Let’s get the bias out in the open. I’m not a gamer, though I have a deep appreciation of the art of the game. If you think all gamers and their gaming machines are created equal, think again. At E3 Expo last week I got to evaluate the game milieus and the crowds they drew, [...]

This holiday season is shaping up to be a practical, penny-pinching one for digital toymakers. While digital toys continue to be a growing part of the toy market, this year’s advances will be incremental, not revolutionary. And toymakers seem to be focused on the “little grownup” strategy, giving kids a scaled down version of mommy [...]

The Hidden Park throws the whole techno-kitchen sink into creating an extraordinary scavenger/treasure hunt for kids. Clues about where to go for more clues are location-based and use GPS mapping. The game knows where you are and can serve up the right information. The phone’s built-in camera documents the landmarks (and you as the explorer) [...]

Watch kids play long enough and you learn that there’s nothing new under the sun. Only the packaging changes. The same play types—from pirates to mystery sleuths, from hula hoops to board game favorites—reappear.
This notion of favorite play patterns wasn’t lost on Ted Barnett, the CEO, co-founder, and dad behind the new virtual world, SuperSecret. [...]

Now that they’ve seen game developers turn into rock stars (and get paid like them too) parents are much more likely to take gaming as a serious career path.
Game development is a part of many colleges computer science curriculum and in a number of high schools like this one in NYC, building a game is [...]

In the old days (just last week), before Nintendo’s new portable game console, the DSi, was available, portable game consoles were for kids with good eyesight, fast reflexes, and too much time on their hands. The DSi, the next generation of Nintendo’s DS, is going to shake things up by changing the nature of the [...]

Mario and Sonic are Olympians with a pretty impressive track record. Separately, Mario plays for the Nintendo team and Sonic plays for Sega. But when they join forces, whoa, stand back. They teamed up in Beijing to star in Mario and Sonic at the Summer Olympics and managed to sell over 10 million games as [...]

This column appeared in HybridMom Magazine this month. Consider it a cautionary tale of a sleep deprived second-lifer.

My name is Hybrid Snoodle. I’m pretty hip-looking with my army chick/punk-er getup: camouflage t-shirt, black fishnet tights, short skirt, day-glo helmet, and one of those shapely 3D bodies. It’s 2 AM and in a few hours I’ll [...]

Joining Intel’s Classmate PC and the One Laptop Per Child PC, the Mini-Note is the latest foray into the sub-notebook PC for the classroom.
To laptop or not to laptop, that is the question many schools are asking. Parents should take heed. More and more schools have begun to require a laptop and at younger [...]

A year ago David Pogue, the NY Times technology columnist, wrote about the new Nintendo Wii. It was a complete sellout before the holidays. Most people were talking about flying nunchuks smacking into their TVs, but a prescient Pogue nailed it. “What surprises me most,” he said, “is how few people are commenting on the [...]