Hasta La Gadget!

Popular smart phone messaging app LINE created by Naver Japan has collaborated with major Japanese toy maker Takara Tomy to create a range of merchandise aimed at children based on a new animated series called LINE Town.

The LINE Town series has begun broadcasting in Japan on TV Tokyo (Thursdays from 6.30-7pm) and is based on characters from LINE’s stickers which are more sophisticated than emoticons, featuring a larger spectrum of personas, humour and darkness.

It is easy to understand the massive popularity of LINE in Japan, just from observing people using the app on crowded subway trains and especially when most young people will ask for my LINE id instead of Facebook when exchanging contacts. According to ZDNet Asia worldwide LINE users now exceed 150 million.

LINE TOWN, the animated series. Image via Lineblog

LINE’s popularity coupled with Japan’s preference for cute and distinct characters is probably what spurred the creation of the animated series and spin off products which includes the MY TOUCH phone, a LINE sticker printing kit, several customised LINE stamp kits and toy figures (pictured bellow).

Images via watch.impress

LINE Town My Touch is designed so that children who are not ‘lucky’ enough to have smartphones can still enjoy the simulated experience of using them. The most unique aspect of My Touch for children is the application of NFC technology to exchange LINE stickers and messages by ‘touching’ the phones together (as pictured bellow).

To further replicate the experience of using a real smartphone, My Touch is equipped with colour LCD screens and sliding touch functions that children use to navigate through the menu of LINE Town mini-games and activities that allows them to unlock more characters and stickers. My Touch is scheduled for released on August 8, 2012 at 6,825 yen (US$70) which is quite steep considering it is a fake phone for children.

This strategy by LINE and Takara Tomy to entice children into the habit of using smart phones to communicate with friends at an early age could produce more smartphone dependant young people and create a strong affiliation between LINE and mobile communication.

Image via coolsmartphone

On the one hand maybe it is good to have more children confident with using the latest in mobile technology so that they are quicker to adapt to changing communication trends in the future. On the other hand should children really be playing and chatting to each other with fake smartphones? Wouldn’t it be better if they just talked to each other instead? Especially if they are only a few feet away.

Reading your child a bedtime story is an experience most parents probably enjoy more than their children do as it allows them to be creative in how they deliver the story to their child. Changing your voice to simulate what they believe the character would sound like is one way to be creative, but another, more tech-friendly method would be to put these Smart PJs on your child.

The Smart PJs have dots all over them, which are placed in a way where they’re scannable to pull up a bedtime story when you scan them. Parents would have to download Smart PJs’ respective application either on their iOS or Android device, and they can let their child choose which dot pattern they like the best to have its corresponding story read to them. The Smart PJs application also puts the words to all of the stories and information on animals on the screen, which can help their child learn to read the stories themselves.

Smart PJs are available in four different sizes for both boys and girls and only cost $25. We’re not sure how many stories the Smart PJs can make available, but we do know that it’s probably enough to keep your child entertained while being drifted off to sleep for a couple of years.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: TomTom Runner and TomTom Multi-Sport GPS Watches, Apple Grabs 20 % Of All US Technology Sales For 2012,

Lego’s new Mindstorms EV3 kit isn’t all just gun-firing robots and killer scorpions. Unfortunately, there’s also some learning to be done, with the new Mindstorm EV3 kit ready to land in schools this August. Lego reckons the kit touches on several curriculum areas like computer science, math, engineering mixed with (we hope) a little fun — c’mon, it’s class-time Lego!

We got to have a brief play with it back at CES, and as far as Lego goes, it appears to have more than enough additions to keep young minds ticking over, including Linux firmware that connects to Android and iOS apps, infrared and its very own 3D construction guide from Autodesk. The core kit includes the EV3 brick nerve center, a rechargeable battery, sensors, motors, a pile of bricks, a new ball wheel and (thankfully) instructions. Added to that, the teaching set includes a “customizable curriculum”, digital workbook and 48 step-by-step tutorials to get the lil’ tykes started.

Filed under: Robots

Comments

I can always tell when my daughter is an art making mood. I don’t have to see her artwork to know she’s feeling artsy, I can look at her hands and tell when she’s been in the marker box. She always ends up with pink and orange swirls on her fingers and on the side of her hand. We also end up with Crayola wrappers everywhere and pieces of paper thrown all around. She typically makes a big mess but ends up with beautiful artwork.

If your kid likes to make a lot of artwork, but isn’t exactly neat about it you might want to check out a new product from Griffin called the Crayola Light Marker for iPad.

The device itself looks like your typical Crayola marker, only it has a glowing light on one end and works in conjunction with an application that runs on the iPad. Instead of drawing directly on the screen of your iPad, you draw in the air with the Light Marker. It uses the iPad’s front-facing camera to track the position of the marker. It also comes with a stand to hold the iPad in place at just the proper angle for drawing.

The app offers several different things the kids can do including a free draw where they can draw on the screen just like they would on a piece of paper with any color marker they want. The app also includes coloring pages, dot-to-dot pictures, and hide and seek pages to play with. The app is available on the app store at no cost and the Crayola Light Marker itself is available right now for $29.99(USD).

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