Today’s kids are digitally adept. That much is very clear to anyone with a toddler and an iPad. They seem to have a natural ability to take a gadget that is touch-driven and make them do magical things, often at a level higher than adults. Is it a good thing or a bad thing? The good parts are clear. Education, imagination, and integrating with today’s world are easy components with which to make arguments for the use of touchscreen devices by children. The good comes with bad components as well as the infographic below depicts. Here are some of the repercussions of having children so engulfed in the use…

I’m not just writing about this gadget because it happens to share my name and along with it a fine heritage of great naming for great stuff, honest. First, Toby jugs in England, quirky mugs with character in look and feel. Then, the Tobi Steamer, a remarkable alternative to the tedious task of ironing clothes. Now finally, the Tobii S32, a device for recording speech and playing it back by pressing buttons with appropriate labels. I’ll admit, I’m a little baffled by it. I see several obvious uses as either toys or educational devices for kids, or accessibility aids for deaf or mute people, but the…

Sure, there might be some kind of problem with the signal bar — perhaps it is software, as Apple claim, perhaps not — one day we’ll know. Meanwhile the adoring iPhone loving or loathing public might as well get their gossip going on this O.T.T. rich person’s creation, the $20,000 diamond-encrusted iPhone 4 from designer, Stuart Hughes. Hughes likes to bling out his Apple devices — you’ll usually find at least one diamond and gold and dragon’s claw-encrusted Apple product emerge shortly after each Apple product introduction. (OK, I made up that bit about dragon’s claws). Take a look…

He may have written some classic hits, but Prince has no ‘Kiss’ to give in his latest ‘Purple Rain’ of vitriol against ‘teh internets’, which the diminutive pop star says ‘is finished’. Is this a ‘Sign of the Times’, or simply an attempt by the artist to propel sales of his latest album, 20TEN, which isn’t going to be made available in shops, instead it is to be given away in the UK with copies of the Daily Mirror. Speaking to the Mirror, Prince slammed, like, this whole Internet thing, saying it is over, finished, dead, last year’s number. At the risk of being a rock ‘n’ roll…

Remember that racecar bed you loved so much when you were a kid? What was the deal with that, anyway? Does anyone really feel like they’re racing a car when they’re lying or sleeping in one of those things? Childish flights of fantasy abound, here’s a similar concept. The racecar Wii controller by CTA Digital. Pretty obvious really, this is actually a pretty neat idea. Like most Wii controllers, you simply attach your Wii or Wii Motion Controller to the device and your gaming experience is enhanced. In this case, the device is an inflatable racing car. Your Wii controller attaches to the steering…

Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone are rapidly snatching smartphone share as the race to ascendancy sees the competition sent to casualty. The latest Gartner figures today tell us Android and iPhones are gobbling up the space. Between them they now account for 25 percent of the smartphone market (in Q1), up from 12 percent last year. The iPhone took 15.4 percent of the whole thing (up 5 points). Android is up 8 points to 9.6 per cent. What’s critical here is that all other smartphones lost relative share, though unit sales climbed. Android is now the fourth largest operating system, displacing…

A survey of 4,000 UK shoppers has declared Apple’s iPhone to be a more important invention than flushing toilets or space travel. The smartphone has also been voted more important than the combustion engine and washing machine. The study, conducted for Tesco Mobile, puts the iPhone in eighth place on a 100 item list (below). The wheel was voted the most important invention in history, ahead of the plane, lightbulb, the world wide web and computers. Lance Batchelor, Chief Executive Officer of Tesco Mobile, said: “It’s amazing to see how much the iPhone is valued, sitting alongside inventions…

Newly-leaked images and video show us the next-generation iPod touch will host a camera. Apple had originally been expected to field a camera in the iPod touch when it upgraded that device in September 2009. The introduction was preceded by a wave of leaked images showing a camera in place. Fast forward to release and the camera wasn’t included in the upgrade, though eagle-eyed users spotted a space on the motherboard where it could have been. Now the latest news from Vietnam tells us to expect the camera to appear in the next iteration of the touch. This follows the brief appearance of two prototype…

Using the iPhone OS, a Belgian man managed to make a wonderfully sounding guitar. Drums and background music can also be heard from the guitar, which makes him a pretty good garage band. Using multiple touch screen phones, he strums the chord he’d like to use and continues to play his “banjo”. Besides using the iPhone OS, a battery-powered speaker and some good old duct tape to keep it all together, he also uses two Android devices, two Windows Mobile devices and one iPod Touch. The app he used is called iShred and just some regular Guitar apps by Frontierdesign. iShred is an app for the iPhone which…

Don’t be confused by the picture, HOLO 2.0 is more than a child’s plastic bracelet with some iPhone Skype screen shots pasted above it. In the eight years since its release, people have been using the computer interface in Minority Report as the milestone for the next level of computer interaction, but now that Multi Touch is widespread, what’s next on the horizon? HOLO 2.0 is the brainchild of a group of Indian designers, and as you might have guessed, focuses on holographic technology. Assuming the technology lives up to the hype, this actually sounds like a great concept. The device is worn like…