Make your own custom fit earphones.

Each year, for the past 10, I brace myself for The Last Gadget Standing, an event at  International CES that admires the spirit of creativity and the fact that CES attendees not only appreciate cool technology, but that they can pick the winners from the losers.

As the competition starts to heat up I’ll point to a few my favs and favs yet to come.

AutoBot from Mavizon Technologies:  Ten years ago  GM Onstar won the Last Gadget competition.  A few years later CarMD tapped into the car’s diagnostic port and let you diagnose potential car trouble. This year Mavizon is “Onstar for those on a budget”.  For under $300 (price is still being determined) you get a small box that plugs into the car and reports back to your mobile phone. Not only will it check the car’s vital signs like the need for an oil change, but it can send an emergency call if your air bag is deployed, remind you where you’ve partked, act like a GPS. It even has a Groupon like coupon feature to get you the best deals on everything from new tires to a lube job.  You get a coupon or two but there’s no monthy service charge for using Mavizon.

Sonomax Soundcage is a kit that lets you make your own custom fit earphones. You buy the Sonomax earphones encased in a plastic headpiece. Place the plugs in your ears and a tube of inflatable silicon shapes the plug to match your ear. Once you’ve shaped your plugs (four minutes later) you toss away the headpiece.

Lapiac entered a bracelet locator that helps you keep tabs on everyone from an outdoor adventurer to an aging parent to a prison parolee. It relies on Assisted GPS technology for indoor and outdoor coverage, logs movement and can be used to set up geofences.

For those who think even a mobile phone is too big to tuck in a pocket or purse, Sony Ericcson just introduced LiveView microdisplay, a tiny square screen that notifies you about incoming calls and social media feeds.  Designed to work with the company’s Xperia phones.

IdealLife, a line of products that let’s caretakers monitor patients is built around a single bluetooth hub that can talk to everything from pulse meters, to blood pressure cuffs, to scales, pedometers and more. A line of expandable high tech products for home health represents a first.

Seen a great gadget lately. Come on over and tell us about them. Or re-live the past by watching last year’s Last Gadget video

And in the Internet safety world, products are appearing to keep kids safe, in a dialog with their parents, and still let them enjoy the benefits of social networking.

A couple of new products make it easier than ever to encourage this sort of behavior. Some are more traditional than others, but each deals with online reputation management. SafetyWeb could just be considered a new monitoring product. It’s a service that lets you enter your child’s email and then does a search for them on the major social networks and photosharing sites. You’ll be able to see their public comments on Facebook, MySpace, Photobucket, and more. A quick search found my son on five networks, but missed his Facebook profile. The service costs $10 a month.

Similarly, a service called ReputationDefender will, for $14.95 a month, produce a report of your kid’s activities, including everything from photos they post to chats they have. ReputationDefender also works for business people and adults who want the less desirable things in their online history to show up at the bottom, rather than the top, of a Google search.

Webroot.com created a summer list to help parents in need of laying down the law on rules and best practices. Included are the basics like urging parents to become web savvy and know what’s on the web. Sounds like common sense, but it’s nice to see web software companies take action beside their core competency of blocking and filtering.

TrendMicro figured that, if kids were going to be a bit frightened about the consequences of inappropriate Internet behavior, then they might as well have their tutelage come from other kids. A contest where kids produced their own PSAs resulted in “Overexposed,” produced by Nicholas Chen and Edan Freiberger, which gets its slightly funny, slightly scary message across in under two minutes (watch it here). Contestants submitted 120 videos over six weeks; 40% of them were under age 18.

One of my favorite new approaches is not Internet safety at all; it’s an online community that’s been likened to Facebook on training wheels. Togetherville allows parents with Facebook accounts to create a kids’ safe area where they can stay in touch with family and friends that parents approve. Messages are confined to those you can select from a pick list. There are art games, photosharing, and mom and dad help pick your friends.

As tools get better, as education continues to be a focus, and as kids witness their own peers falling prey to Internet shenanigans, you can bet we’ll see more and more new answers emerging.

For LeapFrog, the answer is the newly announced $69 Leapster Explorer. For the price, the features are awesome. It has a nice color screen (3.2 inches and 320×320 pixels – which makes it a bit grainer than the iPhone, but a big improvement for LeapFrog) and 512MB of memory. It runs Flash (take that, iPad), will do 3D, and play video. A webcam attachment, due out later this fall, will cost $25. Both games and LeapFrog applets that are similar to apps on the iPhone will be available (in a proprietary format). The device is aimed squarely at 4-9 year-olds.

Underneath the device lies a decision point in parenting philosophy. The Leapster Explorer has a vast network of educational apps that reside on LeapWorld. LeapWorld allows for avatars and personal customization – though no social networking. There’s a Learning Path online component that lets parents monitor activities, get suggestions for additional activities, and quickly find products that address a particular skill.

Unlike earlier versions of LeapFrog apps, their new games and apps are much more fun, exploratory, and open-ended. Gone are the right vs. wrong answers and the whiny voices telling you “Good move” or “Try again.” The music is hipper and there’s a bit of a new edge. The underpinnings of what we used to call “drill and kill software” are eroding.

LeapFrog’s apps are proprietary in format. There are both games - similar to Nintendo’s DS - and learning activities – more like the Apple Apps store. Launch titles include kid faves like Toy Story 3, Disney Fairies, The Penguins of Madagascar, X-Men, Disney Princesses, and Dora the Explorer. Pop culture at its best.

While the $69 hardware is attractive, apps are actually more expensive than on the iPhone. While the Apple Store has no shortage of handsome 99-cent apps, the Leapster Explorer apps will be priced at $15 for two learning apps and for $25 a game. On the other hand, there’s a lot going on beneath the hood, tracking kids’ progress, and unveiling new games that make the additional price reasonable.

Can LeapFrog’s earnest and right-priced approach to reaching kids from 4-9 work in a world where parents are handing over $500 iPads, iPhone Touches, and DS machines to four year olds? The alternative devices are much more facile and able to satisfy the whole family at once. LeapFrog’s Explorer is a platform built explicitly for young kids.

At the moment, unfortunately, there’s no room for crossover. You can’t play LeapFrog games on an i-machine and you can’t play iPhone apps on your LeapFrog device. Sad.

My bottom line? More price-sensitive, more traditional parents and those who believe that kids belong in a finite kids’ educational world will flock to LeapFrog. It’s also a fabulous solution for the less affluent who want a sustainable system through the primary school years. Parents who are less hierarchical and believe in a cross-generational approach will choose the iPad.

Which are you? Think of it this way: When my kids were little, they had a toy vacuum. Playing with the real thing was not an option. The Leapster Explorer is an educational toy, albeit a powerful one. The i-machines are tools for grownups, with occasional kid uses. The Nintendo DS will always fare better at games than learning.

 This presentation ts based on a talk I gave at INplay in Toronto this week.  Click to take yourself down Toyland memory lane.  inplay-presentation

MySims Sky Heroes: launching by this Sept
 Most of you are familiar with The Sims, the closest thing to a do-it-yourself soap opera videogame.  You may be less familiar with the junior version, My Sims.  It’s a simpler, younger adventure that concentrates on cute Mii like characters.  There have been racing version of My Sims and well as others.
. The newest My Sims addition is called SkyHeroes and it will be available by September.  A better name would be My First Flight Simulator.  Instead of just navigating aimlessly from point to point, your mission is to battle Morcubus and his drone army . They’ve got nefarious plans to take over the skyways!  You earn your wings as your speed and reflexes are put to the test.  Whimsy is pervasive as you can fly everything from a prop plane to a UFO.  Available for Wii, Nintendo DS, Xbox and Playstation.
Sky Captain by D3 Publishers, also jumps into the flight training craze with  a  much more structured adventure for young children where they can  pilot anything from a plane to a UFO 40 different tasks from stunt flying to shooting targets.  No killing, no crashing, and simple enough to pilot that even I managed. Sky Captain reports they’ll be available by this sumer.

Here’s how the invite might go:

BOY:  go 2 prom w me???  <3 john

GIRL: id <3 u 2 go 2 prom w me

(The  <3 means “love” .)

Textplus, an app that has a powerful client for free, unlimited and group chatting  surveyed 500 of their users asking about their prom date experience. textPlus and found that 40% of teens 13-17 said they would consider asking their date to the prom via a text message. Sixty four % said they would accept a date to the prom if asked by text.

Initially this might seem cold and impersonal to most of us who remember the agony of the prom transaction. The flip side is that texting is a lot easier than putting yourself in rejection’s way.

Texting looms large in end of year activities in other ways, too.  Driving is one of them  In addition to the sex talk and the drugs and drinking talk it’s not a bad idea to have a texting chat with your kids before they head out in their  gowns and ill-fitting tuxes.  Lay down the “no texting while driving law”.  But, yes, it’s ok to text mom and dad a few times during the evening just to give them some peace of mind.  (For more see Ford’s Tips on Driving for Life).

]]> http://www.robinraskin.com/blog/2010/05/03/go-2-prom-w-me/feed/ http://www.robinraskin.com/blog/2010/04/28/intel%e2%80%99s-classmate-pc-in-action-at-the-central-park-zoo/ http://www.robinraskin.com/blog/2010/04/28/intel%e2%80%99s-classmate-pc-in-action-at-the-central-park-zoo/#comments Wed, 28 Apr 2010 14:11:37 +0000 admin http://www.robinraskin.com/blog/?p=843 “Someone told me it’s all happening at the zoo” just took on new meaning. This week, students on a class trip to the Central Park Zoo were equipped with the latest Intel Classmate PCs. They used the notebook-cum-tablet features to sketch puffins and penguins. They attached USB sensors to explore temperature and humidity in the rain forest. They surfed the web, created Lego-based robots, and, despite a few knocks, bumps, and raindrops, the Classmates held up in style.

Intel Classmate PC

Intel used the venue to showcase the power of the latest iteration of its student PC. The Classmate, like the others, has a rugged clamshell design whose swivel screen transforms it into a touch-enabled tablet PC. It relies on the Intel Atom Processor and has a larger 10.1-inch screen that rotates to turn the Classmate into a tablet PC (with pen-based input). A built-in swivel webcam makes it easy to do self-portraits as well as web conferences. The new version’s keyboard is larger to help kids’ little fingers find the right resting place and it’s powered by the Intel Atom processor. It’s rugged and lightweight, has carrying handles, and is easy to attach to the network, but hardware without software is just a gadget.

The supporting heroes of the Intel Classmates are the third-party players that have adapted their technologies to the Classmate. A few of the partners were on hand for the zoo adventure.

EarthWalk is basically a quick recharge rack that a teacher can use to recharge multiple computers at once. Pasco was on hand with a variety of sensor-based peripherals. The students used a Pasco peripheral that sensed temperature and humidity for their lessons on the rain forest. Pasco’s interesting design allows students to keep the base unit but change-out sensors, so the device is truly multifunctional.

Intel sensors at the zoo

McGraw-Hill Education showcased its LEAD21—a literacy and language arts program.

With schoolchildren tiptoeing into the 21st century at ever-younger ages, the Intel solution heralds some real milestones because it’s the center of a satellite of learning tools. I predict that the biggest competition will come from Apple’s iPad once it has a built-in camera.

For more on the program, visit www.classmatepc.com.

Held in Washington, DC, the Digital Patriots Dinner brings technologists and policy makers together to trumpet the successes of innovation.  CEA  President and CEO, Gary Shapiro, made it a point to highlight the recent policy decisions that would encourage free trade.  Trade Ambassador Ron Kirk, the former mayor of Dallas,  stressed the Obama Administration’s commitment to fighting international piracy, adding trade agreements with some of the more  reticent countries, and removing many of the obstacles in the way of new businesses.

The Patriots honored were Congressman Mike Doyle (D- Pennsylvania), who’s work with his Pittsburgh constituents has helped it achieve a new status as one of the high tech heartlands. On the other side of the house,Congressman Fred Upton, (R-Michigan) was applauded for his work with the DTV transition and with the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet.

Finally, Vince Cerf, often called the Father of the Internet for his vision of a connected web of computers, received the award . Today he is Google’s chief evangaleist.  His speech was touching and humble as he reiterated the Internet mantra of connecting, commuicating and sharing ideas freely.

Prior to the dinner policy makers and legislators (and a lot of young super-connected lobbyists and young aides) were invited to Washington’s Eastern Market for a tast of technology.  Robert Anthony reports on the products that were showcased which included new 3D Tvs, recylable phones,  Goggle’s digital “closed captioning” service and more:

Forget apps. Start the move with your existing contacts and phone numbers.  You did buy your phone to make a call, right?  Step one is to import your contact list from wherever it lives now.  If it’s large, it may be a good time to weed  – getting rid of those contacts  where you haven’t had any contact in a decade.  Immediately learn how your phone “finds a contact” and “places the call”.

Practice your touch. The single biggest complaint most new users have is getting used to a touch screen. They can be both overly sensitive and insensitive, very dependent on your perfect touch. Like my bowling, my touch finger has a hook.  I’m always one to the left of the key I really want to press. My solution was to get an Android with a keyboard; others learn to watch the autocomplete feature which finishes your word for you as you touch.

Take your old GPS with you on the maiden voyage.  Before you grab your phone and head off with its navigation app you should take a maiden voyage with your dedicated GPS as a backup. Nothing like rushing into the car to find out that you can’t read your GPS screen and can’t seem to make it talk. Plus, the routes suggested by a Garmin and an Android are strikingly different.

Make the fonts bigger.  Mobile phones are going to be the worst villains in the history of eye strain. Head to your settings and configurations and choose a font size that you can actually read.  Just getting the gist of an important email is not  enough.  Hats off to iPhone for the pinch and pull, by far the easiest way to enlarge. The rest of you?  Head over to your Settings.

 
Learn how to shut down/silence ringer.  Don’t even think about taking your phone into a public place until you can shut it off properly.  Can’t be fumbling for the first time in a darkened theatre.
Make it Secure  Studies show that mobile phones are the highest security  threat in the workplace. .  Most service providers have decent “backend” protection against hackers and malware but there are few things you should do:
A: don’t keep your Bluetooth or WiFi turned on when you’re not using it; it gives other devices a chance to hack into your system
B: Keep the number of apps that use location based notification to a minimum. Broadcasting your coordinates to your friends doesn’t insure that it stays amongst your friends.

Save Battery Power  A dead phone isn’t much good and smart phones are hungry phones.  Leaving your GPS on; forgetting to end a call, or leaving your phone connected to Wifi even when you’re out and about are perfect battery drainers.  I download an app called Advanced Task Killer – it’s like the RAID of mobile phones. It knock anything that’s running dead.
Now, we’re ready for some App device.

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