Night vision for kids
Spy gear
We're fast becoming a nation of snoops. If you don't believe me, check out some of the toys coming out this fall: radio-controlled digital camera aircraft, audio eavesdropping devices, and pen-size document scanners, many of them aimed at youngsters.
Imagine all of the spies who after Christmas will crush our privacy faster than a fleet of speeding Google camera cars.
The gadgets are also troubling because they help to conceal the people using them, by working at a distance.
Goodness knows what neighborhood busybodies will do with a pair of spy goggles from the prolific toy maker Jakks Pacific (www.jakks.com), for example.
Jakks this fall will release a set of infrared goggles with a range of up to 50 feet in total darkness. The EyeClops Night Vision Infrared Stealth Goggles have a "third eye" that appears to emit the IR beam. The toy, priced at a mere $80, is for kids 8 and up.
My hat's off to the designer, however: He or she must be a disciple of H.R. Geiger or, at least, Jean Paul Gautier.
The goggles are covered with Borg-like apparatuses that have no function, other than to look menacing.
Jakks is also planning to release a camera, the EyeClops BioniCam, which adds portability and 400x magnification to the features available in its EyeClops digital magnifying toy.
GPS
Big screen navigating for the great outdoors
I'm notorious for getting lost the moment I step off the beaten path. I've spent hours circling the Blue Hills and the White Mountains, as the sun dips out of sight, leaving my internal compass scrambled.
The next time you find yourself lost in the woods, with the sky darkening, you're going to wish you had brought along the Bushnell Onix 400 personal GPS navigator. Its waterproof case and rubber armor and its ability to mark hundreds of waypoints along the trail will keep you straight through streams and switchbacks.
The Onix (about $400) has a big 3.5-inch LCD screen, which goes to sleep to save battery power even as the device continues to track you. The Onix can store up to 50 routes on its 512MB Micro SD card, along with hundreds of maps and satellite photos.
the tween scene
Beacon Street Girls keep it clean on Web
Squeaky-clean tweens are hard to come by these days, at least in modern literature: Many book series have sex scenes that would make Judy Blume blush. And the evil-doers in the books commit deeds that often go unpunished.
Then there are the Beacon Street Girls, a gang so good and so diverse and so vulnerable that their books seem handcrafted for the progressive, concerned parents and kids who frequent Peet's Coffee and Tea in Coolidge Corner.
Now the Beacon Street girls are going live, with a Web 2.0 experience for 9- to 13-year-old girls.
The BSG publishers, Lexington-based B*tween Productions, work with Harvard docs and educational experts to ensure that topics such as body image and underage drinking are handled responsibly in the books.
My daughter, Maeve, is only 5. But she was delighted to hear there is a Maeve (Kaplan-Taylor) in the BSG crew. There is also an adopted Asian girl, a touch aimed at parents like Lisa and me, who have two kids from China.
Girls at the Club BSG website (www.beaconstreetgirls.com) can decorate their own middle school lockers with magnets and mirrors, contribute to dynamic works of group fiction, and learn about cooking, sports, and wildlife.
The social networking site, where kids might also discuss the more challenging topics covered in the BSG books, is monitored by real adults, whose job is to seek and destroy abusive user content.
There are also a handful of casual games, in case your girl has enough friends already or isn't interested in taking on new projects. 