Teaching a child to read is something parents take pride in. We start the process early on and look forward to seeing the progression and realizations – the pages have words on them, the words go from left to right and each one means something different. One gadget I found to help with the process – LeapFrog Junior.

For the little ones (ages 2-4) Leapfrog Junior is a version of the Tag Reading System that launched in June. Like the big boy version, Junior brings the book pages to life by allowing kids to interact with them in a few cool ways. Little fingers point the hand held door knob to various pictures and words on the page and kids can listen along as audio plays either reading the words or describing what the child is looking at. You can load your Junior with five titles at a time and learning can come with you anywhere you go – it’s a great portable toy.

The device comes with one book that’s enabled with the touch technology and there’s an extensive library of titles from stories with Pooh, George and Dr.Seuss. Each one of the Junior board books is loaded with 24 playful activities with 130 audio responses that expose children to preschool skills including counting, alphabet and problem solving.

A few down points include the higher price, (new system MSRPs at $34.99 and comes with one book, additional books MSRP at $10.99) and the larger design makes it hard for kids to select one specific word at a time if desired. If you get the system make sure you check eBay for any of the 13 titles and look for deals on pre-loved titles. All-in-all I love this system and love how well the technology works even more.

It’s amazing that iPod’s marketing is so clever that many Americans assume the terms “MP3 player” and “iPod” to be synonymous.   Well, America, that’s not the case.  There are many other types of MP3 players out there and often the other brands have cool features that an iPod doesn’t. The history is that once Apple gained so much recognition for the iPod, Microsoft knew they needed to get into the market and came out with the Zune.  It didn’t exactly blow away the competition but it was strong enough to come out with the latest portable media player, Zune HD that just launched this month.

So how is this digital player different than iPod? Most notably is the 3.3 inch OLED touch screen display.  It takes the iPod’s screen and laughs at its quality with a crystal clear grin in high definition and amazing colors and contrast.  OLED is a technology that we don’t see much of because it’s fairly new and is notoriously pricey.

Content is key with the Zune.  Built into the device is an HD radio tuner with cool features like tagging songs to download on the spot if you have a Zune Pass ($14.99 monthly subscription to access millions of songs and you get to choose 10 to keep for free each month).  This version also has a new Internet browser allowing you to surf the web as well as access the Zune Marketplace where you can download tunes, apps, games on the fly.

Overall it’s a great choice if you’re strictly a PC person (as the Zune can’t be used on a Mac) and really does make for an awesome portable entertainment experience. For $90 more you can get an adapter that hooks this baby up to your HD TV so you can watch high quality video on your big screen, too!

Last Wednesday the tech community was pleasantly surprised, so much that they gave a nearly minute long standing ovation, to see the trusted leader in the revolution of portable music, Steve Jobs, who recently recovered from a liver transplant, deliver the not so surprising news that yet another generation of iPods [...]