The artwork developed by kinetic sculptor Theo Jansen is truly inspirational. The vision behind his movable works is that someday these mechanical beasts could live on any beach in the world as if they were some sort of futuristic animal that survives on wind power. In a way, Jansen has developed an improved version of the wheel, one that can easily travel over sand. One noteworthy creature he developed is called Animaris Rhinoceros, and it looks a cross between a Star Wars AT Walker and a dinosaur. It stands over five meters (16 feet) tall and weighs 3.2 tons!

So imagine my surprise when I saw a fully functioning remote control robot that looks very close to this Theo Jansen piece. It’s eight legs and walks in a similar manner. It also has an extendable arm for grabbing items. The miniaturized version was created with various parts from many robot kits offered by Innovation First. This amazing electronics company makes hobby kits for educational use and also developed the fully functioning Theo Jansen-like robot you can see in the video below.

I was told by representatives at Innovation First that this specific robot has garnered so much interest, that they’re thinking about making a specialized kit so others can also build this specific work. Bringing robotics, engineering AND inspirational sculpture into the classroom, now there’s a forward thinking idea worth watching!

The world’s first hydrogen powered toy, called H2Go, was presented at the 2008 NY Toy Fair by a company called Corgi. The fully functioning prototypes Corgi brought to the show were very impressive and the best example of toy technology innovation at the show.

The remote controlled car is powered by hydrogen fuel which is separated out from common tap water through a device called the “Refueling Station”, or as the company commonly referred to as the “cooker” Connect the car up to the cooker via a small fueling tube, press the plunger down on the cooker to force the hydrogen into the car, and away you go! The cooker and the remote control itself are powered by rechargeable batteries.

Corgi demonstrated a strong commitment to being as green as possible by quoting just what percentage of renewable energy was used through the combination of the different components that power the car. The car, cooker, and remote control sell together for $100. The solar panel, which can be purchased separately costs an extra $20. Without the solar panel, the cooker and remote control require a traditional electric outlet to recharge its batteries.

Irwin Toy creates the ME2, a handheld product that collects “motion points” in the real world and converts those points into online currency.

Every year when I attend the New York Toy Fair I may see a few thousand toys in the course of four days. I was recently speaking with another toy reviewer who said, “Did you ever notice that even though you see thousands of new toys, you will only remember maybe five of the best products?” This observation has served me well. What stands out in a Toy Fair attendee’s memory after seeing so many products will usually go on to be the breakthrough later in the year. I believe the ME2 by Irwin Toy will be one of those breakthrough products, not just in the toy space, but also in the virtual worlds and social networking space as well.

Let me start with some background information. The ME2 is a handheld device that has a small 8-bit color screen that measures about 2 by 1.5 inches. Each ME2 comes with one onboard game. The ME2 can also be docked to your computer via a USB port. When the ME2 is connected to your computer, access to an online 3D virtual world is granted. The website which is being developed will be www.me2universe.com, but currently this part of the product offering is not available to the public. (More information about the ME2 will become available at this link within the next few weeks.) Additional games can be loaded onto the ME2 after connecting to and exploring the online ME2 world.

Once you create and customize your own avatar, you can begin to explore this fully immersive 3D world. Within this world there are many different “islands” to explore, but you can’t visit another island until you successfully complete challenges that are on each island. To complete a challenge, you may need to purchase “in world” items to help solve puzzles. And here’s the amazing part of this entire product offering; To purchase items in this virtual word, you don’t use a credit card or real dollars. Your own activity level in the physical world earns points and therefore purchasing power online.

While the ME2 is a handheld gaming device, it also acts as a pedometer, a tool used to measure the distance or energy people exerted when they go for a walk or a jog. When the ME2 is attached to a child’s belt or is in his pocket, the device collects “action points”. When the ME2 is later connected to a computer, these points are then uploaded to an online account, and then become the currency used to purchase items in the online world. Do you need to buy a boat to cross a virtual river in the online world to solve a challenge but don’t have enough points to buy it? Well, go outside and walk around the block to gain more points. Do you need to purchase a virtual flashlight to see inside a cave but don’t have the currency? Take a ride on your bike across town in the real world, collect points on your ME2, and you’ll have enough credits online to purchase that item! The ME2 is a brilliant solution for online engagement as well as promoting physical activity in the offline world.

In addition to the release of the product, there will be a social networking component. Members will be able to communicate with other avatars in an open chat manner. Communication will be filtered as well as monitored in real time by people looking to ensure that text exchanges between members are appropriate and safe.

The target audience of this product is primarily 8 – 12 year olds, but looks like it could extend nicely out to 6 – 14. The ME2 should be available for purchase in August 2008 and is anticipated to cost between $34.99 and $39.99. This is a one-time purchase and there is no monthly subscription fee to gain access to the online world. This online access model makes it easy to give the ME2 as a gift when compared to sites that require a monthly subscription fee. I also noticed that this product may have a very strong boy appeal, which is something not commonly found in online destinations for children in the 8 – 12 age range.

The ME2 stands above the many other virtual world and social networking “me too” offerings available to kids. Irwin Toy has carefully picked the right combination of online and offline components to make this the innovative product to watch in the months ahead. What a great job for all involved at Irwin Toy. Thank you for sharing your announcement with me!

To see a videotaped demo of ME2 from Toy Fair, click the window below.

I’ve just made it back from the 2008 New York Toy Fair. In the last five years I’ve been attending the show, this was definitely one of the best. One of the big reasons I attend is to see how technology is being applied to toys, both for fun and for learning. Year after year the Youth Electronics supercategory, a description within the toy industry to measure tech toy sales, grows by leaps and bounds. This year’s use of technology in toys was, for the most part, outstanding. Every year a number of themes present themselves at the show. Here’s are the themes I’ve seen at this years event:

• Social Networking, Virtual Worlds, and Web Connected Devices – I counted at least twelve new or relaunched social networking / virtual world destinations for children. Some had an offline product like a stuffed toy complete with a code to unlock an online destination. Others had a device that would connect to your computer via the USB port.
  
  
• Robots and Animatronic Devices – Many more robots this year. Mattel/Fisher-Price and Hasbro had some of the biggest announcements with robotic life-like dolls and animals. Also many more robot making kits were on display.
  
  
• Motion-based Products – The Nintendo Wii has definitely had its influence on the toy industry. New motion-based devices for children were on display. However, a number of these tech toy products can only detect motion on an XY plane.
  
  
• Green Products – A surprising number of companies were eager to tell you just how environmentally friendly their products were. From the materials used in their toys to the clever solutions discovered to power toys without batteries to the biodegradable packaging the product ships in. I was overwhelmed by the number of companies that were trying to do the right thing for the environment.
  
  
• High School Musical – The licensing groups at Disney must be working overtime. Many booths had products using the High School Musical brand to promote their new crop of toys.
  
  
• Dinosaurs – Last year I blogged that it would be the year of the guitar. This year it was noted that many dinosaur products will be coming out later this year. Some simply model kits, some stuffed toys, many robotic.

In the coming days I’ll be posting more information on a few of the products I think will become tech toy sensations later this year. Stay tuned!

Just after I wrote an article called A Survey of Kids’ Social Networking Sites, a noteworthy report was released by the National School Boards Association (NSBA) and the research firm Grunwald Associates which takes a look at how students use and experience social networking sites. In the report called Creating & Connecting // Research and Guidelines on Online Social — and Educational — Networking some 1,277 students ages nine to 17 were surveyed online about their online social networking habits. In addition to the student survey, 1,039 parents and 250 school district leaders were also interviewed by telephone about their thoughts regarding students using social networking sites. This 12 page brief offers up some surprising statistics and contains just a very small fraction of the much larger in-depth report which can be purchased through Grunwald Associates.

Here I’ve separated out just the student responses found in this smaller report. This first set of statistics reveal how students are active participants and creative contributors in online social networking and community-based destinations:

• 96% of all students who have access to the Internet report that they have used social networking technologies (including chat, text messaging, blogging and visiting online communities)
• 81% say they have visited a social networking site within the past three months
• 71% say they use social networking sites at least weekly
• 41% say they post comments on message boards every week
• 21% say they post comments on message boards every day
• 12% upload music or podcasts of their own creation at least weekly
• 9% say they upload video of their own creation at least weekly
• 25% update their personal Web site or online profiles at least weekly
• 12% update their personal Web site or online profiles every day
• 30% report having there own blogs

This next set of data calls out how students encounter problems online with inappropriate content, cyberbullying, privacy and strangers:

• 20% of all students say they have seen inappropriate pictures on social networking sites
• 16% say they have seen inappropriate language on social networking sites
• 7% say they have experienced self-defined cyberbullying
• 7% say someone has asked them for information about their personal identity on a social networking site
• 4% say they have had conversations on social networking sites that made them feel uncomfortable
• 3% say they’ve given out their email addresses, instant messaging screen names, or other personal identification to strangers
• 3% say unwelcome strangers have tried repeatedly to communicate with them online
• 2% say a stranger they met online tried to meet them in person
• 0.08% of all students say they’ve actually met someone in person from an online encounter without their parent’s permission

After reading about the recent acquisition of social networking superstar Club Penguin by Disney, I started taking stock of other social networking sites available for kids. I have my long-term favorites like Whyville because of its educational mission, and Webkinz because of their tangible toy / virtual world business model. But after digging through dozens of websites that claim to have a social networking component, I realize that many of these sites apply this term loosely. For example, if a website allows a user to play many different games and activities online, complete with a customized avatar, and allows a user the ability to see other user’s avatars in games, without communication occuring between community members, does this constitute a social networking environment? If the communication occurs outside of a virtual world’s website, in the form of an email to and from members, does this mean such a service has a social networking component?

I assembled a list of kids’ social networking websites I’m currently watching. Each site has a very defined method of communicating with its members. They include the following:

This list defines social networking sites that are just for kids ages 12 and under, though some sites creep up a little beyond 12 years of age. The only exception I added to this list is Runescape. Runescape is a very popular massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) that was not specifically developed for kids, but kids have found it and they flock to it. Runescape is not for all kids, and parents should judge for themselves about whether it’s right or not for their own child. Runescape is a battle-like virtual world environment, and chat can occur with anyone who plays online, even though it is filtered and monitored. Since no age is recommended by the site, I recommend ages 11 or 12 and higher.

A few notes about my chart.

• Any site that includes ads and is marked with an asterisk (“*”) means that this site has ads only related to the products this company offers (i.e. Webkinz ads are just for other Webkinz items).
• In terms of cost, most sites have a free to use or a monthly fee component. Sometimes these sites have two tiers of service where the paid service offers more bells and whistles. Sometimes a product needs to be purchased instead of paying a monthly subscription in order to reach the higher tiered service.
• How communication occurs with community members varies. “Canned chat” means users can communicate with each other through a short list of pre-approved words and phrases. Nothing else. (Click here to see an example of ToonTown’s canned chat in action, or here for the history behind the development of this version of chat called “SpeedChat”.) “Filtered chat” relies on software tools to strip out bad words, names, locations, and inappropriate content. Many times a live monitor oversees all communication written back and forth to users, in addition to these software filtering tools. imbee is unique in that any messages that are sent to your child have the option of being approved by the parent before being forwarded on.

There are other sites worth knowing about, but span ages from older teen to adult. Sites like Piczo, Dubit, Faketown, and CyWorld (all ages). Generally I find the older the demographic, the less monitoring and filtering of messages between users.

If you’re aware of other social networking sites for kids or teens please do share here with similar details about target age, cost, and how members socialize with each other.

It’s official. Acquisition season in the children’s social networking world has begun. Moments ago, Disney acquired the wildly successful children’s social networking site Club Penguin for $350 million dollars. Club Penguin launched its unique online service for children in October 2005, just six months after another wildly successful social networking website for children, Webkinz. This past June, Club Penguin reached 4.7 million unique visitors to it site according to comScore Media Metrix.

While the folks at Club Penguin have recently been in discussion with Sony regarding the sale of the company, negotiations broke down just a few short weeks ago with the technology giant.

There has been a buzz of activity related to social networking in the last year and we’ve yet to hear the end of it. What’s noteworthy about this particular deal? Here are a few of my predictions:

• This is the first major acquisition in the children’s social networking space. Plan to see similar acquisitions soon.
• Many more social networking site for kids have launched in the last two months, with many more yet to be announced.
• So much activity is occurring in the kids’ social networking environment, that this specific online activity for children is positioned to become very crowded over the next six months.

Stay tuned for lots more activity and news in this space! (For related blog articles, see my posts in April and May of 2007.)

To most adults, knowing which technologies kids prefer and why, is at best, a guessing game. Which is more important: cell phones? iPods? MySpace? In the past year, some very insightful leisure time and technology reports about kids have come out from The NPD Group (see prior blog post in March 2007), Nickelodeon (prior posts in Nov 2006 and Jan 2007), and recently a new division of Weekly Reader called Weekly Reader Research. Each group has something very unique to share about kids and technology. Yesterday, portions of a new study called “The Circuits of Cool / Digital Playground” was released. This study, which interviewed 18,000 kids and youth from 16 different countries, was collaboratively developed by MTV, Nickelodeon and Microsoft. This latest survey looks at technology and its influences on lifestyle of kids (8-14) and young people (14 – 24) around the globe.

Here are a few top level insights from the study:

• Technology has enabled young people to have more and closer friendships, thanks to constant connectivity.
• Kids and young people don’t love the technology itself — they just love how it enables them to communicate all the time, express themselves and be entertained.
• Digital communications such as IM, email, social networking sites and mobile/sms are complementary to, not competitive with, TV. TV is part of young peoples’ digital conversation.
• Despite the remarkable advances in communication technology, kid and youth culture looks surprisingly familiar, with almost all young people using technology to enhance rather than replace face-to-face interaction.

Here are a few data snippets from this survey looking only at kids 8-14:

• 59% of 8-14 year olds still prefer their TV to their PCs.
• 68% of 8-14 respondents said they felt safer having their mobile phones with them outside the home.
• When parents aren’t around, 8-14s are more likely to communicate with friends, participate in chat forums and use the internet for entertainment.
• Under the age of 14, kids generally use the phone as a toy. After 14, the mobile phone quickly becomes a means of self-expression and communication.

The full press release, which includes comparison data for kids and young people around the world regarding cell phone use, online friends, social networking, TV, computer use and more, can be found here.

Dr. Ellen Wartella, executive Vice Chancelor and Provost of the University of California at Riverside, and youth media expert, spoke in Boston recently at a conference put on by the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD). Ellen has been involved with many important studies regarding kids, young and old, and their media habits. During her presentation, Ellen discussed the ever expanding nature of media use by youth audiences citing three different studies that collectively span almost 100 years.

The first study presented was conducted in 1911 in New York City. 1,140 youths age 11 – 14 participated in the study and were found to be spending 4 to 5 hours a week watching movies at the nickelodeon. It’s worth pointing out that movies were the primary media format consumed at the time by younger audiences; Radio and television were not available yet, and magazines specifically targeting this demographic had not yet been discovered as they would be in later decades.

Next, Ellen referenced a study conducted in the 1930’s outside of New York City in Westchester County. 795 high school youths were asked to keep a diary of their media habits. The results of this study showed that this audience had an average of 7 hours of leisure time during the week on weekdays and 11 hours of leisure time averaged over the weekend. This group listened to the radio on average for almost 5 hours a week (4 hours and 40 minutes) and watched about 5 hours of movies per week. Collectively this group consumed about 10 hours of media a week, out of a total of 18 hours of leisure time within that week.

The latest study discussed was that of the Kaiser Family Foundation on Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year olds, published in 2005. More than 2,000 children were asked to keep diaries of their media habits. The results of this study found that this age group spends about 6.5 hours a day consuming media, primarily screened media, and of that, about 26% of this time is often spent using multiple media types at the same time. (Also surprising in this and related research at Kaiser which I discuss in a prior post that children ages 0 – 2 were found to be watching about 2 hours of screened media a day.) In another post I reference a 2007 NPD Group study that found kids ages 5 – 12 have about 6 hours of leisure time per day with about 14 hours per day over the weekend. While these two different studies were not conducted using the exact same age group, the research suggest about 45 hours of media consumption a week out of about 60 hours of leisure time a week.

If you would like to hear an audio recording of this entire presentation where Dr. Wartella touches on other aspects of media use, like the type of content viewed and food advertising to kids through media, click here.

Nickelodeon recently released a new study that looks into technology use by kids ages 8 – 14 and parents of kids ages 0 – 14. This new report called The Digital Family is mentioned as a follow-up to an earlier Nickelodeon report released in 2006 called Living in a Digital World which cited that 86% of kids ages 8 – 14 are playing video games online. While this earlier report has some very interesting findings about kids and video game, television, instant messaging and chat room use, the publicly available findings are not necessarily data rich. However, this new report is chock-full of great stats, providing excellent insight into Internet, cell phone, television and MP3 player use.

Among the key findings in this study, kids, as well as parents, report:

• a decline in the use of and a reliance on newspapers, maps, and dictionaries because of the availability of information found on the Internet
• a decline in radio listening as a result of MP3 players
• a continuing and growing interest in TV viewing and use of TV as a means to relax and unwind
• a declining interest in purchasing of music albums and CDs
• safety and piece-of-mind from owning a cell phone
• the empowering, creative, and educational benefits of having access to the Internet
• parents using the Internet over 33 hours a month and kids using the Internet more than 19 hours a month
• parents being just as tech savvy or even more so than their children

What this report calls into question is:

• older incorrect assumptions about digital media use and digital media consumption by kids and adults
• shifting perceptions about what is “important knowledge”
• traditional school skills being outdated
• the value of older print-based media and radio
• traditional music and information distribution method
• incorrect perceptions about parents ability to keep up with kids when it comes to technology

Technology and the Internet continue to change the world of kids as well as parents in amazing ways. And surprisingly television looks like it will be the only older media format to have ongoing staying power for young and old. But if there’s one thing you can rely on as a result of this study’s findings is that more change in our future… change with how technology will impact media consumption, communication, learning, family dynamics and wider social interactions. Assumptions about the way things have always been are being challenged in a significant way. The rules of child engagement are being rewritten right before our very eyes.

To read the full Nickelodeon Press release, and see the wealth of stats, click here.