Hands-on with Kidoodle.TV, a Netflix just for kids

Streaming is the best thing that’s happened to kids’ television since parents first realized they could plop little ones in front of the boob tube and get a few minutes of peace and quiet. (Or maybe I’m just a terrible father—it’s a toss-up.)

A monthly fee to Netflix, say, gives you access to endless hours of fun—and often educational—programs that kids can watch on a whim. And now a new contender has entered the ring, with a kids-only streaming service called Kidoodle.TV launching Monday as a free beta for those in the U.S. and Canada. After playing with it for a few days, I can say it shows some promise, and will be even more useful if it extends beyond the desktop with mobile and console apps. (Although free while in beta, the final service will cost $5 a month.)

When you sign up for Kidoodle.TV, you not only create an account login and password, but also a four-digit parental passcode. With that passcode, you gain access to the special settings that make Kidoodle.TV a very different service than others out there.

Once logged in, you can set up separate profiles for up to five kids, each with its own settings and restrictions. For each you enter a name and pick an avatar from a list of various TV show characters—I went with Brobee from Yo Gabba Gabba and Bo from Bo on the Go—and choose a color theme (blue, orange, or pink).

You can create up to five profiles for different kids. Sorry, Duggars.

But the really useful options in the Parents Rooms are the ability to filter by age range (any combo of 0-2, 3-4, 5-8, and 9-12) to automatically show or hide groups of shows, and a Title Section area in which you can choose individual shows kids can or can’t watch, even if they fall in or out of the age settings you’ve selected. That kind of granular control makes it ideal for parents who want to monitor viewing more closely. (A feature to limit the amount of time kids can spend watching on Kidoodle.TV is also planned, but wasn’t in the beta version I tested.) At the same time, there’s no way to prevent a younger kid from switching profiles to watch something meant for her older brother, which makes profiles somewhat less useful at the moment. But the company plans to add the option for parents to enable or disable this quick switching feature as an extra layer of customization.

Kidoodle.TV lets you get pretty granular with your parenting choices.

By comparison, Netflix also lets you create multiple profiles on your account, and lets you restrict access for individual profiles to Netflix’s Just for Kids interface. Unlike Kidoodle.TV, Netflix doesn’t offer restrictions for specific age ranges. But just like Kidoodle.TV, there’s no way to prevent a kid from simply switching profiles to watch something meant for older kids—or even adults. And on Netflix, the non-kids stuff they’ll find is much worse. One click and they could be on the path to meth and murder.

When I tried out the service, there were a total of 49 shows (each with multiple episodes and/or seasons) to choose from. You’ll see an image for each episode, and mousing over gives you the season and episode number, the episode title, and a description.

Shows include The Adventures of Chuck & Friends, Bo on the Go, Hurray for Huckle! (which Netflix calls Busytown Mysteries), and Strawberry Shortcake on the younger side, and various GI Joe and Transformers shows for older kids. Netflix offers a ton more kids content than Kidoodle.TV right now, although the company promises additional educational and entertainment content “in the coming weeks.” And part of the beta process will include user feedback to help determine what content gets added (Sesame Street, anyone?).

Content choices are pretty small right now, but more is coming.

Right now, the other limiting factor to Kidoodle.TV’s utility is the fact that it only works on Flash-enabled Macs and Windows PCs. My kids watch their shows on the TV or the iPad, and never on a computer, so that makes it rather useless right now. But iOS support is promised in the coming weeks (while the beta process is still going on, and before the expected November commercial launch) and Android and game console support should follow at some point. Netflix, with its nearly ubiquitous support across devices and platforms, has a distinct advantage until that time.

There’s no question that Netflix has far more content and reach than Kidoodle.TV right now. And if you stream kids and non-kids programming, the $3 extra per month to get Netflix is even easier to justify. But as Kidoodle.TV’s shows and device support expand, I can see where it could easily live alongside other streaming subscriptions in the house, due mostly to its focus on parental controls and the more active role parents can take in determining what their impressionable youngins watch.

Jonathan has been covering the tech industry since 1998. He loves watching TV shows on his iPhone while exercising, and has already indoctrinated his young twins in the ways of the Apple TV.
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Microsoft Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 benchmarks and hands-on

Microsoft launched the next-generation Surface 2 and Surface 2 Pro at an event in New York City on Monday, pairing them with a number of new covers and other accessories designed to enhance the functionality of the basic Surface experience. The basic message is that Microsoft has enhanced the Surface with additional performance, while extending battery life and slimming down the tablet’s overall profile with skinnier covers.

Old Surface Pro versus new Surface 2.

On the first count, Microsoft certainly appears to have succeeded; the addition of an upgraded Core processor to the Surface Pro 2 undeniably improves the tablet. A quick hands-on with both the new Touch and Type Covers leaves me thinking that Microsoft has taken a step back with its portable keyboards, however.

Inside the Surface 2 Pro is a self-reported Intel Core i5-4200 “Haswell” CPU running at 1.6 GHz, versus the Core i5-3317u “Ivy Bridge” chip at 1.7 GHz that powered the original Surface.

The original Surface Pro conked out under heavy load in just 2.5 hours or so, though lighter Web browsing and battery management could push it out a couple more. One Microsoft employee we talked to felt that the new SurfacePro 2 could pull five hours under heavy gaming. (With the new Power Cover, battery life will be extended to ten-plus hours.) A more formal review will settle the difference.

What is clear, however, is that the Surface Pro 2 is definitely a gaming machine of some sort. Microsoft showed off World of Warcraft and Portal 2 running smoothly—yes, these games are several years old, but they do run, and well.

A face-down Surface 2 shows off the new kickstand angle.

Still, numbers generally don’t lie. I slipped in a USB key with FutureMark’s PCMark 7 suite (the Surface won’t run a test or two in or more recent WorldBench 8 and 8.1 tests). We re-benchmarked the original Surface Pro (128 GB/4 GB RAM) and generated a score of 4,447. The new Surface Pro 2 (256 GB/8 GB RAM) returned a score of 4,888 using the identical benchmark—just 9 percent better. That’s not earth-shattering, but we are talking about generational improvements from one set of integrated GPUs to the next.

Since our tests are confined to x86 processors, we didn’t benchmark the ARM processor-based Surface 2. It felt speedy enough, but that’s a very basic impression.

Let’s be clear: Typing is a personal activity, and most users have their own set of subjective preferences regarding their own keyboards, mice, and monitors. I’ve never liked using the Touch Cover, for example, if only because the relative lack of tactile feedback slows me down and forces me to hunt and peck more than usual. But I’ve always felt that the Type Cover nearly provided a full keyboard experience, with satisfactory tactile feedback and a travel distance that made me feel like I was using a desktop keyboard.

The new Type Cover is about a millimeter thinner than the original.

Subjectively, I tend to prefer big and clunky—and that’s not the direction Microsoft is moving in. Both the new Type and Touch Covers are slimmer than before, shaving off a millimeter or so of thickness on each. But Microsoft also took a real step forward, adding dynamic backlights that sense the presence of your hands and turn off when not in use. Backlights don’t seem like a big deal, but that misunderstanding disappears the first time you take your tablet or laptop into a crowded conference rom or lecture hall and the lights dim.

I brought my old Surface Pro along, both for the plane ride to New York as well as to the event itself for a direct comparison. Personally, the Type Cover feels like a small step back—not huge, but noticeable.

And while I still don’t like the the Touch Cover, well, it felt slightly more usable than I remember it.  (And no, I don’t know if the older Touch Covers can be used with the new model.)

The new Surface 2 docking station, due next year.

Microsoft didn’t have the Docking Station (right, and at top) or the Power Cover set up to use, leaving me with the impression that the company is still finalizing the design.

I suspect—well, hope—that Microsoft’s on to something here, though. If Microsoft plays its cards right, the Docking Station could transform the Surface into the engine powering something like a desktop, while the Power Cover could add the stability to make the Surface a true convertible tablet or two-in-one. (In a nice touch, Microsoft employees told me that the Power Cover charges the Surface’s internal battery, so that you can grab it and go if need be.)

Quite frankly, Panos Panay, the Microsoft executive in charge of the Surface launch, oversold it a bit. Seriously: “lapability”? What does that mean, exactly? If it means the ability to work with the Surface in a lap — maaaayybee. Neither the Touch nor Type Cover nor the dual kickstand gives me the feeling of working with a notebook in my lap. I’m hoping a more rigid Battery Cover changes that impression.

Surface Remix

Honestly, I didn’t really play with the ”Surface Remix” project that Microsoft had on hand, both because of a lack of time and without knowing if it would be a finished product. If you’re an audiophile or DJ, however, it’s worth checking out.

The bottom line: the additional performance and battery life are unquestionably significant strides forward for the Surface tablet. The new covers? Not so much. Microsoft’s message appears to be that the Surface is an engine of productivity; at this point, I’d go so far as to say that my fingers will want the old Type Covers back, backlit keyboard or no backlit keyboard.

Microsoft didn’t supply Surface tablets for review, so our analysis was based on limited time with demo units at the company’s lauch event.

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Hands-on: Acer's 24-inch all-in-one Android desktop

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Hands-on: Ricoh's Theta, a personal 'Street View' camera

BERLIN—Imagine being able to take all-round pictures like those seen in Google’s Street View from a small camera you can carry around in your pocket. That’s the promise of Ricoh’s Theta, a sleek panoramic camera launched at this week’s IFA electronics show here.

The camera is intended for both consumer and professional users alike, and I tried it out at the show.

Photo: Martyn WilliamsRicoh’s Theta panoramic camera

Theta is long and thin and doesn’t look much like any other camera. It’s about as long as a smartphone but isn’t as wide and is quite a bit thicker. It’s most striking feature is a fisheye lens toward the top of the device. It’s matched by one on the rear and its through these that the camera can take pictures that extend almost 360 degrees in any direction.

There are only three buttons on its body: about halfway up its body is one for the shutter and on the side are buttons to switch on and off the power and Wi-Fi connection.

Using it is easy. Because it takes an all-around picture, you don’t need to worry which way it is facing. You just have to consider what’s around it.

There are two ways of taking pictures. The shutter button on the camera body will snap an image and store it in the Theta’s microSD card, but you’ll have more fun using a dedicated app on your cellphone.

When the shutter button on the app is pressed, the camera takes a picture and then transfers it to the phone over a Wi-Fi Direct connection. The software acts as an image viewer and lets you explore the picture you just took and share it online with services like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.

Taking pictures with the Theta requires a bit of a change in the way you visualize your intended image. Instead of what’s in front of the camera, you need to consider what’s all around it so, for example, a picture of a group of friends works best if they are sitting around the camera rather than all lined up on one side.

It’s certainly a fun twist on the conventional pictures we all take on vacation, at parties and perhaps for work.

I had a chance to speak to the Theta’s designer, Hidenao Ubukata, general manager of Ricoh’s visual revolution unit, and he explained how it works.

Martyn Williams360-degree action!

Behind each lens is a 2-megapixel image sensor and they both snap a picture at the same time. The two images are stitched together in the device to make an equirectangular JPEG image with 2,000 pixel by 1,000 pixel resolution. Equi-rectangular projection is best known as the projection method used to show the Earth’s sphere on 2D maps.

That image is then transferred to the phone, where it is mapped onto a sphere to re-create the all-around image. The image capturing process takes about three seconds and then it takes another five seconds or so to send the image to the phone.

Ubukata said he anticipates the Theta’s first users will be digital creatives, and they are the people who will probably hit upon new uses for this style of photography, which isn’t new but has never been so easy.

The camera will be available in October and will cost $399. The software is compatible with iOS and an Android version will be released before the end of the year.

Martyn Williams covers mobile telecoms, Silicon Valley and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service.
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Go go gadget: Hands-on with Samsung's Galaxy Gear smartwatch

Samsung’s smartwatch sounds amazing and looks amazing—on paper. In the flesh, the Galaxy Gear is a seriously limited gadget that’s tethered to a phone and/or tablet that no one owns yet. So much for innovation.

I donned the $299 watch, which hits U.S. shelves in October (and launches in 149 other countries on September 25), and played with its features for a few minutes in a crowded pressroom under less-than-optimal conditions. Based on that, I don’t see myself ever owning a Galaxy Gear.

The 1.6-inch Super AMOLED screen is beautiful. I felt like Inspector Gadget when I glanced at my wrist. But the display and plastic strap are massive. Wearable tech continues to struggle to appeal to all types of people, because it has to be comfortable, stylish, and small. If you have tiny wrists, the Galaxy Gear is not for you.

The Gear might be a tad large for ladies, or men with slender wrists.

Several people commented on the fact that the Galaxy Gear looks like those iPod nano watchbands that were in vogue a few years back. It’s a fair comparison. The Samsung watch’s display is definitely more rectangular than the Nano watch, but the glossy black display just feels like you’re wearing a mini-smartphone.

The watch responds like a smartphone, too. Swipe to the left or right to access different screens, like your notifications, clock, apps, and more. Swipe down to return to the previous screen. The Gear is quick, like a phone. But it’s an accessory. That much is obvious.

Samsung is tying the Gear to the Note 3: “Better together” is the duo’s tagline. But hundreds of millions of people own Samsung devices that aren’t the Note 3, and they can’t use the Galaxy Gear. That exclusivity severely hinders Gear’s potential. The company said it plans to widen the Gear’s compatibility with other Samsung devices, specifically the Galaxy SIII, Galaxy S4, and Note II, but reps couldn’t provide a timeline for that rollout.

Samsung teased the launch lineup of apps at the event, but must-haves like Facebook and Twitter were conspicuously absent.

The watch has apps galore: Path, Runtastic, Glympse, Line, Vivino, and more. But none of the majors are there. Instagram? Nope. Vine? Nuh-uh. Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, and news apps for browsing the latest headlines are all missing. Anything I would want immediate access to—you know, without digging my phone out of my bag—I can’t get to on the Gear. It seems like it would work well as a pedometer tied to Samsung’s S Health tracking features, but $299 is an awful lot to pay for a glorified health tracker.

You can answer calls with the Gear—it has a speaker—but you have to hold the watch up to your ear to hear the person you’re calling, thereby irritating everyone around you. You can also respond to messages, but only in the form of a voice-to-text memo. I didn’t get to test that feature, but voice-to-text is notoriously poor. I can’t even trust Siri to understand my clearly enunciated dictations.

Listening to calls in any kind of noisy environment is tough. Just ask Evan. (If he can hear you.)

The Gear has a few cool features. The 1.9-megapixel camera, located on the north side of the watch strap, allows you to take undercover photos. It just feels awesome. The camera also shoots videos—neither camera nor video quality is very good compared to the smartphone, but that’s to be expected.

The Note 3 pairing also lets you find the Gear if you ever lose it, which seems inevitable. (Watches, like sunglasses, tend to disappear into the Bermuda Triangle.)

Pebble proved a smartwatch is possible. Sony paved the way. Samsung has thrown down the gauntlet. It’s your move now, Apple.

Caitlin writes about all things social media. She is addicted to the 24-hour news cycle and Mission burritos.
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Hands-on: Parallels Access runs your Mac apps on your iPad

Parallels is best known to Mac users as one of the handful of companies—including VMWare and a couple of others—that make apps enabling you to run Windows on your Mac. Now the company is entering a much more crowded niche: Its new iOS app Parallels Access lets you connect to a remote Mac from your iPad and so "run" Mac apps on your tablet. In doing so, it joins the likes of GoToMyPC, LogMeIn, TeamViewer HD, and SplashTop Remote Desktop, as well as VNC clients like Mocha VNC, among many, many others.

So if Parallels Access isn’t exactly unique in what it does, how does it expect to differentiate itself in that crowded field? By making remotely accessed Mac programs act as much like native iOS apps as possible. Based on my preliminary testing with the app, here’s how it works.

Installing Parallels Access is a simple, two-step process. First you install an iOS client via the App Store. From that client app, you log into your existing Parallels account or create a new one. You then install a Mac “agent” on your desktop or laptop and log into that same account from there; the Mac app must be running in order for the remote access to work. (The Mac installer is smart enough to check your system’s sleep settings and advise you whether you need to adjust them; if your Mac goes to sleep while you’re remotely accessing it from your iPad, you’ll be out of business.) There’s an Access agent for Windows machines, too, so you can control those from your iPad as well.

With those two bits of software in place, you launch the iPad app, which will then show you a list of the Macs that are registered to your account.

When you launch the iPad app, you first select the remote Mac you want to connect to.

Tap on the one you want and you’ll enter a Launchpad-like interface showing you a bunch of your Mac apps. (Which is to say it looks like a standard iOS home screen, but with Mac icons.)

After you connect to a remote Mac, Parallels Access shows you a Launchpad-like home screen of that Mac's apps.

Parallels says that, by default, this initial list shows the Mac apps you use most commonly, but you can add and delete apps as you see fit: Just tap the Edit button in the upper right corner to delete or the plus-sign (+) to add. There’s also a handy search field, which will find any app with your search string, not just those on that default home screen.

When you tap on one of the icons on that home screen, the Mac app opens smoothly; I noticed no lag between my taps and the app’s response. (That’s not always the case with this kind of remote access.) If you were near the Mac you’re connecting to, you’d see the app open in full-screen mode on your Mac’s display(s). You could type and move the cursor from your Mac input devices, but the interface would be zoomed in on the one app that’s open on your tablet.

Access isn’t just mirroring your Mac’s screen on your iPad: It’s overlaying its own interface on your OS X apps. That means you interact with Mac apps by tapping, tapping-and-holding, clicking, dragging, and so on. A regular one-finger tap on the iPad produces a single left-click on your Mac, a two-finger tap creates a right-click, a slide of your finger scrolls the screen, and so on.

On the right side of the screen, you’ll see a small toolbar with four icons on it. You can swipe over the toolbar left-to-right to hide it, then swipe in from right edge of the screen to have it reappear.

On the right side you get the Access toolbar; at the bottom, there's the app-switcher.

The top icon on that toolbar summons a Dock-like interface at the bottom of the screen, showing all of the apps that are currently open on your Mac. To switch to another app, you tap its icon there.

Below that on the toolbar there’s a Launchpad icon; you use that to summon that initial home screen with your Mac app icons; you can open new apps there.

The Settings bar along the bottom summons special keys or mouse pointers, expands the workspace, and more.

Next there’s the familiar gear icon for settings. Tap on that to control six settings:

Additional Keys (which lets you summon special keyboard keys, about which more below);Mouse Pointer (tap on that to get a mouse-click toolbar that makes it easier to effect left- or right-clicks);Desktop Mode (which gives you a fuller OS X desktop, including the top menubar and the Dock); Sound On/Off;Feedback; andHelp.

Finally, below that Settings icon, there’s a keyboard button that summons the Access keyboard. That keyboard is the standard iOS one, plus a set of special keys at the top: Escape; Tab; F1 through F12 keys; Delete; a button with a grid-like icon on it that, when tapped provides Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys; Shift; Ctrl; Alt; Command; and cursor arrow keys.

Access adds a row of special buttons on top of the standard iOS keyboard.

The Access keyboard doesn’t let you “chord” keys—in other words, you can’t use standard OS X keyboard combinations such as ?-B, ?-C, and so on. Instead, you must use the iOS-standard context menu (summoned by selecting text or whatever else you’re working on, depending on the app, then tapping the selection). On the plus side, you can use iPad dictation for input in your Mac apps.

Because you’re running OS X, you can run multiple apps at once, switching from one to the other using that app-switcher button in the toolbar. But because you’re in iOS, the Access interface is really optimized for running one app at a time. So if you need to hop among multiple apps, the Access interface could be frustrating.

Tapping on elements of an app’s interface—buttons in the Office ribbon, for example—works really well, in part because Parallels intelligently interprets taps that are close to buttons; you don’t have to hit them exactly.

While Parallels Access does indeed provide a nice, smooth iOS interface to Mac programs, that’s not to say the app does so uniquely enough to clearly distinguish itself from the other iPad apps that do much the same thing. For that final word (as well as word on whether and how well you can stream video or transfer files from your Mac to iPad), you’ll have to wait for our review.

Parallels Access will sell for an $80 annual subscription; you’ll need a separate subscription for each Mac (and PC) agent you install.

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