Teach Children to Read

Smartphones are crazy awesome. You can do your banking, track your children, find directions, and even pretend to have a mustache. The only thing that these personal supercomputers are missing is physical interaction with the environment. I wanted to be able to call my house ...more

“Of a generation who remembers Tiananmen Square, 1989, I considered how some excuse – the lack of, or slow progress on, human rights in China because ‘times have changed’, or because other concerns, including making money, come first, or because rights, freedom, and democracy ...more

The very people this humanitarian mission seeks to help are outraged at the portrayal of their problems and lands. In my previous post, I talked about how this new internet sensation is most probably a hoax designed to force us into a new war. Guess what? It was. "The viral K ...more

Last week, we discussed whether Google should require you to use your real name for Google+ profiles. Google is working on eliminating fake profiles, and in the process, they've booted some real people, including actor +William Shatner. If you find out that your Google+ accoun ...more

A devastating tragedy occurred in Japan on Friday when a monstrous 8.9-magnitude quake hit, causing a 10 meter (33 foot) tsunami to engulf the northeastern coast of the country. There are reports of over 1,000 people who have lost their lives, tens of thousands evacuated, and ...more

This is an amazing minestrone soup that is both extremely healthy and tastes delicious. It's high in fiber and is full of vitamins and minerals. Even though it's low in salt and so healthy it still leaves you feeling full and satisfied. You can make this soup anytime of the ye ...more

Since the invention of the printing press, books have been a dominant and iconic paradigm in our culture and throughout the world. During my years in elementary and high school, the digital world was on the rise sparking the conversation: Are Books Obsolete. Over the last year ...more

It’s hard to know where to start talking about a book like 2666. That’s partly because, in some ways, it’s actually five books. Published posthumously, the book begins with “A Note from the Author’s Heirs” explaining that, before his death, Bolano stipulated the book be publis ...more

Oh yeah, this is a big topic, at-least for me. All the frequent flyers will/should be interested in this topic. I'm sure all of you have heard at-least something about the TSA, and most of it should have been bad. Complaints, lawsuits and general disgust surround this organiza ...more

Pygame! And what you can accomplish with it. Another python article... (Blame Alex for getting me hooked on yet another coding language...) This little article will cover "Pygame", the set of modules that were designed with game developers in mind. Specifically ones who code ...more

It's a question I've been pondering a lot lately. Technically, children under the age of 13 are not allowed to join Facebook. But according to a Consumer Reports in May, 7.5 million children 12 and younger are already on the site. Currently, federal law prohibits websites from ...more

Dear Miss and Mrs. H, I love your blog! Its nice to get two completley different opinions on one subject. I have a couple questions for you both and then need some advice. Well I am a Housewife myself and have been married around 5 years. We don't have any children yet and h ...more

Here we have a unique piece of work. Miley Cyrus, the girl that started out as a 12 year old acting on Hannah Montana, is now 17 and showing some skin. Do we care? Apparently, parents do. So it seems as if if Cyrus wasn't able to do what she wants in her music videos because o ...more

Do you do last minute cramming before you go to the dentist? No, I don't mean reading up on orthodontia in hopes of having an intellectual conversation about crowns with your dentist (how you can talk at all with all those tools in your mouth is beyond me, though dentists alwa ...more

We all remember the controversy of SCRABBLE Trickster back in April. SCRABBLE + Mattel + Proper Nouns = BLASPHEMY! Some thought it was just a PR hoax, something to rattle the bones of diehard SCRABBLE players, like myself. Others thought it was an April Fools' Day joke. But ...more

By Cal Ripken Jr. Let the players play and the coaches coach ! Perhaps you played a particular sport at a high level and hope to pass that knowledge on to your children. By all means do it. But remember, there is a time and a place for everything. Your kids are tuned into ...more

Kurt Harris, MD, writes about paleolithic nutrition at his highly recommended blog, www.paleonu.com. "Eating like a caveman" has become a bit of a fad, with all the down sides that comes with fads. But behind the fad lies a large amount of research that can be and is used as ...more

Before you go running off to the Apple store, you may want to educate yourself. DVICE is kind enough to compile the 20 biggest complaints about the iPad from a whole slew of reviewers. 1. Upscaling makes old iPhone/iPod Touch apps ugly. "Here's the problem: It looks terrible ...more

You've seen his explanation of a combination lock's inner workings. You'll never lose another game of Jenga, thanks to his winning wooden pistol. And nearly 4 million YouTube users have marveled at his wooden marble machine sculpture. He's Matthias Wandel, and he's accomplishe ...more

It's never too late--in fiction or in life--to revise - Nancy Thayer, author In life, you get one chance at most things. You get one chance to choose to dance with the person who asked or not. You choose to study in school and pass, or redo or drop out. In most decisions, you ...more

Planning the Trip Get lots of brochures Send for brochures of the places you will be visiting. Make a travel book with the brochures to get the grandchildren and their families excited. The best place to contact for these brochures are the Visitors Bureaus or the Chamber of ...more

Via WonderHowTo World, SCRABBLE: Dirty SCRABBLE. Everybody likes to play dirty, but we're not talking bluffing with fake words or closing up the board—we're talking actual "dirty" and offensive words. Despite the exclusion of offensive words in the bowdlerized Official SCRAB ...more

Dirty SCRABBLE. Everybody likes to play dirty, but we're not talking bluffing with fake words or closing up the board—we're talking actual "dirty" and offensive words. Despite the exclusion of offensive words in the bowdlerized Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary (OSPD), the ...more

A game labeled as 'educational' usually spells its death among hardcore gamers. The educational game genre is mostly intended for children, and games that appeal to children often lack the sort of widespread appeal that makes them commercially successful. Many people play gam ...more

I want to write this article because in my childhood, I had experienced internet stalking which ultimately ended in physical stalking which then lead to several attempted abductions. I have now learned how to use the internet safely, who to communicate with and I've learned ho ...more

Obesity has ballooned into a worldwide epidemic. The World Health Organization estimates that 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and 700 million will be obese by 2015. Over 20 million children are overweight today. The reasons for these distressing figures are common knowle ...more

The landscape for mobile augmented reality apps is still mostly filled with utility and gaming apps, but a new entrant into the space is looking to pull children into the mix. A just-released iOS app called Bookful takes classic children's stories usually found in large-sized ...more

Today's smartphones and tablets offer a great way for children to learn through interactive sight, sound, and touch, but they can also provide hours of genuine fun. If you have a spare tablet laying around—or at least a nice, durable case—the only thing you need to get your ch ...more

1 Identify the child's talents, and discuss the opportunities he has to use them in productive ways. If you notice that the child you're mentoring is excellent with counting money, talk about how the child should consider a career in banking or running a business one day. 2 ...more

Give an 18-month-old a shoe, check back 10 minutes later, and it's a very big maybe he will have it on his foot. But give him your smartphone, and in a mere five minutes, he can take 100 pictures of the carpet, send weird messages, and delete essential apps. Imagine what your ...more

Everything that has a beginning has an end. This week marked the end of the long wait for the reveal of Magic Leap's first product and the beginning of the wait for more substantive details. Likewise, Google Tango will meet its end in March 2018, when ARCore will officially b ...more

Augmented reality content makers often position the technology as a new storytelling medium. And who loves stories more than children? Available now in the App Store as a free download with in-app purchases for additional content, Wonderscope uses ARKit to place content, whic ...more

It's a controversial headline, I know, but bear with me and I'll explain in due course. Disclaimer: I was once a child, and I played lots of video games. I didn't look anything like this child. Are Video Games Good or Bad? Ah, video games: that perennial time-waster that chi ...more

|Choose Your View: Quick Bullet Points | Detailed Descriptions Android's newest major update is a special one — it's the tenth full version of the world's most commonly used operating system. The latest release, dubbed simply Android 10 (codename Android Q), was first showcas ...more

Most of us skip through documents like privacy policies and EULAs (end-user license agreements) because they're long and boring. But, as Congress just passed the SJR34 bill in early April, you're probably a little concerned about your personal data, so we summarized the privac ...more

As excitement looms for Apple's annual parade of pomp and circumstance for its latest lineup of iPhones, some hidden hints in an internal build of iOS 13 has Apple enthusiasts salivating for what Cupertino is testing in the AR wearables realm. While Apple has yet to even conf ...more

While Magic Leap has gained attention for its ability to raise capital, the company (now with an actual product on the market) still faces an uphill climb against the titans of the industry. Namely, there's the looming presence of Apple, who 18 months ago didn't even have an ...more

If you're someone who loves to read, you've probably read a book that made you want to hop into the story and live in the world that wasn't your own. Reading has a way of letting us escape into other worlds and experience things that we normally wouldn't be able to. Augmented ...more

Alongside Sesame Street, the Dr. Seuss universe has been a constant presence in the formative years of several generations of children in the US. Now, Dr. Seuss's creations are continuing to maintain relevance with today's youth via augmented reality, just as the Sesame Stree ...more

The latest installment in the Alien movie franchise, Alien: Covenant, came out many months ago, and the fan day dedicated to the franchise, Alien Day, April 26, is long past. But for many Alien fans, Alien Day is every day. For those loyal members of the xenomorph-worshipping ...more

Everybody loves the stars. Well, I certainly do. As a child I'd spend hours outside during summer nights marveling at the seemingly endless amount of sparkling dots spanning the sky. Maybe you have children of your own and want to create a sparkle in their eyes, or in your own ...more

Many people that I know who have gone to see the Hobbit have come back unimpressed or annoyed with the film. I LOVED it. When those non-specific people, cough Loziers cough, gave me their reasons for not liking the movie, I was very annoyed... I considered the demands that the ...more

Your childhood "social networking" may have been to go outdoors to the neighbor's — and outdoors is a great place for kids to be. But these days, the terms educational, digital media, entertainment, and toddlers don't have to be mutually exclusive. Like most things in life, it ...more

What's black and white, sounds like actress Kristen Bell, and is standing in your living room talking to your kids right now? Don't worry, that's just Genius the Panda, an augmented reality character from the Yakables app for iPhones and iPads. Using ARKit to place the animat ...more

Anyone that has ever watched a member of the opposite sex play a video game knows that the other gender does it wrong. My personal favourite example of this is Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, after you get the Hearthfire DLC. When I first watched the demo clip for this DLC I freaked ...more

Phone specs get better and better each year, and multiplayer mobile games are right there with them. Instead of playing solo, jump into some real-time gameplay with co-op and player vs. player modes, and battle friends, family, and strangers from around the world. But which mu ...more

While our time with the Protostar VM from Exploit Exercises was lovely, we must move on to bigger things and harder challenges. Exploit Exercises' Fusion VM offers some more challenging binary exploitation levels for us to tackle. The biggest change is that these levels are al ...more

After nearly two months of beta testing, Apple is finally pushing the iOS 15.6 software update to all iPhone users. While it's not as feature-rich as the iOS 15.5 or iOS 15.4 that came before it, there are still a few things you'll want to know about it. The iOS 15.6 update w ...more

Apple's latest mobile operating system for iPhones, iOS 12, was released to everyone Monday, Sept. 17, and it's the same exact build that developers and public beta testers received as the "golden master" on Sept. 12, the day of Apple's 2018 special event. Install it to start ...more

Essentially, the Anti-Griddle does exactly what its name promises: it turns things almost instantaneously cold when you drop them on its "grilling" surface. Unlike home methods of flash freezing, its staggeringly low temperatures (-30°F/-34.4°C) allows ingredients that normall ...more

Each day, we read about another security breach somewhere in our digital world. It has become so commonplace that we hardly react anymore. Target, J.P. Morgan, iCloud, Home Depot, and the list goes on and on. Those are just the big ones that get reported in the news. Millions ...more

Remember going to the doctor when you were a kid? If the word 'traumatizing' comes to mind, you'll love the RoboDoc by MarkusB, a robotic doctor that makes checkups a little less scary (and a lot more fun) for kids. It all started when Markus took his 14-month-old daughter for ...more

Brands are increasingly adopting augmented reality to promote their products and services, and they have multiple paths for bringing AR experience to their audiences. To promote its stage production, the Harry Potter franchise turned to Facebook to pull together an AR experie ...more

As we settle into our new normal, this extra time provides a perfect opportunity to learn new skills. Speaking a foreign language is a great way to expand your cultural boundaries while also training your brain. Not only will you pass the time more effectively, but you'll also ...more

Apple's scheduled to show off the first look of iOS 13 at WWDC 2019 on June 3, but what will the new operating system hold for iPhone? Rumors suggest that many features initially planned for iOS 12 will show up in iOS 13, codenamed "Yukon," and dark mode will be the big ticket ...more

The last few months have delivered some great new Magic Leap releases, but that doesn't mean the development team is resting on its laurels when it comes to the platform itself. On Thursday, Magic Leap began inviting users to join its Lumin OS Beta Program, which includes a r ...more