Hasta La Gadget!

Amazon has launched Kindle FreeTime Unlimited, the company’s new kid-friendly entertainment service for those times you wish your beloved offspring would just focus on their Kindle Fire tablet and stop bothering you. The subscription-based service pulls in books, games, educational apps, movies, and TV shows that Amazon guarantees are child-appropriate, with characters like Elmo, Dora, and Curious George; all of the apps have the adverts, social media integration, and in-app purchasing disabled.

That means no extortionate bills when you discover your beloved child has been stabbing the “buy extra gold!” button with their chubby, sausage-like fingers for the past hour. The “Unlimited” package also means there’s no restriction on how many times they watch individual episodes or movies.

Amazon has partnered with Common Sense Media for show, book, and app ratings, making sure that not only does no inappropriate content make it through into FreeTime, but that what the child does see is likely to be interesting for their particular age group. Parents can also add their own picks manually for inclusion, and place individual limits on how much video, app, and reading time is allowed, as well as whether browsing is blocked.

FreeTime content is accessed from a separate interface, and the system supports multiple profiles for each child which keeps their own position in books, TV shows, and movies; they’ll need a password to escape the app to the regular interface.  There’s also topic-based search.

Amazon FreeTime Unlimited is priced at $4.99 per child or $9.99 per family, per month; Prime subscribers get a discount, taking it down to $2.99 per child or $6.99 per family. It’ll be supported on the Kindle Fire, Kindle Fire HD, and Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ with a software update “in the coming weeks” and a month’s free trial to get you started.

Amazon FreeTime Unlimited for Kindle Fire offers safe kid distraction is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Sonos has updated its controller apps for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, adding the ability to stream music stored on the iOS devices directly to the multi-room wireless audio system. The new update, which popped up in the App Store today, treats local storage on the phone or tablet just as it does your traditional music collection and online sources such as Spotify, taking on Apple’s own AirPlay system in the process.

Tracks stored on the iPhone or iPad can be added to a Spotify playlist, along with content from multiple other sources. However, there’s no way to pipe audio from other iOS apps through a Sonos system; that means you can listen to music on YouTube through Sonos from your phone, nor have game soundtracks play back via your bigger speakers.

Sonos is yet to add the functionality to its Android client, either, though that was given a mild update today with no new features. The company’s Mac and PC clients also lack the streaming support, though we’d be surprised if all of these were left out in the cold for long. It’s worth noting that the iPhone app is still to be updated for the iPhone 5′s 4-inch display.

Apple’s AirPlay system has similar features to Sonos, and works with third-party speakers such as Libratone’s Zipp. What’s been missing so far has been a way to pipe AirPlay into a Sonos system; so far, the advice has been to plug an AirPort Express into the aux-in input found on a PLAY:5 speaker.

You’ll need iOS 6 in order to use the new Sonos functionality, and of course a Sonos system and an iOS device. You can find the updated iPhone/iPod touch app here [iTunes link] and the updated iPad app here.

Sonos adds AirPlay-style streaming from iPhone and iPad music is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Sonos has been steadily reducing our dependency on the computer as the cornerstone of its multi-room audio system, but there’s been one link left to cut: local music. Outside of an AirPlay workaround, a PC of some sort has always had to stay awake to stream a personal collection. If you’re an iOS user, it’s now possible to go truly PC-free. A 3.8.3 update for Sonos’ apps plays music stored on an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch directly through the system, with no hoop-jumping required. Local content is put on equal footing with pure internet sources, too — the software can mix local tracks with those from Amazon Cloud Player, Spotify and other internet services as part of the same playlist. There’s no official word of direct device streaming for Android, although we wouldn’t be surprised to see it follow before too long.

We gave the update a quick spin of our own, and it works largely as you’d hope. There’s a logical hierarchy for browsing music by categories; songs, albums and podcasts play almost as soon as you’ve added them to the queue, even if the Sonos app is in the background. We heard slight hitches when playing tracks meant to play seamlessly — this may not be a dream Dark Side of the Moon setup — but grouped speakers stay just as nicely in sync as they have in the past. The Sonos upgrade is more than good enough to save a walk across the house for a favorite tune, and that’s really all we need.

Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment, Portable Audio/Video, Tablets, HD

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Source: App Store (iPad), (iPhone)

Our favorite shows, anywhere, that’s all we really want. Of course that is asking too much but we’ll be closer to the dream now that Silicondust has announced its three tuner HDHomeRun Prime CableCARD is a certified DLNA Digital Media Server (DMS). While the options this opens are seemingly limitless, one specific use case is watching premium cable on a PS3. CableCARD tuners aren’t exactly known for their ease of setup, but once you do get this working with your cable company and on your network, it’ll show up like any other DLNA source to your PS3. From there you can browse the list of channels and watch any you happen to subscribe to.

The PS3 isn’t the only DLNA Digital Media Player (DMP) or Digital Media Renderer (DMR) that works with a DLNA DMS, and plays MPEG2 video. However, at this point it’s the only one we know of that also supports DTCP-IP, which is the DRM required to play premium content. A representative of Silicondust told us he’s confident more compatible devices are on the way, while even more devices will support the unprotected content. Keep an eye out for an official list of compatible hardware on its site some time after this update starts rolling out later this month. Finally, yes, you will be able to use your DLNA Digital Media Controller (DMC) to record content to your other Digital Media Servers — is that enough acronyms for you? If this interests you, then stay tuned for CES where Silicondust plans to announce phase 2, which is where we think things could really get interesting.

Continue reading HDHomeRun Prime is the first CableCARD tuner to deliver live TV to DLNA Devices

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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Before walking down the aisle, some celebs like to let loose.

Strippers are a traditional part of both bachelor and bachelorette parties, and we found stars who took part in the wild trend. Click through the slideshow below for celebrities who partied hard on their last nights of singledom.

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