Teach Your Tykes About Financial Management With Tykoon

Today on WSAV Tech Tuesday, we talk about Tykoon, a website that can help parents teach children about the basics of financial management.

What is Tykoon?

Think of Tykoon as Allowance 2.0 but with more opportunities to help kids better understand the principles of earning, saving and spending.

How does it work?

Parents start by creating an account for themselves and then separate logins for each of their children. Then they assign tasks to each of their children and setup rewards for each of those tasks.

What kinds of tasks and rewards can a parents assign to their children?

Tasks can be anything from specific household chores to doing homework to using their manners. The rewards for these tasks can be monetary and can contribute to a set weekly/monthly allowance, or the rewards  can be non-monetary, such as extra TV or video game time or staying up later on the weekends.

What makes this such a great way to teach kids about earning, spending, and saving?

Say your child wants a new video game, bicycle, etc. You can use Tykoon to set a savings goal for that item based on how much the item costs. Using either the mobile app or the website, your child can see a pie chart that helps them see the progress they are making toward their goal.

How much does this cost and where can people get it?

Both Tykoon.com and the mobile app are free to use, but right now they only have apps for iPhone and iPod Touch. But it's important to point out that the mobile apps aren't required to use this service, so it is one that anyone can potentially use.

This post also appears on the BFG blog.

Two iPad Apps That Bring American History To Life

Today on WSAV Tech Tuesday,  we talked about two iPad apps that help bring American history to life: the Revolutionary War app from Multieducator Inc and the Civil War Today app from the History Channel. These apps are perfect for students and history buffs alike, and both apps offer a wealth of content: photos, articles, historical biographies, maps, etc.

The biggest difference between the two apps is the way in which they present their content. The Revolutionary War app is setup like a reference book. You can select the people, topics, and events that interest you to find out more information. You have on-demand access to the entire catalog of information from the Revolutionary War.

By contrast, the Civil War Today app takes a much more unique content approach. This app is laid out like a daily newspaper, pulling together old newspapers articles, personal letters, photos, maps, and more into a single format. The app launched in 2011 and new content will be added daily through April 26, 2015. In doing do, the app aims to provide readers with Civil War era news in "real time" over the same four-year period spanned by the Civil War. The only drawback to this app is that you cannot skip ahead to future content; you are only able to see news and documentation from the "past."

Due to the 4th of July holiday, both of these apps are on sale this week at a significant discount. You can pick up the Revolutionary Way app for a mere 99¢ and the Civil War Today app is only $2.99.

This app also appears on the BFG blog.

Curalate, Helping You Find Your "Pins" In A Haystack

Is your brand on Pinterest? If so, what kind of metrics are you using and how are you tabulating them? (You are tracking against some sort of success metric, right?)

If these questions leave you with a look more awkward than Phil Mickelson's smile as he approaches the 18th green, then fear not; there is hope. Enter Curalate. As stated in the video above,

Curalate uses some pretty cool technologies to automagically find, match, and remember images that are about your brand. We take the impossible and make it possible, discovering, tracking and measuring the sharing of your brand's content on visual platforms like Pinterest.

Curalate is packed full of stats and graphs, and appears to be thorough to say the least. My only caution on this one is to make sure you don't get lost in the data. As with most things online, it's possible to track a minutia of data points, but not all data points truly matter. Make sure you don't get lost tabulating results that aren't actionable or insightful.

Thanks, Ben!

This post also appears on the BFG blog.

Two Apps That Help You Watch What You Eat

Today on WSAV Tech Tuesday, we talk about two apps that can help you watch what you eat.

The first is called MyFitnessPal. This app is a calorie counter and a food journal rolled into one. Enter a total calorie goal for the day, then log the food items you eat throughout the day. My Fitness Pal knows the calorie counts for most common foods and will do all the math for you. It's a simple and easy way to stick to your calorie goals for each day. MyFitnessPal is FREE for iPhone, Android phones, Blackberries, and Windows phones.

The second app is called intelli-Diet. This app is currently iPhone only and it will set you back $3.99, but intelli-Diet gives you much more than a just a food diary and calorie counter. You start by entering your height, weight, etc and your weight loss goal. Then you tell the app what foods like and don't like. Using those foods, Intelli-Diet will give you a weekly meal plan that includes breakfast, lunch, dinner, and two in-between meal snacks. If you don't like a meal option, simply hit refresh and it will give you a new one.

Social Network Get Glue is Like Foursquare for Entertainment

Today on WSAV Tech Tuesday, we talk about Get Glue, a social media network that lets you check-in to your favorite TV shows, movies, books, and music. Think of it like foursquare for entertainment.

Checking in on Get Glue allows you to:

1. Connect and converse with other fans of the same movies, TV shows, etc.
2. Get recommendations based on the things you like.
3. Earn limited edition stickers that you can have mailed directly to your door FOR FREE.
4. Get discounts on merchandise from some of your favorite shows.
5. And, as usual, you can connect Get Glue to your Twitter and Facebook accounts if you want to share your Get Glue activity across your other social networks.

Get Glue has free mobile apps for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry.

This post also appears on the BFG blog.