Teens' own tech site

A few weeks ago at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Arizona 13-year-old Kimberly Kolwitz “had fully-grown, professional manufacturers practically groveling at her feet,” KVOA in Prescott, Az., reports. It’s understandable, because Kimberly and two cousins (aged 15 and 16) in California publish NeekTalk.com (“neek” being a cross between “geek” and “nerd,” Kimberly told KVOA), which is “basically an online teen tech site [aka blog] filled with new product reviews,” photos, and podcasts the girls record. Though KVOA doesn’t provide site traffic numbers, electronics manufacturers are “groveling,” apparently, because the site attracts cutting-edge technology-seeking teenage readers, an important market for the tech industry. These site publishers sound smart, too, because they’re having a lot of fun (favorites at CES were Ultra Mobile PCs at the Intel booth and the ASIMO humanoid robot at the Honda booth) and covering other teen interests too, like finding the right college/university (last summer “the neeks” traveled east to look at and blog about MIT, Harvard, Wellesley, and Dartmouth). For further perspective, here's a New Jersey high school student's commentary on social networking.