The LeapBand, from the folks who make the popular LeapPad kids' e-book, is a gadget that straps onto the wrist of a 3-to-7-year-old and encourages them to move around. Our experience with kids that age is that it's far harder to get them to not move around, but we understand that people's mileage on that may differ. There are some 50 different activities that the LeapBand … [Read more...]
Guardian Bluetooth Kid Tracker
The Taiwanese company Beluvv has an interesting spin on kid trackers with its Guardian product, due to ship next month for $30. Guardian is a disk that looks to be a couple of inches in diameter that you can clip or strap onto your kid. You can set a geofence around your location using a smartphone app, and the Guardian uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to alert you when the … [Read more...]
FILIP: Kids’ first smartphone
Kids are being raised with (by?) phones and pads. Kids, inevitably, want their own way before they're ready. As a parenting tool, they can be useful, as a way to stay in touch and monitor where the kids have gotten themselves to. But only a loon would hand a little kid an expensive phone and expect the phone to survive. FILIP is an interesting middle ground. It's a big … [Read more...]