They WILL eat you out of house and home

Confirming what all parents already know, WhatToExpect.com says that raising a child from infancy to the age of 18 will cost about a quarter of a million bucks. That's before college, mind you.

Parents and parents-to-be have been using Lottay.com to create and share baby registries. Because our wish lists are free-form, you can jot down anything you need or want ... from "Money toward college" to "This specific car seat". Share your wish list with family and friends and they can contribute toward your wishes via PayPal.

Using Lottay for your wedding registry

Nice pick up about Lottay in Arizona Bride magazine: "Show Them the Money!"

I'm really writing this blog post as an excuse to link to this!

Chinese New Year ain't over yet..!

Chinese New Year is still going on! The Asian celebration runs two weeks long. Don't you think all holidays should run two weeks ;-)

As some of you know, Lottay released our "Celebrate Chinese New Year!" application on Facebook in honor of the holiday.

Here's a nice blurb about our Facebook app.

You can also send virtual red envelopes on Lottay.com.

Lottay's "virtual Red Envelope" for Chinese new year gifts

The second-largest Chinese newspaper in the U.S. did a nice article about Lottay's "virtual red envelope" for Chinese new year.

See the article here in Sing Tao Daily.

Lottay.com is about sending cash as gift, securely via PayPal. Chinese new year is often marked by giving cash as a gift, inside a red envelope. So we combined the two (Chinese new year started on Feb. 14 and runs for two weeks).

Happy Chinese New Year from Lottay!

Gong xi fa cai! That's "Happy New Year" in Mandarin. February 14 was the start of the Chinese new year, a two week-long celebration of culture, tradition, food and family.

Lottay wants to help you celebrate the Chinese new year ... with our new Facebook application!

Check out Lottay's "Celebrate Chinese New Year" app here.

You can get your Chinese zodiac animal sign, your horoscope for the new year, and send good fortune to your Facebook friends.

That well wish can even include money via PayPal. Traditionally during Chinese new year, people give money gifts inside red envelopes. We're helping you do that electronically.

Not on Facebook (or just don't like Facebook)? You can also send an electronic red envelope on Lottay.com here.

Happy Year of the Tiger!

Entrepreneur.com gives love to Lottay

Thank you Entrepreneur for showing Lottay some love!

A recent article on their web site lists Lottay.com as one of "17 Companies We Love".

(Scroll down to the middle of the page to see our citation.)

Pair programming at Lottay.com

This is an office photo of Chris L. and Jesse F., two of Lottay's web developers. At Lottay, we practice what's known in the web dev world as "XP" - "extreme programming". No, we don't undergo five cosmetic surgeries, lose 75 pounds in two weeks, and remodel our house in four days. XP is a flavor of agile development, a software programming methodology that we employ here at Lottay.

A key component of XP is "pair programming", a coding technique where two developers sit at one computer and work together. One coder types, the other reviews his or her code, and they talk about it along the way.

It's a bit weird if you come from days of yore with cubicle hives of engineers sitting silently alone, tapping away at their individual keyboards.

Now, that said ... do Chris and Jesse look as if they're programming in that pic?

right. watching lolcats videos. yep.