Saturday, January 26, 2008

Rage in the Internet Age - PKTR 18

Have you heard about the school superintendent's wife who left a harsh message for a disgruntled student?

YouTube is not new, but what is new is its use as a tool to fight bullying behavior. Now students (and others) are using it to stand up to authority figures (or their spouses) who are, arguably, abusing their positions of (relative) power.

Download the show and listen to an interesting discussion about this topic.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Chicken Soup and TV for Tweens - PKTR 17

Can you identify the author of this quote?

"Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand ... Simplify, simplify."

Maybe this photo will help:

If some of us lived by his words, perhaps our lives would be more fun and less stressful.

Does all of this seem (as my daughter would say) off topic (from the usual topics found on this blog and on our podcast)? Well, tune in today to find out how it applies...trust us...it will.

The hosts started out a bit slowly on this episode, but eventually ended up being silly enough to sing a song from American Idol. You've got to hear it to believe it. Download the show now from BlogTalkRadio or listen by clicking on the "play" symbol in the blue button on the right.

Here's one of the books that the hosts mentioned on the show. We think it will help you by providing great parenting tips and words of encouragement:

The "Saturday Box" concept the hosts told you about is not in that book, so you'll have to listen to the show for its explanation.

Another series of books that will help you understand the phases and stages your children experience is written by Louise Bates Ames, Ph.D. Here's the example the hosts mentioned in the show:

Finally, the Chicken Soup story book was this one:


Thanks for listening.

Tune in again next Saturday at 2:00 pm (ET) on Parents and Kids Talk Radio.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Perfect Picture Books - PKTR 16

For a variety of reasons, the PKTR hosts felt motivated to do a show all about picture books. First of all, with the ongoing WGA strike, there's nothing on television (was there ever anyway?). Secondly, we've read about a decline in time spent reading and have heard that more and more parents are spending less time with their kids while at the same time we've read about how important reading is to our minds. So...somehow we put that all together and thought maybe in some small way we can help by providing a list of picture books that are good for kids, fun for parents to read and some of which you may not have heard about until now.

Listen to the podcast for detailed descriptions of each of these books (and a few more!).

So here it is:

Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems


Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson

Cows Can't Fly by David Milgrim


The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn

You and Me, Little Bear by Martin Waddell

Good Job, Oliver! by Laurel Molk

Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey


If You Give a Pig a Pancake by Laura Numeroff





A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon






Duck for President by Doreen Cronin


Leave a comment for a chance to win a prize (listen to the show for details!).

Thanks for listening! Join us again next week on Parents & Kids Talk Radio.


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Images from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Vote for this post on MomBlogNetwork: Vote for my post Over a Dozen Perfect Picture Books to Read Aloud to Your Kids on Mom Blog Network.

Saturday, January 5, 2008

All Things Apple! - PKTR 15

UPDATE 1/17/08:
No post about Apple would be complete without mention of the keynote speech Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, gave recently at MacWorld 2008. To save you time, I searched around the web and finally found a great, quick recap in a video done by Veronica Belmont of Mahalo. She calls it "The Steve Jobs 90 Minute Keynote (in 60 Seconds)":



Better and better and better...

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Happy New Year!

Our holidays were full of all kinds of activities and events, but what do you think inspired us to devote a whole radio show to it? You might be surprised.

For whatever reason, we repeatedly heard people doubting that there was much of a difference between PC products and Macs. We then felt a sudden urge to explain that that's simply not true. We also heard things like, "What's the big deal about the Apple stuff?" That led us to start giving iPhone demonstrations, but then we decided to just talk about all things Apple (and Macs) on our show.

So, today's show was all about the beauty of the Mac and other Apple products. To hear the show, just click here.

Have you seen the ever popular PC vs. Mac commercials like this one (below)?




Well, we started to wonder whether the people we know have ever seen them. So, we decided to throw a few of those in (in part, to provide a little humor, too).

We also love the NBC show, The Office, starring Steve Carell. So we had to share our observation that some of the show's characters bear an uncanny resemblance to the Mac/PC guys. What do you think?

Here's Dwight from The Office (or is he the PC guy from the Mac ads??)


And here's Jim Halpert from The Office



And here's another one of our favorites:




Click here to go right to the site (which the PKTR hosts referenced for this podcast) that lays out the differences between PCs and Macs. On that site, you can also view more of the Mac vs. PC commercials (including that one where the guys look a bit like cartoon characters in the Rudolph the Reindeer movie).

Here's the very informative site by John Droz where he debunks many myths about Macs (and explains how a Mac can actually end up costing 36% less than a PC). He presents an impressive amount of research within the site.

We also mentioned Apple stores which you can read about here.

Or, if you want to see an Apple store that in and of itself is beautiful, look at this:

Apple Store in NYC

Thanks for listening!

Join us again next week on Parents & Kids Talk Radio.


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Images from the sites themselves (like The Office) and DigitalTechNews.