Child's play: Sky's new app brings kids shows to tablets

Sky has launched its first content app outside of its core Sports offering. Sky Kids targets pre-schoolers and children up to nine years old and may be an indication of things to come at the media company.

The app, which will be available from March 31, can be used on iOS and Android tablets and comes off the back of extensive research carried out by Sky into the kids market.

About a quarter of households with Sky have one or more children and given that nearly two thirds of 5-6 year olds have their own devices, it was only logical for it to be the first in line for "vertical" apps. You need to be a Sky customer though, with a current subscription to the Sky Family bundle, Variety bundle or Sky Q.

More to come

Sky Kids is backed by a significant production budget, and it's likely to be the first of a number of other audience-targeting apps.

Already, Sky has announced it will premier new episodes of the much-loved Morph, a stop-animation hero created almost forty years ago, in partnership with Aardman Animation. The app will also get new features in the near future, allowing parents to download episodes for offline consumption.

Currently, most major channels (Nick, Boomerang, Disney, CBBC, CITV, Milkshake) are covered although not all episodes of your kids' favourite series are included.

Only a couple of episodes of the first series of Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom are included, while only a fraction of Peppa Pig's episodes are listed on the app.

• Check out our Sky Q review

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EE TV now lets you watch any free to view show on your phone

We love watching TV on our phones and tablets, but you'll always hit an issue with particular channels or shows which won't let you go mobile.

Usually it's some sort of licensing issue, football highlights for example are generally not freely available - but EE TV is changing that with its new 'Recordings to Go' update for its set top box and companion app.

While there's no change in viewing live TV, users can now download any recorded free to view show, yes ANY, to their mobile device to watch at their leisure.

Any show, any time

It sounds a little too good to be true, but EE claims that's not the case. That means everything from news and movies to sport and soaps from over 70 channels can be recorded on your EE TV box and sent from there to your phone or tablet using your home Wi-Fi network.

You can then watch your download at any point offline, with no expiry date or watch time limit. The recording will only leave your device when you delete it.

The new update will also allow EE TV customers to set recordings on their box from their mobile phone when they're out of the house, bringing the service in line with competitors Virgin Media and Sky.

• Read our EE TV review

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Teardown of Oculus Rift finds good design that’s somehow relatively easy to repair

 When a new category of gadget appears, it’s understandable when the vanguard devices aren’t the most well designed, or are resistant to disassembly and repair. Fortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case with the first headset from Oculus, iFixit has found. Read More http://ift.tt/1ZLTLNT

Opinion: Microsoft's Bots could be its biggest contribution to computing since Windows

On stage at its annual Build conference keynote, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella painted a picture of our lives being made easier with bots, intelligent agents that live within apps and services. But, would that life be much better, or less connected than it already is – or both?

Nadella and team's vision for conversational computing comes just a week after their first public experiment in the field, Tay, came crashing down in a spectacular display of human depravity. Not exactly the best argument for a world run by bots.

The newly-appointed executive addressed the Twitter chat bot experiment head on during the March 30 Build 2016 keynote with a three-fold plan for bots that he believes are the new apps.

To Nadella, so long as bots and the digital assistants that use them are built with the intention to augment human ability and experience, with trustworthiness (privacy, transparency, security) and with inclusion and respectfulness in mind, we'll be OK.

Or, at the very least, we'll avoid another Tay scenario.

And, on paper, that generally checks out. Of course, the bots that Microsoft envisions aren't necessarily accessible by the masses all at once, but individuals through specific communication programs or through assistants, like Cortana.

Still, Tay was demonstrative of the sheer power that such intelligent, semi-autonomous software can possess. But I'm worried about another facet of these bots' power.

Do we need another crutch to connect?

That's my simple question to everyone: are the lay people of the world ready for such power, just as we're learning empathy on the internet? But, I'll follow that up with another one.

What will that power do to a society that's more connected than ever yet whose people struggle to meaningfully connect with one another more than ever?

Take Microsoft's demonstration of Cortana using bots to facilitate uniting with an old friend in Dublin, Ireland on an upcoming trip. Looking at it one way: Cortana and its squad of bots just helped someone connect with her old friend.

But, try and look at it this way: wouldn't that person have remembered that old friend without Cortana's help? Americans don't visit Ireland every day, after all. Or, would she not have, for the effects of "connected" tech have already created a crutch for her to lean on to facilitate human interaction?

I like to call this "The Facebook Effect." How many of your friends and family members' birthdays do you actually remember now that Facebook reminds you? (I won't even bother counting myself.)

What happens when we apply similar use cases to far more powerful pieces of technology? My guess is that it won't be long before we rely on bots to remind us to connect with one another much less order a pizza.

At that point, I don't know how much bots are helping so much as hindering our ability to meaningfully or earnestly connect with one another. In the above Dublin scenario, the woman didn't even reach out to her friend on her own – Cortana did it for her.

Bots for tedium, brains for relationships

Now, don't mistake: I couldn't be more excited for for bots to intelligently update my calendar and remind me that I'm on deadline for that laptop review. But, I'd rather handle communicating with other humans on my own, thanks.

Technology by its very definition makes life easier, we'd be nothing without it, but just how much do we want to lean on technology to foster human relationships?

As we enter this new phase of automation, we could do with asking ourselves that question more often.

• Windows 10 is about to get quite interesting

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Opinion: Microsoft's Bots could be its biggest contribution to computing since Windows

On stage at its annual Build conference keynote, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella painted a picture of our lives being made easier with bots, intelligent agents that live within apps and services. But, would that life be much better, or less connected than it already is – or both?

Nadella and team's vision for conversational computing comes just a week after their first public experiment in the field, Tay, came crashing down in a spectacular display of human depravity. Not exactly the best argument for a world run by bots.

The newly-appointed executive addressed the Twitter chat bot experiment head on during the March 30 Build 2016 keynote with a three-fold plan for bots that he believes are the new apps.

To Nadella, so long as bots and the digital assistants that use them are built with the intention to augment human ability and experience, with trustworthiness (privacy, transparency, security) and with inclusion and respectfulness in mind, we'll be OK.

Or, at the very least, we'll avoid another Tay scenario.

And, on paper, that generally checks out. Of course, the bots that Microsoft envisions aren't necessarily accessible by the masses all at once, but individuals through specific communication programs or through assistants, like Cortana.

Still, Tay was demonstrative of the sheer power that such intelligent, semi-autonomous software can possess. But I'm worried about another facet of these bots' power.

Do we need another crutch to connect?

That's my simple question to everyone: are the lay people of the world ready for such power, just as we're learning empathy on the internet? But, I'll follow that up with another one.

What will that power do to a society that's more connected than ever yet whose people struggle to meaningfully connect with one another more than ever?

Take Microsoft's demonstration of Cortana using bots to facilitate uniting with an old friend in Dublin, Ireland on an upcoming trip. Looking at it one way: Cortana and its squad of bots just helped someone connect with her old friend.

But, try and look at it this way: wouldn't that person have remembered that old friend without Cortana's help? Americans don't visit Ireland every day, after all. Or, would she not have, for the effects of "connected" tech have already created a crutch for her to lean on to facilitate human interaction?

I like to call this "The Facebook Effect." How many of your friends and family members' birthdays do you actually remember now that Facebook reminds you? (I won't even bother counting myself.)

What happens when we apply similar use cases to far more powerful pieces of technology? My guess is that it won't be long before we rely on bots to remind us to connect with one another much less order a pizza.

At that point, I don't know how much bots are helping so much as hindering our ability to meaningfully or earnestly connect with one another. In the above Dublin scenario, the woman didn't even reach out to her friend on her own – Cortana did it for her.

Bots for tedium, brains for relationships

Now, don't mistake: I couldn't be more excited for for bots to intelligently update my calendar and remind me that I'm on deadline for that laptop review. But, I'd rather handle communicating with other humans on my own, thanks.

Technology by its very definition makes life easier, we'd be nothing without it, but just how much do we want to lean on technology to foster human relationships?

As we enter this new phase of automation, we could do with asking ourselves that question more often.

• Windows 10 is about to get quite interesting

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Quora’s first acquisition is Arab Spring instigator’s Q&A site Parlio

 “Ex-con” isn’t normally something you find on a founder’s resume. But Google employee Wael Ghonim went to jail for sparking the Egyptian Revolution. Now he might be wearing some golden handcuffs instead, as his startup Parlio just became Quora‘s first acquisition. Parlio’s goal was to spread knowledge — a similar mission to Quora. But rather than… Read More

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Windows 10's big Anniversary Update puts Ink to screen

As part of the big Anniversary (formally known as Redstone) Update for Windows 10, Microsoft has branded a new Windows 10 feature called Ink, putting further emphasis into pen and stylus usage.

The new feature levels up the interaction of any hand writing users put to the screen. For example, users can make a reminder to call their mom tomorrow, and Windows 10 will intelligently recognize you've written a date and transform it into object you can tap and setup a reminder through Cortana.

Alternatively, users will be able to drop a dot on a map to mark it as a point of interest. In another new use case, users will be able to strike out a sentence by simply drawing a line through it. You'll even be able hold a stencil against the screen and drawing along its edges.

Microsoft wants ink to be as intuitive and natural as using real paper. As such Ink is also being given its own work space built into the lock screen, so you don't have to unlock the device to start sketching and taking notes.

Beyond Ink, Microsoft promised more Universal Windows apps including Starbucks, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger will come to the Windows 10 store soon.

Of course the Anniversary Update isn't just limited to the Windows 10 operating system. Xbox One will be getting Windows 10 apps and a developer mode as part of Redstone. Microsoft also announced the enhancements will also come the Hololens and Cortana, but the software company didn't highlight what these would include.

While on stage, Executive VP of the Windows and Devices Group Terry Myerson boasted are now more than 270 million Windows 10 devices worldwide. According to Microsoft, and the platform is being adopted 145 faster than Windows 7 and 4 times faster Windows 8.

The Anniversary Update should come to all Windows 10 users in late summer.

• Here's what we expect to see at Build 2016!

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