Technology Evangelist

Attention expecting parents! First thing: Congratulations to you. Best of luck through the final weeks or days. Now, if it's not too much of a bother, could you please avoid sending us gigantic emails with attached photos once your beautiful child is born? It's not that we don't want to see your newborn. We just ask that you take your least techie relative's bandwidth into consideration before sending dozens of high resolution photos of your new family member.

Why do we ask this of you? It's not you. Really. And it's not us. We ask this on behalf of our less techie relatives who still don't have broadband Internet connections. Do you realize that your celebratory emails could take more than an hour to download on their wimpy dial-up connections? That's no way to treat your favorite aunts and uncles.

We realize you'll be exhausted when you get around to emailing your baby announcement, so in the time you have left before delivery, follow the instructions below so you'll be prepared to send a bandwidth sensitive baby announcement. Cut this out, dad, and put it in your wallet so you'll have it on the big day:

Things to do now:

1. Set up a Flickr account. (They're Free)
2. Download the Flickr Uploadr so you'll be able to easily upload a lot of photos of your newborn.
3. If you don't feel comfortable publishing your newborn photos publicly, invite your friends and relatives to your Flickr account so they'll be able to access the photos.

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On and after the big day:

1. Take pictures. Lots of them. And don't forget to take pictures of yourself. We love you and want to see how you're doing too.
2. Upload them to your Flickr account.
3. Tag the photos with your newborn's name.
4. Email a link to your newborn's photos. It should look something like this:
http://flickr.com/photos/yourflickrusername/tags/yournewbornsname/

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Now everyone can receive your announcement in an instant, and view the photos without grinding their system to a halt.

Why Flickr? Because Flickr doesn't require your relatives to register to view photos if you simply make them public, unlike some other photo sharing services associated with film companies.

Who inspired this post? It wasn't you, I swear! But I am related to someone who still uses a dial-up connection and calls the ISP to "fix their email" whenever it takes too long to download. The ISP "fixes" things by purging the email with large attachments. Would you want your newborn's photos purged by an anonymous employee at an ISP? Of course not. So load and link your way to successful communications with less broadband endowed relatives.

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