks or Starbucks-imitator?

This would work out great for the churches too. They would give up almost nothing and get a captive audience for subtle evangelization. The stained glass alone would be a great advertisement for returning on Sunday. The cash infusion to the church would pay for the required capital investment and probably put a fair bit more into the coffers.

In economics there is a concept called a Pareto improvement. This is transaction or change or reallocation of resources that makes at least one person better off without making anyone worse off. It might sound like sacriledge to even talk about turning holy spaces into coffee bars, but it sure seems like a Pareto improvement to me.