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Care.com pulls nearly 47,000 daycare listings following report
Care.com is considered the go-to site for caregivers in the US, but it just faced a serious shakeup. The company has confirmed that it took down 46,594 daycare center listings (45 percent of the listings in its database) after a Wall Street Journal report found that hundreds of listings weren't actually state licensed as claimed. Some falsely claimed their licenses, while others either didn't exist or didn't know they were on the site in the first place.
New smart crib aims to relieve frazzled, sleep-deprived parents
Exhausted parents the world over have probably fantasized about a crib that could automatically rock their crying babies to sleep. And Snoo, a new $1,150 smart sleeper, promises to do that. It mimics the sounds of the womb and comes with a swaddle blanket to prevent your baby from rolling over into dangerous positions, which the company says is a big reason more than 3,500 babies a year die in their sleep. To tackle this problem, pediatrician and author of The Happiest Baby, Dr. Harvey Karp, teamed up with MIT engineers and designer Yves Behar to develop what they're calling the first smart (and, they add, safest) sleeper.
Robot babysitter keeps kids occupied in Japanese store
Inhuman babysitters aren't all that uncommon around the world, but a new creature recently placed in a Japanese department store is a godsend for shopaholics with rugrats in tow. Developed by Tmsuk, the 1.4-meter tall bot is employed at a Fukuoka retailer in order to keep watch over rambunctious youngsters that are dropped off by their overworked parents. Reportedly, said critter boasts an integrated projector and camera, a colorful yellow / white outfit and the ability to identify children by name based on a special tag that each kiddo wears while playing. Of course, the manufacturer isn't looking to just shove one or two of these into every store in Japan -- oh no, it's hoping to create similar robots that could one day "guide customers through the aisles of a store," fill their carts or whisper the joke of the day in a French accent into their ears.
CPR Teddy cuddles up nicely, teaches resuscitation
We've seen soft 'n cuddly teddies transformed into nearly every gadget imaginable, but the Save-A-Life Training Center is hoping to teach common individuals how to perform CPR with the use of a less frightening subject. The oh-so-adorable CPR Teddy looks a whole lot better than other CPR training bots that we've come across, and after squeezing one of his paws, "voice prompts walk you through the correct procedures for choking rescue and infant / child CPR." It gets a bit dodgy, however, when you have to submerse yourself in the moment and actually press down on his red heart patch as the bear's built-in metronome paces you. Subsequently, the creature's bow tie actually lights up in green or red to alert you of how you're doing, and his chest will actually rise up as you perform rescue breathing and simultaneously inhale mounds of fur. The basic CPR Teddy kit rings up at just $79.95, but we'd highly recommend picking up a few extra masks to avoid getting choked up yourself when performing mouth-to-mouth.[Via Uber-Review]
