Summer camp5/4

NEW YORK -- For the third straight summer, Stacey Weiss will be sending her 11-year-old twin boys to Camp Echo in Burlingham, N.Y. But even though they'll be away for eight weeks, Weiss can keep tabs on her children through photos on the camp Web site.

"I really love the Web site. It adds comfort to a parent when your child is away," said the Woodcliff Lakes, N.J., resident, who will be logging on to the password-protected site to find out what her twins are up to this summer.

Over the past few years, a growing number of camps have tapped to the expertise of Internet startup businesses for e-mail services, online videos and photos to help parents stay in touch with their children. Companies like Bunk1.com, Thriva LLC (which operates eCamp and CampRegister), Dial M For Mercury Inc. and Camp Channel Inc., say such tools are helping camps market themselves to parents at a time when anxiety about children's safety is high in the post-Sept. 11 era.

"Camps are looking more and more at technology as a means to assuage parents' fear," said Paul Fisher, president and CEO of Dial M For Mercury Inc., which installs cameras to stream video to camps' Web sites. This summer, it's offering camp clients an Internet-based automated telephone messaging service.

So far, such services appear to be making parents more comfortable writing checks for summer camp. Deb Bialescki, senior researcher at Martinsville, Ind.-based American Camp Association, reports a general rise in camp enrollment after the $20 billion industry suffered two consecutive summers of enrollment declines following the terrorist attacks in 2001. The trade association, which comprises 7,000 camp professionals, estimates an average increase in enrollment of 1 percent to 3 percent for the year over the same period of 2005.

This summer, Peg Smith, CEO of American Camp Association, believes camps will eventually be supplying podcasts, downloadable audio files similar to radio programs. "That's the next natural evolution," she said.

Some camps operate their own Web sites, but many have turned to Internet companies with expertise in video formatting and other areas for better sound and visual quality. Ari Ackerman, founder and CEO of Bunk1.com, said some clients do their own videos, but send the company clips for formatting on the Web.

Meanwhile, companies like Bunk1.com and ecamp.net offer systems to help parents send e-mail to the camps' Web site for their children.