The Sandio 3D Game O Mouse in five lines:

• It’s a gaming mouse; the normal buttons work well, but aside from some fun in Google Earth, the extra joysticks are not useful for other things.
• The joysticks are digital, not analog. In simpler terms, they are either going in one direction or not, with no sensitivity.
• The top joystick is brilliant, especially for first person shooter games and very useful in strategy games. It does not interfere with using the scroll wheel.
• The thumb joystick is useful in MMORPGs, FPSs, and for macros in strategy games, but its opposite twin is very hard to use.
• An “advanced” pre-teen PC gamer and older should be able to use it, but the software it requires is too complex for younger children.

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NCAA Football 2008 is a college football sports simulation game. The game is a fully licensed product of the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) and features all of the Teams and Stadiums.

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Rats in the kitchen are usually not desirable – unless of course the rat’s name is Remy, lives in Paris, France and knows how to cook…

Ratatouille for the Leapster is based on the popular Disney/Pixar Movie. Rather then following the movie-plot, this edutainment game offers 5 different Ratatouille themed mini games. The game is suited for players ages 4 to 7 years. Kids will encounter Remy the main movie character, Emile –Remy’s food-loving brother and culinary hero, Auguste Gusteau. (more…)

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What are the memories of childhood that keep coming back to you? Oftentimes, they are of the first movie we saw. Movies are profound (and often intense) experiences for first-timers. Think back to your first visit to a cinema: whether it was a public screening or a private viewing at home, when the lights went out and the movie came up, you were alone in your own experience. This great gift of cinema helps create those memories that are so clearly affixed in our minds.

Now do you think that memory from your childhood, that cornerstone in the foundation of your life, influenced who you are today? If you’re were a kid in America in the 70s who turned on the Afterschool Specials on Wednesdays at 3:30pm when they were playing foreign films, chances are that is why you are tuning into KidConfidence and this blog today. And look at how similar things around us are to the 70s.

Cinema has always played a large part in the memory of our American society. Those 70s kids’ parents spent entire afternoons in the cinema for a nickel watching Betty Grable, Clark Gable and the stars of the 40s and 50s. Their parents remember the advent of the “Talkie.” No doubt, vivid memories of cinema days were passed on. But with so much media at our fingertips today, parents have to make more careful choices about providing the opportunities for those memories. What is the exposure that is going to make the lasting impression and perhaps plant seeds that continue to inspire your child as her or she progresses to adulthood?

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Kid Confidence is committed to providing relevant and informative content to parents, as it relates to selecting the best media choices for their families. In this vein, Kid Confidence will also now be providing reviews, recommendations, and informative articles and blog posts around selecting the best age appropriate media titles. Our focus on video games has enabled Kid Confidence to establish itself as the ‘go-to’ resource for ‘non-gamer’ parents looking for the best video game titles with learning or educational value. Now we would like to expand our offerings to include children’s films and movies, books, TV shows, toys, activities, etc.

With this in mind, I would like to take this opportunity to introduce Katy Kavanaugh, the founder of Catapult Productions and the Screen360 Children’s Film Festival… Films for Children of the World. Screen360’s program begins in San Francisco this weekend and travels to Oregon next month.

Please stay tuned to Kid Confidence for more information on Screen360 Children’s Film Festival and reviews and recommendations for International Children’s Films recommended by Katy and her programming team. Thanks, Katy!!

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