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PDAs For Kids
fiftyfly writes "Wired's running a story about the Pixter - a sort of etch-a-sketch/palm love child. At an estimated $50.00 I'm sure someone out there must have had a go at hacking it.
No mention of anyway of getting the drawings off, I'd imagine that would be a good place to start. For $75CAD I'd give it a go, eh?"
of my first Sony.....
Yes, at last! A palm in Purple...
R.
That's a lot of power for a kid's toy! Kind of reminds me of what Precursor (guy from endeffect.com) does with his Palm.
-
And the Angel said unto me, "These are the cries of the carrots! The cries of the carrots!"
Sounds like my girlfriend's Palm m105. She's got this pastel blue faceplate for it that makes it look like a FisherPrice toy. Don't get any PlayDoh in your PDA!
http://www.cybikoxtreme.com/
This device was released a few years ago and it is basically a PDA for the younger generation. They go for about $100 CDN here ($65 USD).
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
Is conquering Slashdot part of this evil scheme?
For those of you who obviously don't get it...cad (n) A man whose behavior is unprincipled or dishonorable.
Man, kids these days! Back in my day, we were happy with pencils. And crayons, man, a pack of those could keep us happy for weeks, until nothing but little stubs were left!
Now kids got all these newfangled toys with bright color lcd's... it's almost sick! I bet they don't get the preverse pleasure of drawing on walls with 'em thou...
Websurfing done right! StumbleUpon
augment your senses: http://sensebridge.net/
For those looking for a cheap PDA, the Visor Basic can be had for as little as $55. Check Pricewatch.
I recall the old pull-back, carbon-paper drawing pads with which I used to play when I was younger. One could purchase them at the toy store for less than a dollar. I suppose that if Fisher Price had called them "creativity systems" back then, they could have charged a lot more for them.
Gosh. Think about what better marketing could have done for Etch-a-Sketch. They'd be standard issue on university campuses had they that kind of billing a couple of decades ago.
Just looking at the device made me think back to the Speak'n'Spell. I'd guess that this new toy has plenty of power to do the emulation if they feel like offering it (or if someone feels like hacking it). It would be an amusing evolution of emulator technology to have even Fisher Price toys digitally emulating their ancestors.
Thus, from this slightly drawn out anecdote, I can conclude that if mature adults don't have the self control to carry a somewhat burdensome piece of productivity hardware for a significant amount of time, there is no hope for children. Their "PDA" will become a veritable Game Boy in a short amount of time.
Recently there has been an increase in mobile phones stolen. OVer 10% of these thefts have been from children - including the children targetted by this device.
So, is this device just another expensive toy waiting to be stolen?
Move faster
I can't help but think that that toy is targeting a rather small market. Who wants it? Certainly not people over say... 12? Most kids would want it, but who's parents would actually get it for them?
I suppose some people wouldn't mind spending $50 on a toy for a 6 year old . . . just look at LEGOs.
I understand that life's not fair, just why is it never unfair in my favor?
one of the first steps to hacking this would be to get your hands on some of the ROM expansion packs. On the Go and Learning Fun would be too good choices at $10 each. The interface for connecting to the ROMs would definitely be the easiest way to connect to the toy and get info on/off of it. Someone get some software on it that can read my handwriting and ill buy one.
$5 to the first person who can port linux to the thing and releases a distro.
.... um .... 4 days.
I'd give it about
And we can finally say that Linux now has a WindowsXP counterpart, as it's running on Fisher Price, so it must look like Fisher Price, right?
right?
~will
sig?
Looks just like the Cybiko to me. Cybiko was released a few years ago and it is basically a PDA for the younger generation.
Wait a month and all of the progs you see included with the "PDA" will be emulated in MAME. At that point you can teach that special 5 year old niece or nephew about real PCs and software piracy simultaneously.
is to figure out how to get this thing to talk to ProE or AutocadLT
So they're not left out from having an overpriced alternative to paper and pencil that they will stop playing with after 2 weeks.
Every 6 months I vow to get organized and pick mine up for a week... but It's just not that hard for me to remember:
2pm: Wake up
2:01pm: Sit down at computer
6am: Go to bed.
Don't be gay, Sparky...
Man...the screen on this thing looks pitiful. I think my watch has higher resolution.
...minus the drawing stylus.
The Etch-A-Scetch animator was released in the '80s, and you can do frame-by-frame animation with it. Used the same 2 knobs just like the original.
Hey for people who has a handeld with Palm OS, there is a very similar freeware. Here's the url if you want to download it. It's called "Pen Draw". And plz note that it doesn't work if you have a color handheld. http://www.freewarepalm.com/graphics/graphics.shtm l
http://www.palmzone.net
Give the kids paper and pencils.
I've seen one of these before, they are huge.
I can't see any use for these except perhaps a wacom tablet emulator... even then, you can get a wacom 12"x12" on ebay for $40, older palms sell for less than $40...
has anyone ever died of psychedelic shrooms? not by eating the wrong kind and dying, but like killing themselves while tripping? please give links... i hope i can read them since I just ate a bunch like 10 mins ago so theres no going back!
P.S. Respond fast before my monitor starts to try to eat me or something
I got one for my four year old at Christmas. It's fun to doodle on.
Someone should buy Ozzie one.
ph34r th3 3l17e 7oddl3r hax0r kr3w...
I want my Pixelvision.
My childhood best friend and I both owned PXL-2000 camcorders. I'd rather have one of those than one of these; the Pixelvision was easily the coolest toy Fisher-Price ever cooked up, and it's rather a shame they didn't last very long. We all used to think we were TV producers back in the day -- parodies of Star Trek and 20/20 were the big thing.
/Brian
...but can it do this? http://www.lkwdpl.org/lfiles/vlosich/gallery.html
We need a dissection. Or at least to find out a> what kind of CPU it uses, and b> how much ram it has, of what kinds.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I can't belive slashdot actually posted this story. Why is this such a big deal. Look at the VTech Phusion, it's long been discontinued, but it has got a ton more features than this Fisher Price. Phusion has all the features of the Fusher Price, but the Phusion has a built in camera. Get it here for $29.00.c phuspcli. html
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/iitemcom/vte
I don't know why slashdot crew has to post this childs stuff. How about some REAL news. Yea Rite.
Etch-A-Sketch made something just like this back in the 80's. It was called the Etch-A-Sketch Animator and as I recall, it sucked. Maybe they've got something better here, but I feel that for my money, you can't beat a tablet of paper and a 64 pack of Crayolas.
you know the drill
I'm not buying one of those pieces of c*** until I finally get my cybiko running linux and talking to the network!
That's not a PDA. It's a stupid drawing thing.
<mocking>What CPU does it have? How about a BASIC Stamp 2?</mocking>
Furthermore, I'm very tired of having these underpowered, stupid, etc., devices with colorful cases targeted at children and teenagers, as if they needed colors and didn't need a real OS.
This toy is not an etch-a-sketch, you are thinking of the wrong toy. This gadget is more like the old magna-doodle :-)
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these! *smack* sorry! sorry! I won't say it..... *zap!* ouch! what did you do that *smack* for?
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Heheh, they don't abbreviate Canadian currency to CAN$ for nothing.
Unfortunately, I think you need to spend at least CAN$20 now to get a bill with the Queen's face on it. If you're gonna risk it with a loonie or twoonie, at least warm the coin up a bit before applying to your anus.
Emulating a speak'n'spell would simply consist of writing the various spelling games - the speak'n'spell used a common and public available speech synthesis algorithm, and the phonemes are publicly available. You could write a C speak'n'spell to be adapted for a variety of PDAs.
It's just a MagnaDoodle(TM) that allows you to save pictures to your PC. As for geekifying kids, my own (ages 8, 5, 3 and 1) are already attached to the computer. One of these gizmos would be a clever way to actually give them some "old-fashioned" fun: say "hey, it's your very own computer!" when all they're really doing is drawing. Sure, it costs more than pencil and paper, but my kids probably go through $10 of paper, crayons, coloring books and markers a month, and that's not even counting the time and cost of cleaning off the 3-year-old's "artwork" from our apartment walls! I'd rather give him a stylus than a pencil any day - less damage that way...
;-)
(He's also already trashed the MagnaDoodle I got him for Christmas -- it seems that with enough use, the "writing surface" becomes magnetized, so it doesn't "wipe clean" any more... Another reason why the digital version is better than the analog one...)
As an aside, did you really mean to suggest that the best thing for children aged 4+ is to "give" them "members of the opposite sex" for "old-fashioned fun", or was that just some odd Freudian slip?
First 'Can You Imagine A beowulf Cluster Of These' Post!
(Well, OK, you beat me...)
-_-_-
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
after awhile they would begin to wonder where the blue screen went..
Karma: Bad (mostly affected by moderation done to your comments)...Now i know why.
You can't compare this to lego. We've bought our children hundreds of dollars worth of lego. They play with it EVERY DAY. For years. Given this sort of use, Lego is cheap.
I can't see the article's toy getting that sort of usage.
Is one of those drawing things like an etch-a-sketch except it uses a magnetic stylus, not knobs (can't think of the brand name), in a Palm-pilot form factor case.
I'd whip it out in meetings when my colleagues are writing on their palm pilots and jot down a quick note.
No batteries, no lights, no cpu, just a flat screen and low-res analog drawing with the magnetic dust.
It's interesting the way americans force materialistic attitudes on their children at a very early age... So many toys represent items those kids tend to purchase later in life. Toy guns for boys, silicon implants (barbie) for the girls.
Now it's PDAs...Before too long yuppie parents will be buying their kids minature working BMWs... wait.
I wonder how hard it would be to port BSD to it? BSD is very portable.
What do you mean a way to get drawings off? Its pretty simple, 1) turn upside down, 2) shake vigourously.
Think about it people! Kids could draw anything in this video game. They could draw offensive words, or lewd sexual acts. They might even hack the device to install a free operating system that in every way contradicts the principles on which our capitalist nation is based. They could visually depict violent acts and criminal behaviour! Are these the kinds of things we want our kids seeing? Hell, no. Expose your kids to this kind of medium, and they'll be sexually retrograde serial killers in no time. Censor the art of drawing! Now!
Always thought I'd buy one, then got laid off. Now, though I'm working on contract, I still cannot afford one. Not complaining, though I am curious: Are they really that convenient/useful? On the one hand, pen & paper are more convenient, what with the concerns mentioned above. On the other, the memory and connectivity aspects are intriguing.
Judging from the comments in general, it sounds like you really only need one if
So what do Slashdot readers think? Worth it? Idle minds like mine want to know...
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Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
Using the stamps, replacing them with circuit elements, and adding in a circuit analysis tool could make it an effective tool for teaching physics/Electrical engineering, perhaps digital logic too.
p34nu7 6u773r.
I just assume that children dont get spoiled to death by electronic equipment. Makes a kid lazy, I'm the perfect example. Give that kid a baseball and a bat let him get outside and play ball, and not Homerun on nintendo.
These corporate-types would do well to include Slashdot in their product-release marketing plans. Think of how well the slashdot effect would server them. But then again, it would be sort of bastardizing this sacred site.
Then again, think how much the SlashCrew could charge companies like Mattel, Fisher Price et all by having a geeks-first preview of upcoming tech toys. Kind of like serv-u ads but more profitable?
But don't sell out!
The Wknd Sessions - Malaysian and South East Asia independent music
How can I set up antialiased fonts??? I hate this 20x20 screen!
Anybody know of a sturdy little digital camera for kids?
My five year old loves to take pictures, but a roll of film disappears in about 20 minutes.
A little digital camera would be perfect - no film, zillions of pics.
If you got a $100 bill, put your hands up...
Chreeeist!
If half a million sold within one month of introduction isn't a statement of some kind of a market existing, what hope Linux gaming?
(And yes, come Hell or High Water I'll be getting my 4 year old one of these!!! I mean, if there's *anything* I can do to give him a leg up on the Digital Generation... Plus, with the way my son goes GAAA-GAAA over *every* piece of electronics I whip out (INCLUDING Sunon and Panaflo fans, for crying out loud!!!), he'd not put it down!)
This has already been discussed before.
I'm seriously tempted to buy one. Has anybody bought one? Done anything cool with it?
*likes buying high tech geek toys*
"Derp de derp."
Some kind of design use for this. Give it a grid of metric graph paper and some basic drawing tools (line, curve, angle) as well as add note capabilities (put the cursor on part of the drawing and see the author's design notes on it). It would be great in 3D too, but even straying from that add graphing calculator abilities to it as well. Alright, so you can do that stuff with a full-fledged PDA on a smaller screen, but I know when I was a kid I would have definitely enjoyed something where I get to design things. Even as a kid I knew I couldn't draw worth crap, but I loved graph paper, rulers, compasses, and protractors. Hell, I still love that stuff.
I hear you!
Every time I see her in anything, I try to think Poison Ivy and Doppelganger, but I always seem to wind up with ET and Firestarter.
It is so VERY disturbing!
...and to clear the memory, simply turn it upside down and shake.
I think the main problem with most geek-child toys, such as consoles and this PDA too, is that the children are mostly just playing on their own when they use such things. This means they miss out on competitiveness, social awareness, companionship (so they don't feel lonely, I mean) - and above all closeness to human beings.
I'm not anti-tech, and to those who would say for example that they don't like their children watching tv all day because it's bad for them, I'd say - watch it with them then. Sit with them, enjoy the thing together, laugh, or even teach stuff about what's being watched if you think that won't be boring and ignored.... If nothing else, it's a chance for the child and the rest of the family to snuggle up together and do something they all enjoy. Or it can be a horrible box that breeds alienation. They are tools...
So anything tech-wise that doesn't allow others to join in (if the child wants: you have to leave them their space to be alone too!) - is going to be limited, and potentially limiting, for your child. With hardware like the PDA, we can adapt and help, but can't change the overall structure. I think with software we can go a lot further, and actually create things which by default encourage this sharing and companionship.
With regard to this, and this generally being an open source related forum, I think there's 2 software areas where children could benefit from the connectivity you get from the internet:
1) a mail reader - same as the article featured, kids draw simple sketches, can send to friends. This is much the same as any mail client, except the interface would be child friendly, and have pictures of the intended recipients, rather than their email addresses...
2) a peer to peer game - some way of exchanging drawings and sounds, or even "objects" made up of drawings and sounds together, all though a first person perspective.
But these are just my views on possible projects. There are already loads of children's games on linux, usually written by parents while the child had the age the game was intended for, and abandoned later. There's no larger scale project that I know of that directly addresses the child's "linux"(or any open source) desktop. I think it's my responsibility as a programmer and parent to do something about this. Can anyone help or inform me about what's currently around in terms of software projects?
Ale
I don't know if anyone has priced an LCD display to use for a headless PC display or MP3 player but when I saw this, I thought it would make a good display and it's inexpensive. Has anyone hacked this thing (or a cheap Visor/Palm device) as a display for a PC?
For my seven year old a Christmas time. I was rather unimpressed, the pixel size sucks so all your lines (when you are drawing) are fat and nasty plus the tracking (angled lines, direction change) when you draw just isn't as good as even the cheapest PDA. The ROM packs that you can load into the top have some fun games but the base unit grew boring quickly. As a hack / mod it might be fun but the issues with the screen make me think its not worth the effort.
mentioned before5 5&mode=thread
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/22/17342
nothing new to see here
I gave my daughter a pink Newton a couple years back (she asked for pink... I made it pink). She's been quite happy with that.
A friend of mine bought his seven-year old daughter one of these. She loves it. She plays with it for hours. She still plasys with crayons and pencils, and her dolls and other assorted kids toys.
And for those of you moaning about its size and bulkiness: it's not designed for you. It's designed for kids, who need something bigger to hold onto.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
not a lame flash version...
Free cell phone tracking
This sounds like a lame attempt by Palm to trick a new generation in to thinking the stylus is the best way to enter data.....when will they learn the qwerty keyboard RULES!!!
The key to good humour is at least a thread of truth... So don't expect to be modded up ;-)
(And yeah, its nice to AC once in a while.)
Loser
i bet your catholic.
I know shouldn't feed the troll, but since you phrased it sooo politely (and logged in to boot!), I'll have you know that I'm Mormon, not Catholic. If that was intended to be an insult, it was a pitifully inept one. May I kindly suggest that you sharpen your wit with a little remedial reading here, here, or even here. "Subtle Nuance" you haven't.
Nevertheless, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are in fact seriously concerned about overpopulation. Here are some statistics that might allay some of your fears.
According to the CIA World FactBook, the fertility rate (average number of children born to each female) in most Western nations is well below the replacement rate of 2.1:Canada in particular has a declining immigration rate in addition to the low birth rate, so according to the recent census, Canada's population is likely to decrease in the next decade. I don't think you need to worry about "saving space."
Then again, you may be one of those worried about being overrun by the mongrel hordes, but here again are some useful statistics (again, mostly from the FactBook):In other words, if the arable (farmable) land in the US were equally divided among the entire population of the world, it would only come to about 3,600 persons / km^2 (about twice the population density of the Bay Area), or about 300 m^2 (~3,000 sq. ft) for every man, woman and child. That's certainly enough to be self-sustaining. So, in short, the farmland in the US alone is enough to support the entire world; no need to worry there either.
One last note: after my 4th child was born, I had a vasectomy (which was planned all along), so you needn't lose any sleep over my "popping out" another 2 or 3. On the other hand, my 8-year-old is not only quite familiar with computers, but (unlike you) is also familiar with the proper use of "your" vs. "you're"; so perhaps what you should be losing sleep over is your own lack of education, if not your future livelihood...
Yeah. I bet you're so drunk your hot blonde hairy palm is laughing back at you.
"Little did Gary know that all the other children in his kindergarten class used the combined powers of their PDA's to crack Gary's account to nickelodeon.com".
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i