Every day, it seems, technology opens up a fertile new market that never existed before. Take online gamers. Certainly a diverse crew, weighted a bit towards the male, but representing a wide range of ages and interests. But three-year-olds? Just never occured to me. That's one of the many ways that I am not like Disney, which is launching a new $50-a-year subscription service for preschoolers.

The death of 82-year-old Stan Berenstain, who with his wife Jan created an industrial-sized publishing franchise around a family of bears by the same name, has gotten me thinking about the hours I spent with those Berenstain bears.