How many family members in your household access your Netflix account? Netflix has made some progress on making their service more family friendly, and for my daughters’ sakes they’ve got a little further to go….

We enjoyed a long New Year’s weekend away from home, spending most of our time at the indoor pool at our hotel, playing cards in our room, or mindlessly watching network TV.  Looking for a little programming variety, I fired up the Netflix app on my iPhone and scanned the usual screen landscape:

Recently Watched: Curious George, Avatar The Last Airbender, Wizards of Waverly Place, Gossip Girls, Vampire Diaries, Hannah Montana, Veggie Tales  ….

Woah, what a minute. Hmm. A few of these set off the warning flares. I have two girls ages 12 & 11, six boys 10 and under, and then a wife that ain’t spending a lot of her free time watching Netflix.  I’m no expert, but from everything I can tell Gossip Girls and Vampire Diaries probably aren’t in the age-appropriate wheelhouse for pre-teen girls which means my daughters were sneaking some inappropriate viewing time on their iTouch , which means—queue the knee-jerk reaction–I blew my stack!

Five minutes and a mini-Spanish Inquisition later, my girls continued to voraciously deny the offense. Shucks, they did look pretty darn earnest. Maybe I accidentally hit the viewing on these shows recently when I was browsing around? But for both shows? Naw.

Finally it clicked: Our 18 year-old babysitter was checking-in on our dog a few times a day back home. Clearly she was making herself comfy and enjoying some couch-time with the dog and the ladies from Gossip Girls. We’re not the type of family to tuck a secret babysitter webcam into the bookcase, so it felt a little creepy to have an audit trail of her viewing habits.

Some key takeaways:

• The Jerk: Yep, I’m a big ol’ jerk. My daughters got a big bear hug and even bigger apology from daddy ASAP. Mea culpa!
• Parent Control: Boy, I wish Netflix had some privacy controls so I don’t have to use a combo platter of responsibility dialog, scare tactics, and the “Recently Watched” queue as a deterrent to keep my kids from accessing mature and R rated content!
• The Recommendations: Shoot, I just realized that my babysitter’s viewing is probably going to skew the recommendations that Netflix starts spitting out at me. Uh oh.
• The Audit Trail: There’s some mature stuff – like Spartacus or The Tudors — that I click on that I just plain don’t want to show up in my Recently Viewed list. Period. Netflix, can you give me a widget that will allow me to suppress this?

Any of this ever happen to you? How many family members access your account? Please share!

Our house is extremely busy with our four daughters. There is constantly a little one that needs to be wiped, repaired with a band-aid, broken up from a potential brawl with their sister…you name it. There is always something going on. I love the excitement. With that said, there is also a constant battle of who controls the living room and entertainment devices. The girls outnumber me so more often than not; Disney Channel is coming through the big screen TV, while another kid’s show may be occupying the tablet device. Because of things like those pesky college savings I haven’t built my man cave…yet, so my mobile device is extremely important to me, it’s like my mobile man cave.

I’m absolutely a gadget hound. I have owned and played with all kinds of smartphones. My new favorite might be the new LG Nitro™ HD. What immediately makes the device so cool is the screen. The phone came loaded with 3 sample videos and the picture was so astounding that I wanted to show everyone I know. I didn’t know I needed real RGB striped pixels and a 329 pixels per inch screen in my life, but I do. The color and sharpness of the screen is truly amazing. My wife and I joked that we could prop this thing in our family room and make it the media centerpiece of the room.

With the sample videos being so impressive I immediately downloaded some of my favorite apps like HBO GO and Netflix. My favorite shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm and Breaking Bad never looked so good. On Monday mornings, I run through all of the highlights from a weekend of NFL football and again, the 16:9 aspect ratio for widescreen make the device perfect for HD quality sports. Definitely excited now that the NBA is back. The visuals are also great for HD movie experiences.

IMAGE: BREAKING BAD ON NITRO

I love the size and weight of the device too. Let’s say I’m taking my oldest daughter to her dance classes, which I feel like I’m doing all the time these days, and I have some time to spare while I wait in the sitting room until they’re done. The Nitro is perfect in this scenario–the 7 hours of talk time means I have plenty of time when waiting. The visuals are so stunning that I feel immersed in the entertainment like you would a tablet device. But you don’t have to lug it around like a big ole tablet.  The Nitro fits right in your pocket. It’s the perfect balance of giving a big-time entertainment experience while still keeping the device small.

What makes LG Nitro’s True HD IPS Display so amaing? 16:9 Aspect ratio for widescreen entertainment, sharper, crisper images, amazingly accurate colors and more. Exclusively available on AT&T’s 4G LTE network. Find out more at www.NitrobyLG.com

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
I was one of the bloggers selected by LG to review the LG’s Nitro HD. They provided me with product to test and compensation for my time. However, my opinions are entirely my own.

This feels a lot like scrap booking and it’s a significant change to Facebook profiles:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ever since we became Netflix customers, we have primarily used it for the kids. My wife and I have never been disciplined enough to keep a steady queue of movies coming to our mailbox and the streaming section never had enough good content. But they’ve always had an OK sprinkling of kids’ movies and shows. Very quickly Netflix became “Kids Shows on Demand” for us.

And as soon as they announced their price hike, we immediately canceled the DVD portion of our subscription and went streaming only. We’re obviously not the only family using Netflix this way as they just launched a “Just For Kids” tab making it easy for kids and parents to quickly find stuff for the kids.

From Netflix VP of Product Innovation, Todd Yellin (via Techland):

“Kids discover and categorize movies and TV shows differently than adults. Just as we have revolutionized the way people find the movies and shows they want to watch when and how they want to, we’re making it easier for kids and parents alike to have the best possible Netflix experience.”

Are you a Netflix Customer? Will you stay a customer with the new prices?

It was very cool today to see that the latest Google logo doodle is celebrating the 92nd birthday of legendary children’s author and illustrator Richard Scarry. Richard Scarry is one of those great authors that my wife and I read as children. And in a world of iPad apps and video games, his craft still demands the attention of our kids. The illustrations are so complex and rich that our kids get lost in uncovering the story of each picture. Until right now, I had no idea when he was born or that he passed away in 1994. I’m happy that Google is honoring his legend and getting me to research more about his life and work.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Check out this great new Google Chrome ad highlighting some key milestones of fatherhood through the lens of technology:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Christa Charter is a Playground Dad guest contributor. You can follow her on Twitter @trixie360

In October, I wrote about my husband GySgt Charter’s deployment on the USS Kearsarge and how I was using technology to help him keep in touch with our toddler daughter. I was pretty confident that with short video clips and emails it would be smooth sailing. That was fairly naïve. Here we are six months later, so I feel I owe you an update.

First off, not to panic. He’s okay, we’re okay, the baby is okay. He’s in the Mediterranean now and in the next month will make his way across the Atlantic back to the US. Here are some of the bumps we’ve encountered in the past six months:

Afghanistan
This was an unpleasant surprise. Part of the 26^th Marine Expeditionary Unit were moved off the Kearsarge and sent to two locations in Afghanistan to help efforts to maintain the ground gained over the winter (when the Taliban forces typically amscray to Pakistan). Some of the Marines went to Kandahar; others (including my husband) went to Helmand. These are the two worst places in Afghanistan. The places where Marines are getting killed. I’m not a very emotional person, but I admit I lost it when this happened. I cried—a lot. Dana promised me he’d be okay and said not to worry about him. He also told me not to watch the news. This was not comforting. But we got through it. There were a couple good things about him being at Camp Leatherneck: communications rarely went down, and connectivity was good enough that we could have weekly video dates.

Video Dates
How awesome was it for me to see my man live once a week! How great that he could see the baby blow kisses, say “Daddy!” and act silly. It was extremely awesome. But as the novelty wore off, we’d get set up with our video and, well. There were some awkward silences. He was coming off a long night shift and looked exhausted. A peek at where he slept those months will explain why. The other reason: despite our best efforts, we were just losing touch with each other’s lives. He couldn’t tell me much of what he was doing, or didn’t want to worry me. I tried to keep him up to date on what was happening at home, but complaining about the day to day challenges of a new job, three kids, and ‘oh damn the car needs work’ just made him feel bad he couldn’t be here to help. So what did we talk about? Often not much. And that scared the hell out of me. This was how people ‘drift apart’; this is the bright sunny path that doesn’t seem treacherous until it’s too late.

Homecoming
We have a maybe-tentative date for his return. We won’t know for sure until about 48 hours prior. It’s not very long now until he’s back in our arms. But just for a while. Our particular situation means that when he moves to his next duty station (Maryland) in July, I’ll still be here in Redmond with the kids. And for the next 3 years until he retires we’ll have separate households on opposite coasts. And this sucks. After nine months apart, I’d love to be tripping over his boots and rolling my eyes at the crap he watches on TV and getting pissed off that he doesn’t notice that the garbage needs to be taken out—all that petty husband and wife stuff sounds like a week at the Ritz-Carlton to me right now. But, we’ve done this for three years and we can do it for three more. We already have plans to do Kinect video chats and Facetime when he’s in Maryland, and he’ll be home for the weekend every six weeks or so.

Coming to the end of this deployment I have to give huge props to the spouses that do this over and over again. This is it for us; no more deployments. I will have to put him on the plane back to the East Coast but I won’t have to say goodbye for most of a year.

WonderCon is one of the premier events for comic books and pop culture. This year WonderCon is celebrating its 25th anniversary and it took place this weekend at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA. All of the big names are there like DC and Marvel, but one of the coolest things in this year’s show was 7 year old named Haykell Aria. Haykell’s dream is to make comics. He saved  his money, purchased an exhibitor booth and displayed his work.

(Photos courtesy of Varian David)

The creators of Brutal Legend, Double Fine Studios are at work on their first family game, Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster for Microsoft Kinect. The game is being described as a “living storybook” featuring Elmo and Cookie Monster. Appearances by Big Bird and Snuffleupagus have not been confirmed. The kid-friendly game will teach problem solving and social skills while allowing kids to interact with the software using the Kinect motion sensors.

From Double Fine CEO and gaming legend Tim Schafer:

“Sesame Street had a profound effect on me, and many members of the Double Fine team, when we were children. So did video games. Now many of us are parents and we want to share with our kids the great experiences we had, but also the completely new ones made possible by cutting-edge technology like Kinect for Xbox 360. So it’s a labor of love on many levels.”

As a big fan of the Brutal Legend game and a bigger fan of the Sesame Street franchise, I’ll be tracking this one carefully.

We often highlight the iPhone and iPad apps that have obviously taken art and interface design as priority one. This isn’t because we’re stuffy art enthusiasts, it’s simply because this what our kids seem to gravitate towards. They’re less concerned about apps that try to push the technical horsepower of an iOS and more compelled by those apps that are designed from the bottom up to try and connect with kids and equip them with engaging prompts and surprises to keep them mesmerized.

A new app that our kids are loving – that does all of the above while teaching them numbers – is Splish Splash Inn from the folks at Shortstack Apps. The app’s beautiful interface is based on an underwater hotel with 10 doors. Behind each door is a corresponding number of perfectly illustrated animals that the kids count and then move around the screen. A hidden gem of the app is that each animal makes a different musical sound. So my kids discovered a “sub-use” of the app by creating different rhythms with all of the animals. Another great addition is that your kids can play in English, French or Spanish…so now you got numbers, music and language…a nice little educational trifecta there.

The app is available on iPad and iPhone for $0.99 which a great deal considering all of the fun the kids will have not only learning their numbers but using the guests of the Splish Splash Inn as interactive percussion instruments. Perfect for the younger kids aged 2-5.