the tweney review

Thanks to repeated viewings of Jimmy Neutron, Clifford the Big Red Dog, and Scooby Doo, Clara is now obsessed with the idea of building a super-duper clubhouse that contains, among other things, trap doors, secret pools, a waterfall, and levers that make things happen (like pop people into the air). But most of all, she wants it to have a flying saucer — that really flies.

KJ and I really want to encourage this obsession but it’s getting hard to figure out what to do with it that will be a) practical and b) satisfying to Clara, and maybe even c) educational and inspirational for her. With KJ’s help she’s made spec lists and has started drawing plans.

I posed my problem to Chris Anderson, who edits the Geekdad blog (oh yeah, and Wired mag too). He was nice enough to pose my question to his readers — many of which have some great suggestions here:

Ask Geekdad: My daughter wants a UFO

Our biggest trick — and it’s not really a big stroke of genius or anything — is simply to make a huge and dramatic presentation and then not let anyone actually see the phone. The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: You can’t reverse-engineer my presentation skills, sorry

I’ve been playing with an iPhone all weekend, and I haven’t had this much fun with a gadget in a long time. Is it useful? You bet. No phone does web browsing or email quite as well as this one. Plus it’s a great music player, video player, and photo browser, and it’s got tons of other features. But it’s not exactly a productivity tool: If you’re expecting to edit web pages, write long emails, or work on office documents, you’re looking at the wrong phone. It’s more of a lifestyle phone: Like iLife for your pocket. All you Mac fans will know what I’m talking about.

Check out my full reviews (and the rest of Wired News’ iPhone reviews) on Gadget Lab.