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Going ga-ga with UltraSoundd

April Fools!

Josh Lowensohn Former Senior Writer
Josh Lowensohn joined CNET in 2006 and now covers Apple. Before that, Josh wrote about everything from new Web start-ups, to remote-controlled robots that watch your house. Prior to joining CNET, Josh covered breaking video game news, as well as reviewing game software. His current console favorite is the Xbox 360.
Josh Lowensohn
CNET Networks

We just got the word on a new social network called UltraSoundd. It's aimed at unborn children who want to blog their lives and post pictures and videos of their dwelling space to share with friends. Other social networks have similar efforts, but with their parents managing the profile and posting updates. Ultrasoundd lets the kid do all the work. The site just secured a $2 million round of Series A funding from Gerber's parent company Novartis.

To set up an Ultrasoundd account, parents need simply register with the site and download a small, 130KB Java application to their mobile phones. Once installed, an expecting mother just needs to duct tape her phone to her stomach, and the program will run automatically--sending blog updates to the child's profile page. Landlines work for users without mobile phones, but the parent will need to dial in manually.

We ran into a few problems with this service. For one thing, our photos were turning out dark. Like really dark. We were also getting a ton of spam from other Ultrasoundd members with garbled messages and friends requests that the service calls Amnioticalls. We also got a text message that said "0/?/womb RDY 2 PRTY?"

Ultrasoundd is an innovative service; we just don't think it's ready yet. Things just feel a little premature.