February 03, 2005
When Should You Worry?
Children almost always outgrow the need for comfort objects on their own. It happens inevitably once they attend preschool or kindergarten and they’re asked to put away their scruffy pillow or stuffed animal. At such times, just knowing it’s in the cubby – available to be looked at – can be helpful. Some parents have tried taking a picture of the object, or cutting it up into smaller pieces so it can be carried unobtrusively. Sometimes parents who want to ease the weaning process will set limits, such as allowing the special blanket only in the car or in the bedroom.
Ultimately, peer pressure usually puts an end to thumb- and pacifier-sucking, so there’s no need to take a hard line there. Parents set the rules for their children in so many areas, Shine says, “at least let children decide how to handle the big love of their life, be it their thumb or a toy.” Shine reports that her daughter finally gave up her blanket when she was 8, “on her own terms!”
If your child is nearing age 2 and prefers his lovey to anything else, should you take action? As long as there’s plenty to do in his environment, the child’s natural inclination is to be curious, explore and play. If he’s dragging his blankie around and still interacting with his environment, there’s no need to worry. But if your child is involved with his comfort object to the exclusion of other activities, then it might be time to be concerned. If you are worried that something is interfering with your child’s sense of security, talk with your child’s pediatrician and ask if a consultation with a child psychologist is in order.
Most kids eventually rely on their comfort object less and less over time, and parents do best to let it run its course, Lerner says. “It usually gets retired to the bed, where it stays – sometimes for many years. Taking it away prematurely can have the opposite effect of making the object more important to the child and can create unnecessary power-struggles.”
Be aware that children may return for years to such habits as thumb-sucking or nose-rubbing or blankie-cuddling when they’re tired. Whatever helps your little one cope with stress is usually harmless. For parents, the best attitude is a relaxed one.
Posted by dimitri at 07:45 PM | Comments (0)
talking between one another
puffles should talk between one another, sending random information. One idea is that they send a single peice of information which is then pooled with other peices of information. The mass pool will not be accessable to anybody. it is just just deposited and encrypted.
Privacy? opt out... if one wants.
Posted by dimitri at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)
January 20, 2005
Furby
I remember when furby first came out I had one and at the time my dog got a hold of it and killed it out of jealiously. poor furby...
This toy is a good example of relationship building with a stuffed animal.
A new development by Hasbro is the FurReal Friends. While I think this would have upset my dog even more, it is a step towards the "Boxie" if mix with a better technology of a A.I.B.O.
The FURBY interactive plush toy was first introduced in 1998.
According to a Media Director at MIT in 1999, the processing power in a FURBY toy exceeded the processing power in the first Lunar Module to land on the moon.
The original FURBY had 24 names, three different pitches of voice, six fur patterns and four eye colors (blue, green, brown, grey).
The official language of FURBY was Furbish. Remember what it meant when it said ah-may koh koh? Or mee mee a-tay? How about noo-loo and dah doo-ay wah? (see below for definitions)
FURBY was once banned from the Pentagon because it was said it could "learn".
FURBY was named the Top Toy two years running and over 12 million FURBYs were sold worldwide between October 1998 and December 1999.
Between fur colors, eye colors and the sound of its voice, there are over 1000 different combinations of FURBY toys available.
One FURBY toy could influence another - one could make another sneeze, or start giggling and make all the FURBY toys around it giggle too.
Furbies are capable of over 300 different unique combinations of eye, ear, and mouth movements.
FURBY BABIES had 25% more vocabulary and 233% more phrases than the original FURBY toys.
FURBY often wanted you to ah-may koh koh (pet me more). It wasn’t very noo-loo (happy) when it was mee mee a-tay (very hungry). But loved to have dah doo-ay wah (big fun)!
Posted by dimitri at 03:02 AM | Comments (0)
Ruxpin
Teddy Ruxpin
"The World's First Animated Talking Toy!"
Ruxpin is a historical reference. I think while it is not a stuffed aminal so is the BigTrac.
Toy around this point started to play a part in learning. Leap frog is a company which deals with direction alot today.
Every Christmas there is a must-have toy for children. Remember Cabbage Patch Kids, Furbys and
Sing and Snore Ernies? In the mid-'80s Teddy Ruxpin enjoyed his moment in the spotlight as the
first circle in the Christmas catalog. Like Cabbage Patch Kids he proved that he was no
one-Christmas wonder, enjoying a run into the '90s spanning 3 sizes and manufacturing
configurations.
Teddy and his caterpillar friend Grubby were from the land of Grundo. That alone makes them pretty special under ordinary circumstances. The thing that made them extraordinary was that they were animated in a Showbiz Pizza kind of way. Just pop the special tape that contained inaudible movement commands into Teddy and suddenly his eyes and mouth are moving in synch with the story on the tape. Pretty heavy stuff for 1985.
The early full-sized Teddy's were manufactured by Worlds of Wonder or WOW, until 1989. Then they were produced by WOW/Playskool and Teddy had a new size and now used special cartridges rather than tapes. Teddy got even smaller when Yes! Entertainment made the latest version from 1998-1999.
The Teddy concept was pretty cool but you needed lots of books/tapes/cartridges to keep him interesting and WOW obliged with over 40 titles. The 3 different Teddys cannot share stories as none of the tapes/cartridges are downward or upward compatible.
Like any favorite that shares time on store shelves and TV, children could enjoyed a wealth of Teddy Ruxpin related merchandise like outfits, videos, bedsheets, phones, puzzles, backpacks, ballons and much more.
Partial List of Books/Cassettes/Cartridges
A Wedding in Grundo
All About Bears
Autumn Adventure
Color my World
Counting is Fun
Double Grubby
Fire and Water Safety with Teddy Ruxpin
Gizmos and Gadgets
Grubby's Romance
Grundo Beach Party
Grundo Springtime
Grunge Music
Lost in Boggley Woods
Love Songs
One More Spot
Quiet Please
Safe at Home
Sing Time
Take a Good Look
Teddy and the Mudblops
Teddy Ruxpin Lullabies
Teddy Ruxpin's Birthday
Teddy Ruxpin's Christmas
Teddy Ruxpin's Lullabies
Teddy Ruxpin's Lullabies II
Teddy Ruxpin's Summertime
Teddy's Winter Adventure
The Airship
The Day Teddy Met Grubby
The Do-A-Long Songbook
The Medicine Wagon
The Missing Princess
The Mushroom Forest
The Sign of a Friend
The Story of the Faded Fobs
The Wooly What's-It
Tweg and the Bounders
Tweeg Gets the Tweezles
Uncle Grubby
Posted by dimitri at 02:35 AM | Comments (0)
Taken from Robin Good
I was looking for some statistics of Blogging and ran into what seems to be an interesting article:
A critical commentary of Blogging and the eCommunication Paradigm
Independent Publishing
Information Access
by Jose Luis Orihuela
The must be more like this out there...
April 30, 2003
A critical commentary of Blogging and the eCommunication Paradigm
Independent Publishing
Information Access
by Jose Luis Orihuela
University of Navarra (Pamplona, Spain)
http://mccd.udc.es/orihuela/ blogtalk/
Bloggers, webloggers and the universe they create is a phenomenon of such importance for our immediate future, hardly anyone is grasping its implications fully.
In this humble attempt at providing some differing viewpoints on the topic I take what I would consider an established assessment on the blog universe and the new media to launch some critical comments and to open up some new questions to reflect upon.
Professor Orihuela writes in his Introduction:
"The digital age arrives with a set of big communication challenges for traditional mainstream media: new relations with audiences (Interactivity), new languages (Multimedia) and a new grammar (Hypertext). But this media revolution not only changes the communication landscape for the usual players, most importantly, it opens the mass communication system to a wide range of new players."
The word mass in not anymore in sync with the times we are in.
The global communication system is NOT a mass communication system; it is a network. The difference between the two is very deep and fully acknowledging and understanding such difference empowers the individual in taking on with high self-esteem and confidence her role of twenty-first century Communication Agent.
"As far as enterprises, institutions, administrations, organizations, groups, families and individuals starts their own web presence, they become "media" by their own, they also become "sources" for traditional media, and in many cases, they produce strong "media criticism": opinion about how issues are covered and delivering of alternative coverage."
It is not a matter of Web presence. It is a matter of electronic interconnectedness. Don't need to have a Web site in the traditional sense. It can all happen through email. Through a newsletter. Discussion group.
Individuals, institutions, organizations don't make up for the creation of new similar media entities. While most of the institutions and companies are attempting to force their traditional information-communication-commerce paradigm onto the network, individuals ONLY are reaping the true benefits of real-time networked communications. Though this may gradually change, as companies and organizations will more likely reflect the clustering and like-minded aggregation of professionals working at the same goal, today it is the individual who is creating the new media, not the company Web site.
"The blogging phenomena represents the ultimate challenge for the old communication system because it integrates both: the new features of the digital world and a wide democratization in the access to media with a universal scope.
A recent article by Noah Shachtman at Wired News "Blogs Make the Headlines" bring back the always polemics relations between weblogs and Journalism. And once again the Poynter debate "Are Weblogs Journalism?" has to be quoted because of its clarity: "Wrong Question". Blogs could be many things, and even Journalism, but they are not Journalism for the sake of being blogs.
On the other hand, when mainstream media start blogging with their own columnist or hiring famous bloggers (which is recently the case of the Argentine newspaper Clarín) the debate that arises in the blogosphere becomes: "Is that blogging?". When the powerful tool of the media revolution is used by media, then is the blogosphere community who turns to the defensive.
While both debates were taking place, Google bought Pyra Labs, and the surprised blogosphere together with mainstream media seems to arrive late to understand what Google saw first: neither traditional media alone, nor just para-media blogging, the issue is now "Where is the knowledge?" . Google could become a global news agency and a global news media, joining the power of its database with the human knowledge of thousands of bloggers, from then on, also a global niche advertising channel.
The Iraq war was the first big test to check the relations between traditional media coverage and weblogs, and also to evaluate the media power of blogs. Even when the last Pew Report, The Internet and the Iraq war, reveals a limited influence of warblogging as news source, a trend emerges: blogs are catching the interest of young Internet users:
There has been much early discussion about the role of blogs or Web diaries in shaping opinion about the war and allowing Internet users to gain new perspectives and sources of information about the war. Our first soundings on the subject show that blogs are gaining a following among a small number of Internet users, but they are not yet a source of news and commentary for the majority of Internet users."
Many Internet users do not yet realize that blog ARE ALREADY part of the mainstream news. The circle has already been closed. Conceptually and technologically. Let me explain myself better. With the introduction of RSS technology many quality informative blogs have not only become the official news sources for many newsreader users, but most importantly they are now automatically crawled and indexed by major news syndicators as Syndic8, Moreover, and many others. This means that selected blog news, which include individuals and non-traditional journalists are already picked up regularly by news aggregators and syndicators and re-distributed over the main news channels utilized by established traditional companies and organizations.
"Some 4% of online Americans report going to blogs for information and opinions. The overall number of blog users is so small that it is not possible to draw statistically meaningful conclusions about who uses blogs."
The data is available for all who have enough curiosity to search for it. According to Jupiter Research and other analysts there are more than 500,000 people who maintain a weblog today.
If each one was so miserable to have only one hundred readers (I for nothing I have more than 1000 different blog readers each day, so that gives you some reference) that would make already for 50 million readers. While I am not promoting the soundness of my statistical approach, I just wanted to give some alternative way of looking at this.
"The early data suggest that the most active Internet users, especially those with broadband connections are the most likely to have found blogs they like."
It is those with most curiosity, interest and a will to communicate and inform that have first found out about blogs.
Broadband or narrowband do not have anything to do with your ability to open up, to search, listen, discover where the pioneers, meme-generators are going.
"In addition, blogs seem to be catching on with younger Internet users - those under age 30 - at a greater pace than with older Internet users."
In my noosphere, and in my list of bloggers I refer or look up to, there is no one that is younger than 35. I am 45. Sure enough teenagers are discovering blogs at faster pace than my age group is doing, but much of the critical content moving through blogs is not generated by them. (Teenagers are just playing with the tool to develop the skills they will need to use later, once they understand where they are going and what they want in their life.)
"Pluralistic views, not necessarily more balanced, but more transparent and out of the mainstream, turn blogs in the favourite source and tool for the anti-war movement."
Blogs is the natural counterbalancing component of our cyberworld to carry ANY independent idea, concept or news item not covered by the mainstream mass media.
"One of the most important effects of Iraq war coverage to the debate old media vs. new media is that old media discovered the emergency of blogs as non conventional sources, not only for news and views, but also for media coverage criticism.
Experiences like Technorati's Current Events in the Blogosphere show an interesting trend and strategic function for blogs: the blogosphere becomes a system for media control and balance."
"Once calm returns, maybe we will see that blogs are becoming a very valuable source for the media, a sort of early alert system to detect news, trends, and opinion states. And media could transform some of their columnists into bloggers and also integrate famous bloggers in the staff."
Calm maybe gone for a while.
SARS, and other mainstream media controlled stories will continue to provide valuable fuel to the blogosphere to provide alternative and independent views unfiltered by direct economic interests. With much greater immediacy, efficacy and reach.
Traditional media do not need to integrate great bloggers into their staff, nor great bloggers need to sell themselves out for supporting a news publishing system that unless changes its assumptions, maybe a mined field for any free writer around.
Bloggers exist for the very reason why they do not have a space inside the mainstream media. For the mainstream media to co-opt bloggers to serve its interests (which are rarely the ones of the bloggers - especially if it is true that relationship between bloggin and independent, activists and socially involved individuals) it maybe too much of a stretch. While there maybe some interesting exceptions to this, I believe this is a tough marriage and one that beats the original purpose of independent media blogging. In my view blogging for mainstream media would be just like infiltrating the blogosphere with co-opted and paid-by-other-interests writers. Just not the same thing.
"The blurring limits between journalism and blogging, between data and knowledge, between news agencies and semantic search engines, between readers and writers and between old and new media, reveals the need for a set of intellectual tools that contribute to understand by rethinking the changing nature of media and communication in the digital age."
"Ten paradigms of this new scenario are proposed, and the term eCommunication is coined to describe it in a single word.".
We need a better, maybe less trendy term to really address and identify electronic communication, the digital version of traditional mass media establishment communications, from networked contelligence and its radically different modus operandi, mission, infrastructure, stakeholders and goals.
"The global process could be understood as a big shift from the classical mass media models to the new media paradigms: the user becomes the axis of communication process, the content is the identity of media, multimedia is the new language, real time is the only time, hypertext is the grammar, and knowledge is the new name of information."
The process is indeed from mass media to new media. But new media are not driven by "users". New media are designed, created and published by active individuals with a precise personal agenda to follow.
The user becomes the neuron and the axon of the global network.
News and information are not provided by centralized news services serving different economic interests and political agendas but by personally selected and self-aggregated networks of like-minded individuals: clusters.
The individual, the Communication Agent, is the axis of the network, and her ideas (and not her content per se) is the only identity valued. Transparency and openness are the rules of the system she works in. Credibility and trust is achieved not by reach and advertising but by peer recommendations.
And yes, "knowledge" (personally generated by selectively gathering quality information through individual networked media clusters) is indeed the name of the game.
See more of what Professor Orihuela thinks and read his interesting 10 paradigms of eCommunication.
Thinking recommended.
Posted by dimitri at 02:05 AM | Comments (0)
Teenager's blogging a BBC article
Teenagers reach out via weblogs
By Jo Twist
BBC News Online science and technology staff
Teenage boys and girls are using blogs, easily publishable online diaries, in many more similar ways than has been predicted, according to a study.
Previous studies on gender and the net have suggested girls communicate better, and more often, than boys.
But US researcher David Huffaker's study of 70 blogs contradicts this.
He found the gender split in blog use was 50-50. But worryingly, teens tended to reveal more personal details on blogs than in chatrooms and forums.
Getting personal
"Privacy is a concern, what with cyber-stalking and predation, but we think this could be something that parents or teachers could be encouraged to make them more aware of," Mr Huffaker explained to BBC News Online.
Many teenage bloggers he studied gave out e-mail addresses, instant messenger names or links to personal homepages.
Mr Huffaker's postgraduate research at Georgetown University in the US looked in detail at blogs created amongst young people aged 13 to 16, across several well-known blog publishing sites.
Recent figures from one web survey company, Perseus Development Corporation, have suggested that 52% of all blogs are created and maintained by 13 to 19-year-olds.
"Overall, there were a lot more similarities than differences in blogs. In terms of personal disclosure, they were using names that were close to real names," he said.
The average blog post is over 2,000 words, which is really interesting when you are trying to get kids to write essays
David Huffaker, Georgetown University
Females tended to link to personal homepages while males were giving out details of their location more often.
On average, males used more emoticons, like smiley faces. Previous studies in computer communication, explained Mr Huffaker, have suggested that females are more likely to use them.
He also found that not only did teenage bloggers write a lot more than would be expected, they were also using the blogs as a form of "self-therapy".
"Blogs are an area for self expression. It gives them a space to be candid or personal where they don't usually have.
"I thought at first it was about exhibitionism, but a less cynical view is that they are trying to meet a common human need of finding connection."
Most of the blog posts were about their everyday lives, and what was happening in their school. About 67% used the facility that allowed them to comment on blog entries.
This is a feature in many of the blog publishing systems, and is part of their attraction, as well as the ability to link to other blogs.
About 40% talked about music and bands, but many were a lot more candid about themselves.
Two of the blogs he studied were by 15-year-old mothers whose posts described what they were going through.
Many of their posts were accompanied by messages of support from strangers.
Peer support
"I am now looking at the way blogs can be used in the class, as an educational technology," Mr Huffaker said.
"The average blog post is over 2,000 words (per page), which is really interesting when you are trying to get kids to write essays."
He found evidence that some teachers had already been using blogs to highlight pupils' work to improve literacy, but also as a way for students to comment on each other's work.
Blogs have exploded in popularity amongst young people and adults in the last 18 months.
They are an increasingly common way of expressing and communicating on the net, along with e-mail, chatrooms, message boards and instant messaging.
But very few in-depth studies have examined differences in how males and females use them.
A recent white paper by Perseus has suggested there are currently 4.12 million blogs which have been created on eight of the biggest blog publishing sites on the net.
Posted by dimitri at 02:04 AM | Comments (0)
Leap Frog
Talking with Tom today and he mention looking at Leap Frog for my thesis, a product for a child ages 0 to 15. it will evolve person over time.
Insperations comes from Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin.
Product Details
This 3-in-1 learning book grows with baby - from crib to a take-along storybook! First, as baby lies in the crib they can see and hear sweet stories and soothing music while gazing at the colorful animal scenes above. When baby learns to sit, they can interact with any of the three engaging animal activities. With each tug, animal characters introduce animal names and sounds, plus fun facts about the animals, including where they live and what they eat! Used outside the crib, the activity panel folds up into an on-the-go storybook! Stimulating activities combined with music help develop baby's motor skills (touch, feel, pull), while songs and melodies encourage babies to explore and learn.
How does it work?
· With four ways to learn, parents are provided with a choice of rhymes, stories, upbeat music or classic lullabies!
· Secure crib attachment allows easily conversion to take-along book!
· Plush book handle makes it easy for little hands to grip!
What it Teaches
Use the Learning Guide card to the right to find out more about the general categories of learning for the Touch & Tug™ Discovery Book. By clicking a category on the Learning Guide card, you'll see a list of knowledge areas that children develop when they play with this product and the skills on which those knowledge areas are based.
Logic
Logic refers to valid reasoning or to a system of reasoning used to draw correct conclusions. Children use logic in everyday situations (e.g., determining cause-and-effect relationships) and in mathematical problem solving. Children begin to develop logic skills as newborns, and expand upon their understanding as they get older.
Problem Solving
From birth, babies constantly experiment with their worlds. Accidental discoveries progress to more purposeful actions. At around 8 months, babies become active problem solvers who want to reach goals and who understand that actions cause reactions. Babies repeat their "experiments" over and over, particularly if they are rewarded with a pleasing response — such as hearing delightful sounds when they spin a brightly colored wheel. Along with beginning to understand cause and effect, babies gain an awareness of matching and opposites.
Social Development
Social development refers to the acquisition of the skills that children use to express their personalities in a healthy manner and to interact in positive ways with family, friends, teachers, neighbors and others. During the preschool and kindergarten years, children experience a dramatic change in their social development.
Motor Skills
Involving or relating to coordinated muscle movements, motor skills are broken down into two types — gross (e.g., catching a ball) and fine (e.g., properly grasping a pencil). Children begin to develop motor skills as newborns and continue to develop and refine their motor skills through the preschool and kindergarten years.
Posted by dimitri at 02:01 AM | Comments (0)
MyLifeBits
here is some research done at Microsoft. I think there is alot of work to be done here to move it into a more usable state. The calader system is ok but there should be another way of arriving at this interface.
MyLifeBits Project
Microsoft Bay Area Research Center Media Presence Group
MyLifeBits is a lifetime store of everything. It is the fulfillment of Vannevar Bush's 1945 Memex vision including full-text search, text & audio annotations, and hyperlinks. There are two parts to MyLifeBits: an experiment in lifetime storage, and a software research effort.
The experiment: Gordon Bell has captured a lifetime's worth of articles, books, cards, CDs, letters, memos, papers, photos, pictures, presentations, home movies, videotaped lectures, and voice recordings and stored them digitally. He is now paperless, and is beginning to capture phone calls, IM transcripts, television, and radio.
The software research: Jim Gemmell and Roger Lueder have developed the MyLifeBits software, which leverages SQL server to support: hyperlinks, annotations, reports, saved queries, pivoting, clustering, and fast search. MyLifeBits is designed to make annotation easy, including gang annotation on right click, voice annotation, and web browser integration. It includes tools to record web pages, IM transcripts, radio and television. The MyLifeBits screensaver supports annotation and rating. We are beginning to explore features such as document similarity ranking and faceted classification. We have collaborated with the WWMX team to get a mapped UI, and with the SenseCam team to digest and display SenseCam output.
Posted by dimitri at 01:58 AM | Comments (0)