Best Tablets for Kids 2017

If you’re in the market for kid-friendly tablets, we’ve got a list of contenders.

Every kid wants a tablet. They’re fun, portable, easy to use, and they keep the little ones entertained. If your children have seen you working (or playing) on a tablet, chances are they want to play, too.

Deciding to invest in a tablet for your child is a big step, and there are a number of qualities to consider: price, parental controls, and perhaps most importantly, durability. We’ve read the reviews, asked around, and brought together the tablets we believe will be the best for your kids .

• Amazon Fire Kids Edition
• LeapFrog Epic Kids Tablet
• Dragon Touch 7 inch Android Kids Tablet
• Fisher Price Kids Learning Tablet

Amazon Fire 7 Kids Edition

The only tablet that offers a two-year, no-questions-asked warranty is Amazon’s. If the unthinkable happens to the Fire 7 Kids Edition, or if you know your kids tend to be hard on their toys, this is peace of mind included in the price of the product. Running the mature and fast Fire OS, the only thing missing is Google’s services, but Amazon’s Appstore is stocked with lots of apps and games.

It comes with one year of Amazon FreeTime Unlimited, which allows your child to access over 10,000 apps, games, shows, movies, and books, all kid-tested and parent-approved. Parent mode, which is accessed with a password, gives you the opportunity to share media that your kids need your permission to get into. It also helps keep little fingers away from your Amazon account, which is pretty important.

The latest update to the Fire Kids Edition bases it on the “all new” Fire 7, which brings a better screen, improved battery life and dual-band Wi-Fi for better connectivity. If you want a different case, there are plenty out there to choose from, or you can get it in blue, pink or yellow.

See at Amazon

LeapFrog Epic Kids Tablet

LeapFrog was one of the first tablet-style devices made just for kids. Until recently, parents had to purchase cartridges in order to get games or educational materials for LeapFrog products, but the latest version of the tablet has eliminated the cartridges in favor of Wi-Fi and an Android 4.4-based OS. Now that everything can be downloaded, just like a regular “grown up” tablet, you’ll never have to go searching for little green cartridges again.

The tablet comes with LeapSearch, a child-friendly browser that lets kids “explore” the web without stumbling into adult territory. Kids can download pre-approved apps without worry and keep themselves occupied with plenty of safe content. The 16GB LeapFrog has an expandable SD card port, just in case your child requires more storage for their new favorite gadget. Parental controls within the LeapSearch browser allow you to set time limits either for the entire tablet or for particular games. These controls also let you unlock web access as your child grows up.

The Epic has a battery life of approximately 6 hours and a 7-inch screen. At 3.6 pounds, this tablet is heavier than most, but it stands up to drops and unexpected accidents. The bumper case, available in either green or pink, is removable, which helps reduce some of the weight and bulk once your child has mastered their grip on the tablet.

See at Amazon

Dragon Touch 7 inch Android Kids Tablet

The Dragon Touch tablet runs on Android’s KitKat OS. It’s Wi-Fi, HDMI, and Bluetooth-compatible, so you may find yourself playing around on it after the kids are in bed. Reviews for the Dragon Touch are consistently favorable, and the cost is reasonable, starting around $60. The 8GB storage is expandable thanks to a microSD slot.

The tablet comes pre-installed with “Zoodles,” a child-friendly app store. Here, kids can access free games and educational software. If you want to share some digital artwork your kids have created on social media, you have access to Parent Play Along mode, letting you access things like Facebook. In Play Along mode, you can download other apps for your kids that they would not otherwise have access to. You’ll also have access to services like Netflix for family-friendly shows and movies or for binge-watching your own shows when the kids are done playing.

The thick silicone case makes the Dragon Touch drop and bump-proof, and it’s easy for small hands to grip onto. It weighs 9.8 ounces, and the bumper is available in either red or blue. The battery life tops out around 3.5 hours — which could even be an advantage if you’re looking to limit usage.

See at Amazon

Fisher Price Kids Learning Tablet

The first thing you’ll notice about the Fisher Price Kids Learning Tablet is that it’s perfectly suited to handing off to the little ones without worrying about it disintegrating. It’s eye-catching enough to be fun, while being covered in the sort of rugged case that will protect from the likely frequent tumbles.

Fisher Price preloads the tablet with 35 apps and games suited for ages 3 and up, which is great, because part of a good experience for a kids tablet is tailored content. But, where it has the edge on something like the Fire Tablet is with full access to Google Play.

Without being siloed away from Google’s massive app catalog, you’ve access to anything you want to have for your kids. All for $100, which isn’t bad at all.

See at Toys R Us

The bottom line

No one knows your child like you do. You are the best predictor of what your child is going to enjoy and get the most use out of. You’re also the one with the wallet.

But it’s tough to look too far beyond the Amazon Fire Kids Edition. Amazon’s no-quibble warranty and sheer amount of content available for the young ones makes it hard to top. All of these are good, though, so you’re sure to be getting a great tablet for your kids with any of these.

Update June 2017: Added Amazon Fire Kids Edition.

Google introduces reCAPTCHA Android API to keep mobile apps safer from bot abuse

Adding reCAPTCHA functionality is but another tool for Android developers to keep their apps secure.

Machine learning and security were big themes at Google I/O, including making the Google Play Protect service more visible to users. In a recent post on the Android Developers Blog, Google has announced the first reCAPTCHA Android API as part of Google Play Services.

If you’ve spent any time on the internet over the past 10 years, you’ve surely run into Google’s free reCAPTCHA service, which has benefitted billions of users and saved countless websites from the spam and abuse caused by scripted bots. The service has become so advanced that Google announced it was going to become invisible to human users, while suspicious users and bots will have to solve those familiar challenges.

This new Android API will use that latest reCAPTCHA technology to run in the background so users can enjoy their favorite apps and avoid spam and abuse without being interrupted with a human check. The API will be included with Google SafetyNet, the existing set of services and APIs that developers use to protect apps from security threats. This is a win-win for users, who will get an extra layer of security built into their favorite apps without ever noticing it’s there.

Every Daydream app you can install right now, and a look at what comes next

Just go ahead and install all of them. You know, for fun.

Google’s first Daydream headset is finally shipping to people who purchased the first Daydream phone, and are quickly finding it’s not easy to locate the whole list of Daydream apps from the Play Store. While we’ve been having a lot of fun showing you the best free Daydream apps and the Daydream games everyone should have installed, the act of browsing for apps and then waiting for them to install while in VR isn’t a good time.

To make it a little easier, we’ve tracked down the first wave of Google Daydream apps that are available to install now, so you can load up your Pixel with VR goodness and see what this new experience is all about.

Read more at VR Heads!

GoPro Fusion preview: The 360 camera you’ve been waiting for

GoPro has given us a first look at the upcoming Fusion 360-degree action camera. Like the Hero and Session, it’s designed to be strapped to virtually any part of you, your bike, shoes, car or any number of accessories. It’s just as much an action camera as the others, except this one shoots in 360 degrees and has some impressive features. 

It’s worth noting, the units we saw were very much pre-production models, and this was more a sneak peak teaser than a full-on product announcement. That means some (or most) details and specs aren’t being shared, but we’ve seen enough of how it performs and works to at least give you a taster of what to expect. If pre-launch models are anything to go by, the real thing won’t just be what the 360/VR capture market needs, it could revolutionise action camera video. 

GoPro Fusion preview: Design

GoPro kept things fairly simple on the design front. It’s a square camera that’s noticeably larger than the Hero 5, but it is roughly the same thickness and has a similar finish. GoPro retained the dual-tone grey colour scheme and the grippy diagonal lines around the edges. As you’d expect, it also has the same two-button control system to keep things familiar and simple for existing users. 

Pocket-lint

There’s a camera on the front and the back of the Fusion, as well as the usual small, square monochrome screen on the front which will show basic information during shooting, just like the Hero does. The one thing it doesn’t have is a touch screen or viewfinder. Arguably, having one on a 360-degree system doesn’t make any sense, so it’s a fair omission. 

Using the usual mounts, you can attach the Fusion to most of the existing selection of GoPro accessories, although due to its size, it obviously won’t fit in the Karma mount. That means no drone flying for this gadget just yet. 

While GoPro hasn’t officially confirmed as much yet, it seems the Fusion is built to withstand water. We noticed one (accidentally) being submerged in water at least 1 metre deep for a few minutes, and it worked just fine afterwards. That’s not a surprise though, with its similarities to the Hero 5 in terms of finish and build, it looks like it will cope with all your rainiest, wettest action cam sessions. It’s not confirmed, but we’d be very surprised if it wasn’t waterproof. 

Pocket-lint

GoPro Fusion preview: Cameras and OverCapture

Being a 360-degree camera, the Fusion is equipped with two 180 degree lenses that capture everything all around the device. It shoots 5.2k video, and its sensors and optics make this one of the best action cameras we’ve seen. Strangely, it’s not because its footage can be viewed in a VR headset like the Gear VR (as cool as that was). It’s what it does to transform the 360 video in to a flat video that anyone can watch. 

With so many consumers using their phones to consume media on the go, GoPro decided it made sense to develop a way to transform its 360 captures in to videos that look great on a flat screen. With 5.2k resolution and something called OverCapture, the company looks like they’ve cracked it. 

Using its OverCapture feature, you can choose to have a nice flat shot of one part of the action, or select a wider one, or even have a “tiny planet” like experience that shows all of the video. More importantly though, when editing the footage you can pan through select parts, or transition between the tiny planet and more traditional flat video scenes smoothly in one motion. 

As an example, you could have the Fusion set up on a tripod, completely still and have a bike or dog run past it, and in the edit, you can follow that action almost as if you were moving a regular single video camera. So when you go to show your friends, or watch it back on a TV, you don’t miss any of the important action. 

As you’re watching it back, it looks as the the camera itself was being moved, but it isn’t. It’s all in the Over Capture technology and the way it can switch, transition and edit. It’s pretty phenomenal.

What this does for regular consumers, and technophobes, is it gives them the ability to make amazing action videos. You’ll be able to make professional looking, immersive video, and barely lifting a finger to do it. Arguably then, you actually get a better experience from it on a flat mobile or TV screen than strapped into a headset, although even then, the video quality was good. 

As with many of the other features, we don’t have any information about the camera sensor resolution in terms of regular still photos or an idea about battery performance. There’s more to come in that regard, sometime later this year. 

GoPro Fusion: When can I get it?

There’s no concrete release date yet for the Fusion. Currently, the company has opened up registration for a pilot program where it will select a few experienced prosumers to test out the camera before it’s officially available. You can sign up at GoPro’s Fusion web-page. Actual retail launch hasn’t been nailed down just yet, neither has a price, but the plan is to have the camera starting to roll out by the end of 2017. 

Pocket-lint

First Impressions

Although we’re short on official specifications, we’ve seen enough to excite us about what’s coming up, when the company eventually reveals everything we need to know about the new 360 degree action camera. For us though, the experience is more than just about numbers on a screen. What’s going to make this camera unique is its ease of use and the OverCapture feature. 

With OverCapture, being able to smoothly switch between a regular sized photo or video frame to the tiny planet effect in a single transition, editing on the fly on a smartphone, it’s impressive to say the least. We think this is the real story here and something which has the potential to shake up the VR camera industry, and reinvigorate the action camera market. 

Self-navigating cargo ships will use AI to plot their course

Japanese shipping companies want to build self-navigating cargo ships. Working alongside shipbuilders, their goal is to develop new technology that can predict malfunctions, reduce maritime accidents and improve efficiency.

The plan is to implement an AI-driven steering system that could lay out the shortest, safest and most fuel-efficient routes based on information about things like weather and any obstacles that might be in a ship’s way. Participating companies have agreed to share both expertise and costs, which are expected to top hundreds of millions of dollars, and they hope to construct around 250 ships with the new technology. Ultimately, the companies aim to implement completely unmanned shipping at some point in the future.

Japanese groups aren’t the only ones working to create autonomous cargo ships. Last year, Rolls-Royce announced plans to develop remote-controlled ships that it hopes to have ready in the very near future. While Natilus is going another route — designing massive drones that can fly cargo across oceans.

The developers hope to launch the Japanese smart ships by 2025, which is gearing up to be the year for self-navigating vehicles since Honda just announced that’s also its goal for perfecting autonomous cars.

Via: BBC

Source: Nikkei Asian Review

Cortana can be your frugal online shopping assistant

Microsoft’s Cortana could already help you with shopping thanks to image search and sales reminders. Now, it might help you get the most for your money too. In the latest Windows 10 Creators Update, Microsoft has rolled out a pilot feature in Microsoft Edge where Cortana can help you find the best price for a product you’re interested in buying. Right now, this feature supports 14 retailers, which includes Amazon, Walmart and eBay, as long as they’re within the US.

So, let’s say you’re on a product page for a vacuum cleaner on Walmart. Cortana can look up the price of that particular vacuum cleaner in competing stores (like Home Depot or Best Buy), while you still have that page open and it’ll let you know if the vacuum cleaner is available for a cheaper price elsewhere. Think of it as a Kayak for online shopping, but built right into the browser. It might not be as full-featured as Microsoft’s Personal Shopping Assistant (which lets you get notified of price changes), but at least Cortana doesn’t require installing a browser extension.

Source: Microsoft

Sony slashes prices on the year’s biggest games ahead of E3

If you can’t make it to LA this weekend and next week for the open-to-the-public E3, Sony still wants you to have a good time at home. In addition to a week of free access to multiplayer gaming sans a PlayStation Plus subscription (and a $10 discount on said subscription), Sony has slashed the prices on some of the biggest games from this year. Horizon Zero Dawn, MLB: The Show 17 and Nioh have all been marked down to $40, while The Last Guardian and Uncharted 4 from last year are now $20. The European PlayStation store is offering similar deals.

Looking to fill the gaps in your (digital) third-party library? Battlefield 1 and Mass Effect Andromeda temporarily cost $30, while Prey has been marked down to $40. More than that, if you spend $100 or more between now and June 20th, you’ll get a $15 credit. And here you were worried that your new, gold PlayStation 4 Slim’s 1TB hard drive would go unfilled.

Source: PlayStation Blog (1) (US), (2) (UK)

Palmer Luckey’s virtual border wall: From disruption to dystopia

“Disruption” was one of Silicon Valley’s worst buzzwords. But it was the battle cry of the greedy and desperate of coding and grifting. It meant better and faster data harvesting, venture capitalists throwing money at anything convenient to the wealthy. It meant companies skirting regulations, human rights, and labor laws were defensible heroes.

Every coder living off his girlfriend and unwilling to support himself with a job dreamed of having their startup called disruptive by any of the high holy thought leaders of the upper classes. It promised funding and a license to behave in any manner a man wanted. Call your users “dumb fucks,” ignore user safety and security, eschew laws to ruin life for poor people in cities, “innovate” a surveillance state that would make North Korea jealous, build a culture on sexual harassment or have a bang room in your office: All is permitted when you disrupt. Even if you want to disrupt like a despot, and create a startup to hunt and round up human beings, like disgraced Oculus Rift founder Palmer Luckey.

Disruption, like all Silicon Valley buzzwords, began to grow limp in its old age. To shore up the flagging jargon, just about every tech writer was calling every garbage startup “like Uber for (whatever).” Financial advisors, being noble Valley warriors, took to the Internet to try and bring “meaning” back to the buzzword, whatever that means.

But then Oculus Rift showed up and disruption was back, baby. Palmer Luckey’s plagued-with-problems virtual reality headset shored up 2014’s disruption dysfunction issues to be hailed as … Silicon Valley’s next disruption! The Kickstarter success practically printed money, raising $2.4 million (nearly 10 times its goal) from 9,522 backers — and Luckey earned a reputation of a man who attacks his supporters.

So it was no surprise to anyone when Luckey was revealed to be funneling piles of money and lots of energy into pro-Trump (and openly racist) online propaganda mill “Nimble America,” with his silent partner in the venture Milo Yiannopoulos, and its troll army.

Daily Beast, which broke the news, explained: “Nimble America was founded by two moderators of Reddit’s r/The_Donald, which helped popularize Trump-themed white supremacist and anti-Semitic memes along with 4Chan and 8Chan.” Among Palmer’s Nimble America foundational ideas are “America First” and “Legal Immigration.”

In tech lingo, Luckey’s side project was like a warm and fuzzy Y Combinator “startup school” for people who post content designed to harm others and scream “free speech”. Almost everything online related to Nimble America has been removed since the story broke.

Strangely, Luckey was ousted at the end of March from the “all lives matter” and “Holocaust denial is free speech” enclave of Facebook, which had acquired Oculus. Six weeks later, Chris Dycus, the first Oculus employee hired by Luckey, quit Facebook too. Dycus wrote on his employee Facebook page that he was leaving for a “job opportunity that I just can’t pass up” at a startup in Southern California “in stealth mode” that “really sounds like something I want to do.”

If you think that sounds disruptive, then you’re probably right. Dycus ran from Facebook’s fake-news-coddling bosom straight into the arms of Palmer Freeman Luckey. Their sekrit new startup got smacked out of stealth with an article last weekend describing how Oculus founder Palmer Luckey is now developing border surveillance technology. To create a “virtual wall” for the purpose of hunting and tracking human beings.

I guess you could say it’s “like Uber but for rounding people up.” Or maybe it’s like AirBnB but for dehumanizing refugees and immigrants. Maybe since Peter Thiel is reportedly planning to fund it, something more appropriate might be “like PayPal for the surveillance state” or “like Gawker but for genocide.” Maybe not buzzwordy enough? I don’t know.

The New York Times report explained that Luckey and Dycus’s awesome new startup is developing “surveillance technology that could be deployed on borders between countries and around military bases.” He told The Times, “We need a new kind of defense company, one that will save taxpayer dollars while creating superior technology to keep our troops and citizens safer.”

According to three people who spoke to the Times on condition of anonymity, the new company wants to employ LiDAR technology with infrared sensors and cameras “to monitor borders for illegal crossings.” LiDAR is typically used for archaeology and guiding driverless cars, but it’s an area of interest for security firms for real-time human surveillance.

For instance, Industrial Laser Solutions wrote that with Velodyne’s compact LiDAR tech and the People Tracking software from Raytheon/BBN, a camera can track people in real time, day or night, identifying them with precision as they move around. “The user can select a “person of interest” and this tracking information is passed on to a PTZ camera that follows the person.”

Luckey’s new venture won’t stop at border surveillance, it’s supposedly planning to expand the virtual guard posts to other locations and public events. “Mr. Luckey believes his system, which can be mounted on telephone poles,” The Times wrote, “can be built far more cost effectively than Mr. Trump’s proposed wall on the Mexican border — and with fewer obstacles from landowners.” Meaning, people won’t know “the wall” is hunting and tracking humans on their property, and the general public won’t know they’re being tracked (in detail, in real time, being indexed on a computer somewhere), either.

In April, just after he left Facebook (and before Dycus left Facebook), Luckey held a big ‘ol fundraiser to help line the pockets of Texas Senator Ted Cruz — who is currently tied with a Democrat for the 2018 election, and whose state has the largest stretch of border wall with Mexico. Just last month, Luckey had a high-tech border wall pitch meeting with Ryan Zinke, Chuck C. Johnson, and four other Trump team members.

Apparently the thought leader rockstar of moonshot shitposting opened his kimono with synergy! At some point in all this, he hacked his way into ideating some “virtual wall” deliverables: The Times reported that Luckey apparently got an audience with Creepy Steve (Bannon) himself.

If you’re wondering where this hot new startup might pivot to next, maybe just think of it like disruption but for everything Lady Liberty stands for.

Requests for comment and updates to Palmer Luckey on this article, or corrections in regard to NYT’s reporting, did not receive a response by publication time. We will update this article accordingly.

Images: Niall Carson/PA WIRE (Palmer Luckey); Gary Cameron / Reuters (Ted Cruz)

Google’s reCAPTCHA can tell you’re not a bot from your phone

Google’s reCAPTCHA has evolved from distorted text, to street numbers, to “I’m not a robot” tickboxes and, most recently, to their new invisible system. And now the company is bringing its bot-fighting program to Android.

The mobile version will launch with Invisible reCAPTCHA, meaning websites will be able to tell you’re not a bot automatically. Which is good news since dealing with CAPTCHAs on small screens is kind of the worst. However, if you don’t pass the system’s behind the scenes risk analyses and it’s unconvinced that you’re not a bot, whatever puzzle you have to solve to prove your humanity will be optimized for mobile.

Invisible reCAPTCHA uses machine learning and advanced risk analyses to determine if a visitor is a bot or a human without engaging with the users themselves. The technology considers things like your IP address and how you engage with the website to make its assessments.

The reCAPTCHA Android API, part of Google Play Services, is included with Google SafetyNet. And developers will be able to do device and user attestations in the same API for a more streamlined mitigation of security risks.

Android API is available to developers now and the company says to keep an eye out for the iOS version, suggesting it’s just around the corner.

Source: Google

PCIe 4.0 will be twice as fast as today’s slots

We’ve been hearing about a new PCIe specification since 2011. That seems like an eon ago in technology time. PCI-SIG, the community responsible for maintaining these peripheral input/output (I/O) specifications has finally released the specs for PCI Express 4.0, which will give PCs twice the throughput speed (up to 16 GT/s) as previous 3.0 connections while maintaining backward compatibility as well.

Peripheral Component Interconnect Express, or PCIe, is the current standard type of connection protocol for internal devices in your computer. It refers both to the expansion slots on a computer’s motherboard that accept expansion cards as well as the cards themselves. Most motherboards today only include this type of connection slot.

It isn’t just for PCs, either. Devices that use the PCIe protocol can be found in server, storage and even mobile devices. It could make a big difference in faster video cards, SSDs, and other internal configurations, speeding up entire systems. Backward compatibility means that manufacturers won’t have to redesign older systems, either. Any new PCIe devices will be able to play nicely with current PCs as well as new ones. As PCI-SIG members have already been testing the new 4.0 specifications, we could see new products with the faster speeds on shelves as soon as PCIe 4.0 has undergone a final IP review.

According to The Tech Report, PCI-SIG also teased an upcoming PCIe 5.0 specification, which could be ready by 2019. Future PCIe devices could see a throughput of up to 32 GT/s, doubling that available from 4.0 devices. Such speed could work very well in high-end networking environments, allowing for up to 128 GB/s network bandwidth.

Source: The Tech Report