Staying connected with family in the modern world is great. Thanks to the Internet, the only thing to stop you contacting family on a different continent is whether it's an inconvenient time. Just recently though I didn't realise how many different ways technology lets me stay in contact with family.

So there's the usual forms of communication like phone, email and video are the most common forms of keeping in touch with family but what else is there?

Apps from social networks offer a very easy way to stay in touch with family, providing their all on the same network of course.

In our family we use Path to stay in touch and share photos and updates. Path's benefit is that it's a private network. Only people that you allow to follow you get to see your updates. Path is so simple that even my parents are on Path as well. It took them a bit of persuading to sign up, but now they can see photos of all their grandchildren at the touch of a button. With my sister in Dublin and my sister-in-law in Toronto it's great having them both on Path so that we share pictures of the kids as they grow up.

At home myself and my wife Jen use an app called Avocado. Getting more smaller and private again, Avocado is a service for just two people. Not only does it let you message each other privately but it also provides a calendar and todo lists which are shared automatically with your other half.

Of course there's the big three of social networks: Google+, Twitter and Facebook. Of these three I'm only on Twitter but these days I mainly use it for just connecting with other developers and not for staying in touch with family.

There's probably many others apps and services you can use, but what's great about technology now is that there are so many more choices.