I too have been trying Duck Duck Go (link to encrypted version) for the last several weeks and have been impressed.

Furthermore, check out their privacy policy, as well as a recent blog post about search privacy that explains why it "might be the most private place to search the Internet". No IPs logged, no cookies, no contractors.

There are also a large set of convenient "bang commands" such as searching "!slashdot foo".

And finally, searching over (encrypted) HTTPS just works "out of the box".

Give it a try for a few weeks!

Check out some of the NerdKits Video Tutorials, which are 20+ free video tutorials that cover all sorts of electronics topics. For example, Motors and Microcontrollers 101 talks about how to model motors as circuit elements (I'm the guy in this video). The Halloween Capacitive Touch Sensor talks about using aluminum foil as a proximity sensor. All in all, we sell breadboard-based electronics kits, which help beginners like yourself get started with electronics and programming.

Then, our customers adapt it to do things we'd never dreamed of: measuring how far a hamster runs at night, or controlling an RC helicopter, or building an intervalometer, or even building a video game system.

The communications / RF type stuff is very cool, and I hope you're able to get there! The most relevant content we have available right now is a 20-minute video about building a single transistor amplifier for a sound meter.

Best of luck in your electronics journey!

(Actually, not 32-bit -- it's all still 8-bit, except for the AVR32 line which is another set of chips altogether.)

You're right, there was a lot lacking and people could be "scared away" from getting started with microcontrollers, but what we're trying to do with NerdKits is make it less scary without hiding the complexity or the conceptual learning. Our hypothesis is that people are actually smart enough to handle real tools, if you show them how, and will be far better off with that experience. Guide newbies through looking at the datasheet, setting registers, etc. Add some unique content that really makes you use your brain, and we've got a lot of very happy customers!

I too had one of those as a kid -- the ones where you follow the book to connect the various spring terminals! While I might be able to go back and learn some more from it now, I can't really say I learned much from it at the time. It was very much focused on just following the step-by-step directions, with little emphasis on creativity / customization / concepts. So after finishing my Masters in EECS from MIT, I decided to build my own electronics kits for the "digital generation", with a tremendous focus on creativity / customization / concepts. Check us out :-)

Whatever you do, find something where there's real teaching and interactivity and creative thinking going on -- not just polishing some rocks or a step-by-step Lego project. And furthermore, interacting with your child while they're using whatever science gift you pick is also extremely valuable.

Ages 7 and 9 may be a bit young... but we know that 11-year olds do well with getting introduced to electronics and programming, and the interaction that it offers with the physical world through various sensors and actuators. In our experience at NerdKits electronics kits, our youngest customers tend to learn the fastest, because they are the most fearless! They're able to try building something, get something wrong, but just keep working at it until they succeed. Our various free video tutorials help teach various electronics and programming concepts as well.

Here's an 11-year-old's NerdKits "Kid Review" in Make Magazine, or a reading by the author of the review.

Challenge them a bit -- with a bit of guidance, they're capable of taking on more than you might think!

You've got to get their attention first -- impress them with something that makes them say, "Wow, that's cool!" This is particularly important when reaching out to high schoolers and others who aren't necessarily techies yet. While some "neat" algorithm or circuit may capture your attention or mine, it's really hard to visualize for people who aren't already in that mindset, so you generally need a good physical interaction to capture their attention and spark their interest in the first place. From our NerdKits DIY video tutorials collection, I can particularly suggest USB-Guided Servo Squirter (a water gun you can point and control with a computer), our iPhone-controlled R/C car, our Valentine's Day LED Heart with PRNG for a randomized twinkling effect, or even our Morse Code Decoder which automatically translates dits and dahs into letters.

Then, only once you have their attention and interest (they've got to be asking, "How'd you do that?"), you can go deeper into the underlying concepts and electronics and programming. Open up a dialogue, ask "How would you build this (conceptually)?", and once you've done that kind of analysis-style thinking on a few existing projects (learning to take things apart), the students will be empowered with the skills they need to start doing synthesis-style thinking on building projects of their own.

Only after that should kind of top-down, system-level thinking should you dive down into the details, like how to use printf and scanf in C for the LCD or serial port, or how to use interrupts in microcontroller programming.

Just yesterday I taught four high school physics class sections, 10th-12th grades, and we were able to talk about concepts around feedback control systems, sensors and noise, motors, etc all around a currently-unreleased project we're working on with our electronics kit. (Lots of links here, but I think they're quite relevant to my reply and show off how we do things in our part of the DIY educational space.)

So in summary, capture their attention with a few exciting projects, make them think analytically to figure out how they work, and from there, let their imaginations run with taking those projects in new directions or in coming up with their own!

If you're truly trying to integrate science with "mainstream culture", a big part of the overlap is in engineering. Science for the sake of scientific knowledge is great, but we've found that it's often easier to connect to people by looking at how science connects with their lives, which often falls into the realm of engineering (or medicine). We have tried to do that with our free educational electronics videos.

Even as science and medicine and gadgetry continue to advance, it's important to make it accessible and exciting to those outside the field. But while the original book being reviewed argues that "the scientists themslves" must take up the lead in educating the public, the fact is that making these subjects accessible has its own set of required skills that are not necessarily the same as those needed for being an excellent scientist. Some will be able to do both, but it's not for everyone.