Baby On The Way? These Five Web Services Can Help

As more people share their lives online, a natural extension is to share information with friends and family about a baby, both pre- and post-birth. We've seen many Twitter births over the past year. But what happens when you want to share more information and media? A handful of new companies aim to create the ultimate baby website.Baveo is the newest baby management site which launched this past week in private beta. Baveo provides a blog which family and friends can subscribe to or receive updates on their mobile phone. Baveo also offers a "delivery date countdown" which keeps track of how close we are to the actual birth. The service allows you to share photos, text and videos.

Kidmondo says they are an "online baby journal" which includes an online diary and photo/video gallery. There are also growth charts along with medical and growth journals. Kidmondo allows parents to send updates to Twitter. Kidmondo allows three children to be maintained for free and then moves to $39/year for unlimited children.

Kidmondo recently partnered with SharedBook to allow users to create actual printed books - these are perfect as keepsakes.

TotSpot founder Adam Katz describes the service as, "a place for parents to publish a page about their kids and share with family and friends. It's part online baby journal, parent scrapbook, and social network." TotSpot offers charts, photo/video sharing, baby blogs and milestone tracking.

TotSpot also offers an API which allows Web developers to build applications on top of the TotSpot platform.

babyZbook is based in Switzerland and is the only service in this review that's located outside the U.S. It's also the most basic of the services. babyZbook calls itself, "your online babybook" and offers sharing of baby-related events, content, photos and videos. There are tracking tools including weight/height measurement and birth notifications. Content can be printed into an off-line version for sharing with family and friends who don't have Internet access. babyZbook offers content in German and English. Guests can signup for automatic notification of changes and sign a babybook.

Lil'Grams is currently in private beta and they are targeting first-time parents. Lil'Grams could be compared with a microblogging service. The concept is to share anything and everything related to the new baby. Media, including photos and videos, can be uploaded using a variety of methods including the mobile phone. As more devices offer photo and video capabilities, this will help parents keep their baby sites updated.

Each of the services listed above offers a unique interface and set of features. I'd suggest testing each one then decide on which works best for you, baby and your friends and family.