E-mail Muddah, e-mail Fadduh . . .

Naomi David loved camp this summer, but she says she might not have made it through a double session if she hadn't heard from her mom and dad every day. No, they weren't calling incessantly, and they weren't making daily trips. They were sending her e-mail.

Sure, they also sent letters, but those arrived sporadically at Camp Interlaken in Eagle River, Wis. "Getting e-mails is better," says Naomi, 10, "because I got them every day, and I knew what was going on at home," including: her parents going to the Paul Simon concert; Peter, her basset hound puppy, getting paper-trained. Getting the news "made me happy."

It also made her mom happy. Naomi and her family were able to communicate via Bunk1, a company that uses the Net to link parents with their kids at camp. There are no computers in cabins; kids don't access PCs at all. But family members, given passwords, can send e-mail that is printed out at camp and delivered on paper to the campers.

Parents also can see their kids: Every day, participating camps (there are now 600 throughout the USA) snap pictures and put them on a Web site (accessible by families only).

"It's for the 21st century parent," says Bunk1 founder and CEO Ari Ackerman. Naomi's mother, Cathy, of Milwaukee, loved finding pictures — especially the one in which her daughter has her arm around her buddy. "It was a Kodak moment."

News from the Big Apple, and Steve Jobs

Apple Computer's ads may ask people to "think different," but there wasn't a whole lot different about the products CEO Steve Jobs unveiled during a two-hour keynote at Macworld Expo in New York on Wednesday. Despite rampant speculation about the possible appearance of a new iMac with a built-in flat panel display — or maybe a new handheld — the rumors turned out to be just that.

Jobs did introduce the fastest Mac systems ever, including lower-priced Power Mac G4s at $1,699 to $3,499. Models costing $2,499 on up include SuperDrive, a combination drive that can burn both CDs and homemade DVDs.

Three speedier new iMacs also were unveiled, ranging from $999 (for a 500MHz G3 processor) to $1,499 (700MHz). Each is preloaded with Apple's Mac OS X. Jobs previewed the "first major upgrade" to that operating system, dubbed version 10.1 and due in September for $129 ($20 for current owners).

The company also is bracing for a showdown against Microsoft's new operating system in the fall. "Sometimes I don't think we get as much credit as (Microsoft), because that's all they do," Jobs told USA TODAY. "But I think Mac OS X is far more ambitious than Windows XP. We think (OS X), even though it's the most powerful operating system, is the easiest to use." As for speculation about a handheld, Jobs was characteristically mum: "Didn't have one to announce today. There's really nothing I can say. Lot of rumors out there."

E-mail Janet Kornblum at jkornblum@usatoday.com.