Gizmodo: tweens

Please, Nobody Show This Twilight USB Drive to Any Girls

Jason Chen — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 19:40:00 EDT

Do you think that your eardrums being intact is a good thing? Then please, don't show this Twilight USB drive to any girls between the age of 9 and 15. Or was it 45. Can't tell these days. [EntertainmentEarth]

Now You Can Read Twilight, Golden Compass On Your iPhone

Jason Chen — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 21:00:00 EST

If your one dream in life was to read the teenage vampire novel Twilight on your iPhone and pay twice as much as normal, you can now die happy.

ScrollMotion has designed a book reading interface wrapper for the iPhone and partnered with major publishing houses like Simon & Schuster, Random House, Houghton Mifflin and Penguin in order to bring books like Twilight and The Golden Compass to you. At $10.99, it's actually MORE expensive than buying the Twilight paperback ($6.04 on Amazon), so if you buy this it's more of a convenience thing than a price thing. And don't confuse your iPhone as an E-book reader, as that lcd backlight will kill your battery even when you're not turning page. (Unlike an E-ink display.)

More books will be rolling out gradually as more partners jump on. [Twilight]

Leapfrog

gizmogo — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 11:57:49 EDT

We mentioned the Leapfrog FLY Pentop Computer before, but this time, it's finally hit shelves. As we mentioned, this is a computer built inside a special pen "computer", and works with specially made paper. For example, you've got some crazy calculator function: you draw some numbers on the paper, a plus sign, and an equal sign. Then you simply tap a number, and it'll say the number out loud. Tap 2, the plus sign, and 4, and the equal sign, and the pen will yell out 6. This also works if you draw out a musical keyboard; it'll play out a tune depending on which notes you tap. I didn't believe the hype until I actually saw a demo of this first-hand — the technology blew me away.

Targeted primarily for tweens, the FLY Pentop computer is intended as a learning device, with various educational applications and games. Some of it sounded quite cheesy (like a trading card baseball game, plus a password journal for teen girls) but maybe that's just 'cause I'm an old and jaded 26-year-old. The rest of the apps sounded actualy cool and useful: a scheduler, a Spanish language translator, etc. I actually would like to see this technology upgraded for adult-use, perhaps as a PDA, or an advanced note-taking system... I would definitely prefer using this thing to grappling with stylus Graffiti.

Suggested retail price for FLY Pentop Computer is $99, while various accessories and applications range from $5 to $35.

Fly Pentop [Leapfrog]
Highly-anticipated US$99 Pentop Computer finally hits shelves [Gizmag]