Wee hands born to hold the remote

video games
It's scary to see how quickly kids learn to use Nintendo's Wii game controllers. It's as if their wee hands were born to hold the Remote and Nunchuk.

Scarier still is watching my oldest girl, Maeve, holding the Wii Wheel. A few more laps around the track in Mario Kart Wii, and I expect she will insist on taking the Baard family buggy out for spin.

I got off to a rocky start with Mario Kart Wii, a splendid, nonviolent, cheery, and colorful game. But once I started holding my Wii Wheel right side up, my ability to negotiate turns and avoid turtle shells and banana peels dramatically improved.

I found it easy to adjust to this steering wheel, which has no column, and which locks onto the Wii Remote.

Just be sure you keep that Wii Remote wrist strap securely fastened, after you've clicked it into the Wii Wheel. The remote's buttons all come in to play in Mario Kart, so you can accelerate, reverse, and fire rocket boosters to your car or motorbike ahead of the pack.

By hitting ramps and popping through airborne objects, you can speed yourself up, surround yourself with a force field of some sort, and cause your competitors to slow down.

You can race through dozens of courses, many of them new to Kart players, with Mario Kart Wii.

You can purchase additional steering wheels to race your buddies at home, or - with a WiFi connection - you can take on up to 11 drivers, anywhere in the world.

Mario Kart Wii has a bunch of additional off-track challenges, too, which I am looking forward to exploring.

Maeve may also be earning her Mario Kart Wii driver's license next week, at City Hall Plaza or Downtown Crossing. The Mario Kart Wii Driving School on May 14 and 15 will be awarding licenses to players, personalized to include their photos and nicknames.

headsets

Jabra makes progress with Bluetooth components

I don't know which of Jabra's latest Bluetooth headsets makes me feel more like the prisoner of some futuristic techno overlord. But both of the headsets I looked at last week worked wonderfully and are solidly made.

One, the Jabra BT3030 (top left), resembles a computer-chipped dog tag. It has a metallic face, black frame, and backlit communication and music playback controls, similar to the keypad on a Moto Razr phone.

The BT3030 plays music from your mobile phone or MP3 player. It has a headphone jack and a built-in microphone. Your music automatically pauses when a call comes in.

The BT3030 (about $80) lasts for up to seven hours of music playing time and eight hours of talk.

The BT3030's dog tag aesthetic strikes my conspiracy bone, however. To me, it says, "man in the service of technology," instead of the other way around.

The sleek Jabra JX20 Pura (bottom left), on the other hand, is a tasteful looking thing with a slender profile when worn in the ear. It has a brushed titanium shell, with black trim, and a gel ear bud that makes the headset among the most comfortable I've worn. This, of course, increases the likelihood that you will forget you are wearing the headset, and someone will take it for a prosthetic device.

The Pura, which will be available in June for about $180, offers about six hours of talk time between charges.

The Pura also comes in a classy, black, obelisk-shaped box about 10 times the size of the headset itself, making it a poor example of green packaging.

digital photos

Helping to explore what lies beneath

My wife and in-laws have finally worn me down: There will be no avoiding the Cape this summer. (I've run out of excuses for bailing out of those weekend - and weeklong - trips to catch up on my Battlestar Galactica.)

So, I reckon I'll need a hobby, perhaps something like underwater photography, to stave off beach-induced boredom. One camera I will be looking at is the SeaLife DC800 (about $550), an 8-megapixel camera with a 4x optical zoom. It's waterproof to 200 feet. (I rarely venture into the bay beyond waist-deep.)

The DC800 has a number of color-correction settings for various ocean and freshwater environments. And its rubber housing should protect the camera from bumps along the jetty.

Innovative last week

Some sex appeal for real-life robotics

Raytheon Co. is thrilled that the new "Iron Man" movie might lend some sex appeal to its real-life robotic exoskeleton project. The Raytheon suit looks nothing like the comic book hero's version, and it won't be outmaneuvering Air Force jets anytime soon. But the Raytheon exoskeleton, to be worn by soldiers in the field, is capable of some exciting moves. The idea is to amplify a fighter's god-given strengths, adding force to kicks and punches, and increasing running speeds, for example.