Kite's Eye View
Ever wanted to take snapshots that don't immediately inspire narcolepsy in your friends? All you need is a camera, a mechanism to remotely activate the shutter and a kite big enough to lift them both off the ground. Sound difficult? Well, with a World Wide Web's worth of supporters, you'll never be short of advice. As far as thriving online subcultures go, few surpass the sheer geekiness of kite aerial photography, or "kaping." On numerous Web sites, kaping enthusiasts detail the history of the sport (it got its start in the 19th century), share kite engineering tips and, of course, proudly display JPEGs of their photographic adventures.
And now some kapers are going digital, using the video outputs on digicams to monitor what they're shooting from the ground. The best place for information about kaping is Kapers E-Magazine, which includes several photo galleries - from shots of the family minivan in a parking lot to stunning pictures of a cruise ship in Alaska. - Mark Frauenfelder
PlayDock Rocks
In the hawk-filled wilds near Maine's rocky coast, Hank Williams, Moby and the Soggy Bottom Boys played a perfect outdoor evening concert. It wasn't some hallucinatory hootenanny, but the sound of Cambridge SoundWorks' $200 PlayDock PD200, a stylishly curvy but hefty speakers-and-battery combo made for the Nomad Jukebox, a player with enough storage space for about 150 CDs' worth of MP3s. While you probably wouldn't lug the 13-pound three-way stereo speaker system in your backpack, it's campsite perfect, capable of 10 hours of field-filling music on a single 48-hour charge. In fact, PlayDock's acoustics are as unsullied as a higher-priced Bose system (which isn't as portable). Just make sure the people in the tent next to you are cool with the idea. Available through www.nomadworld.com. - Harold Goldberg
