Here’s a really simple mobile phone designed for younger children. The bright pink (or black) Firefly glowPhone is simple to set up and only has five main buttons, arranged in a butterfly pattern, so is much easier and less fiddly to use for small fingers.
Two of the buttons can be assigned to call mum or dad, while the middle one has arrow keys for moving around options. There’s a 1.5-inch colour screen which can display customised wallpapers, and there are also built-in games and ringtones.
Important features include an emergency button on the side of the phone, and the ability for parents to lock the phone to allow certain calls to be made or received.
The phone works on Pay-As-You-Go, so your child won’t rack up a huge phone bill.
If you think your younger child should own a mobile phone (half of under-10s in the UK do, apparently) then this might be worth considering. It’s likely that older kids and teenagers will want the latest, expensive, “grown-up” mainstream mobile phones.
The handset launch has been delayed but it’s expected to cost around £85 and you’ll find places to buy it at the Firefly Mobile Ireland web site.
(Via Tech Digest)
This post looks at one of the latest bits of home entertainment kit. You’ve probably started to hear “Blu-ray” mentioned at the end of adverts for films. Read on for an explanation and find out how you can enter the world of high definition.
The rise of high-definition TV formatting and Blu-ray has seen a change in home entertainment and we are now able to create a full cinema experience within the family home, which is a great bonus during the currently economic climate.
What is Blu-ray? Blu-ray is a high-definition disc format and DVD is a standard-definition format. The higher definition means that Blu-ray is a significant improvement over DVD in terms of picture and sound quality, delivering a whole new exciting way to experience movies, games and music. Blu-ray discs play through either a BD player or Playstation III enabling the highest quality viewing experience available to date.
This new technology often sounds intimidating, however it’s surprisingly simple to use! You don’t have to throw out the existing collection of DVDs as they still play on these machines and in fact the Blu-ray player will even enhance the quality of your DVDs. Price has also been a worry in the past but this is a another surprise, with BD players now starting at £80.00 and Blu-ray discs available nationwide.
So, is Blu-ray here to stay? It’s a resounding yes, as 3D TV is still a little way off the HD images that Blu-ray provides are second to none. I recently viewed Disney’s Enchanted on both DVD and Blu-ray, the difference was astounding and I was able to create the cinema experience from my very own living room with a little help from the kids.
The science bit, how does it work?
The Blu-ray Disc offers better video quality and to do this each disc needs to hold more information so it is burnt using a different laser to a DVD. As these discs can hold more content they also have an array of bonus features and many players now offer connection to the Internet. This enables you to download additional content or features about the program or movie you are viewing.
With Blu-ray sales predicted to exceed 15m in 2009 we have been quicker to switch to the format than we were to relinquish the VHS. Recent sales figures from Disney home entertainment show that 1 in 10 sales of Wall-E were purchased on Blu-ray rather than DVD.
It’s actually quite simple:
1. Make sure your TV is HD ready – check to see if there is an HD symbol on your TV as nearly half of all homes in the UK already have an HD TV.
2. Get a Blu-ray player. There are over 67 different players now available, prices starting from £80.00.
3. Connect your Blu-ray player to your HD TV with an HDMI cable – it should be in the box with your Blu-ray player.
4. Blu-ray not only looks better but it sounds better too. Enjoy this enhanced audio quality with a simple surround sound system.
5. Connect to the Internet through your Blu-ray player to download bonus features and games that you and the kids can enjoy (most modern Blu-ray players support this feature – look for ones that say “BD Live”).
For more information on family titles available on Blu-ray visit http://disney.go.com/disneyvideos/bluray/
Welcome to Family Relationships Magazine’s weekly roundup of family-friendly gadgets.
Designed to act as the virtual fridge door for busy families, the O2 Joggler is a new device designed to organise family life.
For O2 customers, it works with the interactive online calendar and mobile phones, sends out text messages, provides various information including news, sport, traffic and weather updates, and it can also play and display music, photos and video on its screen.
If someone updates the shared events calendar from their PC, it automatically updates the Joggler too. There’s more information about it at O2Family.O2.co.uk.
It’s coming tomorrow, priced £149.99.
Welcome to Family Relationships Magazine’s weekly roundup of family-friendly gadgets.
B(l)aby belt
Though currently only a prototype, the B(l)aby belt is like a hi-fi system for the womb.
It’s a wide, contoured belt equipped with a touch-sensitive digital music player and three vibration-based speakers that effectively transmit music directly into the womb.
Based on research which suggests that music (particularly classical) may help boost children’s intelligence, Canadian design student Geof Ramsay built the device.
It’s not commercially available yet but Ramsay is looking for developers.
Memoir digital photo frame
Digital photo frames are pretty popular these days. They allow you to view the photos taken on your digital camera or stored on your PC and have all sorts of fancy features.
However, getting the images on to the frame has potentially been a stumbling block for those not so au fait with technology, particularly if the photos are prints.
Here’s a solution from Skyla. The Memoir FS80 digital photo frame is also a scanner, so you can add those printed pictures that you haven’t got round (or been able) to get onto your computer.
It has a decent eight-inch colour screen and a slot at the bottom for feeding in photographs. It can even be used as the “go-between” for getting photos onto a computer thanks to its standard USB port – the same as you find on most modern PCs and digital cameras.
It costs around £178 and will be available from the end of this month.
