If you're a parent, you know how little kids often want to be like their older sibs and other "big kids" they look up to. And that goes for technology too, of course. Enter Talking Angela, an iPhone and Android app designed for teens (and the teenager in all of us) but not for little kids. Though I can see why little ones would find Angela the talking cat fascinating. Yesterday morning I found … [Read more...] about The flap over Talking Angela the chatbot app
apps
Keek’s fast-growing ‘kred’ (with video-sharers)
You may not have heard of Keek the social app because Mashable says it has "maintained an under-the-radar presence" since it launched in 2011 but is "steadily gaining both users and notoriety in the shadow of networks such as Vine, Instagram and Snapchat." What's most different about it is that videos can be as long as 36 sec. (up from Vine's 6-sec. max and Instagram's 15 sec.). Video or text … [Read more...] about Keek’s fast-growing ‘kred’ (with video-sharers)
Students developing apps (and businesses) on the side
There's the app for cats. Yes, true – not feline iPhone users, but cats who play (i.e., all cats). The Guardian's feature on young app creators leads with Oxford physics student Owen Beckett's Cat Snaps, "a laser chasing game for cats [that] includes a function that takes a photo of your cat when it 'wins' the game." Beckett says he didn't know how to write code or make an app, but he watched … [Read more...] about Students developing apps (and businesses) on the side
App reviewer’s top Android picks for kids
TheGuardian.com in the UK has a blog devoted just to apps – a big job (with more than a million apps at Google Play's app store, passing up Apple's 900,000+ this past summer). And the blog's writer and app reviewer, Stuart Dredge, writes that he's noticed a shift in device and app use among families with kids. More and more parents are downloading children's Android apps for both smartphones and … [Read more...] about App reviewer’s top Android picks for kids
Mobile learning & edugames taking off worldwide
Whether it's the chicken or the egg – the device or the edugames – fueling the growth isn't completely clear, but "tablets are proliferating everywhere across the planet," said Sam Adkins, head of research for market research firm Ambient Insight, at the Serious Play Conference in Redmond, Wash., last week. He was referring to mobile learning – especially on tablets, where school's concerned – and … [Read more...] about Mobile learning & edugames taking off worldwide