Little Pim’s Word Bag

When you’re learning a foreign language, it’s helpful to have frequent vocabulary reminders for words you have learned. To help with that, the creators of the Little Pim DVDs (which Jonathan and I reviewed recently) have written an app for the iPhone/iPod Touch called Little Pim’s Word Bag*. The app contains both Spanish and French nouns which are a subset of the words taught on the DVDs.

When you start up the game, choose which language, French or Spanish, that you want to study. Within each, the words are split among three different topics: eating and drinking, wake up smiling and playtime. Once you have made your choice, Little Pim the panda rolls in with his messenger bag and greets you. His bag starts shaking, signaling you to tap the bag. Little Pim then takes out an item and says the word for it. The item and the word for it go to the bottom of the screen. When the screen width is full, the words and pictures shift to the left. You can always shift them back to review words. When you’re done with a section, touch the back arrow to go to the main menu for that language.

The program is identical in both French and Spanish, except for the language. Since there are no English words in the app, it encourages you to think only in the language you are studying. This app is perfect for reinforcing the words already learned in the DVDs. Since all of the words are written on the screen, you learn the words visually and auditorily. I personally find this very helpful, since my entire family seems to learn visually. Being able to see how a word is spelled helps us to remember more.

I wish that Little Pim would use each word in a sentence, too, but at this price, it is a cute, fun, interactive and educational activity for kids. It is most helpful to use along with the DVDs, to reinforce vocabulary words, but it is also very fun and helpful on its own. I hope that they’ll come out with apps for the other languages offered on DVD.

The Little Pim’s Word Bag app is $1.99 at the iTunes Store.

Wired: Adorable panda, very useful vocabulary words, reinforces learning from the Little Pim DVDs, good price for what you get.

Tired: Limited number of words, wish there were more languages offered.

* I received a free copy of this game to review.

Ike-Dog Image: Dave Banks

There’s a great little app that’s just made its way to the iTunes store. It’s called LEGO Photo (links to iTunes), and it allows you to take any photo from your camera lens or your existing library and turn the pixels into LEGO bricks. It’s simple to use - just take or pick out a photo, click the button … and you’re done. If you’re not happy with the outcome, simply touch the screen and the app chooses a new palette of colors. Once you’re satisfied, click save and your LEGOized photo is saved to your photo library. And the best part of all - LEGO Photo is free.

Update: A fun suggestion from GeekDad Matt Blum: Take a screenshot on your phone (press Home button & Sleep/Wake button simultaneously - it will be saved in your photo album) and turn it into LEGO bricks.

Image: Apple

In my experience, when it comes to home media centers, there are two main camps and an outlier.  In the main camps are the uber-geeks who want to build everything from the ground up and those who go with a gaming console or one of a myriad of inexpensive devices that plugs in to a TV and plays files in a wide range of digital formats. And then there are the outliers, of which I am one: the AppleTV people. Santa dropped off another of Steve Jobs’ hobby boxes under our Christmas tree this year and I couldn’t be happier.

Those who scoff at the AppleTV as being a closed system or too simplistic are missing the point. You don’t typically pick up one of these things as a standalone media center; it would be next to useless compared to the alternatives. However, if you’re already reasonably committed to an Apple universe -in particular, use of iTunes for media management, iPod(s) and an Apple computer of some description- then the AppleTV isn’t taking the easy way out so much as an taking advantage of a well honed multimedia ecosphere. Everything just works (mostly), and that appeals to the systems design geek in me much more than constructing a box myself ever would. There’s also something inherently cool about buying a piece of hardware that has continually expanded its capabilities over the past few years through software updates instead of leaving early adopters behind with multiple new hardware iterations. And for someone without cable, the ability to buy and rent movies and TV shows on demand is extremely useful.

Sure, lack of format support can be frustrating (DivX? What’s DivX?), the hardware can only handle 720p, the devices run hotter than hell and the tiny standard hard drive sizes are laughable, but there are ways around all of these challenges. If I want to geek out for a while, I can fire up iStumbler and try to pinpoint what device is interfering with my wireless network and kicking one of the AppleTVs offline, or I can just relaunch iTunes and everything’s fine again. It’s not a perfect device, by any stretch of the imagination, but neither is an iPod and both reflect one of the more interesting paradoxes of our time: while our equipment is capable of supporting technical specs that were unheard of a decade ago, in many cases we are satisfied with audio or visual quality that’s subpar compared to what ten year old technology could pump out. It’s that whole bit about a library of any media that’s “good enough” to watch or listen to on demand trumping high definition versions that require space, time and/or effort. For the stuff I really care about seeing in full 1080p glory, the Star Treks and Planet Earths, we buy Blu-Ray copies. For everything else -and for virtually anything the kids care about- the AppleTV is good enough. And if the rumors that have been flying around about Apple offering subscription TV services pan out, it may be even get even better.