With Father’s Day rapidly approaching, perhaps what Grandpa (or hey, Dad too!) is a little more access to those grandkids that are far away. I’m betting he might not bug the heck out of your for pics like my father-in-law does, but even so, Kinzin is opening up connections between families with their free and safe photo and information sharing website.

As families become more wary of posting pictures on the internet, services are popping up with amazing options that make it safe and easy. Our first group of bloggers had much praise for Kinzin, and this group of bloggers had similar comments.

In a nutshell here’s how Kinzin works, according to one blogger:

Kinzin is a social media site, but with a lot more control. You can create a page for your kids, or each of them, share updates and photos with your family. Or, if you have relatives who like to have a nice photo to put in a frame, Kinzin can do that for you too. You can also share your photos on a more public site like Facebook and Kinzin is free.

The bloggers found the web component easy to use. “Now I’ve never been shy about putting my kids’ mugs online, but as they get older it’s something I think about more and more. Kinzin makes it easy (both for you and the people you invite to share with) to keep things private. Plus the site is fun. If you already have your photos in a flickr account you can link the two services up to avoid additional uploading.” Added another mom, “The Kinzin interface for uploading, changing, naming and describing photos is so easy even the least ‘net savvy among us could do it with a quick click of the mouse.  Bonus!”

Additionally, they appreciated that you could share info (not just pics) about the kiddos to only folks on your list. “Not only is it easy (and free!) to sign up, you can create a page for each child, listing stats about what they are up to. It’s a win-win. You can share fun information with friends and family and record details for you to look back on later as well.”

And if you’re a Facebook user, they even have an interface for that. “As as added bonus, if you use facebook you can make your kinzin page available to people already in your friend pool as well as us non-facebook users as well. I’m sure there is a better way to express that, but since I don’t do the facebook thing I don’t know the lingo. Sorry! If you are a facebook user definitely check it out.”

Of course, the most mentioned component of Kinzin is their photo printing and mailing service (which involves a small $2.99/month per address fee). Here’s what the bloggers had to say:

- With my mom in Georgia, my grandmother in Maryland and my in-laws just around the corner but hardly heard from, Kinzin has created a special connection after just one month. I could hear the happiness in their voices. So what if I didn’t get around to making this many photos in all of the first two years? I’ll make up for it now.

- My dad received the first batch of photos late last week. He said they look great and he and my mom are both laughing over the photo of Holden with the crayon up his nose. (See above.) I haven’t gotten my photos yet, so I’ll let you know what I think about the photo quality as soon as mine arrive.

- But the thing that sells it best for me is the mail service. While membership to the site is free, for just $2.99 per month you can have the ten most recently uploaded photos shipped to three separate addresses. Every month! As in real, true photos in my Grammy’s mailbox every month.

One mom summed it up well:

For the price of a combo meal at a fast food place, you can send out ten photos a month to three different addresses and show your friends and family just what your cute lil’ punkins are up to. I guarantee they will be thrilled and so will you!

For more information on Kinzin Photo Sharing, check out their website!.