On Mother's Day, I rue the fact that I live thousands of miles from my mom. I'm sure many of you are in the same position. So, I compiled this list of nice things you can do for your mom online. Nothing beats being there, but maybe these suggestions will help. Note that some of them will take a few days to arrive at your family's house, but better late than never, my mom always said.
1. Create an online gallery of old family photos. I took a bunch of the scans that my parents had done and curated a nice little selection for my family with Posterous, so that we could easily share them. If you're a really great child, you'd take on the digitization yourself.
2. Buy Mom an old favorite song on iTunes. In my case, that long-ago song would be Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On?"
3. Create a Blurb book from a family trip. Blurb is a print-on-demand service that creates beautiful books. I think photobooks work especially well. When my dad and I went to New York a few years back, I took a bunch of his photos and created a lasting record of that trip with Blurb. It was probably the best gift I've ever given.
4. Send your Mom a Postagram. For 99 cents, the Postagram app lets you send a photo from your phone as a real, life postcard to someone (say, your mom). Here's the one I made for my Mom.