{"id":714,"date":"2010-03-25T21:25:28","date_gmt":"2010-03-26T04:25:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wellconnectedmom.com\/blog\/?p=714"},"modified":"2010-03-25T21:25:28","modified_gmt":"2010-03-26T04:25:28","slug":"do-you-have-trouble-communicating-with-your-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wellconnectedmom.com\/blog\/do-you-have-trouble-communicating-with-your-family\/","title":{"rendered":"Do You Have Trouble Communicating with Your Family?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/a><\/a>\"mom<\/a><\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Are you shopping at the grocery store with a basketful of groceries, only to realize you are supposed to pick up your child from school across town in 5 minutes?\u00a0 Have you found yourself watching your child’s school play wondering where your husband is and if he remembered it was tonight?\u00a0 Do you find yourself nagging\u00a0 <\/span>reminding your children a lot about different things such as chores, remembering to call you when they get home or to a friend’s house, or remembering\u00a0to go to dance practice right after school?\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you said yes to any of these questions – or could think of other scenarios like it, you will be interested in a\u00a0new website called CasaBlast.com.\u00a0\u00a0CasaBlast.com\u00a0just launched and they are hoping to help you and your family to “stay organized and in touch virtually…..anywhere.”\u00a0 They do this through the use of a personalized CasaBlast phone number, your computer, and your family’s cell phones.\u00a0 When you go to\u00a0CasaBlast.com you can sign up for a free<\/strong> account\u00a0and add everyone in your family who has a cellphone into your family profile.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Features<\/span><\/h2>\n

Now you are ready to begin communicating more easily with your cellphone toting family.\u00a0 Here are some of the features of CasaBlast.com:<\/p>\n

Family Blast<\/strong><\/span>\"mom<\/a><\/p>\n

Once you have your family members and their cellphones assigned, you can begin “blasting” everyone at once with important messages.\u00a0 Let everyone know you’re running late and want them to start making dinner.\u00a0 (hey, I can dream, right?)\u00a0 Let the family know that you’re having a special guest come for dinner and you need them to be on their best behavior.\u00a0 Alert them that you are tied up and won’t be able to pick the kids up until 20 minutes later.\u00a0 Lost at an amusement park?\u00a0 Blast everyone to find out their whereabouts.\u00a0 The list goes on and on.\u00a0 I found that as soon as I sent out the blast, my two cellphones immediately received the message – so it works fast.<\/p>\n

Calendar<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Everyone can add their personal calendar events so you can keep track of important dates and meetings.\u00a0 You can set reminders to send alerts to everyone to remind them of the event automatically.\u00a0 Phew, do you see how you can dramatically cut down on your nagging time?\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 You are not able to upload your calendar, however, you if you use Outlook or a similar program, you can “invite” your CasaBlast.com\u00a0account by sending your calendar event invite to invite@casablast.com<\/a>.\u00a0 I tried this and the event was added very quickly and visible on our calendar at CasaBlast.com.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Unfortunately,\u00a0it does not automatically text everyone in the family that the event has been added — so they can add it to their personal calendars.\u00a0 Hopefully this will be an option in a future upgrade of CasaBlast.com.\u00a0 You can, however, edit the event in your CasaBlast.com\u00a0calendar to set a reminder to go out via a blast to family members.<\/p>\n

Group Blast<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I really like this feature too.\u00a0 You can upload your contacts\u00a0if they are in Google or Plaxo.\u00a0 If not, you can manually add in your contacts (though I don’t like manual labor!) and then create groups so you can send a blast message out to various groups.\u00a0 For example, I created a Group for a\u00a0group of our friends that we all like to get together every so often.\u00a0 Luckily, they all like texting.\u00a0 So now I can blast a message to them all at once about the next gathering we have at our house.\u00a0 Nice.\u00a0 Casablast also does a nice job of tracking all outgoing and incoming messages that come in so you can keep track of them.<\/p>\n

To Do Lists<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

You can keep lists within your profile at CasaBlast.com.\u00a0 These lists can be used for your personal use or you can create a list to send out to your husband or child.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0After creating a new Task List (on the left)\u00a0and entering in my list items (on the right), you\u00a0have\u00a0the option of sending the list to one family member or all family members.\u00a0 Send your child a To Do list so s\/he always has it right at hand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Grocery List<\/strong><\/span>\"mom<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

OK, I like the Grocery List better than the To Do Lists.\u00a0 When I sent a list of 12 things to my cell to buy at the grocery, it arrived on my cell nicely formatted with each item listed separately in a vertical list.\u00a0 Nice and easy to follow.\u00a0 I had the option of sending the list to one family member or all family members.\u00a0 I like this feature but the downfall is that you need\u00a0 be near your computer and have your CasaBlast account running to enter your grocery list.\u00a0 Sometimes the old fashioned written list works better.\u00a0 However, if you need to send a list to your husband, this would work out well.<\/p>\n

Voicemail<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Once you sign up you will receive a free CasaBlast phone number.\u00a0 This number is used to give you the ability to send text messages out to everyone all at once.\u00a0 A family member then has the choice to text back everyone or leave a voice-mail by calling the CasaBlast number.\u00a0 The voice-mail will be sent to your CasaBlast.com account and you will be notified by e-mail or text that a voice-mail is waiting to be heard.\u00a0 This options works well for children – who may not have texting on their phone.<\/p>\n

A Mom’s Perspective<\/span><\/h2>\n

All in all, I love the idea of being able to blast everyone at once with reminders or important news.\u00a0 If you have a family of teenagers, this will come in handy as they tend to view text messages as soon as they come in.\u00a0 Finally, you’ve got their attention!\u00a0<\/p>\n

The calendaring feature would be powerful once they progress further on the ability for everyone to have the option to upload their calendars to CasaBlast.\u00a0 However, to import your calendars and keep them sync’d up would be a challenge.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you have a soccer team you coach, the PTA Leadership you need to stay in contact with, a girl scout troop where you need to be in constant contact with your girls’ parents, then CasaBlast would be extremely helpful for communicating out and managing incoming text messages.<\/p>\n

To be totally effective, you need to ensure you can easily sign-in and use your CasaBlast.com account.\u00a0 Commitment to making it one of your main communication systems will allow you to reap the benefits.\u00a0 I believe the beefed up calendaring section with syncing would be the crux that would make this tool indispensable in your life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, if you have young kids, without cell phones, CasaBlast.com\u00a0won’t help you communicate with them.\u00a0 However, I’ve been told that adding your kid’s nanny or grandparent to the family blast is a great way to keep them in communication on family events.<\/p>\n

For those of you with an iPhone or BlackBerry, I asked CasaBlast.com\u00a0if they will be coming out with a program button for your phones.\u00a0 The answer is yes!\u00a0 I believe this will make it easier for you to update your account and send out text messages in the future.<\/p>\n

Go to\u00a0CasaBlast.com\u00a0and sign-up for your free account now and tell me what you think.\u00a0 There are a lot of innovative ideas you can come up with in using CasaBlast.com.\u00a0 But wait!\u00a0 Here’s more good news —\u00a0CasaBlast.com\u00a0will donate $10,000 to help Haiti if they can obtain 10,000 subscribers by March 31st.\u00a0 So go check it out and support a good cause at the same time.<\/p>\n

The concept is great and the price is right!\u00a0 CasaBlast.com\u00a0is offering their service for free for the first 10,000 families who join.\u00a0 Go have a blast with it!\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CasaBlast.com is a free new way to broadcast important messages, events, and reminders all at once to your family members through the use of their cellphones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14,22],"tags":[50,93,125,178,179,207,272],"class_list":["post-714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kids","category-moms","category-websites","tag-casablast","tag-family-communication","tag-home-manager","tag-mom-tech","tag-mom-technology","tag-phone-messaging","tag-text-messaging","entry","has-post-thumbnail"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellconnectedmom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellconnectedmom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellconnectedmom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellconnectedmom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellconnectedmom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wellconnectedmom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellconnectedmom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellconnectedmom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellconnectedmom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}