As developers for tablets and smartphones we like to keep abreast of the latest mobile technology developments . This is a daily digest of mobile development and related technology news gathered from the BBC, the New York Times, New Scientist and the Globe and Mail to name a few. We scour the web for articles concerning, iPhone, iPad and android development, iOS and android operating systems as well as general articles on advances in mobile technology. We hope you find this useful and that it helps to keep you up to date with the latest technology developments.
Alamo Drafthouse In Dallas/Fort Worth To Show 'Team America' Instead Of 'The Interview'
Sony may have pulled “The Interview” in wake of hacker threats, but at least one movie theater isn’t letting North Korea off the hook. The Alamo Drafthouse is planning to run “Team America: World Police” in its place at its Dallas/Forth Worth location.
“We’re just trying to make the best of an unfortunate situation,” creative manager and programmer James Wallace of the Richardson, Tex., theater told The Hollywood Reporter.
The 2004 musical by “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone features an all-puppet cast, with a puppet version of North Korea’s then-dictator Kim Jong Il as its foul-mouthed main villain.
(NOTE: The clips in this piece, and some of the text below, contain NSFW language.)
On its website for the event, the Alamo Drafthouse is promising to turn the movie into both a singalong and a quote-a-long:
“We’ll have subtitles for all the songs and all of our favorite quotes, so you’ll have plenty of opportunities to scream out ‘AMERICA! FUCK YEAH!’ at the top of your lungs. And yeah, we will have American flags, red white and blue streamers, balloons, and more for everyone. And THAT is how true American heroes will be celebrating this year, but if you want to let the terrorists win…well, that’s your prerogative.”
North Korea had no official reaction to “Team America,” at the time. Kim died in 2011, leaving his son — and “The Interview” target — Kim Jong Un in charge.
His regime has been angry over “The Interview” since Sony began promoting it earlier this year. The U.S. government has linked the Sony hack attack to Pyongyang.
The Dallas/Forth Worth Alamo Drafthouse in Richardson, Tex., will show “Team America: World Police” on Dec. 27 at 7 p.m.
(h/t Mediaite)
FBI Warned Theaters Of Potential Cyberattacks Over 'The Interview'
BOSTON, Dec 17 (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation released a warning on Tuesday, advising theaters and other businesses associated with Sony Corp’s Hollywood studio’s film “The Interview” that they could be targeted in cyberattacks.
The private document, which was obtained by Reuters, said that “anyone associated with the production, distribution and promotion” of the film “could possibly become the target of cyberattacks.”
Sony Pictures Entertainment pulled the film from its planned Dec. 25 release on Wednesday after top U.S. movie theater chains canceled plans to show it in the wake of a devastating hack at the Hollywood studio and threats on Tuesday of further attacks if it were shown. (Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
Sprint facing fines for charging customers for unwanted services
Mobile phone service provider Sprint could be facing a fine of as high as $105 million or other disciplinary actions from the FCC after a study by the agency concluded that the carrier was willfully participating in a practice called “cramming,” in which users are often tricked into signing up for “premium” services (such as ringtones or special messages) from a third-party, which then adds monthly charges to the user’s bill. Like AT&T and T-Mobile before it, Sprint has run afoul of authorities for taking a cut of these scams, and thus having an incentive to allow them to continue, despite cus
Obama On Sony Hack: People Should 'Go To The Movies'
President Barack Obama says that threats by the hackers responsible for the attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment shouldn’t deter Americans from going to movie theaters over the holidays.
In an interview with ABC News airing Wednesday, Obama said his administration is taking the breach seriously, but that moviegoers should feel safe.
“Well, the cyberattack is very serious,” Obama said. “We’re investigating it. We’re taking it seriously. You know, we’ll be vigilant. If we see something that we think is serious and credible, then we’ll alert the public. But for now, my recommendation would be that people go to the movies.”
Last month, anonymous hackers breached Sony’s servers and began to release a series of document caches obtained from the company’s computer system. The leaks included a number of sensitive emails and files, including employee Social Security numbers, salary information and film scripts. The attack is believed to be in retaliation for “The Interview,” a comedy about an attempt to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
U.S. officials have reportedly determined determined that North Korea is behind the cyberattack.
On Tuesday, the hackers threatened individuals going to see “The Interview,” invoking the September 11 terrorist attacks. The threat prompted several major movie theater companies to pull the film. On Wednesday, Sony canceled the film’s Christmas Day release and said it had “no further” plans to release it.
Mitt Romney, Obama’s Republican rival in the 2012 presidential campaign, also addressed the threats, urging Sony to make “The Interview” available for free online:
.@SonyPictures don’t cave, fight: release @TheInterview free online globally. Ask viewers for voluntary $5 contribution to fight #Ebola.
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) December 18, 2014
U.S. Officials Determine North Korea Is Behind Sony Hack: Reports
U.S. officials have determined that hackers working for North Korea are behind the Sony Pictures Entertainment attack, multiple news outlets reported Wednesday.
According to NBC, the hack originated outside of North Korea, but appears to have been carried out by individuals working for the North Korean government.
Sony began working with law enforcement earlier this month following the November breach on the entertainment company’s servers by anonymous hackers. The hack resulted in the leak of many sensitive emails and documents, including film scripts. The attack was believed to be in retaliation for the release of “The Interview,” a comedy about an assassination attempt on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un starring Seth Rogen and James Franco.
While officials told the AP and CNN that an announcement would come in the near future, The New York Times reports that the White House is still weighing how it will respond to the attack:
Senior administration officials, who would not speak on the record about the intelligence findings, said the White House was still debating whether to publicly accuse North Korea of what amounts to a cyberterrorism campaign.
…
Officials said it was not clear how the White House would decide to respond to North Korea. Some within the Obama administration argue that the government of Mr. Kim must be directly confronted, but that raises the question of what consequences the administration would threaten — or how much of its evidence it could make public without revealing details of how the United States was able to penetrate North Korean computer networks to trace the source of the hacking.
The FBI, who is leading the investigation into the Sony hack, warned theaters and other businesses associated with the film that they could be targeted by cyberattacks.
Earlier Wednesday, Sony announced it was canceling plans to release the film on Christmas Day after the nation’s largest movie theater chains said it would pull the film from their screens due to threats by the hackers invoking 9/11.
“In light of the decision by the majority of our exhibitors not to show the film The Interview, we have decided not to move forward with the planned December 25 theatrical release,” the film studio said in a statement. “We respect and understand our partners’ decision and, of course, completely share their paramount interest in the safety of employees and theater-goers.”
A Sony representative later said the company has “no further release plans” for the film.
This is a developing story and has been updated.
14 Nerdy Gift Ideas For The Star Wars Fanatic In Your Life
As Jabba the Hutt might say, bargon wan chee kospah ooh (“There will be no bargain!”). But don’t let that stop you from getting something nice for the Star Wars fan in your life this holiday season.
Now’s the perfect time to buy your Star Wars items. Anticipation for the next film, “The Force Awakens,” is high following the release of a teaser trailer. But it’s not as high it will be next Christmas, when the movie will have just been released.
There are perhaps as many bits of Star Wars merchandise as there are planets in the galaxy far, far away, but we’ve found a little something for everyone.
EU Bureaucrats Want to Dictate What Content Americans Can View on U.S.-Based Websites
Freedom of speech suffered a serious blow when, last May, the European Union’s highest court, in the so-called “Right to be Forgotten” decision, ruled that Google must remove search results that infringe individual citizens’ privacy rights under EU law. A first amendment red line had been crossed. A major publisher of information — which is what Google, in its search business, most emphatically is — had been directed by government authorities to censor its content.
But the impact on free speech could soon get much worse. Google has received over 186,000 requests for deletion of search results and has agreed to approximately 40 percent of those requests. It has complied with Right to be the Forgotten ruling by removing search results and links on the foreign language versions of the Google search engine serving EU member countries. (google.fr, google.de, google.it, etc.). Not from Google search engines worldwide, however; and most significantly, not from the English language version of Google seen in the US (google.com).
But the EU now says that’s not enough.
In new guidelines, the region’s privacy regulatory body interprets the Right to be Forgotten ruling as requiring Google, when removing search results and links, to remove them from all of the company’s search sites worldwide. “Limiting de-listing to EU domains . . .cannot be considered a sufficient means to satisfactorily guarantee the rights of data subjects according to the (Right to be Forgotten) ruling,” the guidelines declare. “In practice, this means that . . . de-listing should also be effective on all relevant domains, including .com.”
That is a big step, one that even China, the master of internet censorship, has never taken. While China’s “Great Firewall” prevents Chinese citizens from accessing numerous websites based abroad — like FaceBook, most Google services, Twitter and the Wall Street Journal, to name some of the biggest — it does not try to block you or me from using those websites or to limit what we can see on those websites.
Of course the Chinese government cares not at all about protecting the privacy interests of its people, which is what the Right to be Forgotten is about. The EU version of internet censorship, because of its relatively benign motivation, may seem to pose at most a minor threat to free speech. That, however, is a grave miscalculation.
That the EU, or any foreign government, can dictate what Americans may read on U.S.-based websites is an alarming prospect. Although the Right to be Forgotten ruling, to date, may have affected content that is mostly trivial, the precedent of governmental censorship across borders, once established, can’t be easily confined to information that society doesn’t much care about.
If bureaucrats in Belgium have the power to force Google’s removal, worldwide, of links to a Spanish citizen’s 10-year-old record of an arrest for marijuana possession, then they also have the power to purge all search engine links — including on the English language version of Google — to a Mother Jones magazine story about corrupt EU banks, or articles on Wired about EU members’ collaboration with NSA’s mass surveillance of European internet and phone traffic.
The assault on first amendment safeguards consists of the exercise, by a foreign sovereign nation, of extra-territorial censorship–specifically, to deny US citizens access to information on US-based websites, accomplished through removal of links on Google (and other search engines) and, in some cases, removal of the linked content itself from the publishing website.
It is one thing for a foreign nation to limit what its own citizens can find on the internet. It is quite another for that country to dictate what Americans can see on the internet.
Extra-territorial censorship, a new phenomenon, is a form of governmental extortion made possible by the internet and the global reach of information businesses. Google is particularly vulnerable due to its size and the importance of particular foreign markets. Google can’t risk being excluded from the huge EU market. It’s share of EU internet search stands at about 85 percent, nearly three times as big as Google’s share of the China internet search market at its highest, before Google withdrew from direct competition inside China.
The U.S. government has been on the sidelines of Google’s battles with the EU (which is also pressing an antitrust investigation against Google). Relations between Google and the Obama administration have chilled considerably as a result of revelations about the excesses of US intelligence agencies (which, quite apart from their harm to civil liberties, have hurt Google’s business with foreign customers).
But the issue of foreign government censorship of Google — and through it, of the myriad U.S.-based news and content businesses to which Google links — cries out for U.S. government push-back against the EU. The administration has a responsibility both to protect American sovereignty and to assure that the first amendment’s guarantee of a free and independent press does not become a casualty of globalization.
–
Peter Scheer, a lawyer and journalist, is executive director of the First Amendment Coalition. The views expressed here are his alone; they do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the FAC Board of Directors.
'Serial' Gets The Perfect Finale In This Funny Or Die Parody
But, who did it?!
That’s the only thing on “Serial” fans’ minds these days, since the podcast that took over the Internet will air its final episode on Thursday. In a new video fromFunny or Die, former “SNL” cast member Michaela Watkins stars as Sarah Koenig, obsessed with finding out who killed Hae Min Lee in 1999. “I don’t know anything!” she says.
Oh, but look! There are the executives from Mail Chimp! “This child murder has been really great for Mail Krimp,” they say.
Koenig, in real life, has said that we may not get a “Hollywood ending” out of the podcast, but in this video, we do.
VIDEO: US navy develops 'fish' robot
The US military has been showing off its latest catch.
Growing the Next Generation of African Coders
Everyone’s talking about it. It’s the topic of the moment. I’m doing it right now. Even President Obama’s doing it.
It’s learning to code. codeX is doing it in Africa. Our mission is to train 100,000 African developers (or more) in the next 10 years (or less).
Why?
Africa is home to 200 million young people, soon to be the largest working age population in the world. Less than a third will graduate from high school and only 12% will get any sort of tertiary education.
At the same time, Africa’s billion people are getting online faster than you can say “hit me on Whatsapp.” The number of Nigerians on Facebook doubles every quarter. Kenya has one of the highest tweeting populations in the world. Check out Chief Kariuki’s Twitter stream!
So who is going to build Africa’s digital economy? It has to be Africans, because they know what the rising consumer class wants and what problems need to be solved. They also know how to solve them, once they have the tools. And at the moment, far too few do.
I’m writing this sitting in a computer lab in Kayamandi, a township of mainly informal shacks, outside of Stellenbosch. It’s only a 10 minute drive from Spier Wine Farm, where I’ve spent the last 3 incredible days at the first WPP Stream Africa, talking with and learning from some of the world’s most talented humans. Everyone there showed incredible support for codeX, and voted for us to win The Pitch, the last major event of the (very) un-conference.
Sixteen hours after I stood onstage talking about how codeX addresses the Pitch brief for a social enterprise that tackles youth unemployment and empowerment, I’m watching Lindani Pani, one of the coders from our codeX pilot, mentor a group of young would-be coders through the Javascript course on Codecademy. The course is in English, but he’s advising them mainly in Xhosa, and they are flying through the modules. They don’t want to leave when the elderly staffer comes to lock up. And when she finds out they are learning “how to control the computer,” she asks me if she can come to the next session too.
Running Open Days is part of our recruitment strategy to find the best talent, no matter where they come from. We’ve partnered with libraries and non-profits in some of Cape Town’s poorest areas to give computer access and mentors for free to people who want to learn coding basics, and we’ll take the stars into codeX in 2015. (We also have a crowdfunding campaign to run a 2 week bootcamp in January specifically for girls, because they are much harder to recruit.)
Lindani took a minibus taxi here from his home in Khayelitsha, another township nearby, where more than a million people live. Three months ago, Lindani was working as a salesman at a big box store, making $300 a month that he used to (just barely) feed his twin sons. He is one of the few who had a job at all. He had never seen a line of code, but he knew that computers could be controlled from taking a PC networking course at a local computer training center called Silulo Ulutho. And he wanted to learn how to do it.
In the last 12 weeks, Lindani has built a personal website, a blog, an app to manage money in group saving collectives known locally as stokvels, and an app to increase transparency and efficiency in minibus taxis–since he uses one every day. Working in teams, using agile methods, he’s learned to code, but he’s also learned to learn — about user experience, about business models, and importantly, about his own learning experience itself. Today, he’s already passing what he’s learned onto another 6 young people from the surrounding shacks who showed up on a Saturday to learn to code.
In South Africa, a starting salary for a junior developer is about $1000 per month, and it goes up exponentially from there. So once Lindani finishes codeX, he’s looking at about a 300% salary increase, just for starters.
And that’s if he decides to go work for someone else at all. His real ambition is to start a company doing development work for other people, because he knows that while there are a whole lot of great ideas on the continent, there are not nearly enough people who can execute them. Yet.
But what if there were an oversupply of developers in Africa?
What problems could be solved once people are armed with the technological tools to solve them?
Perhaps an app for informal moneylenders, the main source of accessing capital for most Africans, to track lending and borrowing? Perhaps a logistics management tool for health care workers delivering AIDS medicines around informal settlements? Perhaps a website to reduce corruption in the construction industry?
Those are just a few of the prototypes our coders have already built. And that’s 8 of them in the first 3-month pilot (which we had 800 applications for).
Imagine what 100,000 could do.
We need your support to do it. Please get in touch if you want to get involved.
@lsabeth3
@project_codeX
AMC Theatres Tests Out Movie-A-Day Subscription For $45
Call it Netflix, but for movie screenings.
AMC Theatres will begin testing a subscription service next month that will allow subscribers to attend one film per day without paying for a ticket, the company announced on Tuesday.
The service will cost up to $45 per month, and will only be available in Boston and Denver during the initial trial period. To create the service, AMC Theatres partnered with MoviePass, which helps create subscription packages for theaters. The new service will be called MoviePass Premium.
AMC Theatres operates 4,959 screens in the United States, which makes it the second-largest theater chain in the country. But the company has faced dwindling audiences in recent years, which has forced it to try new ways of getting people in seats.
“This pilot will provide more convenience for our guests, and responds to the preferences of many consumers for monthly subscriptions such as music and magazines, which we believe will increase the frequency of movie going,” Christina Sternberg, AMC’s senior vice president of corporate strategy and communications, said in a statement.
Like the music and print magazine industries, movie theaters are struggling. The share of Americans who attended at least one screening this year held steady at 77 percent, but the number of films the average person saw in theaters dropped to 7.3 from 7.7 last year, according to the Nielsen 2014 Moviegoing Report released last week.
Young people led the decline. Since 2007, moviegoing has become steadily less popular among people ages 12-24. This year, people in this age group saw an average of 7.1 movies in theaters, compared with 8.4 in 2013.
The number of people ages 12-24 attending movies has steadily fallen off since 2007.
AMC’s main way of responding to that trend has been to increase prices. In the third quarter of this year, AMC jacked up its average ticket price to $9.48, a 5.3 percent spike, according to The New York Times.
At that price, film buffs who go see one movie a day for the entire month of January would spend $293.88. By comparison, a $45 monthly subscription sounds like an offer you can’t refuse.
AMC gets paid full price every time someone uses their Movie Pass, the Times noted. The bet is that most people won’t take full advantage of the deal. Indeed, if you wound up only seeing seven films a year, like the average American, you’d wind up shelling out $77 per movie.
Here's Every Guy You'll Meet On Tinder In Under Three Minutes
Spoiler alert: you’re probably still single.
Looking for a boyfriend in the age of Tinder has taken a lot of the pressure out of first dates. You swipe right, you choose a bar, you grab a drink and within an hour, you pretty much know if it’s going anywhere or not. But having your pick of the area’s most (and least) eligible bachelors at your fingertips can also be a bummer, especially when you realize that most of them are highly undatable.
In a new sketch from Michelle Markowitz, David Ross and Stephen Parkhurst, one woman gets to experience all the joys that Tinder has to offer, including self-indulgent jerks, cheap, crabby idiots and the one guy who you could sort of see yourself with (if he didn’t live in another state).
Sprint Sued For 'Cramming' Cell Phone Customers
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Sprint Corp over unauthorized charges on customers’ cellphone bills, a practice known as cramming, in the agency’s first foray into mobile payments.
Marking the third cramming-related government enforcement action this year, the CFPB alleges that from 2004 through 2013, the wireless carrier allowed third parties to charge consumers tens of millions of dollars for services like ringtones or text-message horoscopes that consumers had not requested, while keeping 40 percent of the gross revenue.
The Federal Communications Commission is weighing a $105 million cramming fine against Sprint.
“Sprint mistreated consumers egregiously by creating a billing system that invited illegal third-party charges and processed them in a highly irresponsible manner,” the CFPB’s director, Richard Cordray, said.
Sprint expressed disappointment in being the target of the CFPB’s lawsuit and disputed the accusations, listing various steps it said it took to monitor third-party charges, such as hiring an outside compliance vendor and vetting billing companies.
“We strongly disagree with (the CFPB’s) characterization of our business practices,” Sprint spokeswoman Stephanie Vinge Walsh said in a statement.
“It appears the CFPB has decided to use this issue as the test case on whether it has legal authority to assert jurisdiction over wireless carriers,” she said in an email.
In July, the Federal Trade Commission sued T-Mobile US Inc over similar billing issues, and in October, the FCC and the FTC settled such a case with AT&T Inc.
For the CFPB, which oversees consumer financial products such as mortgages and credit cards, Wednesday’s case marked the first public action coordinated with the FCC.
“If a company is processing payments over a mobile network, that’s something that the bureau has jurisdiction over,” the CFPB’s deputy enforcement director, Jeff Ehrlich, told reporters. “We’ll take action against anyone who violates the consumer financial protection laws.”
FCC spokespeople said the FCC and the CFPB have agreed to continue close cooperation “on this and other cases on behalf of wireless customers nationwide.”
Verizon Communications Inc is the only nationwide wireless carrier that so far has not been subject to government actions over cramming. The FCC’s investigation of T-Mobile is ongoing.
Prodded by state attorneys general, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile last year agreed to stop billing customers for third-party services.
The case is Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Sprint Corp, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 14-cv-9931.
(Reporting by Alina Selyukh; Editing by G Crosse and Leslie Adler)
Apple notifies iOS devs about Feb., June deadlines for 64-bit support
Apple has issued a new notice to developers, reminding them of two important deadlines concerning 64-bit support in iOS apps. As was previously announced, those submitting new titles to the App Store must implement 64-bit support — and use the iOS 8 SDK — by February 1st. Additionally, the company now says that updates to existing titles must meet the same standards as of June 1st.
Largest Movie Theater Companies Drop 'The Interview' (UPDATE)
UPDATE: Sony said in a statement that “The Interview” will not be released in theaters on Dec. 25.
In light of the decision by the majority of our exhibitors not to show the film The Interview, we have decided not to move forward with the planned December 25 theatrical release. We respect and understand our partners’ decision and, of course, completely share their paramount interest in the safety of employees and theater-goers.
Sony Pictures has been the victim of an unprecedented criminal assault against our employees, our customers, and our business. Those who attacked us stole our intellectual property, private emails, and sensitive and proprietary material, and sought to destroy our spirit and our morale – all apparently to thwart the release of a movie they did not like. We are deeply saddened at this brazen effort to suppress the distribution of a movie, and in the process do damage to our company, our employees, and the American public. We stand by our filmmakers and their right to free expression and are extremely disappointed by this outcome.
EARLIER: The five largest movie theater companies have dropped “The Interview” after threats from the Sony hack. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Regal Entertainment, AMC Entertainment, Cinemark and Cineplex Entertainment have joined Carmike Cinemas in pulling the film from release.
Landmark Sunshine Cinemas also canceled its New York premiere of the film, and another Northeast chain with 55 locations, Bow Tie Cinemas, decided to abandon plans to show the film following the threats. “The safety and comfort of our patrons is foremost in our minds,” Bow Tie CEO Ben Moss told Variety. It was previously reported by TheWrap that ArcLight Cinemas would not show “The Interview,” but in a statement given to The Huffington Post, a representative said that no decision has been made.
Carmike Cinemas, was first to drop “The Interview,” which is scheduled for release on Christmas Day. The decisions to pull “The Interview” come after a cyber hack against Sony Pictures threatened the theaters that showed the film. “We will clearly show it to you at the very time and places ‘The Interview’ be shown, including the premiere, how bitter fate those who seek fun in terror should be doomed to,” a note published Tuesday read.
When the threats surfaced, officials from the Department of Homeland Security told the Huffington Post that even though they were aware of the note, “there is no credible intelligence to indicate an active plot against movie theaters within the United States.”
Combined, these companies make up approximately 1,646 movie theaters in North America.
“Due to wavering support of the film ‘The Interview’ by Sony Pictures, as well as the ambiguous nature of any real or perceived security threats, Regal Entertainment Group has decided to delay the opening of the film in our theaters,” a representative for Regal said in a statement to The Huffington Post.
Representatives for Sony, as well as AMC, Cinemark and Cineplex Entertainment were not immediately available for comment. According to Variety, Sony executives have reportedly discussed releasing “The Interview” via on-demand services.
A previous version of this story stated that ArcLight Cinemas had pulled “The Interview.”
Colliding Galaxies Mount 'Spectacular Light Show' In New NASA Image
Just in time for the holidays, NASA has released a new photo showing a spectacular light show created by a pair of merging galaxies 130 million light-years from Earth.
The photo is a composite image of the spiral galaxies NGC 2207 and IC 2163, located in the constellation Canis Major.
(Story continues below image.)
Spiral galaxies NGC 2207 and IC 2163.
The image is a mash-up of X-rays captured by NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory (shown in pink), visible light data from the Hubble Space Telescope (shown in red, green, and blue), and infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope (shown in red).
What makes NGC 2207 and IC 2163 look so dazzling? Together, the galaxies are home to 28 separate “ultraluminous” X-ray sources. The X-rays they produce are more intense than those produced by most star systems.
NGC 2207 and IC 2163 were discovered by English astronomer John Herschel in 1835.
The Best Apps for Your Bright or Gifted Child
When it comes to electronics, no mother or father, or grandparent or caregiver, it seems, is immune to the often challenging, frustrating, enlightening and educational tug of war relationship their child has (daily) with the almighty smartphone, tablet or other mobile device. As a parent, we struggle with how much time we should allow our child to “play” on these brave new modes of technology. We wonder what content and types of applications we should approve for our children’s absorbent minds. We struggle with the right rules to put in place for these post-modern toys and games.
As parents of bright children, we waffle between not wanting our children to be plugged in too much and the realization that some of these systems of entertainment are actually providing our children with solid, goal-oriented problem solving skills and means of achievement not found elsewhere. It is indeed a balancing act but one that, if navigated wisely, can prove fruitful to our children and ourselves.
With the holiday season upon us, we have an opportunity to both foster our children’s love of these apps as well as provide holiday presents that are extremely low in cost. It is a win-win situation, allowing us to get our children something they will love, continue stimulating their minds in ways that allow them to fine tune their smarts in the guise of actually having fun, and it doesn’t hurt our pocket books to do so.
One important note is that apps are for all different age groups so it is important to evaluate them first before deciding if they are appropriate for your child. One way to check is to visit the Common Sense Media website which provides ratings on a variety of scales regarding the suitability of apps (along with movies, books, TV. shows and video games).
Here are some great ideas to get you going providing something for every kind of budding child from the curious scientist to the prodigy mathematician to the creative artist to the meticulous engineer:
1. Animoto – an app that turns photos into professional videos with the addition of music and text.
2. NASA – an app for following NASA videos, mission information and latest news while exploring over 13,000 images from the archives of space.
3. Simple Physics – an app for designing and simulating structures like tree houses and carnival rides.
4. SketchBook Pro - an app for unleashing creativity on the screen as if it were a canvas: draw, paint, sketch the imagination into fruition.
5. Trainyard - an app for strategizing the drawing of puzzle-like train tracks in order to get colored trains to their corresponding stations.
6. Words With Friends – Scrabble-like tile word game that can be played with friends over mobile applications.
7. Wikipanion - an app giving access to the online encyclopedia source that allows easy search, navigation and display of entries plus bookmarking features.
8. BrainPOP Featured Movie - an app that features a new movie everyday. After watching the movie, a quiz pops up to test comprehension and memory.
9. Playtime Theater - an app for creating a puppet show inside a customizable interactive castle with provided characters, props and sound effects and the ability to record the shows.
10. GarageBand – turns your iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch into a collection of Touch instruments and a full-featured recording studio.
I hope these ideas will entertain, engage and educate your children during this holiday season. Happy Holidays!
Briefly: Mujjo's gray wallet iPhone case, Google Wallet update
Mujjo has introduced its Leather Wallet Case line-up for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in gray, as part of its Desaturated Collection. The wallet case is designed to hold two to three essential cards without sacrificing a thin profile. The case is available in two styles for iPhone 6 – one with the card slot angled upright and the other with an 80 degree angle pocket – and the 80 degree angle pocket case is available for iPhone 6 Plus. Pricing for the Desaturated Collection begins at $40, and cases can be purchased through Mujjo.
New Blackberry 'back to its roots'
Blackberry launches what it calls a “no-nonsense” smartphone in a bid to win back business customers.
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