Pressgram was released yesterday for iphone (android coming later). I have been using the alpha and beta test versions since they were released and I am very pleased with the final product. Below is the post that I wrote about Pressgram during the Kickstarter campaign in April.
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Now that we have publicly announced that my wife and I are going to have a child in the fall, I have been thinking more about digital parenting. I have thought about this more than a lot of first time fathers because I have also been a full time nanny for five years. In that time I have seen an enormous change in the way we share our children’s lives.
When my oldest niece was first born I created a static Web site for her. A few months later I changed to a Blogger blog. Once my second niece was born I primarily turned the blogs over to their mother and I started sharing pictures and happenings through twitter, Facebook, and eventually Instagram.
But over the past 18 months my love of social media sites is waning. Not because I don’t love the communities there, but because I am increasingly concerned with how Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are using my information (picture, stories, timeline) to make money and how I am losing control of my own data. And more importantly how I may be losing control of my nieces data.
My friend John Saddington announced a solution that I have been looking forward to since before we publicly announced our upcoming child. Pressgr.am is a way to use the filters and photo tools of Instagram and other photo apps while keeping your photos on your own site or choosing when and where to share them.
In my case, I think I will go back to a WordPress blog format, but I will be in charge of how the photos get shared and can remove them from the web when I want.
Pressgr.am is in the last 10 days of a Kickstarter Campaign to be able to raise money to develop and launch the new app in the fall. The app will be free, but I want you to consider contributing toward its development to support your rights as a parent to control the pictures and information of your child.
Here is the slick video that explains more about the app.