About Us

Tumblon was conceived by Jonathan Dahl and Graham Scharf on a walk through Central Park with their wives. This is their story:

As parents of young children, we wanted a simple way to learn about our children's development. We also wanted to celebrate all their memories in a secure online baby book - a book that grew with them far beyond the first year. After that stroll through the park, we searched for interactive ways to learn about child development, and to safely preserve and share memories. We came up wanting in both areas. So we designed an integrated solution: a web 2.0 service to help parents understand, celebrate and preserve the precious memories of early childhood.

As a teacher-turned-full-time-father (and the husband of a pediatrician) Graham was intent on the quality and accessibility of the developmental information. As a web designer (and husband of a classical school teacher), Jonathan was committed to simple, intuitive design. Rather than having boxes of prints under the bed, or a folder full of images on a personal computer, we both wanted to create a secure, reliable book of memories that could be constantly enjoyed by friends and family around in the world.

For interaction, we wanted to provide more than a simple milestone checklist and photo sharing/printing service. So we designed a blog-like interaction that enables parents to celebrate developmental milestones (like a child's first step) and special memories (like the first trip to Grandma's) in stories, pictures and videos. We also wanted more than an accurate list of what to expect; we wanted to connect the milestones to the best books, toys and activities for each stage of development. So we did it. Dissatisfied with unguessable URLs as a security measure, we let parents set the privacy level for each memory or milestone - all at the same url: "mysite.tumblon.com." From start to finish, our aim has been to make parenting fun and simple.