This interactive comic introduces “environmentally aware” themes to children, through the adventures of three friends named Flash, Graham and Melody Tulip. The 26 screen story is about the friends search to learn the identity of the Phantom Clickerist — the person (or creature) who keeps turning out the lights. The creature, turns out to be a polar bear, who wants to prevent global warming. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Perfect Pitch Piano (PPPiano) is designed to teach you to play piano by ear, by playing a copy-cat style game with your iPad. Your screen displays a large, responsive keyboard that is just over an octave in size (17 keys) and sounds exactly like a piano. The app starts easy, playing a one or two note phrase and then waits for you to answer. The lessons get progressively harder; wrong answers give you another chance, depending on the settings. You can adjust the activity so that you can make as many as six mistakes. You can also change the pitch and tempo. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
This is a 28 screen rendition of the classic Danish folk tale, The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Anderson, with illustrations by Lisbeth Zwerger. The story is about the tension between the mer-people and the land people, and how a young mermaid rescues and falls in love with a human prince. The pages can be narrated. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
This interactive earth science textbook app is organized in ebook fashion, with illustrations, photos, narrated animations, and slide shows, along with quizzes and review questions to test and reinforce understanding. Specific topics include the causes of earthquakes; the relationship between earthquakes and faults; earthquake waves; seismometers and earthquake detection; locating the source of an earthquake; measuring the size of earthquakes; earthquake damage and large historical quakes; tsunamis, firestorms, landslides, and liquefaction; earthquake prediction; and an in-depth discussion of the relationship between earthquakes and plate tectonics. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
This first ever 3D Sims title works only on the Nintendo 3DS, which means some additional new control mechanisms not available in the past. Besides the 3D graphics, the game plays like other Sims games, offering a top-down view of your Sim family. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
This edition of The Sims gives you millions of hair/clothing/facial feature/body type combinations; along with many of the features of the Sims games. You can give your Sims unique personalities, make them them evil, romantic, paranoid, kleptomaniacs or a mix of something completely different. You can control their destinies, determine whether or not to fulfill their desires or let their dreams die, or let them try to become a rock stars. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
The Parrot AR.Drone is a $300 flying spy camera, propelled by four-rotors (called a quadricopter). Onboard flight sensors consist of two altimeters, a three-axis accelerometer and multiple gyroscopes that send in-flight information to a Linux-powered processor, so that it can continuously stabilize itself when flying. The Drone is controlled via Wi-Fi. Here’s how that works. After you charge the Lithium Polymer battery and Velcro it into a holding dock, you turn on your iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad (obviously not included in the price, but required) and check your control panel to sniff out the Drone’s temporary Wi-Fi hotspot. A power button starts the four motors, and an emergency button shuts everything down. To steer, you can tilt your device like you are balancing a plate, and use thumb controls for more subtle moves, such as when landing. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
This iPad edition of the Periodic Table of elements is loaded with visual surprises, with links to the WolframAlfa encyclopedia. The app features 500 examples of the chemical elements in virtual form, and every object can be spun around a complete circle with the touch of your finger. Language options include US English, British English, French, German and Japanese. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
It’s always nice to see things get more powerful and cheaper at the same time. The Echo, now two years newer than the two-year old Pulse is also designed to work with standard headphones. The lithium-ion battery, Java-powered recorder that is just a bit fatter than a Sharpie marker, with a tiny camera in its tip that can detect a faint pattern of dots to give the pen its bearings. Without this special paper, you’re left with an old fashioned, rather expensive pen, however. Here’s a summary of the three biggest features: a) It can capture everything you write and “replay” it on a Windows or Macintosh computer screen; b) It can record large amounts of extremely clear stereo audio (up to 100 hours for the 1GB model and 200 hours for the 2 GB model); and c) It can associate written notes with the sounds that are going on, at the exact instant the marks on the page were made. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.