An Ex-Pixar Designer Creates Astounding Kids' Book On iPad

By John Pavlus
re-post from: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1664419/an-ex-pixar-designer-creates-astounding-kids-book-on-ipad?partner=co_newsletter

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore iPad App Trailer from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.

"The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore" is like a well-written bedtime story and an immersive animated movie at once.

E-books are already a fraught subject for many readers, writers, publishers and designers, but children's e-books are even more so. Is it rotting their minds? Is it as good as good ol' paper? Is it too interactive for their own good? Obviously there are no practical answers to such questions, but at least one children's e-book/app/thingie (what do we call these things, again?) is doing it very, very right. It's called "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore," and it's like a well-written bedtime story and an immersive animated movie at once -- without being "too much" of either.

Part of why the book works so well is its top-shelf creative pedigree: author William Joyce is also an accomplished illustrator and animator who's published New Yorker covers, won a bunch of Emmys, created character designs for some of Pixar's first animated classics, and worked on many others for Dreamworks and Disney. With his cohorts at Moonbot Studios, he created an interactive book-app around the story and a standalone animated film -- so you can experience "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore" however you like.

Designing interactive interfaces for kids is no mean feat, and the Moonbot team really made some great choices with "Morris Lessmore." When you open up the app, it doesn't waste your time with teaching-screens about how to interact with it -- it just smoothly enters the story. (A key feature, I imagine, when you want to get Junior to go the youknowwhat to sleep ASAP.) Gently animated cues surface in the lush visuals at just the right time, encouraging you to explore the app rather than slavishly plod through it: When a house gets picked up in a tornado, you can use your fingers to swipe and spin it around -- but you don't have to.

In fact, the interface design is so subtle it wasn't until I was about six pages in that I realized that every page of the app has some delightful feature embedded into it that you have to find for yourself. This is the key to a successful children's book -- inviting them to play and explore and be curious, not just jab buttons to activate cheesy visual effects. And mercifully, every gewgaw in the book has a button so you can toggle it on or off: For example, you can kill the voiceover so you can read to your kid in your own voice the way God intended, or silence the music and sound effects if you want to. But they're all just a tap away if you change your mind -- and the whole experience is so well-produced, you very well just might.

Amazon’s Tough Decisions on Its Android Tablet

By NICK BILTON

Repost from http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/the-amazon-android-tablet-conundrums/

Waiting for Amazon to sell a full-fledged tablet feels like waiting for the grass to grow: we know it’s going to happen, but it’s taking an awfully long time.

As we have reported over the last year, Amazon has been readying a color screen tablet that will run the Google Android operating system. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, has even acknowledged that a tablet project is in the works, saying earlier this year that the company was actively working on a “multipurpose tablet device.”

According to a person who works with Amazon and asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak publicly by the company, Amazon has struggled with a number of issues while building its upcoming tablet.

The company’s choice to pick Android in the upcoming tablet, for example, was not an easy one.
Internally, executives at Lab 126, the division of Amazon which makes the Kindle e-reader line, debated the pros and cons of an Amazon tablet running Android versus Amazon building its own operating system based on the existing Kindle platform.


One of the goals with the Kindle tablet is to enable Amazon to deliver its own rich media services, including its cloud music and streaming video products to Kindle customers. Yet the Android platform already offers the same services through Google and other third party companies.

Executives worried that putting Android on an Amazon tablet would be like opening a new music and video store on a city street already packed with dozens of other music and video stores.

In the end, Amazon realized that if it created its own operating system for its upcoming tablet, it would need to entice developers to build apps on yet another platform. Developers are eager to build for Apple, as evidenced by the over 100,000 apps that are available  for the iPad, and they build for Android, which has hundreds of thousands of apps available for tablets and mobile phones. Hewlett-Packard, with its webOS, and Research in Motion, also with its own operating system, are having a harder time winning developer’s time and they have far fewer apps.

If the Kindle wants to compete with Apple and its highly popular iPad, Amazon realized that it needed to offer services and products beyond just video, music and books. It also has to give customers access to games, social applications and other third party products.

Amazon also ran into trouble with the touchscreen technology it planned to use in the upcoming tablet. Last year, the company purchased Touchco, a multitouch project that grew out of the Media Research Lab at New York University. Touchco uses a technology called interpolating force-sensitive resistance, which is extremely inexpensive, costing as little as $10 a square foot. But engineers have had trouble integrating the technology into the Kindle e-readers because it can reduce the intensity and crispness of the screen.

Amazon has also been working hard to offer a device that is competitively priced compared to other tablets. The person who works the company said Amazon planned to offer its Kindle tablet at a lower price than the Apple iPad, which costs from $500 to $830 depending on memory size and 3G abilities.
To do this, Amazon is building its tablet with the bare necessities inside. Limiting memory capacity, peripherals and choosing to skip a built-in camera in the device, the person said.

According to an Amazon executive with close ties to Mr. Bezos, who could not be named because of his senior role in the company, Mr. Bezos made a decision after the iPad was introduced to try to lure customers onto the Kindle platform by offering less expensive devices.

This can be seen with the company’s price reduction of the Kindle e-reader over the last year. The third-generation Kindle now starts at $140, compared to the original, which sold for $400.
Amazon also hopes to entice customers to its new tablet by offering competitive wireless 3G pricing. Although Apple originally offered unlimited access to AT&T’s wireless 3G on the iPad, the company discontinued this pricing option months after the iPad was introduced. Apple customers have complained that the current 3G pricing options for the iPad were too expensive.

Do the Math: Amazon is Planning Three New Tablets

Re-post from http://www.pcmag.com

By Damon Poeter

 
Amazon tablet rumors are flying fast and furious these days. A new report Thursday from Taiwan-based supply chain scoop sniffer DigiTimes may only serve to muddy the waters regarding the online retail giant's plans to take on Apple's iPad with a touch screen device of its own before the year is out.

The crux of the DigiTimes report is that Amazon has contracted with Kindle assembler Foxconn to put together 10.1-inch tablets for a release date sometime in 2012, while Quanta Computer is now shipping a 7-inch tablet to the online retailer.

At first blush, the rumored deal with Foxconn on a 10.1-inch tablet for 2012 doesn't jibe with this week's report from The Wall Street Journal that Amazon will have a 9-inch device with an outsourced design ready for release before October of this year.

But as TechCrunch points out, the 9-inch tablet reportedly arriving in the third quarter could be "a sort of placeholder" for a larger model that Amazon plans to design itself and release next year.
In that sense, both the Journal's article and the DigiTimes report could be on the money.

What's a bit more confusing is the part in the DigiTimes report from Thursday about a 7-inch Amazon tablet being assembled by Quanta Computer. ZDNet's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has cited sources who have identified Quanta as the maker of the Amazon tablet, so that much is consistent. The trouble is, Vaughan-Nichols' sources seem to be referring to the 9-inch tablet identified in the Journal report from Wednesday.

Here again, there may be an answer that indicates both reports are correct, though it takes some digging through the growing backlog of Amazon tablet rumors to find it.

Back in May, Boy Genius Report cited sources who claimed Amazon was readying not one, but two tablets for release in the second half of 2011—specifically, a more powerful model codenamed Hollywood (the 9-inch tablet named by the Journal?) and an "entry-level" version codenamed Coyote (the 7-inch device identified by DigiTimes?)

So here's the skinny, as far as we can tell: Putting together all the different rumors and assuming that everybody's information is more or less accurate, it sure looks like Amazon has not one, not two, but in fact three separate tablets in the offing.

First, there would be two color, multi-touch tablets running Google's Android Honeycomb 3.1, designed and assembled by Quanta and set for a September release—the 7-inch Coyote tablet with Nvidia's dual-core Tegra 2 chip, and the 9-inch Hollywood tablet, powered by either the dual-core Tegra 2 or perhaps by the upcoming quad-core "Kal-El" chip from Nvidia.

The third rumored tablet is the mysterious Amazon-designed, Foxconn-assembled 10.1-inch device mentioned by DigiTimes' sources. Not due out until 2012, this tablet would likely sport Nvidia's Kal-El processor and run a more advanced version of Android.

South Korea to throw away schoolbooks by 2015, Teachers to be given 'digital training'

Re-post from http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/05/south_korea_kids_go_digital/

By Natalie Apostolou

Posted in Networks, 5th July 2011 01:00 GMT

The Korean government plans to digitise all school textbooks by 2015, and have students of all ages access "education content" via smartphones, tablet PCs and smart televisions.

The Korean Education Ministry has set the bold timetable to accelerate "smart learning", it announced last week.

The ministry plans to digitise all subjects for elementary school students by 2014, and all subjects for middle and high school students by 2015.

In addition to the content of paper textbooks, supplementary materials and two-way study methods will be included in the digital textbooks.

The government will increase online classes in 2013 for three years to allow for distance learning for students in remote areas and those who are ill, unwell, or otherwise unable to travel.

Using IPTV, the ministry is also encouraging students to also take a "University-Level Program", where high school students can take college-level courses that include foreign language study.

Around 25 per cent of teachers are set to receive dedicated "digital" training in how handle devices for the "smart education" programme.

The ministry also said it plans to hold nationwide academic tests online.