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Daily iPad App: The Elements in Action brings the periodic table to life
The Elements in Action takes a visual look at the periodic table, bringing the metals and gasses to life with engaging videos. It's an interesting look at the elements from BAFTA award winner Max Whitby and Theodore Gray, author of the popular book and app The Elements. The content is top-notch, taken from footage originally available only at museums. The first thing that strikes you when you open the Elements in Action app is its strong visual UI. Every element in the periodic table is literally bursting with activity, displaying a teaser video that illustrates each element's unique properties or uses. When you click on an element, you can watch a short video that showcases a unique property of the element. An accompanying description provides you with some interesting facts on that element and how it is used in the real world. Did you know that rhenium melts at 3,000°C and is used along with nickel to make turbine blades for jets? The array of information runs the gamut from details on passenger aircraft to the composition of body piercings. There are also a handful of not-so-everyday explosions. The only complaint I have about the app is its promotion of the developer's other app, The Elements for iPad. When you click on a 3D model in each element's description, you are not shown the 3D model; instead you are prompted to buy The Elements app for the iPad. The Elements in Action is available from the iOS App Store for US$3.99.
Educational bloggers chime in with their favorite back-to-school apps
It's the start of a new school year, which means you've probably got a stack of new books on your desk, a drawer full of new pencils and an iPad that desperately needs some new apps. TUAW is here to help you build a new app list, and we did so with the help of some friends. We consulted with students, teachers and some of the top tech and educational bloggers to generate this list. In this article, we highlight the top picks from educational bloggers whose job it is to evaluate this category of apps. Here are the apps that they prefer: Daniel Donahoo, Core contributor to GeekDad I have come to take a strong interest in apps that deliver great content to students. Teachers have a range of tools now to use on digital devices, but what apps are offering students information and new ideas in a way that speaks to the YouTube generation. Here are three apps, for three different age groups. Rough Science (by Deeper Richer) A terrific app with quality playful video content, a free teachers handbook to download and offers a great step into a flipped classroom model using 1:1 devices. Questimate! (by Motion Math Games) A clever app offering the ability to estimate against any number of things, it also offers collaborative learning options, Motion Math Games never disappoint. Sonnets (by TouchPress) A beautiful Shakespeare app, great for high school students with quality video and excellent extras in text and video. Veronika Walshe, founder of The Appy Ladies The Appy Ladies is a diverse group of ladies with various backgrounds and interests, who have a passion for apps and information. Veronika Walshe is a stay at home mum to 3 children, one with Down Syndrome and one with ASD. TOBY Playpad - a fantastic app, just amazing the content. There is nothing like it. iGetit Apps - featured in the REMLE project for Autism Wonkidos - brilliant series of life skills apps, supporting your child in many areas L'Escapadou - great apps, colourful and engaging Demografix - For those children slightly older Learning Touch - over and over again children with SN love and use all of their apps Tactus Therapy - Amazing all of them and how they work together in the growth of your child Good Karma - Just love their new app FTVS - HD Close 2 Home - So Much 2 Say - fantastic app for SN children at the initial stage of communication StudyPad - all their Splash Maths apps are just wonderful John Wilkerson, founder of The Wired Homeschool John Wilkerson and his wife have 7 children and have been homeschooling for 15 years. John has been a speaker at homeschool conventions and regularly podcasts and blogs about the use of technology in homeschooling at thewiredhomeschool.com. You can follow John on Twitter or like his podcast's Facebook page but please, no stalkers. Math Mathews: Getting your kids to remember their multiplication facts can be a real chore. With Math Mathews kids join Captain Mathews on a piratical adventure while learning multiplication. Your kids will have so much fun that they'll forget they're doing math! Stack the States: Geography can get a bit dull when you're trying to memorize state capitals and other mundane facts but if you add the challenge of building a Jenga-like tower out of states it becomes a fun way to learn things which states border New Hampshire. 5 Dice: Order of Operations: If you're looking for a way to solidify and reinforce math skills this is your game. Players roll dice and must use the numbers provided to get the solution. Using the correct order of operations is essential to be successful at this game. Cargo-bot: The objective of this game is simple: move crates from one stack to another. How you do this isn't always so simple. Cargo-bot is a great way to teach kids how to logically solve a problem and basic programming skills. Don't miss this one. Graphing Calculator+: No need to spend $50-$100 on a graphing calculator. Just buy this app. It probably won't get your son or daughter through advanced Calculus or Differential Equations but should suffice for a typical high school student. Josh, founder of Homeschool Tablet This year I am trying to reduce the apps I use and focus on specific areas I want to focus on this year. One of my sons needs to focus in reading so I am installing mostly phonics apps like Reading Raven and Abby Phonics - first grade. I am trying to stay away from sight word apps. Our new favorite letter app is LetterSchool. For science, we are studying astronomy, so I plan on using Solar Walk and the Q Continuum Planets app (on my iPhone when we are outside). Spelling for my daughter will be mostly with Teach Me:2nd grade and Simplex Spelling Phonics 1. Math will be Khan Academy. History will also be with Khan Academy and maybe some timeline apps. Reading will probably be exclusively on the Kindle. I hope to use iBooks Author to customize some of their learning but I don't know if I will have time. While the program is intuitive it still takes work to make a good book. Also my son started to use the free Mac program Typist for keyboarding. It's pretty basic, but he seems to like it. iGameMom, founder of the iGameMom blog iGameMom is a place for busy parents to discover good educational applications for kids, and to explore ways to stay engaged with kids in the new game world. Here is iGameMom's back-to-school list of recommended apps: Brain Quest (free): curriculum based trivia games for grade1 to 5. Each grade has 80 questions. With In-App purchase ($2.99 for each grade), you can buy the whole pack, which has over 600 questions for each grade. Kids learn while playing games. BrainPop Featured Movie (free): Kids get to see a new animated documentary every day. The range of topics is amazingly broad: science, history, Engineering & technology, Social Studies, English, Arts & Music, and Health subjects. TeachMe ($1.99 for each grade level): An app series covers Toddler, Kindergarten, Grade1, and Grade2. Each grade has spelling and basic math. Khan Academy (free): Free classes on various subjects. The topics include: K-12 math, science (such as biology, chemistry, and physics), finance, history, test prep (GMAT, CAHSEE, SAT math, etc). The level of the courses ranges from elementary school to college. Any student will be able to find somethingStraight A Back To School Apps Stack the States ($0.99): Learn US states via interactive games Stack the Countries ($1.99): Learn world geography while playing games NOVA Elements (free): Learn periodic table with multi-media materials, such as short videos, pictures, 3D models, and games. SplashMath ($9.99): comprehensive math app that is linked to US standard curriculum. Mathemagics – Mental math tricks ($0.99): teaches little tricks on how to do math quickly Mindsnacks Spanish (initial download is free with one level, $4.99 for the whole package with 50 levels): Learn Spanish with fun. Ice is Nice – Cat in the Hat Learning Library ($5.99): Learn animals and geography of North and South Poles. It is for kids aged 5-10. ABCmouse.com: Grand Canyon (free): Kids 4 and up will learn everything about Grand Canyon, following ABCmouse. Horton Hatches the Egg ($4.99): Another Dr.Seuss's book app designed for pre-school and kindergarteners. Biography Comics (free for the first 3 books, $29.99 for all 29 books): 29 biographies in comics, including Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, Steven Spielberg, Warren Buffett, ... It is for kids 8 and older. Cool to be Clever (free): kids 6 and up who can read chapter-books will learn the story of Edson Hendricks and how he invented "connectionless" network design that is used in today's Internet. Brush of Truth ($1.99): A book app written for children age 8-12. It is a book app that the readers get to decide how the story unfolds... FeelElectric (free): designed for kids 6 and older, this app teaches kids recognize different emotions and express emotions with words Be Confident in Who You Are ($2.99): a graphic novel targeted at kids 8-14 years old. It addresses topics such as self-consciousness, stress, bullying, fitting in, body image, and sticky issues in friendships. All these issues are presented in an age appropriate manner.
My Beastly ABCs comes to the iPhone
My Beastly ABCs debuted in the App Store at the end of last year and was an instant hit. The interactive storybook teaches kids their ABCs as they follow a boy (and some monsters) throughout a day. Available initially for the iPad, Duncan Studio recently released an update that brings this educational tool to the iPhone. The iPhone version of My Beastly ABCs mirrors the iPad version, but is scaled for the iPhone's smaller landscape screen. The illustrations in My Beastly ABCS are eye-catching and the narration by Jim Dale is top notch. Some of the navigation elements are a bit small, especially on the iPhone, and the letters sometime take a back seat to the story, but that's what the parents are for. Sit down with your child, help them learn as they make their way through the tale and enjoy some quality time together. My Beastly ABCs is available as a universal app and costs US$2.99 from the iOS App Store.
Daily iPad App: Sun by Discover Kids is a star-studded look at our Sun
The sun is one of the most important stars in our galaxy. It gives us light, enables the growth of plants, is a source of energy and is the cornerstone of our calendar. To learn more about this spectacular star, you should check out the Sun By Kids Discover app. The iPad app features interactive 3D models as well as audio and HD video to teach you about the sun. You'll learn the difference between the solstice and the equinox and follow the steps as a star is born. The app is packed full of stunning photos, clever animations and easy-to-read trivia about the sun. Think you are an expert ? Then test your knowledge using the puzzles, quizzes and games included in the app. There is even an activities section that teaches you how to study the sun in real life. The Sun By Kids Discover app is available for US$3.99 from the iOS App Store. It is compatible with the iPad and requires iOS 5.0 or later.
LightUp electronic blocks and AR app teaches kids circuitry basics (hands-on)
There are plenty of kits out there designed to help kids learn the ins and outs of electronics, but LightUp hopes to stand out from the crowd with not just easy-to-use building blocks but an accompanying augmented reality app as well. From resistors and LED modules to light sensors, each block represents a real component that can be attached to each other via magnetic connectors, hopefully creating a circuit in the process. LightUp even offers an Arduino-compatible microcontroller block to help kids start coding -- clip the programming wand to the block, hook it up to your computer, and away you go. What really sets LightUp apart is the aforementioned AR app. Simply snap a picture of your circuit, and the software will let you know what's wrong with it if there's a mistake. If everything's working, it'll display an electrical flow animation atop the picture, showing kids the magic of electricity. We had a go at creating a circuit ourselves, and were delighted at how easy it was. The connectors fit in either direction, and can be attached and reattached with ease. We also saw a brief demo of the prototype application, and sure enough, it showed us when an LED block was placed backwards with an error message -- you can see it in action in the video below.
Daily iPad App: NASA's Earth As Art shows us our beautiful planet
NASA has a series of excellent educational iOS apps that appeal to adults and kids alike. Most have a strong scientific bent, but if you lean more towards art than science, NASA has an iPad app for you, too. Mixing a little bit of earth and planetary science with a keen eye for art, NASA has created its Earth As Art app, an iPad title that shows off the unseen beauty of our planet. NASA's Earth As Art app picks the best images of Earth from the Terra, Landsat 5, Landsat 7, EO-1 and Aqua satellites. It also adds in some choice photos from the USGS Landsat image gallery. The satellites used to take these photos can measure light outside the visible range. The resulting images show you the Earth as you have never seen it before. The images are presented in gallery format, allowing you to see a thumbnail of each stunning photograph. You can also switch to list format, which is sorted by geographical location. When viewing an image, you can pinch and zoom to look closely at a specific section. Each image has a brief and only slightly scientific description that you can access by tapping on the "i" in the corner. You may not understand the scientific reasons why each photo looks the way it does, but this is an art-centric app. You are expected to sit back and enjoy the images, not necessarily dissect them. Besides stunning images, the app also has a several time-lapse photos that show changes in a specific location. I particularly enjoyed the Dubai series that shows the creation of its artificial palm islands and the rapid development of the area. The changes in just a short 11 years is unbelievable. The NASA Earth As Art app is available for free. It's an iPad app and requires iOS 4.3 or later.
LeapFrog's LeapReader pen teaches reading and writing, on sale in July for $50
With its latest device, LeapFrog's continuing to fight the good fight: teaching kids essential skills through the power of consumer electronics. LeapReader's a sort of spiritual successor to the company's Tag line, maintaining the reading tool's pen-like form factor, while adding writing to the equation. The device continues to read out words and sentences, adding in the ability to trace letters and write them out on its special paper. LeapReader encourages kids to trace the lines of letters and then try things on their own, after a couple of goes. The pen's got enough space to hold 40 books or 175 songs, which can be played through an on-board speaker or via a headphone jack on top -- and you can also play books purchased for your Tag device. Interested parties will be able to pre-order the $50 LeapReader on June 12th. It'll be hitting retail locations and LeapFrog's site early the following month, with a few months to spare before back to school rolls around. The pen's targeted toward kids aged four to eight (and, thankfully, is designed to only write on designated books) and will come in pink and green. Check out a demo video of the device after the break.%Gallery-187119%
Adafruit debuts Circuit Playground: a show teaching kids about electronics (video)
Programs have a certain magic power over littluns, sending them into a trance-like state and then having them beg for merchandise afterwards. The perpetual tinkerers over at Adafruit don't expect you to catch 'em all, though, and have debuted their own show called Circuit Playground -- an educational YouTube series teaching kids about electronics. In the first episode, we learn all about Amperes and are introduced to our hosts: a free-willed human and ADABOT, a charming puppet presenter (just don't tell them that). Following the letters of the alphabet, expect 25 more installments and, if the intro sequence is any indication, a bunch of component-based characters to keep the sprogs interested. If you need 3 minutes and 50 seconds of peace and quiet, or just want to brush up on the basics yourself, head past the break for the first episode. Next time on Circuit Playground: "B is for Battery."
Daily iPhone App: 7 Little Words for Kids is a well-made word game for youngsters
I'm a big fan of 7 Little Words, a word game that's different from the rest, in that you need to simply figure out vocabulary clues and match up syllables rather than playing Scrabble yet again or lining up letters. Now, the app's creator has returned with a version for children called (surprise) 7 Little Words for Kids. As you'd imagine, the Kids' version is a bit more colorful and easier than the serene and challenging original, but it offers the same very addictive and rewarding gameplay of being given clues for just seven little words, and then assembling a collection of syllables up to form them. The Kids' app features a number of themed stages, colors up the characters a little bit and offers stars as a reward to open up different worlds, but none of these changes are annoying, and all of them should help the game appeal to children. Plus, I couldn't imagine a better-designed game for kids to play -- there are zero ads or in-app purchases in the app, which is very notable considering how successful Seven Little Words has been with IAP. The devs really went out of their way here to make sure this app was kid-friendly and parent-approved, and while I don't have kids of my own, this is one that I'd make sure was in their hands on a long car trip or plane ride. The one qualm I have with the app was that it wasn't formatted correctly on my iPhone 5's longer screen -- again, I'm not sure how you release an app these day without making sure it works on that display. But despite that small issue, 7 Little Words for Kids is a great app for just US$0.99, and a must-buy if you've got some young minds around looking to boost their vocabularies.
Daily iPhone app: Dr. Smith's Music Factory
Here's an iPhone app that's great for kids just learning about music. Dr. Smith's Music Factory, (free) listens as you hum or whistle a tune and then composes music around it. You can also touch icons if you don't want to rely on your ability to carry a tune. Here's how it works. You select a mood. So far, Sweet and Funny are supported. You hum, whistle, tap on the screen or randomly shake the phone to create notes. After a few seconds, the song is composed. If you save it, you can then share it with friends or family via mail, MMS, Facebook or Twitter. %Gallery-177840% The app isn't sophisticated in terms of giving you a lot of control. That's not what it is for, but I suspect it will keep young people entertained as they try to come up with some worthwhile "compositions." The app looks like it is set up to offer some more options soon, like additional moods or orchestrations, which will probably be available via an in-app purchase. As it is, this is a clever app that should engage the youngsters in your life. The app is optimized for the iPhone 5 and requires iOS 6 or later.
Butlers, lunar rovers, snakes and airboats: the best of Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute
How was your week? We got to spend a couple of days trekking around the Carnegie Mellon campus in Pittsburgh, PA to check out some of the latest projects from the school's world renowned Robotics Institute -- a trip that culminated with the bi-annual induction ceremony from the CMU-sponsored Robot Hall of Fame. Given all the craziness of the past seven days, you might have missed some of the awesomeness, but fear not, we've got it all for you here in one handy place -- plus a couple of videos from the trip that we haven't shown you yet. Join us after the break to catch up.
New iBooks Author supports LaTeX and MathML
LaTeX is document markup system (similar to the popular Markdown) that's popular among high-level academia and mathematics authors. iBooks Author 2, which was released during Apple's big event, now supports the LaTeX protocol. It works through the MathML markup language, which a lot of educational textbooks often use for marking up and displaying complex mathematical equations and formulas. In other words, iBooks Author has gained significant functionality for working together with a markup language already used by education professionals, mathematics authors and students. That fits right in line with Apple intentions for iBooks Author, namely the creation of academic documents for college curriculums and classes. That's good news for anyone who commonly uses this language, as they can now load up iBooks Author and continue their work there. This is a small, very technical change, that accomplishes Apple's mission of making this software work for the systems already being used to create higher education texts. [via Michael Tsai]
Message from Me offers dispatches from early education, we go eyes-on (video)
What do you get when you attach a point-and-shoot, display, microphone, RFID reader and a bunch of big buttons to a clear plastic box and stick it all in a classroom with a bunch of three- to five-year-olds? Carnegie Mellon's CREATE Lab calls the creation Message from Me. It's a way of engaging early education students with technology, developing language and social skills and helping keep parents abreast of their school day activities. The tool encourages kids to record a thought or take a picture and send it to a parent by pulling a card with their face on it down from the wall and scanning on the RFID reader. Parents can get updates via text message or email from kids who are often unable to pass along such information at the end of the day. According to the lab, the machines have already been installed in nearly a dozen schools in the Pittsburgh area -- and from the looks of the boxes on the floor in the CREATE Lab, plenty more are on the way.%Gallery-169260%
Brøderbund's Living Books return for iPad via Wanderful
Some of you may not remember the early 1990s. Heck, some of you probably weren't born yet in the early 1990s. But for Mac users of a certain vintage, it was an exciting time. The growing popularity of CD-ROM drives paired with Mac II-series machines (did the IIci really cost over $6,200 at introduction? Criminy) made for engaging, inventive multimedia applications on the platform. Among the best of these multimedia experiences -- the young-kid equivalent of Cyan's revolutionary Myst immersive world, which is now back as an iPad app -- was the Living Books series from Brøderbund. The Living Books took children's picture stories (Mercer Meyer's Just Grandma and Me, Marc Brown's Arthur's Teacher Trouble and several Dr. Seuss books) and transformed them into clickable, lovingly animated and narrated environments. Kids (and eager grownups) could listen to the story read all the way through, or take control and play inside each page of the virtual book. Objects onscreen reacted to clicks with individualized sounds, motion or transformation; even the narration, delivered in multiple languages, was broken down word by word. This let new readers explore and absorb at their own individual paces. Trust me when I say that they were all kinds of awesome. Or, you know, you could skip the whole trusting me thing and just find out for yourself. These classic children's applications (in both the "great and old" and the "ran on pre-OS X versions of Mac OS" senses of the word "classic") are making a return to the market in the form of iPad apps. The original content may have been developed two decades ago, but the experience is brand-new -- and certainly almost all the target audience of early readers will be experiencing the Living Books for the first time. The new Living Books, which preserve the animation and narration of the originals while adding teacher's guides and other enhancements, are available from Wanderful Interactive Storybooks. Current titles for iOS include The Tortoise and the Hare, Arthur's Teacher Trouble, Little Monster at School and the just-released Harry and the Haunted House. (The iOS version of Just Grandma and Me currently available from Oceanhouse Media is not the original Living Books version, much to the chagrin of App Store shoppers.) Versions for Mac OS, Windows and Android are in the works, as are other titles from the Living Books library. Wanderful's mission to restore access to these landmark titles is a labor of love. When Brøderbund was acquired in the late '90s, the rights to the original Living Books began to bounce from corporate owner to corporate owner. They eventually landed with publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which maintained the rights to the software titles; the author agreements, however, had lapsed. Many companies might have given up the effort to recover the rights at that point. In this case, however, Wanderful founder Mickey W. Mantle -- the early '90s-era CTO at Brøderbund who managed the development of the original Living Books -- pressed on, and eventually obtained most of the author agreements needed to bring back Living Books. Nearing retirement after a decade-plus stint at Gracenote, Mantle recruited several former Brøderbund colleagues to rebuild the Living Books content for a new, more flexible platform. In the process of "getting the band back together," Mantle approached Mark Schlichting, the illustrator and creative director who invented the original Living Books products. Schlichting (a father of three grown sons and now grandfather to three young kids) came back to the project with the insistence that the new iOS Living Books not be simple reproductions of the originals; he wanted to see them enhanced and improved to stand with the best children's apps available today. I had the opportunity to meet both Schlichting and Mantle at this weekend's Mac Computer Expo in Petaluma, Calif. It's clear from their enthusiasm and pride in their apps that this band of software veterans is ready to tackle the App Store. Sure, the Living Books are about as far from sleek, tightly rendered Retina-quality graphics as you could possibly get. The effort and care that went into their original versions, however, is still evident in the restorations that you can download and run 20 years later. Each Living Books title is US$4.99 in a single-language version; a premium edition that includes all languages plus a teaching guide is $7.99 (languages can also be added to the single-language version via IAP for $1.99). If you are looking for apps to enhance your child's love of reading, the Living Books are a sure thing.
Raspberry Pi's new turbo mode boosts performance by roughly 50 percent, doesn't void warranties
Giving a Raspberry Pi extra voltage is a quick way to squeeze out additional processing power and void its warranty, but the folks behind the tinker-friendly board have devised a turbo mode that boosts performance by roughly 50 percent while keeping warranties intact. After studying the effects of temperature and voltage on the hardware's lifespan, the team found that dynamic overclocking and overvolting doesn't affect the Pi's health appreciably. As a result, speeds can be pushed from 700MHz to 1GHz only when additional horsepower is needed, and things are reined back in when the CPU grazes 185 degrees Fahrenheit (85 degrees Celsius). Benchmarks show the extra computing oomph makes the Pi 52 percent faster on integer, 64 percent speedier on floating point and 55 percent snappier on memory tasks. The new mode is available in the latest firmware update, which also includes temperature and frequency widgets, better analog audio, improved USB performance and support for WiFi dongles out of the box. For the technical nitty-gritty and more details on the upgrade, hit the source link below.
Sifteo Cubes go next-generation, square gaming gets more portable (update)
It's hard to believe, but Sifteo's interactive gaming Cubes first went on sale just over a year ago. Fast forward to the present, and the company has unveiled version two of the MIT-born blocks. If you'll recall, the 1.7-inch squares let you play interactive table-top games, each featuring a 1.5-inch LCD screen, motion sensing and wireless connectivity. With this next-gen variant, Sifteo's improved the graphics, added capacitive touch to the screen (the original acted like a physical button) and doubled the amount of Cubes that can interact at once to 12. The V2 Cubes also come packed with a dedicated, AAA-powered, wireless base station / speaker that stores your titles, sparing the need for a computer to play as was the case with the originals -- an onboard USB port allows downloaded files to be transferred from your computers. Developers looking to create content for the device will also pleased to know that Sifteo's releasing its next SDK on October 1st. Ready for some tangibly-cute Cube gameplay? Pre-orders begin today at Sifteo's website, priced at $130 for 3 Cubes with a base station and five games, and $30 for each additional cube. They're set to ship in November, so in the meantime you'll find details in the video demo and press release after the break. %Gallery-163853% Update: For those curious, we've learned that the original Cubes are not compatible with the new ones, but Sifteo has emailed owners with a $50 voucher that they can use toward upgrading.
Why I Play: EVE Online
Sci-fi MMO EVE Online is possibly the most polarising online game in existence. It has some of the genre's most loyal fans and spawns some of its biggest news stories, but most people just can't stand the user interface and gameplay. It's been called boring, overcomplicated, and a griefer's paradise, but even those who don't play it often still watch from the sidelines as each insane story of theft or corruption emerges from the sandbox. Most games can only keep my attention for a few months at a time, but somehow I've played EVE for over eight and a half years. I've heard it said that EVE is a long-term commitment, a statement I find hard to argue with as at only 26 years old I've been playing EVE almost continuously for a third of my life. It's not just been a game to me; at times it's been a way of life, a refuge from stress, a way to stay in touch with friends, and even a place to learn skills that can apply to the real world. Thanks to Massively, my attachment to EVE has even grown from a hobby to a career in writing and games journalism. I've had numerous periods of low activity in EVE and even quit for months at a time, but something always brings me back to the world's biggest sci-fi sandbox. In this article, I look back at what drew me to EVE initially, some of the unusual factors that have kept me playing EVE over the past eight years, and the reason I'm still motivated to subscribe to this day.
Lexibook kids-tablet coming to the US, makes fifth-graders dream of an Aakash
French educational tech maker Lexibook is bringing its eponymous kiddy-tablet to the US from next month. It's not talking specs or price, but we're expecting it to be close to the Lexibook First currently available in Europe. The seven-inch slate packs a 600MHz processor, 256MB RAM, 4GB storage (expandable to 16GB with an microSD card), parental controls and 802.11 b/g WiFi. The FroYo-running device retails for £150 ($237) over the pond, but if the company tries something similar over here, we suspect people might plump for something a little more powerful, or less expensive, or both.
PSA: Google's 3D City View and Tour Guide arrives for Google Earth on iOS today
Google's 3D City View is now available on iOS. The Google Earth update adds three-dimensional imagery to major locations including Washington D.C, San Francisco and Boston. It's arriving alongside Tour Guide; select a notable attraction to go straight to it, with accompanying trivia you can bore your friends with later. Sadly 3D maps requires the processing hardware of the iPhone 4S, iPad 2 or the third-generation iPad, but other iOS (4.2 or higher) device users can still get access to Tour Guide. Unsurprisingly, the update's available via the App Store -- but you shouldn't need a map to find your way there.
New child-friendly Vinci Tab II 'M' is smaller, lighter, cheaper
If your Vinci II tablet was working out your children's arms, more than their minds, then fear not. The makers have just announced the arrival of a new, lighter "M" model. The 5-inch kiddie slate is compatible with the Vinci Curriculum and Kids library apps, and keeps the option for Parent Mode for when Dad wants to check the football scores via the Android-based OS. Designed for users kids on the go, the tablets can also be networked for some little-LAN action. It's still the same 1.2 GHz A8 Cortex running the show, but if you thought that smaller screen might mean more battery, then sadly you're mistaken, with the company's own website estimating just four hours of junior-fun -- half that of the larger version. That said, up for pre-order at $169 ($80 less than the 7-incher) maybe that's enough to soften the already rubberized blow.
