Alla inlägg den 14 mars 2011
Saddled with mounting complaints from parents that their kids were running up big iTunes bills Apple changed its app purchasing policies. Now parents, or kids using their parent's iPhone or iPad, will have to re-enter an iTunes password when making a purchase within an existing iOS application (called an in-app purchase).
The new policy was delivered to Apple devices this week as part of a iOS 4.3 update that added several tweaks to the iOS platform. Previously, purchasing something on the App Store (and entering your iTunes account password) opened a 15-minute window, during which you (or your child) were able to make additional in-app purchases without re-entering your password.
According to The Washington Post , parents complained that, in this 15-minute period, their children had managed to rack up hundreds of dollars worth of in-app purchases on games such as Smurfs' Village and Tap Zoo. While both of these applications are free to download, their in-app purchases cost as much as $100.
Parents were alerted to this fact a while ago, when Capcom actually ended up putting a warning on its Smurfs' Village game--a warning that said Smurfberries cost real money. Unfortunately, children who make impulse purchases on iPhones probably aren't all that good at comprehending what "real money" is, so Apple has stepped in.
"With iOS 4.3, in addition to a password being required to purchase an app on the App Store, a reentry of your password is now required when making an in-app purchase," Apple spokeswoman Trudy Miller told The Washington Post on Thursday.
Now users are required to enter their password twice, once to download the app and once to make a purchase. Hopefully this will make people stop and think about what they're doing (or, in children's cases, prevent them from making changes all together...you don't give your kids your iTunes password, do you?) before they start making purchases left and right.
So upgrade to iOS 4.3 today! If you can, that is--Gizmodo notes that iOS 4.3 is only available for the last two generations of the iPhone, the iPad, and the iPod Touch, so some of you will have to control your kids' purchases the old-fashioned way.
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The growing repertoire of gadgets at our disposal, from smartphones to televisions, may make it easier to work, play and connect with one another. Unfortunately, these devices may also be making us very, very tired.
According to the 2011 “Sleep in America” poll, conducted by the National Sleep Foundation, 95 percent of Americans ages 13 to 64 use some type of electronic device — television, computer, video game or cell phone — in the hour before going to bed. The near-constant presence of screens, doctors say, may account for two thirds (63 percent) of respondents admitting that they don’t get enough sleep throughout the week.
“Artificial light exposure between dusk and the time we go to bed at night suppresses release of the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin, enhances alertness and shifts circadian rhythms to a later hour—making it more difficult to fall asleep,” said Dr, Charles Szeisler of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Woman’s Hospital in a statement. “This study reveals that light-emitting screens are in heavy use within the pivotal hour before sleep. Invasion of such alerting technologies into the bedroom may contribute to the high proportion of respondents who reported that they routinely get less sleep than they need.”
Among the baby boomer population, those ages 46 to 64, television was the most often used electronic device, with 67 percent saying they watch before falling asleep. That compares to about 50 percent of 19- to 29-year-olds (generation Y’ers) who watch TV before bed.
Cell phone usage was the most pervasive among the younger generations, with 56 percent of generation Z’ers, those ages 13 to 18, and 42 percent of 19- to 29-year-olds talking or texting in the hour before bed. Only 15 percent of generation X’ers (30-48) and 5 percent of baby boomers report cell phone usage in the hour prior to falling asleep.
In addition, more than six in ten respondents say they use the computer at least a few nights a week. Fifty-five percent of generation Z’ers say they surf the Internet before going to bed, as do 47 percent of generation Y’ers.
Late-night video game sessions are also fairly common among the younger generations, with 36 percent of 13- to 18-year-olds and 28 percent of 19- to 29-year-olds admitting to playing before bed.
All of these gizmos and screens amount to far less sleep, say experts.
“Over the last 50 years, we’ve seen how television viewing has grown to be a near constant before bed, and now we are seeing new information technologies such as laptops, cell phones, video games and music devices rapidly gaining the same status,” said Dr. Lauren Hale of Stony Brook University Medical Center in a statement. “The higher use of these potentially more sleep-disruptive technologies among younger generations may have serious consequences for physical health, cognitive development and other measures of wellbeing.”
Read the full results of the 2011 “Sleep in America” study here.
WASHINGTON (AFP) – YouTube on Friday began showing what it said was the first feature-length Hollywood movie created specifically for the Internet.
"Girl Walks Into A Bar" is a comedy starring Carla Gugino, Zachary Quinto, Rosario Dawson, Danny DeVito, Josh Hartnett and Emmanuelle Chriqui, YouTube's entertainment marketing manager Nate Weinstein said in a blog post.
The movie is described as "a comedy about a seemingly unrelated group of characters spending a single night at 10 different bars throughout Los Angeles."
It was directed by Sebastian Gutierrez, who wrote the screenplay for "Snakes on a Plane" starring Samuel L. Jackson, and produced by Gato Negro Films and Shangri-La Entertainment.
It can be watched at youtube.com/ytscreeningroom.
YouTube, which was bought by Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion, has been adding professional content such as full-length television shows and movies to its vast trove of amateur video offerings in a bid to attract advertisers.
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – YouTube announced that it bought Internet television company Next New Networks to improve content for the Google-owned video-sharing website.
The New York City-based startup was launched four years ago and is home to popular networks, such as "Barely Political" and "Indy Mogul," which it billed as the "filmmaking network for the YouTube generation."
Next New Networks built a highly effective Web programming platform that has served up more than two billion videos and attracted six million subscribers, according to Tom Pickett, director of a newly created YouTube Next team.
"Next New Networks will be a laboratory for experimentation and innovation with the team working in a hands-on way with a wide variety of content partners and emerging talent to help them succeed on YouTube," Pickett said.
"At YouTube, we're focused on building a great technology platform for creators, and so we leave the actual creation of great videos to the people who do it best: our partners."
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, and YouTube stressed that it was not getting into the content creation business.
YouTube has been working to expand its video offerings with more original content as online video services such as Hulu and Netflix become increasingly popular with viewers.
Industry tracker eMarketer predicted that online video ad spending in the United States this year will climb to nearly $2 billion from an estimated $1.42 billion in 2010.
STEVENAGE, England – Eden Sawczenko used to recoil when other little girls held her hand and turned stiff when they hugged her. This year, the 4-year-old autistic girl began playing with a robot that teaches about emotions and physical contact — and now she hugs everyone.
"She's a lot more affectionate with her friends now and will even initiate the embrace," said Claire Sawczenko, Eden's mother.
The girl attends a pre-school for autistic children in Stevenage, north of London, where researchers bring in a human-looking, child-sized robot once a week for a supervised session. The children, whose autism ranges from mild to severe, play with the robot for up to 10 minutes alongside a scientist who controls the robot with a remote control.
The robot, named Kaspar, is programmed to do things like smile, frown, laugh, blink and wave his arms. He has shaggy black hair, a baseball cap, a few wires protruding from his neck, and striped red socks. He was built by scientists at the University of Hertfordshire at a cost of about 1,300 pounds (US$2,118).
There are several versions of Kaspar, including one advanced enough to play Nintendo Wii. The robot's still in the experimental stage, and researchers hope he could be mass-produced one day for a few hundred dollars.
"Children with autism don't react well to people because they don't understand facial expressions," said Ben Robins, a senior research fellow in computer science at the University of Hertfordshire who specializes in working with autistic children.
"Robots are much safer for them because there's less for them to interpret and they are very predictable."
There are similar projects in Canada, Japan and the U.S., but the British one is the most advanced according to other European robot researchers not connected with the project.
Scientists at the University of Hertfordshire first began using a version of Kaspar in 2005. The newest model is covered in silicone patches that feel like skin to help children become more comfortable with touching people. So far, almost 300 kids in Britain with autism, a disorder that affects development of social interaction and communication, have played with a Kaspar robot as part of scientific research.
The robot has only a handful of tricks, like saying "Hello, my name is Kaspar. Let's play together," laughing when his sides or feet are touched, raising his arms up and down, or hiding his face with his hands and crying out "Ouch. This hurts," when he's slapped too hard.
But that is enough to keep autistic children enthralled. Ronnie Arloff, 4, was so eager to see Kaspar he banged on the door and shouted his name. Arloff opened his arms wide just like the robot. He also recognized facial expressions, saying "happy" when Kaspar was smiling and "sad" when he frowned.
Nan Cannon-Jones, an autism consultant at the school, said the robot helps children understand emotions and language. "After Kaspar says 'haha' when he's tickled, the children learn that's what laughing is," she said. Two of the 12 to 17 kids who attend the pre-school have refused to play with Kaspar outright.
The school also uses speech and music therapy. "You can't teach children to speak or play using a robot, but it helps reinforce what we're teaching them already, like how to share and be nice to people," Cannon-Jones said.
Experts not linked to the project said it was a promising idea.
"Autistic children like things that are made up of different parts, like a robot, so they may process what the robot does more easily than a real person," said Dr. Abigael San, a childhood clinical psychologist in London and spokeswoman for the British Psychological Society.
She thought it was possible that skills children learned with the robot at the pre-school could be transferred to their homes or the playground. But San warned that experts and parents shouldn't rely on robots too much. "We don't want children with autism to get too used to playing with robots," she said. "Ultimately, they need to be able to relate to other people."
Kerstin Dautenhahn, the senior researcher at the University of Hertfordshire behind the Kaspar project, said she and colleagues don't have enough data to know if playing with Kaspar has sped up social skills in autistic children. They have published case studies describing improvements in up to a dozen children but no long-term trials.
Researchers say prospects for a comprehensive study depend on funding and teacher-parent participation, since they would have to track the kids for years — but they would like to carry one out.
She said it might also be possible to modify Kaspar to help children with other developmental problems, like Down syndrome.
Uta Frith, an emeritus professor of cognitive development at University College London, said the robot was valuable in providing children with social interactions, but doubted a machine was necessary.
"What's important for autistic kids is that they learn how to play imaginatively," she said. "And for that, you could use cooking pots or a shoe box."
But Eden Sawczenko's mom says Kaspar's weekly visits seem to be helping.
"Before, Eden would make a smiley face no matter what emotion you asked her to show," she said. "But now she is starting to put the right emotion with the right face. That's really nice to see."
___
Online:
http://kaspar.feis.herts.ac.uk/
WASHINGTON – Shoppers snapped up new cars, clothing and electronics gadgets in February, pushing retail sales up for the eighth straight month.
The Commerce Department says retail sales rose 1 percent last month. Part of the gain reflected higher prices for gasoline.
Still, it was the highest increase in four months and it followed an upward revision to January's data that showed a 0.7 percent increase. That was more than double the original estimate.
Excluding autos, sales in February rose 0.7 percent.
Sales totaled $387.1 billion, up 15.3 percent from the recession low reached in December 2008. The hope is that tax cuts and rising employment will keep consumer spending showing strong gains throughout this year.
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