Best Free Apps for Kids - iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android: February 2009

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02/15/2009

An iPhone App with Magical Powers: Amazon Remembers

Imagine an application that can find any product that you take a picture of. You see a really nice toy or a book that you'd like to get for your little one, snap a picture! You see a pair of shoes that you like, snap a picture! Amazon Remembers is an iPhone app that finds the product you take a picture of and e-mails you a link. The magic behind the app is not some state of the art image recognition technology. When you take a picture, Amazon workers perform searches manually and find the best matching product. The results is e-mailed in about 2-5 mins.

I already used the app few times, including at our pediatrician's office when we enjoyed reading a book together and we wanted to get a copy. We just snapped a picture and got the Amazon link to it in the e-mail.

Below are examples of some of my snapshots and products returned by the Amazon iPhone app:

Did you try the Amazon Remembers app? Drop us a comment.

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02/12/2009

iPod Touch Battery: How long does it last and how to extend the battery life

At Apple's official site, iPod Touch battery life is said to be up to 6 hours when playing back movies and up to 36 hours when playing back music. Many iPhone and iPod Touch forums talk about the battery life, and most people say that their device lasts only 50-60% of these manufacturer-specified-times.

I ran a couple of tests and discovered some battery-saving tips along the way.

1. In the first test, I set the brightness to maximum, wi-fi was turned on and I used the iPod Touch speakers to playback a movie. The battery lasted only 2 hours and 35 minutes.

2. In the second test I applied the following battery power saving tricks. You can access these by selecting Settings on your iTouch:

Reduce the display brightness to half under Brightness tab.
Turn off Auto Brightness
Turn off Location Services under General tab.
Turn off Wi-Fi
Use headphones instead of speakers

In the second test after applying the above settings, video playback time was about 4 hours and 45 minutes.

Apple also indicates that if you charge iPod Touch for 2 hours, it charges up to 80% of battery capacity and it takes about 4 hours to charge the device completely.

iPhone battery life can be different than that of iPod Touch. There are also more functions that you can turn off when trying to conserve battery. I'll run tests on iPhone as well and report here.

Do you have additional tips that you'd like to add? Drop us a comment.

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02/08/2009

5 Concerns About Buying iPod Touch for Children

I frequently get e-mails from parents who have questions about buying iPod Touch for their kids, such as 'will my kid break it in a few days?', or 'it is an expensive device, is it worth it?'. In this article I am discussing some of these concerns and my experience with the same issues. Note that my experience is limited to my young kid owning an iPod Touch for about 3 months. I expect that parents with older kids may have different concerns. Here they are: