Technology

The buying is done, the presents have been unwrapped, the after-sales have yet to begin. I've dragged myself out of my Christmas-dinner-induced food coma long enough to ask which Christmas gadgets were hits, and which were disappointing lumps of coal?

Good thing this is a family blog because most of our gadgets were toys. Our 8-year old loved the WowWee Flytech Radio Control Dragonfly. She was able to overlook the fact that this toy was marketed to boys. After all, who wouldn't love a dragonfly? I spent the day wondering whether we'd make our way up the learning curve to work the controller before the dragonfly self-destructed during normal use. Yes, the dragonfly has to be ultralight, but with a styrofoam body and plastic fasteners (key elements that repeatedly popped off on "landing") we'll be lucky if the dragonfly lasts until New Year's Day. I was truly unimpressed by the remote control's engineering, particularly the connection between the remote's power cord and the dragonfly's body. The microscopic connection was hard to see and difficult to engage. Within a couple of hours I had to straighten out the connector pins. The good news is that dragonfly does fly, and one one spectacular run I actually got it stuck on our house's roof. My bad--thankfully we were able to back it out of the gutter via remote. My daughter is thrilled with the toy. I found it disappointing but maybe that's because at $40 a pop I am wondering how many minutes of fun we'll get out of this purchase. … Read more

Santa's elves worked overtime to ensure that little green laptops would make it to homes across North America by December 24th. After reading of another's horror story (give one get none), and then after reading more and more reports of XO laptop deliveries elsewhere throughout my corner of cyberspace, I'd begun to wonder when my pair would come. Amy called me just before noon to let me know my shipment had come in...… Read more

2007 has been the year of toy insecurity. Few parents of young kids escaped the unpleasant task of removing a favorite toy--from Aqua Dots to Thomas the Tank Engine--that had been recalled.

And all parents were left with a feeling of unease, that globalization and lax US consumer standards have left us vulnerable to toxic chemicals being routinely used to make our toys (and cosmetics, food, electronics...but that's a larger topic for another day).

I predict that the big story next year will be the growing realization that European and Japanese standards for chemicals used in plastic toys are much more stringent than those in the USA, and that as a result, toys that are banned elsewhere are getting dumped into the US market.

But right now, Christmas is rapidly approaching, and families are busily shopping for gifts, and will unwrap gifts given by others over the next week. What's a parent to do? The Web site HealthyToys.org gives parents way to weed out toxic toys, by searching the HealthyToys database that provides a detailed breakdown of the substances found in over 1,200 toys they tested for lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury, and PVC plastic. The results are alarming: of the 10 toys with the most lead, two of them are tea sets, with cups and teapots that are inevitably going to be filled with water that little kids will drink. Some plastic bath toys test high for lead and Chlorine/PVC, and these toys tend to go into toddlers' mouths as well.… Read more

In the movie Hairspray (2007), Tracy Turnblad gets sent to detention for "inappropriate hair height". But instead of being a punishment, her pink slip is a ticket to a higher education than her school is willing or able to teach, and an opportunity to enjoy the greatest freedom of all--the freedom to be herself and to follow her dreams. The currency rebels of today have moved from hair height to copyright, and the hottest ticket to detention is...Firefox. !!!w00t!!! Consider this facsimile of a letter supposedly sent from the Principal's office of Big Spring High School in Newville PA: (UPDATED)… Read more

You won't read this in the glossy ads of a pregnancy magazine, but motherhood often leaves women feeling burned out, disappointed at times, and confused about who they are anymore.

As a writer on this topic, one of my major conclusions is that it's not our reality that is necessarily so difficult, but rather the gap between our expectations and reality that drives us crazy.

What creates this gap? It begins with the romanticization of motherhood, the buildup to the "big day" of childbirth, like the idealization of a wedding as opposed to the reality of a marriage. Mothers-to-be are marketed to like crazy, and I am concerned that high-tech gadgets have a particular role in this problem. The marketing of gadgets raises the bar of expectation even higher, and gadgets tend to promise new parents an unrealistic level of control and certainty.

Take the BabyPlus "prenatal education system." Hey, I guess a regular baby isn't good enough any more. You need to produce a baby PLUS. This little pod is the latest gadget that a pregnant woman is supposed to strap to her belly to give her fetus a jump-start on academic achievement. The device "introduces patterns of sound to the unborn child in only the language he or she understands - the maternal heartbeat." The promised benefits include better sleep, better nursing, more self-soothing...right up to improved school readiness.

Now I can't say whether this program has any effect or not, but the marketing really bothers me.… Read more

On Thursday BBC News gave us a child's view of the $100 laptop. The article reads like a techie version of Jim Carrey's breakout movie The Mask, with Rufus Cellan-Jones as the star. The laptop, which came by way of Nigeria, unleashes incredible intuition and abilities in young Cellan-Jones:… Read more

Reading about Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize this week while juggling holiday shopping gave me a severe case of cognitive dissonance about consumption. This feeling intensified today when the viral video The Story of Stuff arrived in my e-mail inbox.

The Story of Stuff illustrates the consumption chain and aims to reframe our conversation from unlimited production and consumption to sustainability and equity. The video is quite engaging, and I was impressed by its simplicity and effectiveness. No flashy graphics or sensational techniques, just simple line animation accompanying a 20-minute video lecture by sustainability expert Annie Leonard.

The story of this project is an interesting case study of viral video. Leonard has more than 20 years of experience studying factories and dumps around the world--giving her deep knowledge of sustainability issues, but not exactly a visible platform to launch a movement. Enter the video: according to Leonard's blog, The Story of Stuff has been viewed by more than 100,000 people since it was launched last week. … Read more

It's getting down to the wire for holiday gift-giving. I am afraid I missed the boat for making recommendations in time for Hanukkah, and I am just starting on my Christmas list. With online shopping, I go right down to the deadline that regular shipping service can handle.

I've been looking for some cool gift ideas for the grandparents in our lives. The seniors I know are fairly tech-savvy in at least one area of their lives, if not totally enamored with gadgets. My Mom still doesn't like her cell phone but she is an eBay maven, … Read more

I know that being a parent has got to be the uncoolest perspective in Silicon Valley. After all, it's much more cutting edge to be libertarian, 23 years old, working 24/7 and sleeping on a futon in your cube.

But no one stays that way forever (thank goodness), and I'd like to think that those of us who have moved down the road a few years have a lot to add to technology design. With Facebook's Beacon plans blowing up this week, you can really see what happens when new "features" are added by twentysomethings who are coding and rolling out products as fast as they can.

I'm proposing a new job title to add to Facebook's Executive Team: VP of Adult Supervision.

My suggestion is only half-joking. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg was called out for ageism earlier this year after he stressed the importance of "only [hiring] young people with technical expertise."

The problem is that Facebook's users aren't only people like their mind-blowingly young executives and programmers. A large proportion of their users are over 35. We don't appreciate having our privacy stomped on, and just because we want to participate in social networks, we don't necessarily want to live our lives in an exhibitionist fishbowl. Product design suffers when a grown-up perspective is not taken into account.… Read more