A lot of you have been asking me what has happened to the podcast so I thought I would take a minute and write a post to give you a quick answer.  Whenever I am asked what’s up with Alternageek, I am reminded of that car insurance commercial where the guy is at the bank drive-thru and the kid inside is on a take your kid to work day thing. He starts sending pencils and coins through the tube which of course then slams into the guys car. The line of the commercial is “life comes at you fast” and that is currently the motto for me lately. A lot has been going on with my family that has required my 100% attention including medical emergencies. While I hate leaving listeners and subscribers in the lurch, family and children always come first and foremost. Once my family is healthy and happy again, I will get back to the podcast and providing you with some entertaining and informative content. In the meantime, feel free to shoot us an email or post comments and let us know what you want to hear. Thank you for your loyalty to the show, I look forward to getting back to it.

I tend to subscribe to the extreme geek parenting method. All four of my kids mostly use Linux at home (they do have an iBook they share as well) and my three year old daughter has been begging for a stuffed Tux of her own for a while now. While I subscribe to many social networking outlets many of them cater to the general public rather than a select target group and sometimes I just want to geek out with other moms and dads. Below I have compiled a list of social networking sites that are built for parents, families, and some just for kids, so we can get our geek on together.

• CafeMom - The largest social network just for moms.
• Famiva - A free secure and password-protected social network for local and extended families to connect and collaborate with features such as a family tree, extended family network, photo and story sharing, family events and reminders, family maps, and more.
• Famster - A private social network for families with a blog for each member, photo and video sharing, recipes, scrapbooking, calendars, addressbooks and more. Famster costs $9.95 per month. 
• Maya’s Mom - Social collaboration and community site for parents. 
• Minti - Advice, friendship and community for parents. Join for free, get your own family page, keep a blog and make friends with other members. Forum like user ranking where advancement can be accomplished by contributing parenting advice, blogging and writing comments.
• MothersClick - Connects mothers in the same area or neighborhood and helps them find groups and organize their groups. MothersClick is designed to be a unique parenting resource, helping moms to promote group-building, knowledge-sharing, and community.
• Parentography - Parentography is an online community for parents who want advice, tools, tips and ideas for family local or distant excursions. Parents can share stories, photos, excursion ideas, ratings and reviews on all sorts of family-friendly places and activities. They can search for things to do by location, season, children’s age and other important factors or find new places with an interactive map. All parents are given profiles to share and use to find new friends.

Sites just for kids (There are tons more sites for kids but this is a sampling of my families favorites as well as ones we have used and are familiar with):

• Club Penguin - Now owned by Disney, this social network allows kids to build their own penguin character and earn money (in their little penguin world) that can be used to purchase things for their homes, their pets, and more. Different levels of activities available depending on how active the use is on the site. Several levels of parental controls allow for no chat, safe chat, or full chat amongst the kids. Premium memberships are available for a monthly fee.
• imbee - a social network for kids and teachers. imbee is a teacher endorsed social networking site appropriate for kids and ‘tweens that allows them to create blogs, upload pictures, make trading cardsm and create and join groups. Imbee’s new Teacher Feature enables teachers to extend their classroom onto the Internet and establish class blogs and online interaction. Teacher Feature enables teachers and parents to work together closely to guide children’s foray into social networking while bolstering classroom learning.
• Nicktropolis - For kids from Nick.com. The site enables kids to build their own avatars and style their clothes and hair, decorate their rooms, play games, and more. Parental controls enable parents to restrict certain activities.

In an attempt to keep you appeased while I recuperate from my minor surgery Monday (which was a lot more complicated than I thought it would be) I have compiled some of my favorite open source apps. I had to be pretty strict with what I listed or the post would have been huge and this is in no way everything I love and use. Please add your favorites to the comments and if I haven’t tried it, I would love to give it a go and discuss it on next week’s podcast.OSXAdium - My absolute favorite multi-protocol IM client out there. You can add skins, icons, themes, script extras and the format of IM conversations is lovely.iEatBrainz - Fills in the correct metadata (title, artist, etc) for MP3s in your collection.Cashbox - Easy to use finance and budget application.WindowsPidgin - Multi-protocol IM clientCygwin - Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows (for when DOS isn’t cutting it). You can also build apps from source (or add some prebuilt ones).WinSCP - Secure copy for Windows with an easy to use interface.LinuxExaile - Audio player similar to Amarok but for GTK+Wine - Free implimentation of the Windows API for Linux that allows you to install many Windows only apps right in Linux.Evolution - Integrated mail, address book and calendaring application. (I use it to check my Exchange email!)Cross-platform Software:Sunbird - Manage your calendar and tasks.the Gimp - Photo manipulation applicationAudacity - Powerful audio editing and recording softwareVLC - Play videos on your computer with the support for many codecs.OpenOffice - Create and view spreadsheets, presentations, and word processing documents.Firefox - Web browserMiro - Video player, video RSS app, and it allows you to save videos from YouTube and more. Slick.