Last-Minute Gift Ideas: Tablets For Kids

One of the biggest questions tech-savvy parents must contend with when it comes to tablets for their kids is this: do I really want to give my precious wee one a really expensive piece metal and glass?

Tech blogger Shelly Palmer asked the same question this holiday season and came up with five good tablet options for kids.

Palmer's picks are pretty good, touching on safe and educational options for younger and older kids alike. I like the fact that he threw out an Android- and an iOS-based device, though I'm not sure that I would have picked a Kindle Fire.

Unless you want to (a) give your child quicker access to a lot of content that will (b) suck your bank account dry, I'd suggest a Nexus tablet instead. You can still get multimedia content if you want it, but from more sources then just Amazon's web store.

I loved Palmer's kid-only choices, but you may want to weigh your own budget needs before getting one of these highly specific devices. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, if you're trying to cut costs for the long term, you may want to buy an Android/iOS device first, rather than a kid device for $99-$199 that they'll outgrow very quickly and you'll have to get a new tablet for anyway.

But if you have a string of little kids in your creche, I would definitely opt for a kid-specific tablet that can be shared and passed along so it will get more than just a year or two of use if you're lucky.

Time's running out, so you'll have to move quick to get a tablet under a holiday tree. But whatever you decide to buy, be sure it exceeds the level of your child's abilities so they'll grow into using the tablet over time, instead of outgrowing it next week.

Windows 8 Sales Slower Than Hoped

It's unexciting. Boring, really. That's what detractors of Microsoft's Windows 8 are saying. And those comments are showing up at the register, as retailers are also blaming slower than expected sales on a weak market. 

It's a sign of the times. At one point a new operating system got people to buy new computers. But those days may be behind us. As 2013 approaches, consumers seem to be more into hardware instead of software. And that means tablets and mobile devices. Not the platforms that make them run.

And with a still-tumultuous economy, people are sticking with the computers they have, not rushing to upgrade. The numbers seem to back this up, as sales of Windows 8 are off 13% compared to 2011 Windows 7 sales, according to research firm NPD. Mix this with heavy competition from Apple, Amazon and a slew of others and it becomes less and less surprising that the PC business, which once dominated the lion's share of tech sales, continues to struggle. 

It's a very real rivalry fought and won in retail dollars, and the first-born isn't winning handily any more. The shift in consumer mentality and sales is moving more and more to tablets and smartphones over computers. These devices are also essential to the long-term success of Microsoft, which redesigned its new operating system to incorporate a tile-interface made for touchscreen functionality, yet flexible enough for traditional laptop and desktop devices. But that change has been met with sharp thorns, as critics have been disappointed with the user interface in lieu of the new tile structure alongside the old desktop version.

Is this the death knell for Windows 8? Not so fast. There seems to be one more hope on the horizon: The introduction of a slew of new Windows 8 devices slated for 2013 launch. But that's a long way away in both retail and calendar time, so slower sales now are not a harbinger for a happy Microsoft holiday season.

Image courtesy of Microsoft.

Nice Guys of OK Cupid Latest Fodder for Online Shaming

The latest target for our collective online ridicule:  lonely, sometimes pudgy, men who can't get dates due to their misogynistic tendencies.

Men who have labeled themselves (not ironically) as "nice guys" on an online dating site have unscrupulously been gathered together in a new Tumblr called the "Nice Guys of OK Cupid." These unsuspecting rejects from the online dating site have become the modern day face of sexism and rape-culture, or at the very least, homophobes and men who hate being "friend-zoned,"  - basically, men who are not so nice after all.  

Besides wondering why they can't get dates after writing most girls they know are "shallow bitches" or "whores" who always fall for "jerks," "douches" and "assholes" instead of them, quite a few of the men answered the OK Cupid question about sexual obligations with "No is really a yes in disguise."

And their sexism is an Internet hit! Well, more like the Tumblr itself, which besides getting thousands of notes on each post has now been covered by everyone from New York Magazine, Huffington Post, Gawker's Jezebel, and even the New Statesman. As Laurie Penny postulated on New Statesman, these men's "worst nightmares have come true: all over the world, ladies who don't even know him are laughing at him."

Nicely Shaming Nice Guys

As far as public shaming goes - a trend that has become quite fashionable these days - Nice Guys of OK Cupid is pretty tame: the real names of the men are not listed, nor are their addresses. (So no one is harassing them on their Twitter or Facebook or prank calling them - yet.)

Unlike other instances of public shaming, the aim of this project is not clear either;  people upset by Lindsey Stone's middle-finger photo wanted her fired (and set on fire), Gawker wanted school officials to know about teens racist online postings, and Hello There, Racists! wanted racists to be humiliated -  but what does Nice Guys of OK Cupid want?

To humiliate these men, or warn women browsing OK Cupid to stay away from them? While the former seems more likely, humiliating these men will not help them change their behavior, or even help them understand why their behavior needs to be changed in the first place.

"There has to be an answer to these guys that isn't just pointing and laughing... Are we ever going to be able to have a conversation about consent, about respect, about fucking, and maybe even about love, that doesn't descend into bullying and invective?," Penny wrote. 

Probably not.

The Old Internet Story

The Internet has been harassing people for various reasons since its first public inception, and making the leap that Internet has enabled bullying through pseudonyms is not a far-fetched claim.  Cyberbullying, or public shaming, can sometimes be referred to as Internet vigilantism, which gained considerable momentum on 4chan's /b/, the same message board that spawning the online activist collective Anonymous. This form of online ridicule has moved beyond the confines of 4chan's /b/ - sometimes referred to as "the asshole of the Internet" - and is now mainstream with writers like Buzzfeed's Matt Buchanan who argue public shaming is okay so we can exact "moral rectitude" - whatever that means -  on sexists and racists. We are all qualified to be judge, jury and executioner, apparently. 

If the Internet is indeed getting nicer as Nathan Heller theorized last month in New York Magazine, why is public shaming now so mainstream? In a prior interview, the online troll and writer Jon Hendren speculated the rising trend of outlets shaming online deviants has legitimized the practice for readers and casual Internet users. Think: If the media is going after sexists, racists, and sexual deviants, we can too.

The coverage Nice Guys of OK Cupid received - a Tumblr which we can all agree makes fun of low-hanging Internet fruit without offering much context - would certainly make its author feel validated.  But how many cycles of shame will it take before we all get the clue about glass houses?

Can Ireland Offer Startups Something Silicon Valley Can't?

In the past few years just about every country with a high-speed network and a national budget has hatched a 'startup ecosystem.' From http://readwrite.com/2012/04/17/move-your-startup-to-chile-con to the Silicon Taiga, these programs offer entrepreneurs funding, infrastructure and support in an effort to lure a critical mass of promising young companies and spawn the next Silicon Valley.

None has succeeded. The Dropboxes and Instagrams of the world still flock to the original Silicon Valley.

First Choice For Second-Tier Startups?

But if you've got a startup that is not quite as hot as a Dropbox or an Instagram, there could be a good reason to consider one of those other startup ecosystems. You won't get Marc Andreessen's number at the next rooftop party. But there's something else you won't get: ignored.

'Our startups get tons of hands-on support - much more than they'd get almost anywhere else in the world,' says Lorcan O'Sullivan, manager of Enterprise Ireland, one of the latest of the many campaigns by governments around the globe to attract startups to their shores and inject new life into their local economies.

Enterprise Ireland has a fund of '10 million to dole out. Startups that relocate to Ireland can get between '100,000 and '500,000 each. Those that are accepted must arrange private-sector funding in an amount equal to the Startup Ireland funding. Startup Ireland does not take a seat on the board but does take 10% equity. That's more than top U.S. accelerators like Y Combinator take (normally around 6%) but O'Sullivan says Enterprise Ireland gives more in return, particularly to startups in sectors where Ireland is strong, such as medical devices, pharma and IT.

'Of course, a good startup can get funding anywhere. But we think we have extra things to offer.'

Ireland Can Help With Going Global

Enterprise Ireland has so far attracted entrepreneurs from the U.S., Russia, Belarus, England, Greece and South Africa. Many of them are outfits that want to internationalize but don't know how to do it. 'We have a network of 28 offices around the world that are at the disposal of our startups to make business connections and gain access to customers and partners,' O'Sullivan says.

Some of Enterprise Ireland's startups joined the program because Ireland is the easiest place in the EU to launch a business. One startup in the medical device field that joined recently was attracted by the favorable regulatory environment.

'We hope to attract a wide range of startups, even those who have a reason to leave the U.S.,' O'Sullivan says. 'These could be entrepreneurs who can't get a visa in the U.S. but can get a visa in Ireland, because we have very attractive startup entrepreneur visas here.'

For all his country's advantages - lower taxes and costs than Silicon Valley - O'Sullivan says he realizes that entrepreneurs with a good shot in the U.S. will not choose Ireland, especially given all the negative economic news about the country of late, including its recession and debt.

'People think, 'Why would I go to Ireland? There is not money or jobs or anything happening there.' But we want to say there is very vibrant startup scene here. Are we going to replicate Silicon Valley? No. But you can still be very successful without being Silicon Valley.'

 

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Cheating DeathWatch: Myspace

The ReadWrite DeathWatch is known for serving up plenty of doom, gloom and grumpiness. But for the Holiday Season, we're taking a slightly different tack - highlighting companies, technologies and perspectives that have managed to cheat death. T

This week, we're taking a look at MySpace, that social network that showed Friendster how it was done, then got shown the door by Facebook. When its users bailed and the tumbleweeds started rolling, MySpace could have packed it in, but instead, it regrouped for one last shot ' behind a leader with some really sweet dance moves.

Where Myspace Came From

Remember Tom? Sure you do. If you're under 45, he was probably your #1 friend at one point. In 2003, Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe founded the MySpace social network, and it was an instant hit.

In 2005, traditional media took note, and Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp dropped $580 million for MySpace and its parent company. By fiscal 2008, Fox Interactive (MySspace's new parent)

Things changed pretty quickly.

The next May, Facebook, already bigger overseas, surpassed MySpace in the U.S. by nearly doubling its user base over the previous year. Myspace responded by slashing 400 jobs to reinvent "a startup culture." The decline was on.

In April of 2011, Murdoch started shopping MySpace to bidders, asking for $100 million. He took a lot less, and sold the company to Specific Media for $35 million in June.

Planning to refocus on MySpace's biggest strength ' music ' Specific Media brought in Justin Timberlake for some star power and industry cred. Management went into planning mode, and apart from a new logo and a more graphical home page, the site just kind of sat there. On the plus side, the bleeding stopped by December, and Myspace (now with a lowercase "s") actually started adding users again.

Where Myspace Is Now

In September, 2012, the team began teasing a new, more visually attractive site, focused on a single mission: providing a single social space for consumers and labels to discover musical artists. In the words of an employee, "There's going to be a huge emphasis on surfacing unknown and up-and-coming artists of all kinds and content around them that is different from what you get on other sites."

The site looks a lot like Twitter. And Pinterest. And every other social media site that's hot right now. There's a layer of media sharing and consumption tools, plus reporting tools that let artists see who's listening to and sharing their music, help them strike up relationships with promoters, influencers and (if they're lucky) music labels.

Myspace began taking requests for invitations and pushed its beta to the industry, with consumer invites to follow. The beta has drawn mixed critical reviews of the business model. ReadWrite's Jon Mitchell can't understand why anyone would invest so heavily in the Web when mobile is where the action is, and he may be right. Still, everyone seems to agree about three things: The beta looks fantastic. It's hyper-focused on sharing and discovery. Justin Timberlake is more than just a name on the marquis ' he has a very real stake in the product's success.

So why would Timberlake risk his reputation on reviving Myspace? For one thing, it still has assets. With 28 million unique monthly visitors, Myspace is no Facebook (152 million), but it's bigger than Pandora (21 million), and more than twice the size of Spotify (12 million). It also has global rights to its catalog, while Pandora is limited to U.S. distribution. The catalog itself is much larger, too, owing to Myspace's direct relationships with unsigned artists, who bring 27 million of the service's 42 million tracks. And as Myspace's parent company pointed out in a leaked slide deck in November, those unsigned artists' songs are free, dramatically lowering Myspace's costs per listening hour.

A Myspace spokesperson was honest about the company dropping the ball. "I think, internally, we all felt like we'd let that community down; like we owed them something and had to make it right by delivering on the promise of Myspace." But she also understood that no one had picked up the slack. "In its heyday, Myspace was a great platform for artists. When we stopped serving that community, no one else stepped in to give artists a place to put their music, connect with audiences, see how their art's resonating with people, promote themselves, collaborate with other creators' The need for a Myspace is there. We plan on delivering on that need."

Where Myspace Is Headed

Myspace has a product to sell. It has the economics to make that product profitable. It just needs to make the product desirable.

This is where star power comes in. Timberlake has managed to endear himself to teenage girls who think he's cute, grown-up women who find him sexy, and grandparents who want to pinch his cheeks ' all without alienating guys, who want to drink a beer with him and meet his wife. Timberlake is there to bring labels to the unsigned bands, marquee names to the catalog, and users to the site. If he delivers, it's up to the team to keep them interacting.

And what about that team? As one Myspace worker puts it: "Before Tim & Chris & Justin took over Myspace, I was looking for jobs elsewhere. I wasn't even confident that new ownership would make a difference. But when they bought the company and we met them, heard what they had to say, there was an immediately noticeable shift. These guys were really ready to turn this thing around, and they had a plan. And the sense I get from them is that they don't fail. They work hard and are focused on specific goals that can succeed, which was really refreshing. The staff, who were tired of being on the losing team, started to perk up and get energized again because we started to have a focus and a goal and some real hope."

Employee excitement doesn't necessarily lead to a turnaround, but it's a necessary component, and something Myspace has lacked for a while.

Can Myspace Make It?

There are a lot of "ifs" in this scenario, but once you posit that there's a market for a music discovery and sharing service, Myspace actually seems to be in the lead.

Or it will be, once the beta launches. The date on that is still uncertain. According to the company, "We're literally pushing fresh code every day. We're actively getting feedback from our community and making tweaks and adjustments based on what they tell us."

The site is due to relaunch at some point in 2013, and when it does, we'll see whether Myspace belongs on real DeathWatch list.

As of the end of 2012, though, Myspace is still here ' and still potentially relevant. So we tip our caps to them, and look forward to seeing whether the company can make it all the way back.

 

To see more ReadWrite DeathWatches, check out the ReadWrite DeathWatch Series, which collects them all, the most recent first.

What Gangnam Style's 1 Billion Views Say About Modern Society

Sometime last night, Gangnam Style made YouTube history - yet again - by reaching one billion total views. The march to this digital milestone hasn't been quiet: it's been surrounded with hysterical speculation about what the video's incredible popularity 'all means for society.'  

I am here to tell you that everything is going to be okay. Society is still fine, and Psy's one billion views on Gangnam Style is not a sign of the Apocalypse as many feared this week. Nor is it a sign our society is turning into 'Idiocracy' or drugs and meaningless babble, as Bill O'Reilly suggested last month.

   

Gangnam Style and its success is simply a byproduct of our interconnected digital world as told through video, digital culture in the form of memes and GIFs, and last but not least, how music now spreads in the form of YouTube videos. 

Parodies Pay The Bills 

As a music video, Gangnam Style is colorful, irreverent and awe-inspiring in its wackiness. Like any good viral video, Gangnam Style put bread on the table for do-it-yourself YouTube content creators in the form of countless parodies and mashups  - some of these collected a million views on their ow, earning their creators a pretty penny.  A good parody video is the YouTube equivalent of movie review or essay by an esteemed writer, if you will, and the sheer number of parodies is a good gauge of how effectively the original video captured the cultural zeitgeist.  

Put another way, YouTubers love doing videos about Gangnam Style because it makes them money, and parodies and mashup videos feed the hype machine. 

That Absurd Global Culture 

The images in Psy's music video feel familiar to Western audiences; the little kid dancing like Michael Jackson, sexy ladies doing yoga and all the references to Hollywood movie tropes like walking into the wind or away from explosions. This familiarity simply means we now have a shared, global culture - one that Gangnam Style was able to reference with an appropriate level of absurdity. You can laugh both at Psy and with Psy. 

Despite this familiarity, though, Gangnam Style still maintains a certain exoticism, which is a good thing to non-Koreans. Sharing a good music video with your friends is one thing, but sharing a popular music video from another country?  You're now "worldly." 

Singing In Korean: An International Novelty 

In fact, Gangnam Style's "Koreanness" likely helped its spread; the video required decoding and gave those that understood the secret meanings a bit of a superiority complex. It was no accident The Atlantic's "Gangnam Style, Dissected: The Subversive Message Within South Korea's Music Video Sensation" is one of the most popular posts on the site, referenced by almost anyone writing seriously about Gangnam Style.    

For people not interested in decoding "Gangnam Style," the foreign language lets listeners project whatever they want onto the song, again broadening the appeal. And don't forget the explosion of K-pop in Western cultures. 

'Time [Magazine] needs to switch from "Person Of The Year" to "GIF Of The Year" to stay relevant,' tweeted Media Matters Simon Maloy a few days ago, and he has a point. 2012 was the year of the GIF, and Gangnam Style was incredibly GIFable. It's hard to say which there are more of, Gangnam Style parody videos, or Gangnam Style GIFs? Either way, GIFS have become the go-to form of expression among many Internet users. 

The Dance  

Remember the Macarena? It swept the globe in the mid-90's and is still a crowdpleaser at weddings. Gangnam Style is just like that, except instead of multiple steps, you ride an invisible horse and occasionally attempt to lasso the air. Its inherent ridiculousness makes people laugh and have a good time doing it. 

YouTube: The Poor Man's Juke Box

Back in August, media outlets were shocked to learn that two-thirds of teens in the United States use YouTube as their primary method of listening to and discovering new music, primarily because it is free.  Many people no longer purchase music, they just play the songs they want to hear through YouTube. Music is the dominant traffic driver to YouTube, as brand and marketing analytics company ChannelMeter kindly displays in the pie chart below.

 

Finally, remember what Gangnam Style topped to become the most viewed video; Justin Bieber's Baby. Baby had so many views because tween girls were slapping the "repeat" button over and over again. People were also hitting that button for Gangnam Style. At t least I was, as I was not about to pay money to listen to it. 

Gangnam Style is not unique. Look for its YouTube record to be broken soon enough by another musician, with another catchy pop song and dance. That's the YouTube way.

Test Driving Poke, Facebook's New "Safer Sexting" App For Tweens

Not content to have one of everything, Facebook now has two standalone mobile messaging apps. Meet Poke, a strange little app that lets users send self-destructing messages. As rumored, Poke appears to be Facebook's spin on Snapchat, an app with a conspicuously identical purpose and a hit among message-crazed tweens. It's perfect for sexting without leaving an embarrassing record, which makes snickering at the name a difficult to avoid.

Poke is available now in the iOS App Store, an Android counterpart is supposedly on the way. Instant messaging and SMS apps are a hit on the iPhone as well as on the iPod Touch, a popular device among teens who haven't quite talked their parents into paying for monthly contracts on an iPhone. Poke and Snapchat both put a playful twist on more traditional messaging apps like WhatsApp and Kik, which allow users to swap messages instantly. 

I took Poke for a test-drive, which was pretty lonely considering that out of 775 Facebook friends, the overlap between early adopters (translation: tech reporters) and people who would ever consider downloading a weird little app like Poke totaled up to exactly one. In Poke, you can send a Facebook friend a message, a photo, a short video or an old-school "poke." The gimmick is that in composing your missive, you also set a timer for how long the recipient will have before the message self-destructs.

Yep.

With a maximum time of 10 seconds, the app was a bit fast-paced for me. I certainly could have spent more time looking at what I think was a blue Furby that ABC's Joanna Stern sent my way. (A picture of a tiny pink unicorn figurine seemed like the only logical response.) 

Poke = Safer Sexting?

Poke is playful by design, but it's also creepy.

Inviting tweens to swap photos and videos that leave no trace behind is basically a mandate for multimedia sexting. After all, Snapchat was reportedly inspired by the Anthony Weiner scandal, in spite of its founder's insistence that the app isn't just about sending anatomical time-bombs. To neutralize the sexting factor, Poke notifies the sender if a message's recipient takes a screenshot. It doesn't seem like much of a deterrent, but at least it's something.  

To be honest, I don't get the app's appeal, but I think it's meant for a younger demographic. The very idea of disappearing texts may seem like a weird, fluffy little phenomenon, but in the era of downloadable Twitter archives and the Facebook Timeline, their ephemeral essence offers an oddly profound alternative.