Spykee, made by the world famous Meccano Company, is one of a new breed of animatronic toys that seem to grow in popularity year-on-year as the technology becomes more affordable.

As you would expect from Meccano, Spykee is a robot that has to be assembled first, and can also be fitted with any standard Meccano parts. He can be built in three separate forms: as a robot, lunar vehicle or a menacing scorpion.

Spykee will move, talk and see everything, as essentially this animatronic robot is a very advanced version of a radio-controlled toy. The animatronics inside the toy use miniature motors and sensors to provide a wide array of functions. Not only can he be controlled by WiFi in a local environment, but also from anywhere in the world via the internet!

When used through a computer (PC or Mac) Spykee can also be a VOIP telephone for making free calls. His built in camera acts as a webcam as he travels around the floor, beaming pictures to the computer. Furthermore, an in-built movement sensor can be programmed to trigger alarms, and can even take a picture of the intruder to be sent wherever you are in the world!

Naturally Spykee will play MP3 music via a plug socket, and is even clever enough to return to his base unit when he requires re-charging! The equipment list is almost endless – webcam, microphone, flash lighting, lights, rubber tracks, WiFi card, and loudspeaker.

Today my dog Ace, a golden-retriever mix we rescued from a shelter, and I passed our therapy-dog test! Together we’ll be able to visit patients in hospitals or nursing homes and share Ace’s sweet personality with people who could use a canine pick-me-up. In honor of this long-awaited accomplishment, I want to share some great toys that are designed to bring smiles from friendly dogs.

Brandy and Val are two big dogs who love little kids. Their “dog mom,” Ilene wanted a way to share her two sweet dogs with a little boy who lived far away, so she invented board books about the dogs. Zachary is a boy with special needs, so she made the pages easy to turn with big tabs. You could add her Brandy and Val stuffed toys to the package to make a really special gift.

They always contribute to animal-rescue efforts with a portion of their profits, but through the end of February Brandy and Val are giving $5 from each sale to help the animals in Haiti. Considering that their books sell for about $12, those are some generous dogs!

Recently, one of my infinite Gucci sneakers-fan friends has come up to me and told me a story he experienced the day before.
Well it really attracted my attention during the whole story and that’s why I want to share it with you guys. Without further ado, here it goes:
“As a traditional practice, we the Turkish people usually leave our “gucci sneakers” behind the entrance door of our houses.

That’s being said, it means we usually do not enter to our homes with footwears put on. Unfortunately, my mate had done this at the day of the incident, too. Having lunch at that time, my friend wasn’t aware of the two gypsies wandering inside the apartment building, maybe for begging some food or money from the residents.
To their surprise, they should have seen the pair of yummy Gucci sneakers, which belonged to my friend and had cost him 550 bucks not long ago. Probably knowing these facts, they stole the beauties.

After the lunch, no sooner realizing the absence of his sneakers, than my friend cries in pain. They sent for police and explain the details about the Gucci men shoes which my friend owned. In the mean time, the gypsies rushing towards their houses, start off an argument about whom to wear the shoes first, or whom they would belong to. The argument goes harsh and they keep on fighting with each other on the street, while the stolen goods were smiling them somewhere near the street. Soon after the patrols come and arrest these gypsies as they were informed about some valuable sneakers being stolen just a few hours ago.”

My friend, then, meets with his stuff and never leaves them anywhere further away than 2 meters =).

There are countless stress relief methods available and it is up to you to choose something that gives you adequate relief. The use of toys for stress relief has recently gained momentum. There are a number of such toys such as twistable toys, pressure toys, magnetic toys etc. These toys are such designed that they allow you to ease your stress effectively. Each set of toy has it own unique characteristic for stress relief. For instance, magnetic toys allow you to create different kinds of shapes, forms and designs. Studies have revealed that this activity is a great way to ease out your tension and frustration. This is true because many users have reported that magnetic toys such as buckyballs are extremely engrossing and fun. You seem to forget the world while playing with such magnetic toys. So get ready to enter a stress free world with stress relief toys!

SWINX Box With Accolades

Swinxs is a new interactive game console that is designed to get any number of children and adults up, moving, and thinking.  And, in this reviewer’s opinion, it truly deserves all the accolades it has received since it was introduced in the United States (including those from National Parenting Publications Awards, Creative Child Magazine toy of the year and the National Parenting Center seal of approval).

Out Of the Box

Swinxs is an interactive gaming console that can be used indoors or outdoors. While you might be hesitant to have kids play with it outside, the running and sillyness that happens with Swinx is perfect for outdoor play.

Styling? This Y-shaped, apple-colored unit is lightweight, but sturdy and stable. The shape, size and weight makes it easy to carry, even for little hands.

Kid’s computing usually comes in a few varieties, but often a kid’s first real computer is a hand-me-down PC from Mom or Dad. While there have been plenty of cheap laptop, desktop and Netbook solutions on the market that can be made to work for kids; Disney has taken an interesting approach, totally customizing an Asus Eee Netbook. Their re-defined Netbook, called the Disney Netpal, offers many enhancements designed for kids that are both cosmetic and designed for Internet safety.

The Netpal comes in two fun colors, Princess Pink or Magic Blue. The exterior shells are well made and immediately give kids the feeling that this is a big kid’s computer, not a toy and not a 5 year-old laptop from Dad that has worn off letter keys and bagel crumbs in the keyboard. The unit, while not technically ruggedized, is very sturdy and should be able to handle the day-to-day life of being a kid’s computer. There’s a spill proof keyboard for instance, to help guard against the mistaken splash or spill.

The design of the camera is true to LeapFrog’s standards, it looks almost exactly like their Leapster2 portable gaming machine. The exterior is textured a bit, so it feels good in the in hand, and is grippy too, so it’s less likely to slip out of a child’s grasp. To get started parents will need to add the batteries, but after that, kids are good on their own.

The camera features four buttons, all of which our test kids figured out either on their own, or with a little coaching. But largely kids were able to operate the camera independently, which is nice.

When taking shots kids can either use the display, or the viewfinder. The camera is fixed focus, the manual recommends trying to take pictures at a distance of 5 feet. Of course this is virtually impossible to manage with kids. The screen displays the number of shots remaining and the battery status, so kids get an honest replica of what an adult camera feels like, which is a nice touch. There’s also a flash, with indicator, that can be turned to auto or off. This sounds like a small thing, but the last several cameras we’ve seen have offered no such controls.

Another great thing which can be turned off are most of the sound effects. While it’s fun that the camera encourages kids with statements like “Great Shot,” when your child runs around the house and rattles off 100 in a row, it gets a little old. We did notice though that the muting isn’t remembered after you turn the camera off and back on.

The other adjustment is resolution. There are three settings that let you control shot resolution. The highest setting is 1600×1280, though it goes down to 640×480 if you’re more concerned about the number of pictures the camera can hold. The camera saves it’s photos to 8MB of internal memory. There is a serious issue here though, the memory is RAM, which means that when the camera loses power, the photos are gone. So parents need to copy the pictures to a computer before changing batteries and before the batteries die. I’m not entirely sure why Sakar went this route, but it’s not kid friendly.

Aside form taking photos, kids can view their photos in slideshow mode on the camera’s screen. It’s also possible to delete photos in this mode to get rid of shots that kids don’t want.

Once the photos get transferred to the computer, kids can go to work with editing software that lets them do the basics like crop and resize. There’s also a bunch of overlays they can add and games to play. The software is pretty well done and could probably stand on its own as a first photo editor for kids. It’s definitely a highlight of this package.

In the end though, it’s all about photo quality. While most kid’s camera companies don’t want to hear this, our test kids always want to see their photos afterward. 9 times out of 10 they’re disappointed because kid’s cameras do such a bad job of taking even decent pictures.

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