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My guess so far as to what will have the the biggest impact is that they will grow up expecting everything should be on-demand. People have usually framed that concept in a critical manner, but I think it is a bit more subtle and could turn out very positive.

Yes, kids want things on-demand and it can be annoying, e.g. that particular episode or song wherever they happen to be in the world at that moment. Yet kids have always wanted things on-demand. 

I'm sure I wanted things on-demand when I was two as well. But I usually couldn't get it. We had to wait until the song came on the radio, look in an encyclopedia, etc.

Now my son can often actually get it, and the question is more whether we should give it to him or not. And he knows it. So his default state switches to the expectation that things should be on-demand. It's like his default expectation that everything is a touch screen, which is amusing, but ultimately I doubt it will have much effect on his frame of reference. 

Expecting things on-demand though I think has more far-reaching consequences. I'm just not sure exactly what they are.

You could argue that when you grow up thinking like that, slow processes may come to really bother you. Why can't we do that now? Perhaps that will be good for the world long-term as his generation starts to break down processes and make them faster. Or not...

Update: there are tons of excellent comments below, including many from great app makers and other parents like myself. Here are some additional guidelines.

--Enable multi-touch. 

--Setting to disable photo taking. 

Eli is 11mo old. Here's the semi-unintuitive stuff we've learned with regards to clothing him.

I'm planning on getting a tablet this year, probably the upcoming Apple iSlate (or whatever it will be called). [1]

My primary use case is compelling and simple, albeit not for everyone: following a baby around the house.

Eli ikes to crawl (almost walk!) around the entire house most of his waking hours. Usually this crawling is accompanied with parental entertainment. Sometimes, however, he entertains himself.

When entertaining himself, he of course still requires watching, but it is more an out-of-one-eye thing. During these times, I routinely catch up on email, RSS, HN, Twitter, and Facebook.

I currently use my Android phone (G2) and sometimes my laptop (HP Envy 13). Each is far from ideal for this use case. 

The phone is too slow and too small. It's a pain to visit sites, and even more of a pain to use to compose an email or comment. It's pretty good at reading things though, especially within a native app.

The laptop is too big. It attracts Eli, who wants to come over and bend it backwards or type on the keys. (I think that may have to do with it doubling as a video phone with his grandparents.) 

You also have to keep taking the laptop off of standby and it too difficult to put down fast, which is sometimes necessary if Eli is about to get in to trouble.

I am hopeful that the tablet form factor will be all of the good and none of the bad. I envision it fast and easy to browse on. I imagine composing with its virtual keyboard will be less effective than a laptop, but still effective enough to not be annoying. And I believe it will be easy to put down quickly. I can't wait!

[1] I'm planning on waiting until it actually goes on sale, i.e. not pre-order. At that point, it's possible that there will be other options. This happened to me with the Macbook Air. By the time I went to purchase it, I instead opted for the Lenovo ideapad U110, which eventually became my wife's laptop when I recently replaced it with the HP Envy 13.

The observer effect in physics refers to how things can change when you observe them. That is, the very act of measurement can change the thing you are measuring.

The same thing happens with Eli, our 10mo old son. If you go into his room to observe him in his crib, and he is even slightly awake, it is pretty much disaster. He hears you, picks up his head, stands up, and starts crying out to you.

When we first looked at baby monitors, I thought video was a bit over the top, but we got one anyway. Now I'm sure it helps both him and us sleep a lot better. With just audio, we would check on him when we heard noises, even if these noises were just due to light sleeping or trying to fall asleep.

But with the video monitor, you can actually tell whether you should go up there or not. You can avoid the baby observer effect altogether. 

This works great in the morning. When he is actually waking up for good, he sits up or stands up on his own. But when it is just a passing thing, he stays laying down.

The best use is when he is going down for a nap. It often takes five to ten minutes for him to fall asleep. And he pretty much always cries out right when you put him in the crib, regardless of if he is tired or not. And you're never quite sure if you have the timing just right. 

The video monitor tells you whether he is really trying to fall asleep or just upset for getting put in his crib not fully tired. Without the video monitor, you can easily trigger the baby observer effect by going to check for yourself. 

We just got back from a vacation where we didn't have the monitor and it was a lot more difficult. We ended up keeping the door cracked slightly and peering through, but that had its own drawbacks. More sounds get through the door in that position, sometimes it cracks open more and makes a sound, and you actually have to get up and go up there.

Our doctor told us that babies are smarter than you think they are. I thought I was heeding his advice perfectly until last night. I had just assumed (key mistake) that his attempts at crawling were in somewhat random directions.

We had been putting him to bed in a crib at night, and he would make his way over the course of the night into the corner. It looked uncomfortable with the head pressed up against the side, so we would move him back to the center. But he would find he kept finding his way back to the corner.

Yesterday when putting him in the crib for a nap, I decided to experiment and just start him in the corner. He went to sleep very quickly. 

OK, but maybe that is because he had nowhere to go. So last night we tried again to start him in the corner. He has taken to going to sleep between 6:30-7:30 and waking up around 12:30-1:30 to cry/"crankle" for a while (30-45min) only to fall back asleep for several more hours.

He woke up last night around 1:10AM. I go in there and he is along the top edge of the crib, faced in the other direction, butt up, about 1/3 of the way to the other corner. It really looked like he was making his way from one corner to the other, deliberately. 

So I picked him up and put him where he seemed like he wanted to go. And it worked!