droolicious : photography

Re-Stickable Decal Photo Frames

Chris Ford — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 01:00:00 GMT

My daughter's new favorite thing is to draw a picture and then scotch tape it to the wall - any wall she can find. Her room and playroom are covered with her creations. Although she's not printing out her own photos yet, I'm guessing that in the future her obsession with displaying her work will continue. Which is why these re-stickable photo frames are so cool. When you get bored with your picture, you just pull it down, replace it and put it back up on the wall.

An 8 pack of Wall Decals costs $20.00 (or two for $36.00) and are made of "pliable, premium vinyl". I'm doubting I'll be able to get my daughter to use them now, but it looks like the sort of thing that she'll really be into when she's older.

Re-Stickable Decal Photo Frames, $20 from Photojojo.com

A Camera for the Mini Photog

Cathy Hale — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 16:00:00 GMT

My preschooler LOVES electronics. After breaking two television remotes, one digital camera and one Blackberry, we decided he needed his very own gadgets. For Christmas he got the Fisher Price Kid-Tough Digital Camera and it's working like a charm. It survives serious physical abuse and can even withstand a dunk in the toilet because it's waterproof. (Luckily, we haven't done that test yet!) It has two-eye viewing, easy-to-use buttons and a built-in flash. It comes with a USB cable so you can download all of the fun pics - it store up to 500 photos! Purple or blue. $65 at BabyEarth.

Fuji's Instax Camera Delivers Old-School Instant Holiday Photos

Aaron Burgess — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:04:00 GMT

I have many fond memories of Mom and Dad pulling out the Polaroid Land Camera to take instant snapshots of my sister and me on Christmas morning. Unfortunately, given the erratic quality of those old-school instant cameras, I mostly have blurry or blacked-out shots to remind me of those days.

Polaroid's instant future is up in the air, but if you're looking to recapture the same warm fuzzies, the Fuji instax mini 7 is a reliable little instant camera that also happens to deliver decent shots -- even if they are just credit-card sized. Just point, shoot, and wait two minutes for your image to develop. No peeling or shaking sheets of wet film required (although there's something to be said for that experience, too).

Pick up one for yourself and any older kid who can be trusted with breakable gadgets, and treat the wee ones to something like the Little Tikes camera we covered earlier today.

$130 from Urban Outfitters, and don't forget the film. [via Uncrate]

Ten Best iPhone Apps For Distracting Young Children

Chris Ford — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:02:00 GMT

We've all been there. You're in the grocery store, or doctor's office, or a restaurant and you need a five minute distraction for your toddler. And if you're a dad or mom on-the-go who doesn't keep a spare stuffed animal in their pocket, you're usually relegated to whatever you have handy. If one of those things is an iPhone or an iPod Touch, then you may not realize it or not, but you've got a wealth of toddler distractions just waiting to be explored.

I've combed through the iTunes Application store and tested out what I think are the ten best applications you can use to distract your young child. The emphasis here is on the word "young." I only included things that would be good for pre-school aged kids, which means I didn't pick any games or anything that would have a learning curve. I also didn't pick anything that required your child to shake the iPhone. It's one thing to hand over your $300 telephone to a two year old, it's another to hand it over and encourage them to shake it.

So here they are, in no particular order:

Preschool Adventure ($0.99, 3DAL, LLC.):
Preschool Adventure is one of the few on this list that was written specifically for pre-school aged kids. It's an app that has four smaller activities inside of it: Colors, Shapes, Sounds and Body. With all of them, you touch the screen to make something appear and sound. So for instance, in the colors app, your child touches a splash of a color, and then a sea creature appears saying the name of the color and the name of the creature ("Pink Sea Animone" is, admittedly, kind of a mouthfull for children). I found the app to be very simple but engaging for a pre-schooler, and my two year old loved it.

Bubble Wrap (Free, Orsome Software):
Bubble Wrap is one of those adult time-wasters that can double as a diversion for your kid. The app itself is simple - you just get a field of bubbles like you were holding a sheet of bubble wrap. Then you touch each bubble to make it pop. As soon as you start, there is a timer to see how many you can pop in sixty seconds, but your kids will undoubtedly ignore that and just enjoy popping the bubbles.

Midomi (Free, Melodis Corp.):
Midomi is a distraction for your kids that you'll have to do with them, so it won't buy you any time, but it's cool nonetheless. Midomi is an application that will identify any song it hears, whether it is on the radio, being played live, or your own singing or humming. It's pretty amazing when you first try it, as it's quite adept at figuring out your tuneless humming. My kids and I had loads of fun thinking up songs and singing them into it to see if it could recognize the tune. Even better is listening to some of the songs it thinks you're trying to hum (especially the songs in Japanese).

YouTube (free, with iPhone):
Everyone who has an iPhone has the YouTube application built in, so some may think this one is a cop-out, but in reality it's one of the great diversions on the iPhone. This is how you get the most out of it. Get a free YouTube account, and in your free time (you are reading this after all) go and search for videos you think your kids will love. Mark all of those videos "favorites" and then when you log into YouTube on your iPhone, go right to your favorites and start playing them. I loaded my favorites with videos of Disney songs, and I can get both of my girls (2 and 4 years old) silent for the length of each song.

Scribble (Free, Zintin Software):
This one is kind of self-explanatory. Scribble is a simple app that lets you draw on the iPhone screen. You can choose colors and draw whatever you can manage to get on the screen. Better than drawing though, I've found it good for quick games of tic tac toe or getting my four year old to practice writing her name.

Vehicles ($0.99, iFRizzo.com):
I don't have boys, but this one is clearly for those of you with little XYs running around. Vehicles is a soundboard of all the cars, trucks and plane sounds they could fit onto one screen of the iPhone. The sounds themselves (cars, police cars, fire trucks, airplanes etc.) are about two or three seconds in length depending on which one you choose and can be played over each other for a true sounds-of-the-city symphony.

Koi Pond ($0.99, The Blimp Pilots):
This app is deceptively simple but mesmerizing to adults and children just the same. When you launch Koi Pond, you get a screen with Koi fish swimming underwater, with tranquil outdoor sounds playing in the background. When you touch the screen, the app makes it look like you are touching the water they are swimming in. This naturally makes the fish swim away, so you have to wait until they unwittingly swim again into your view. There are lilly pads to move around and food to feed them too (when you shake the iPhone food appears - thereby breaking my "no shake" rule) which makes them swim back into view more quickly. I know, it sounds really simple and boring, but both of my girls were fighting over the iPhone for a half hour the other day so they could see the fish.

Rulla (Free, LIngon i Korg Software Creations):
This one is a little odd, but kind of fun for a toddler who is learning to read. Rulla (terrible name) is a simple app that makes a message crawl across your iPhone screen, kind of like a news ticker. I think the original intention was to have a way club kids could shoot a message to each other across the dance floor, but my kids loved thinking up funny messages to "make the phone say." It started with their names and ended up with "Daddy is a kitty cat."

Color Tilt ($0.99, IMAK Creations):
This one is kind of like Scribble, but is way cooler. It's an app that lets you draw by bringing your finger across the screen, but the color you're drawing in is determined by which way you are tilting the iPhone. It's a great use of the iPhone's capabilities, making any scribble look cool. And quite frankly, scribbling is about all you're going to get out of a two year old anyway.

Bubbles (Free, Hog Bay Software):
Bubbles isn't the same as Bubble Wrap, although it may seem like it. Instead of a static page of bubbles, with this app you draw your finger across a blank screen to create the bubbles. Then, as they fall down the screen you pop them with your finger. Simple, but interesting enough to stop a toddler crying in a shopping cart, believe me.

Photos (free, with iPhone):
Photos might be the eleventh suggestion, but everyone gets it with an iPhone (or any iPod for that matter), but in some ways I saved the best for last. The Photos app is the one slam dunk that my kids always want to use. Looking at pictures of themselves, friends and family always quiets them down, and it's gotten to the point that when my two year old sees me with my phone she asks to look at pictures. The trick to it though is to load it up with pictures you've been taking with your regular digital camera, not the iPhone. The pictures will look better and you'll always have more of them.

So there they are. If you have any suggestions or great finds yourself, please let us know in the comments below and happy distracting!

Casio's New YouTube-Friendly Digicam Set for October

Aaron Burgess — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:01:00 GMT

If your due date is before October, or you're looking for an upgrade to your old digital camera in time for Halloween snapshots of the kiddoes, Casio's newly announced Exilim Zoom EX-Z85 packs a ton of handy features in a slick-looking $180 shell.

The 9.1 megapixel camera features a 3x optical zoom lens for hi-res close-ups and ISO up to 1,600, as well as an automatic-face-recognition function to ensure you get clear mugs for up to 10 people per shot. You can also preview all your shots in full color on the 2.6-inch widescreen LCD screen, and if you're a beginning photographer, you only have to worry about three settings (flash, self timer and image size) in the camera's "easy mode" menu.

If you don't have a separate digital camcorder and want to share more than just still photos of the kids with friends and relatives, the EX-Z85's "YouTube Capture Mode" gives you 41.2MB of internal memory (as well as support for SD/SDHC memory cards) and an easy means for uploading all your digital clips to YouTube.

Available in October; keep an eye on Casio's Exilim Zoom homepage for the latest.

Zap Your Holiday Pictures to and Fro with Eye-Fi's Wireless SD Card

Aaron Burgess — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 19:02:00 GMT

The Eye-Fi Wireless Card ($99.99 from Amazon.com) plugs into your digital camera's memory slot just as a regular SD card would (currently, SD memory is all that's offered), but besides offering 2GB of storage for your snapshots, the card also lets you send pictures via Wi-Fi to your PC, printer or photo-sharing service -- from Flickr to Wal-Mart to your Picasa Web Album. Great for those of us who don't want to buy a whole new digicam just for wireless functionality, as well as for those of us who don't really care how this wireless stuff works; we just want our pictures to go somewhere we can print 'em. Before you buy, visit Eye-Fi's support site to see if your camera is compatible.