EE launches second-gen Robin tablet designed specifically for kids
EE launched Robin, the world’s first 4G tablet designed specifically for kids just over a year ago and today, the company has announced a second-generation version with several improvements.
- The EE Robin kids tablet takes on Amazon kids tablet
The new Robin tablet retains its 4G connectivity and 7-inch LCD display but now features a new quad-core processor, 2GB RAM and 16GB of internal storage, up from 1GB and 8GB in the previous model. EE has also fitted a new child-proof bumper case with an integrated kickstand.
While the Robin runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop, EE has overlaid a Kurio OS skin which makes it easy for kids to navigate themselves. Like the original model, the Robin comes with 40 games, educational apps and eBooks pre-installed but now supports motion-controlled gaming via the front-facing camera in either single or multiplayer modes.
Additional content can be downloaded from the Google Play Store, but anything kids want to download has to be approved by a parent first.
Like before, EE gives kids free access to Hopster, a child-friendly portal with more than 1500 episodes of kid’s TV shows, learning games, songs and nursery rhymes.
There’s built in parental controls too, for web filtering, app management and time control so you can be safe in the knowledge your child won’t come across something they shouldn’t.
The EE Robin is available now on pay monthly plans starting from £17/month on a 24 month plan with 2GB data and three months of Hopster access, or £22/month for a 24 month contract with 20GB data, EU roaming and 24 months of Hopster access.
Sharon Meadows, director of devices at EE said: “Last year we introduced the world’s first 4G tablet for kids which proved extremely popular in the run up to Christmas. So this year we’ve given the Robin a makeover, to ensure it is once again the perfect gift for parents who want a tablet which can provide their children with hours of entertainment and e-learning in a protected online environment”.
China’s WeChat messenger tests its own version of instant apps
WeChat might not mean much here in the US, but in Asia, the messaging app boasts some 800 million users. Its next step toward dominance is “small programs” that act like apps within the chat service, according The Information. These perform singular tasks, but won’t require a download. “People would be able to scan a QR code via the WeChat app on their phone to use loyalty points at a favorite coffeeshop or transfer money without leaving WeChat or downloading a separate piece of software,” the report says.
Much like Google’s still-unreleased Instant Apps, it sounds like WeChat’s “small programs” are all about efficiency and speed. The idea is to keep users within WeChat instead of having them download other apps they might only use a few times. For a domestic example, it’s a bit like how Apple positioned its recent additions to iMessage. Where this cleaves from Cupertino’s add-ons is that it may not have an app store, although The Information posits that the small programs could be searchable within the application — much like how you can order a ride with Didi Chuxing currently.
The update is only available to a beta group of 200 developers, with parent company Tencent saying it will go wide soon.
Source: The Information
Read-it-Later App ‘Instapaper’ Makes Premium Features Free for All Users
The premium version of popular app Instapaper, designed to allow users to save notable news articles to read at a later time, has officially become free to all users.
The company behind the app has emailed all account holders to tell them that, as of today, it is opening up Instapaper Premium features to all users, free of charge.
Users of Instapaper now get access to full-text search for all articles, unlimited Notes, text-to-speech playlists, unlimited speed reading, “Send to Kindle” via bookmarklet and mobile apps, Kindle Digests of up to 50 articles, and an ad-free Instapaper website.
The company said the change was made possible now that its team is better resourced – referring to its acquisition by Pinterest, reported in August.
According to TechCrunch, while Instapaper’s team would begin working on Pinterest’s core experience, the company said the app would live on as a separate entity and continue to get updates without them being monetized. Existing Instapaper Premium users will get pro-rated refunds in the coming weeks, the company said.
Pinterest has been busy acquiring smaller companies to bolster its teams with new talent and grow its user base. In October, the company reported that it had hit 150 million monthly active users. Although the number missed the mark on targets the company set in early 2015, it still represents a large potential source of revenue.
Instapaper is a free download for iPhone and iPad from the App Store. [Direct Link]
Tags: Instapaper, Pinterest
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Cabbage Patch dolls with unsettling LCD eyes are now available
Those modern Cabbage Patch dolls with amusing/disturbing LCD eyes introduced earlier this year are now available in the US. While they unfortunately didn’t come out in time to complete your Chucky family Halloween costume, they still have the same unsettling animated peepers that blink and look around. They still “sleep” and have sensors that can detect tickles. The dolls can also “feed” from a bottle and need diaper changes — so they’re basically dolls with the needs of a baby that could freak you out in the middle of the night.
These “Baby So Real” Cabbage Patch Kids dolls were designed by Wicked Cool Toys, the same company that gave Teddy Ruxpin a similar animated eyes makeover. They come paired with a downloadable app that acts as a by monitor simulator and are available for $100 each at various retailers nationwide. A spokesperson told us they will more than likely be available outside the country by next year, as well. You can see those animated eyes in action in the video below if you want to know first what you’re getting into:
Source: Wicked Cool Toys
Talkshow shuts down its chat-in-public app on December 1st
If you tried Talkshow’s public-facing chatrooms but left wondering why they were necessary, you’re not alone. The startup is shutting down its service after determining that it won’t be “big enough” to have its intended effect. As of November 1st, Talkshow’s iOS app is no longer available in the App Store. You can participate in conversations until November 8th, when everything will revert to a read-only mode. You’ll have the option of exporting your chats after that, but you’ll have to act quickly — everything will turn off on December 1st.
As for the factors behind that low popularity? Like other struggling social services, it may be just a matter of Talkshow trying something that wasn’t especially unique or vital. People have public chats all the time on Facebook and Twitter, and moving them to a messaging app format isn’t necessarily advantageous. And of course, many people prefer still like to keep group chats private so that they can share sensitive info in confidence. Talkshow’s harassment-free environment and focus on topics helped it stand out from the crowd, but those perks might not have been enough to cultivate a sizeable following.
Source: Talkshow (Medium)
5 Android navigation apps for those who are sick of Google Maps – CNET
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Waze has driver-friendly features, which include reports from other drivers of where accidents and speed cameras could be.
Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET
Don’t get me wrong: Google Maps is the king of the online mapping industry, but that doesn’t mean that the Google Maps app is the best navigation app for your Android phone. There are plenty of other navigation apps on the market, and most of them are just as speedy and accurate as Google Maps (some are more so). Google Maps is a good general maps app, but if you commute all day long or you primarily use public transit, it may not be the best app for you.
Here are five other Android navigation apps you might want to check out:
Waze
Waze is technically owned by Google, but this “social” navigation app is completely separate from Google Maps. While Google Maps is a general navigation app, Waze is driving-focused, which means it offers some cool features like user-reported gas prices and turn-by-turn directions to parking lots near your destination. The app also has a robust community of users, and it uses this community to gather real-time traffic data and user-reported incidents, such as accidents, road closures, speed cameras and police traps.
If you’re looking for a friendly driving community that’s committed to keeping the public informed about upcoming speed traps, Waze is the app for you. This app is all about social networking, so you can also plan trips with friends, sync events from your phone’s calendar as well as your Facebook account and see the ETAs of friends who are traveling to the same place as you are.
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Here WeGo was originally developed for the Windows Phone platform, and is now on Android as well as iOS.
Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET
Here WeGo
Here WeGo (which was originally developed for the Windows Phone platform by Nokia) is a free app that offers turn-by-turn directions for drivers, pedestrians, cyclists and public transit riders. The app also features real-time traffic information, nearby points of interest, the ability to share your location (or the location of a point of interest) with friends and family members and offline map downloads for when you don’t have a data connection.
Here WeGo offers just about everything Google Maps does, and a little more. The cycling directions and the public transportation overlays are useful, and the app’s points of interest system is also pretty strong (the app pulls info from places like Wikipedia, TripAdvisor, BlaBlaCar, Expedia, Car2go and GetYourGuide).
Moovit
If you take public transportation frequently, you’ve probably noticed that Google Maps’ directions are very basic. Moovit is a free, dedicated transit app that offers several features you won’t find in Google Maps, such as step-by-step directions that will tell you how many stops you have left and alert you when it’s time to get off the bus, train or ferry you’re riding. Moovit also features an entire section dedicated to information about delays, maintenance and service interruptions. It also links you to the local transit agencies’ Twitter accounts, so you can really feel like a local.
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Are you usually on public transportation? Moovit is designed especially for it.
Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET
Google Maps’ public transit directions will work in a pinch, but Moovit — which is available in 1,200 cities around the world (including over 100 cities in the US) — is the app you need to really understand the local metro system. The app has even started integrating information about local bike shares in select cities.
BackCountry Nav Topo Maps GPS
If Moovit is for urban city-dwellers, BackCountry Nav Topo Maps GPS — which costs $12 (roughly converting to £10 in the UK and AU$15 in Australia) but offers a 21-day free trial — is for the opposite. BackCountry Nav Topo Maps GPS is an offline navigation app designed for people who are trekking through the wilderness. This app offers a variety of maps available for users to download, including topographic maps, marine maps and aviation maps. The app also has street maps (through OpenStreetMap and Bing World Street Maps) available, though its primary purpose is for navigating non-street areas.
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Need to save data or use a map when you don’t have a cellular connection? Maps.me is for you.
Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET
Other navigation apps (including Google Maps) understand the value of downloadable, offline maps, but most of those apps do not pay much attention to topography or navigation outside of cities and suburban areas. BackCountry Nav Topo Maps GPS is the app you’ll need for those ultra-outdoorsy activities, though.
Maps.me
Maps.me is a free navigation app that focuses on offline navigation. This app lets you download entire cities (or, well, parts of cities) at a time for when you need to save data or you do not have internet access. Maps.me uses OpenStreetMap for its offline maps (but, unlike BackCountry Nav Topo Maps GPS, Maps.Me is completely free). The app offers turn-by-turn directions and a comprehensive list of points of interest — including overlays for nearby places with Wi-Fi and toilets — but does not offer real-time traffic information since it is, after all, an offline app.
Maps.me is a handy app when you don’t have internet, and, unlike some of the other apps that offers offline maps as an afterthought, Maps.me makes downloading apps quick and easy.
MIT makes neural nets show their work
Turns out, the inner workings of neural networks really aren’t any easier to understand than those of the human brain. But thanks to research coming out of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), that could soon change. They’ve devised a means of making these digital minds not just provide the correct answer, classification or prediction, but also explain the rationale behind its choice. And with this ability, researchers hope to bring a new weapon to bear in the fight against breast cancer.
The scientific community has made tremendous strides in developing neural networks, computer systems that are built to operate like the human brain. Researchers have managed to get these systems to beat the world’s best Go players, identify images and shrink their file sizes. Neural networks now power keyboard apps and photo editors. Heck, we’ve even taught them to write like Philip K Dick. Most incredibly, Google recently taught two nets to design their own encryption algorithm.
The problem, however, is that even the researchers that designed these systems aren’t particularly sure how they actually work. It isn’t so bad with image-recognition nets because researchers can suss out the reasoning based on the images, but it’s far more difficult to do with text-based systems.
So, to illuminate the computer’s decision-making process, the CSAIL team split their network into a pair of smaller modules — one for extracting segments of text and scoring them according to their length and coherence. Short segments pulled from lengths of consecutive words score highest. The second module predicts the subject of the segment and attempts to classify it accordingly.
For their test, the team used online reviews from a beer rating website and had their network attempt to rank beers on a 5-star scale based on the brew’s aroma, palate, and appearance, using the site’s written reviews. After training the system, the CSAIL team found that their neural network rated beers based on aroma and appearance the same way that humans did 95 and 96 percent of the time, respectively. On the more subjective field of “palate,” the network agreed with people 80 percent of the time.
After some more development and tuning, the MIT researchers hope to eventually unleash their machine learning system in the fight against breast cancer as a means of extracting and analyzing the explanations pathologists give for their diagnoses.
Source: MIT CSAIL
Steam now requires that game makers show real screenshots
Have you ever been duped into buying a game on Steam that looked good in the store preview, but was nowhere near as exciting when you sat down to play? Valve wants to put a stop to that. The company is telling Steamworks users that, once the developer tool’s Discovery Update 2.0 arrives, all games on Steam will have to use in-game screenshots for their store image galleries. As Polygon notes, it’s a simple matter of truth in advertising: Valve wants would-be buyers to know what it’s really like to play, not just stare at concept art. It can be “harder for customers to understand” what they’re getting without actual in-game content, Valve’s Alden Kroll says.
It’s not certain that Valve will always double-check game submissions to make sure they honor the policy when it takes effect in the next few weeks. However, this at least gives the company the power to force changes (or in the worst cases, pull apps) if it sees a game that violates the new rule. If nothing else, Valve is practicing what it preaches. The Dota 2 product page on Steam now focuses on in-game screenshots where it previously centered on illustrations.
This doesn’t guarantee that every sketchy developer will mend its ways, or that Valve will avoid selling games whose massive hype doesn’t quite match reality. It should discourage studios from trying to hide shoddy graphics from customers, though. That, in turn, should reduce the chances that you need to ask for a refund or otherwise suffer through buyer’s remorse.
Source: Polygon
GM’s car-sharing program links Uber drivers to weekly rentals
While we mostly think of GM’s Maven program as just a ZipCar-like car sharing service, it’s more generally an option for “flexible” access to vehicles. That’s why Maven is a part of Lyft’s Express Drive program that offers up short term rentals for drivers, and today it announced a partnership with Uber. Launching with a 90 day pilot in San Francisco, it lets Uber drivers lease a Chevrolet Cruze, Malibu or Trax for $179 per week (plus fees) with no mileage limit, and insurance is included.
From Uber’s side, regional general manager Rachel Holt says “This partnership with Maven combines our vast ridesharing network with GM’s extensive fleet vehicles and gives people without access to a car the ability to easily make money driving on the Uber platform.” In the same statement, GM VP Julia Steyn says “Only 10 months after launching Maven, we have implemented viable business-to-business platforms that GM can leverage to manage residual values for ex-lease and fleet vehicles.”
It’s an odd partnership for GM since the company has invested in Lyft, but this will give it more opportunities to get cars on the streets. As Recode mentions, Uber also has a leasing program through Enterprise that offers drivers cars for $215 per week. Adding on the price of gas, we’ll let you do the math on how many rides you’ll need to make the numbers work.
Source: GM
Gameroom is Facebook’s antiquated answer to Steam
Back in August Facebook announced its PC gaming platform as a partnership with the Unity developer toolset. There are a few more details now, and from the sounds of it, Facebook Gameroom is basically Steam from 2009, but for Facebook games — both web and those natively built for the ecosystem. The social network is starting small: games can’t be any larger than 200MB, although it will “consider” hosting games up to 500MB on a case-by-case basis, according to the service. That automatically rules out something like, say, Diablo 3: Ultimate Evil Edition’s 58GB, but smaller fare like Desert Golf’s 1MB size would have plenty of room to spare.
Gameroom has been in beta for a bit — Game of Dice came out last week — but this seems like the platform’s big roll out, with a free client download for Windows 7 and above. In our tests, Words With Friends, Trivia Crack, Peter Molyneux’s Curiosity showed up as available games. And, well, none of them worked when we tried opening them. Those that did, like Scrabble, launched what looks like a web page within the program itself. There’s even a browser compatibility check. First-person shooter Critical Ops, on the other hand, downloaded 100MB worth of files before it would start.
Currently, Gameroom feels like something that’s been gathering dust for awhile. It’s kludgy and there really isn’t anything worth playing on it. But, given that Facebook is adamant about making sure everyone will be jacked into VR, the company needs its own way to sell games to people like your elderly uncle or grandma. Gameroom might seem foreign to you and me, but for a vast swath of the folks playing games on Facebook, it’s the other way around with GOG, Origin and Steam. And those people are who this service is for.
Source: Facebook Developers
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