010 - Apps for Young Children: Bill Gates Predicts, Sound Touch, and Amazon Echo StoryTime for Kids

Your App Lady

Your App Lady

Show Notes

Series 1 Episode 10

Welcome to series 1 episode 10 of the Your App Lady Podcast!

All about apps and tech that I love and use every day.

On each episode, I’ll talk about recent tech news, recommend apps that I use myself and leave you with a great tech tip.

Tech News

The tech news this week is about the smart predictions that Bill Gates made in 1999.

The two predictions I am featuring today are about smart advertisements and online home monitoring.

Gates' prediction: "Devices will have smart advertising. They will know your purchasing trends, and will display advertisements that are tailored toward your preferences."

Today, I frequently see the shoes that are sitting in my Nordstrom shopping cart as a Facebook ad. There are now so many metrics for advertising that even a small business can easily target their ads.

Gates' prediction: "Constant video feeds of your house will become common, which inform you when somebody visits while you are not home.”

For more information:

http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-15-predictions-in-1999-come-true-2017-6?op=1/#no-5-online-home-monitoring-5

With Ring, Nest and other devices, this has definitely come true. This is very apparent on my Facebook feed too. At least weekly, I see a video or photo of a package being stolen off a porch!

App of the Week: Sound Touch

For iOS, Android and Fire OS.

Sound Touch is a great app for babies and toddlers that will also grow with your child. The screen opens to a group of 6 - 12 cartoon icons. There are five different categories. When the child taps the icon, a photo opens up. With each tap, a different photo shows and a sound or word is played. This is a great app for vocabulary development, cause and effect, and eventually, categorization.

Tech Tip

My tech tip of the day is about using your Amazon Echo.

We have several Echo Dots at our house and I have been researching their uses. My assistant, Jessica, also uses an Echo and has been sharing with me how.

If you want to use the kid skills with Alexa and the Echo, go to amazon.com and enable each of the apps you want to use.

For example, one skill is called StoryTime. When you say “Alexa, ask Amazon Storytime to read me a story”, the Storytime skill offers a growing collection of professionally narrated short stories for kids aged 5 - 12 years old. This collection contains curated stories from the Amazon Rapids app library as well as a selection of Audible short stories.

Alexa will also read books from your Audible library! To get her to read from your Audible library, just say “Alexa read” and mention the title of the book.

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