The Guru of New Welcomes GuruMommy.

We Gurus have to stick together. So I immediately zipped over to check out a site GuruMommy.com, created by Linda Meadow, the author of City Baby LA guidebooks, who has three living-breathing reasons to call herself a Mommy Guru.

Unfortunately, I think I arrived at the site too soon. Much of it feels like it’s still under construction — categories either have skimpy or no content. Classifieds offer only a note about Baby Strollers. The blog has few posts. There is a lot of promise here — I especially like the Guru Seal –but the site breaks the cardinal rule of website building: before launch, make sure every category is richly populated so it looks like there’s ‘someone home.’

The site also feels a bit like it exists in a time warp, where families still take pricey vacations, buy trendy gifts (Poppy Gift Store Bins for Baby Boy at $260) and face the challenge of kidlet moving up to a big kid bed that costs thousands of dollars. Perhaps GuruMommy’s LA is faring better during this R-word than other places but I know a long list of Moms in SoCal and most are watching their pennies carefully.

My favorite part was actually the post about coping with head lice. This near-universal problem was one of the shockers of moving to balmy California — and I was happy to see that Guru Mommy tackled this non-cool, always-distressing concern.

I’m looking forward to visiting this site again and discovering a thriving site chockful of useful content.

The Church of Apple Gets A New iPod Bible: iLounge Launches The Free iPod + iPhone Book 4.

Now this is droolworthy.
If you worship all things Apple, this brand new version of what has been called the iPod ‘bible’ is bound to ramp up your religiousity a few notches. With 268 pages of bleeding edge content from hot website iLounge.com, this free book is likely to set another record for mondo-millions of downloads. Packed with juicy new information about the iPod, iPhone and iTunes, this sleekly designed and streamlined fourth-edition is, only hours after its launch, already being dubbed iLounge’s best pub yet.

Along with in-depth guides and ratings of more than 1,800 iPod and iPhone-related products, readers will find new cool features like “iDesign Retrospective,” a look at how talented designers created the world’s most impressive iPod accessories, “Sneak Peeks” , exclusive world premieres of 20+ new accessories and even the inevitable “iPhone Baby”, outlining the ways expectant Moms and Dads can get baby hooked on Apple while in utero. 150 iTunes Answers has been reorged and updated, with 100 pages of tips, tricks and pix.

Another inevitable in these days of user-generated-content, but still compelling nonetheless: The Next-Generation iPhone and Photo Galleries: luscious photographs and images submitted by iLounge readers that depict the past, present, and future of Apple’s iPhone family, as well as the latest globe-trotting iPods.

And even better, iLounge made their instant classic hassle-free as well. When you go to the site to download it, you will find a wide variety of options for easy viewing: from desktop to laptop or smaller pocket-size screens, including the iPhone and iPod touch.

Download The Free iPod + iPhone Book 4 in Adobe PDF format at http://www.ilounge.com/book4/.

“Getting” The Mom Market: Three Winners

It’s my daughter’s birthday today.  Which means that my Momhood is front and center this morning, as I scroll back, way back to the day before being a Mom was rockstar cool and wearing your kids on your hips is hipper than Prada’s latest.

I remember the day a senior executive (and Mom) took me aside at my new job and whispered: “Never talk about your daughter. Don’t post her pictures. Don’t bring her to the office. No one should even know you have a kid.”

Nowdays, Momism is not only a badge of honor but also a booming business, thanks to some 83 million U.S. Moms who are spending 2 trillion + dollars a year on everything from baby spas www.skinspababy.com to NASCAR umbrella strollers.  Although the whisper in the VC world in Silicon Valley may be that the ‘Mom market is saturated’, the Guru thinks that conversely, the marketplace is going to continue to grow right along with every toddling step these kids take.  

Here are a couple of winners:

www.cubesandcrayons.com Cubes and Crayons, ‘office space and kid space’ is a concept well worth watching.  Launched in January 2008 by frustrated Mom and Founder MF Chapman, this savvy combination of full-time, flexible childcare and office space is already a hit and sure to spawn more mini-Mom communities where both Mom and kidlet benefit.

http://maternalinstinct.net/   Just up the road from Menlo Park’s Cubes and Crayons is Mom-marketing powerhouse Maternal Instinct. The brainchild of award-winning creative marketer, Kat Gordon, this talented team of Creative Problem Solvers knows exactly how to tap into the growing band of Mom Influencers.  Check out ‘What’s My Blanket’ for tips.

And finally, we Moms know that each and every one of our offspring is a creative genius.  Check out this latest winner, where self-publishing meets kids, Tikatok: beta.tikatok.net.