6.022 x 1023. I keep random bits of geeky information, such as Avogadro’s number (the number of atoms in a mole) in my head. If you do too, you may be ready for Geekdad. This daily blog (affiliated with Wired Magazine) is a wonderfully random sampling of things of interest for the tech savvy, sci-fi addicted geeks among us. The broad subject range (Lord of the Rings to cyber security) offers diversion and education alike, with a special focus on geeking it up with kids; geeklets, according to these dads.

When I first looked at Geekdad, I was overwhelmed by the amount of material and the sheer geekiness of it all. It’s written by engineers, software developers, pop-culture sci-fi junkies, and other dangerously over-educated people. Most of the content is geared towards Dad Time, including great movie reviews (including scary parts and great times for potty breaks), cool toys, thorough product reviews, spreading geekiness to your kids (Sharing Geeky Gardening With Your Children) and cool stuff like how bridges are built. Some of the posts are over my technical threshold, but there was plenty of material that I understood and enjoyed, especially the Real Genius reference in the top 10 list for dealing with the recession or alien invasion.

So give Geekdad a couple of tries (the first may be overwhelming) and let your inner Spock frolic. You’ll learn how to survive a zombie attack (physics proves you should go to the mall), find a training wheel for “Geek Generation 2.0″ and see the coolest Lego Voltron ever. But watch out: if you’re like me, you could become an addict.

The crisp cool air, changing foliage colors, and the smell of warm cider. Yes, autumn is certainly in the air. Today, the Painted Hen and I took our two boys on our autumn ritual in the Rocky Mountains. Every year at the beginning of October, the elk in the Rocky Mountains begin to rut. And that means they all come down to the low meadows to put on their annual mating display of crashing antlers and incredible bugling. It’s quite a show set against the amazing backdrop of the Rocky Mountains in their splendid fall foliage of glowing yellow aspens. To us, the ritual sort of signals the real beginning of autumn. The kids never tire of it and love to see the elk.  It’s usually on these trips that conversations turn to questions like “What should I be for Halloween?” It’s one of our favorite times of year, and I hope our boys remember these special times of year and our trips to the elk meadows as they grow older.

Growing up back east, we didn’t have elk or towering yellow and orange mountains to signal the start of fall, but we had other rituals that my parents took us on every year when the seasons changed. These rituals have remained with me for my entire life and to me they mark special memories that always return as the leaves begin to fall. Do you have a special autumn ritual you share with your children? If you do, share them with us, we’d love to hear them.

Technobabble

I’m a total tech geek so I want to spend just a brief moment to tell you how this works (and I’ll try not to bore you too much!). LeapFrog has packed this small handheld device with so much amazing technology, including a tiny sophisticated infrared camera that “reads” the letters, words and symbols on the pages, a 32-bit RISC processor, and a DSP driven stereo audio system. OK, that might have been boring, but what it means is that you get super fast response times from the reader when you swipe it across the page or touch a picture.  And you get surprisingly great sound from a tiny speaker.  The infrared camera part…just too cool. The books themselves are designed using what’s called “dotted media”. The infrared camera reads these incredibly tiny dots on the pages and translates them into words, sound effects and music that are played through the “reader”. The coolest thing is that by using some special optical patterns and image processing techniques, the Tag reader always knows exactly which book it’s reading from, what page it is on, and where on the page it is! That means you can skip around from page to page, or even from book to book without having to change anything! It’s all seamless. OK, enough of my technobabble. On to the good, the bad, and the bottom line. This is a review after all right?

What We Tested

The 16MB Tag Reading System with the following titles:

• Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Ages 5 to 7)
• Ben 10 Alien Force: Fugitive from Outer Space (Ages 5 to 7)
• Fly High, Fly Guy (Ages 4 to 6)
• Scooby-Doo! Shiny Spooky Knights (Ages 5 to 7)
• Ozzie and Mack (Ages 4 to 6)

The Good

As with so many other LeapFrog products, this one is thoughtfully designed and well-executed. And, as usual, it makes learning (and especially reading) fun and enjoyable. We tested it with both our 3- and 6-year old boys and they immediately gravitated toward it. They both grew up using LeapPads so the interaction was pretty much natural for them. They quickly understood how to move through the book and get it to “do things“. Our 3-year old was interested in hearing the story, but far more interested in what he could touch on the page that would talk to him or make noises. He was a bit on the young side for this system but really enjoyed the Fly High, Fly Guy book as well as Ozzie & Mack (which comes with the 16 MB system). Our 6-year old was definitely interested in hearing the stories read to him as well, but loved the interactive games throughout the books. His favorite book by far was Star Wars: The Clone Wars followed closely by Ben 10 Alien Force: Fugitive from Outer Space (what can I say, he takes after his geek dad’s love of space stuff!).

Both of our boys really enjoyed earning “rewards” throughout the book. As they progressed through the the books, or succeeded at certain games, they earned rewards that they can print out using LeapFrog’s Connect software. The rewards are simple: doorknob hangers or certificates, or mazes. As simple as they seem, the rewards are a great incentive for increasing attention spans and improving listening comprehension. The kids quickly realized that they need to focus on the details to play the games and win their rewards. The rewards are issued when you connect your Tag reader to your computer and synchronize it with the Leapfrog Connect software. Then you can view and print the rewards for your budding readers.

The books themselves are really well designed and interactive. Along with the “reader” providing great quality sound effects, character voices, and music, these books are anything but boring. It also seems that the audio cues have a positive impact on comprehension as well. As entertaining as this system is, it looks like it will come in handy on long car rides or flights with our little guys.

The system setup is easy and takes anywhere from 10-15 minutes depending on the speed of your internet connection. First you need to install the LeapFrog Connect software and if you don’t already have one, set up a LeapFrog parent account. After that, you use the Connect software to find, download, and transfer the audio component of purchased books onto your Tag reader. That’s it. Pretty easy set up and installation. In our testing, the installation went remarkably smoothly on my PC but crashed a few times on my Mac. But, this wasn’t that big of a problem. I called LeapFrog’s tech support and they quickly pointed me to their alternate installer which is easily downloaded right here http://www.leapfrog.com/en/home/support/product_pages/leapfrog_connect.html. Just look for this section on the Connect webpage and click to download the installer you need for your operating system:

The Bad

The most obvious problem with the Tag system is the storage capacity. The current 16 MB model only holds five stories at a time. The new 32MB model doubles that capacity but still it’s not much. The problem is that you to have go online and download each book’s audio component onto you desktop computer, then transfer it to your Tag. If you’re out of space on your Tag, you need to remove a book first before adding another. My biggest problem with all of this is that LeapFrog spent a lot of time putting together an otherwise great piece of technology and skipped out on memory. Memory is so cheap, why not throw a full 2GB or 4 GB deal inside so you can store every book in their collection without worry? Heck, you could even sell it pre-loaded with all the current titles and only add the new ones if you needed to later on.

Let’s face it, being the parents of 3- and 6-year old boys means we go through lots of batteries. And this little device doesn’t help the situation. In less than two days the unit cheerfully informed us “It’s time to change the batteries”. Wow! OK, so we use rechargeables, we weren’t that worried. But still, my real question is, why not make the entire unit rechargeable…you know, built in like your iPhone? Especially considering that the reader already has a USB connection for your computer to transfer the audio content to the unit…make it rechargeable through the USB cable.

If you are going to use the LeapFrog Connect software to track your child’s progress and LeapFrog Learning Path (which we will be reviewing right here in the coming weeks) you’ll quickly realize that you need more than 1 Tag system if you have more than 1 child. That’s because each Tag system can only store one profile at a time. And each profile can link to only one Learning Path. But, if your not going use Learning Path to track progress etc, no worries. You’re good to go.

One small issue we had with usability that we were a bit surprised with was that if you select the option to read the entire story at the beginning of the book, you can’t touch anything else throughout the book. If you do, the reader stops reading the story and you must start the story all the way back at the beginning again. Not a huge issue, but more of a tip if you’re using one of these for the first time.

The Bottom Line

We spent quite a bit of time watching our two boys use this and had some discussions with them about the system as well. Overall the kids really liked it. We liked it too. It’s neat, it’s well designed, it’s cool, and quite frankly, it’s fun. But the key question for us was, will this teach your kids to read? Probably not. As great as this product is, it’s more about making books enjoyable and about listening comprehension. There’s no doubt that both of these are really good things. Anything that gets a kid to pick up a physical book and spend time with it these days is a good thing. However, if you’re looking for a system to help your child learn to read, this might not be it. The way we see this working best as a learning tool is if parents actively engage with their kids while they’re using this system. When kids are unguided with the Tag, I think they’re going to default to listening and game mode, and like I said before, nothing wrong with that. But for real learning, turning off the “read it to me” feature is probably best. And keeping it off most likely requires the aid of mom or dad. With the “read to me” feature off, struggling or even advanced readers can use the reader only to help them with words they are having difficulty with. I think that goes a long way to helping kids learn to read.

And on a separate note, systems like the Tag are great for keeping kids entertained and engaged with books. But, I really believe that as parents, we need to see them and understand them as a good addition to but not a substitute for personal, snuggle-up, reading time. Well, that’s my two-cents anyway.

Golden Egg Rating

Overall we give the LeapFrog Tag Reading System 4 out of 5 Golden Eggs for great design, incredible technology and innovation, entertainment value, and sheer enjoyment. The storage capacity and battery-life both present some technical issues that could have easily been resolved in design and really hinder the overall score of this product. In addition, we’d like to have seen a bit more work done on creating incentives for the kids to read more on their own. That said, this is another rock-solid product from LeapFrog.

Tag Slideshow and LeapFrog Connect Screenshots

Check out the lightbox slideshow below for images of the Tag Reading System and LeapFrog’s Connect software. Simply click on a thumbnail to start the slideshow. Details and information for each screenshot are located at the bottom of the image in the slideshow.

This past week, we received a copy of a new iPhone app from Kids Eat For. It’s a great application that helps you find “kids eat free” deals near you. I really love this app because the information in the application is community built by users. That means you’re always getting up to date information from real people who have actually found these deals for you. And, if you’re a user of the app, you’re part of that community too and can contribute deals that you find or know about. Kids Eat For is currently available in the iTunes store for $2.99.  And, even if you don’t have an iPhone, read on, Kids Eat For has something for everyone (hint: it’s a FREE website).

The App

The application itself is very easy to use and has a really simple interface. To start finding deals in your area, you just start the application and your iPhone determines your location and Kids Eat For immediately provides you with a list of restaurants near you offering kids eat free deals. The basics are that simple. The list provides you with the name of the restaurant offering the deal, their address, and their approximate distance from you. It also has an icon next to the restaurant name indicating whether kids eat free there today or on some other day.

When you touch a restaurant in the list, you get complete details about the restaurant and the deal including the restaurant’s address, phone number and the meal deal info, for example, “Kids 12 and under eat free all day. Purchase an adult meal and get one kids meal free. Dine in only“. Kids Eat For provides a nice graphic representation of what days of the week the deal is offered on. From this detail screen, you can also give a thumbs up or thumbs down on the deal to confirm that the deal is still be offered or no longer being offered. I love that feature because I can’t tell you how many times we’ve gone to restaurants who supposedly have kids eat for free deals only to find out that the deal was no longer offered!

The restaurant detail page makes it easy to contact the restaurant displayed: simply press a telephone icon to directly call the restaurant.  Want to know where the restaurant is or how to get there?  Pressing the mapping icon displays the location of the restaurant on a map for you. To get directions to the restaurant, all you have to do is click on it and press route and presto…directions to the restaurant!

This app doesn’t limit you to just restaurants in your area. There is a great search function that allows you to search by either restaurant name or by location. We travel to other cities frequently and knowing that we can search for restaurants with free offers before we head out makes our dining planning much easier. Another feature of the app that I really like is the mapping feature. After you get a list of results from either the search feature or the basic “find deals near you” feature, you can touch the map icon and get a map showing the locations of all the restaurants in your list along with you current location (highlighted in blue). Smartly, the pushpins representing the restaurant locations are color coded to indicate whether or not the free meal deal is offered today or on some other day. From the map, all you have to do is click on a pushpin and it pops up the name and address of the restaurant. Touching the restaurant pop-up box provides all of the restaurant/deal details I discussed earlier.

So, what do you do if you find a new free meal deal? Simple…touch the Add icon. This brings up a really simple entry screen to provide the deal info. You just enter the following information: restaurant name, address (or have your iPhone find the address for you), the phone number (if you know it), the basics of the actual deal, and what days the deal is offered on. Save the deal and you’re done. You just became part of a cool community built project! Doesn’t that feel good?

Review

I am a complete techie and an admitted iPhone fanboy, so to make sure this app was everything I thought it was, I had several moms and all of the Five Hens give it a spin just to get an unbiased opinion. Everyone agreed that Kids Eat For was extremely easy to use and provided really useful information. The application is completely intuitive even for mom’s who have never touched an iPhone before.

We took a look at the accuracy of all of the deals in our local area and we found the results to be 100% accurate. To test the completeness of the data, we compared the list of free deals found with Kids Eat For to a local parenting magazine that is known as the “authoritative source” of free meal deals in Northern Colorado. Surprisingly (or maybe not), Kids Eat For contained many deals not in the local parenting magazine. If you ask me, that says a great deal about the power of community based data collection (known as crowd-sourcing). I am a tremendous fan of any crowd-sourced projects and love that Kids Eat For is a grass-roots, community built application and data source.

But I Don’t Have an iPhone!

Well, that’s OK too because Kids Eat For has a great website offering the same information provided in the iPhone app at http://www.kidseatfor.com/. It’s worth checking out.  The website is just as good, if not better than the iPhone app.  It even offers additional features like weekly calendars of deals in your area and information about what’s on the kids menu at specific restaurants! Based on an evaluation of local restaurants near us, we’d say this website delivers for sure! If you don’t have an iPhone, just head over to http://www.kidseatfor.com/ and find some great deals.

And if you happen to have a phone with the Android OS on it, you’re in luck because Kids Eat For also has an Android of the app available in the Android Market.

Golden Egg Rating

Overall we give both the Kids Eat For iPhone app and website 5 out of 5 Golden Eggs for ease of use, great feature set, and accuracy and completeness of the information provided. The iPhone app is definitely worth $2.99 for the convenience of having all of this great information with you when you’re on the go.

Kids Eat For iPhone App Giveaway

This week, Five Hens is giving away 5 FREE copies of the Kids Eat For iPhone App.  Giveaway ends Sunday, September 20 at midnight PST. Click here for details on how to enter to win.

Application Screenshots & Slideshow

Check out the lightbox slideshow below of screenshots from the app and website. Simply click on a thumbnail to start the slideshow. Details and information for each screenshot are located at the bottom of the image in the slideshow.