Those are the fatality numbers. The number of close calls will probably never be known. In the past 5 years, I have personally known of 1 fatality but 3 close calls. Those “close call” parents were not abusive or neglectful. And they live every day now, occasionally seeing a news story about an infant death or near-death, thinking to themselves, “There but for the grace of God…”.

Those of us who have been touched by such a tragedy want to help. We want to get behind an effort. We want to discover or invent something that will stop this.

For a while now, the options have been limited. There are some common sense tips and tricks, such as putting your briefcase or purse in the backseat with your infant so you are less likely to forget.

There have been devices that alert you when an infant is in the car seat after the engine is shut off. But, there has been no clear winner in terms of a device that was affordable, easily transferable from car to car, and got the job done well.

Earlier today, I reported on a new device released by Cobra Electronics at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show. In this particular application of that product, it just may be a game changer.

The folks at Cobra and Phone Halo have designed the Cobra Tag G5 to be aimed at the huge market of people who lose things. That’s pretty much everybody. You attach a key-fob device to any valuable you wish. If you walk away from your keys, purse, etc., your phone will alert you. There are GPS and fine-point Bluetooth tracking elements to the device. Attach the fob device to your keys, your purse, your laptop, your wallet, your kid’s stuffed toy. Anything you need to keep track of, you can.

What about your kid?

Let me posit a scenario that is very realistic:

Mother leaves for work one morning. She puts her baby in his car seat, in the back, facing rear, just as she is supposed to do. She sets off on her daily route, which usually takes her by the daycare first, then on to work where she parks her car and goes inside for four hours before leaving for lunch.

On this particular morning, she is running a little late, only a few minutes. Her phone rings and she answers it, using a hands-free device, being safe. Her usual route to work is blocked by a traffic tie-up, so she makes a change. As she talks on the phone, helping a workmate find an answer to a pressing question, her baby falls asleep in the back.

Her detour takes her out at a point on her route past the daycare. On autopilot, she blanks on the daycare stop, and turns the wrong way. She rushes to the office parking lot, swings into her usual parking spot. She heads toward the air-conditioned office, happy she will not be out in the heatwave coming today.

Her phone chimes an alert.

In a split-second, she recognizes that unique tone. That fob is attached to her baby’s diaper bag. This family has just been spared a horrific tragedy. It literally is as simple as losing your keys. It happens to good families and loving parents every year. But, this time, it did not.

The Cobra Tag system is slated to retail for $79.95. I think it would make an excellent baby shower gift. Go in with a friend or relative if you need to. And, don’t worry about any perceived insult to the parents. If my wife and I got this as a shower gift, it would be one of the most prized items we could get. And, once the child is big enough to not require it, you pop it on your keys and go right on using it. Or, clip it on your kid when they go out to play.

Or, pass it along to another parent. We’re saving lives here.

This is why we love the Internet.

Marc Stephens deserves equal credit for foresight and grace under fire (for the unflappable latter he credits the Royal Navy). The BBC reports Stephens googled “how to deliver a baby” as a precaution the moment his wife went into labor.

His cramming* session paid off for when his wife reached the critical five-minute contraction stage (the stage they tell you to head for the hospital or call your midwife), the Stephens’ midwife was a bit busy. The baby would arrive before the ambulance did.

One of the YouTube videos Stephens viewed was an instructional video from YouTube’s ExpertVillage channel, which illustrates in eerie (and kind of icky) plastic dummy realism how to deliver a baby in a taxicab.

While this is a story with obvious human interest quality, it is also serves as a nice example (if you’ll allow to me to cheapen it) of how businesses can both serve the community and gain valuable exposure. The expert instruction on YouTube, now getting international attention, was demonstrated by Laurie Fremgen, who runs Austin Midwifery Services.

While the video itself is a testament to local parents-to-be that Fremgen knows what she’s doing, the attention her video receives from the Stephens’ story just significantly upped her profile. The example also serves as a testament to the power of the how-to testimonial. When people use the internet mostly as an information utility, business-related how-tos can provide a much needed branding and advertising boost.     

*The word “cram” seems crassly appropriate but is necessary in lieu of the Anglican synonym “swot,” used by Stephens, which my meager American vocabulary forced me to look up.
 

The contest had been running for about 10 weeks when Jessica Thornton of Good Mama Diapers noticed that the hundreds of pictures that had been submitted to Photobucket had mysteriously disappeared.

She contacted Photobucket customer service to find out what had happened to all the pictures. She was informed that the site had recently changed its content moderations policies concerning images of children and that the photos violated its policy because they contained nudity.

"While we understand that in a family album type of setting, these images are innocent, we must remove the content because of the nudity and believe that this restriction is in the best interest of children’s safety," the Photobucket e-mail says, according to Cnet. "This policy applies to all accounts, public or private. We ask that you keep these images on your personal computers and not host them on Photobucket.com."

While the policy is clearly ridiculous, to Photobucket’s credit they reversed their position on allowing photos of babies wearing diapers. In an email to Good Mama Diapers the company wrote," My team has reviewed the images that were tossed in your account and it was determined that the images that were removed from your account should not have been removed."

"We have the images available to restore and are currently in the process of restoring them. Please accept our sincere apologies for the error. It is true that we reviewed our content moderation guidelines to make sure it was in line with Photobucket’s terms of service and it made us more strict on child nudity, however, we were over-censoring in this case and are working to rectify that."