Some toys are better than others.

Some toys, right out of the box, are just what you wanted, sometimes even more fun than you expected them to be. They engage your imagination, encourage your sense of play. They’re well designed and well made. The assembly instructions, if required, consist of clearly drawn diagrams indicating how things go together. They come with batteries.

Other toys are less satisfying. They looked bright and shiny on the shelf, but once you have them in your hands, they seem perhaps a little shoddy. They don’t work quite right. You don’t have the right size batteries. They only do one thing, so they become boring quickly. The instruction manual has been written many time zones from where you live, by one who is not a native speaker of your language.

This blog is one of the best toys I’ve ever gotten. While it’s easy to use and immediately gratifying, it’s not one of those toys of which I’ve tired after a just a short time. It’s a toy for the imagination, so there’s always something to fun to play with – formatting to tweak, a feature to add, or just good old-fashioned storytelling to do.

The new Audioblogger toy is, well, a mixed bag. The technology, while not new, is still pretty shiny and cool. The instructions on the web site are clear and well written, as is the telephone interface. However, the toy is limited, not surprisingly, by the quality of the telephone equipment with which the recording is done. Tonight, we were all set to record and post the {whirr-click-click-click} sound of the pump that delivers food to Paul’s PEG. We tried both the cell phone and our land line phone; neither made an acceptable recording. (There was some sound, but it was more like regularly oscillating static than like the sound of the pump.) I think we’ll have to record the pump using a medium that can be amplified, and then play that – loudly – into the phone. For tonight, however, no pump sounds.

I’m not ready to throw Audioblogger into the pile with the other discarded toys. However, it’s not going to be my new favorite toy.