A Tablet for Children That Comes With Its Own Penguins

Now DreamWorks has partnered with a technology company, Fuhu, on an even more immediate way to reach itty-bitty eyeballs, a highly coveted audience: a tablet computer for children that the studio will be able to program much like a cable channel. “We could push out a new character moment every day of the year,” said Jim Mainard, head of digital strategy and new business development for DreamWorks.

DreamWorks and Fuhu, which makes the popular Nabi line of children’s tablets, plan to introduce the product, called the DreamTab, at the International Consumer Electronics Show, which starts Tuesday in Las Vegas.

The tablets will be sold with a range of DreamWorks-branded accessories, including headphones, protective bumpers and carrying cases. An eight-inch version of the DreamTab will arrive in stores in the spring. Pricing is still being determined but it will be under $300, a Fuhu spokesman said. A 12-inch version is also planned.

The partnership is a convergence of two business trends. With children as young as 2 or 3 now routinely using their parents’ iPads or smartphones — if the toddlers don’t already have their own — technology companies are racing to introduce gadgets made for smaller and smaller hands. Fuhu itself sold more than two million Nabis in 2013, and its tablets, which are primarily designed for children 6 to 11, now collectively deliver more than 20 million video streams a week.

Entertainment companies have been surprised at how speedily children have taken to tablets, sometimes forgoing TV sets altogether. As a result, DreamWorks, Disney and their competitors are searching for ways to make it easier for users to find their characters on portable devices.

Fuhu’s strategic goal with the DreamTab is differentiation — coming up with a way to persuade parents to buy its product over a competing one. DreamWorks is hoping to find a new way into the home, deepening its reputation as an innovative content creator and funneling more viewers to its programs and movies and selling more merchandise.

“By teaming with DreamWorks to create a device that will have original content — original content that is automatically and frequently updated — we are not following consumers, we are getting ahead of them,” said Jim Mitchell, Fuhu’s chief executive.

There are all sorts of branded tablets, of course. Fuhu in October introduced a special-edition Disney Nabi and Nickelodeon Nabi. But neither of those offered original and exclusive programming like the DreamTab will. Unlike some other tablets, the DreamTab will not lock children into a DreamWorks-only world. The studio’s video content and games are the most prominent, but users can also stream shows from Nickelodeon, Disney and Cartoon Network.

Nancy Bernstein, a movie producer who is in charge of creating what she calls “character moments” for the DreamTab, insists that the effort is not simply an advertising opportunity for the studio. Turn on the tablet, for instance, and penguins from the “Madagascar” franchise might greet you with a silly dance. Depending on how parents have set the timing controls, “Shrek” characters might appear in a skit to announce that it is time to power down.

“All of this animation was custom-created,” Ms. Bernstein said in a demonstration at DreamWorks’s headquarters here.

Some parents might disagree with her definition of advertising. Will dancing penguins make DreamTab users more interested in seeing “The Penguins of Madagascar” when it arrives in theaters next year? The studio, led by Jeffrey Katzenberg, would be naïve not to hope the answer is yes.

The DreamTab will also have technology that allows it to communicate wirelessly with DreamWorks-made toys. For instance, a “How to Train Your Dragon” action figure might be used to unlock games and educational experiences on the tablet. (The studio’s “How to Train Your Dragon 2” arrives in June.)

The companies will try to woo parents by including educational elements. In addition to original animation, DreamWorks will supply what it calls “educational artistic experiences”; some of the studio’s top animators will appear in videos to teach users how to draw characters like Po the panda or Toothless the dragon. To allow children to draw on the screens, each DreamTab will come with the same stylus technology that DreamWorks artists use to make movies.

“We want to transform the way kids play, learn and grow through technology,” said Mr. Mitchell of Fuhu, which is based in El Segundo, Calif.

The DreamTab’s technology is quite hefty. The devices will enable children to send instant messages and emails to their parents’ smartphones, for instance. Mr. Mitchell emphasized that his company had gone to “incredible lengths” to make the DreamTab compliant with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, a federal law that restricts the ways that companies collect information on children under 13.

The DreamTab is not a toy. Switched into parent mode, it provides roughly the same computing power as an iPad, the companies said.

“If you give a kid less, they will spot it immediately as less, and they won’t like it,” said Mr. Mainard of DreamWorks. “We wanted to give more.”

Gadgetwise Blog: Three Noteworthy Apps for Children

Here are three recently released noteworthy apps to entertain children during the summer.

A screen shot of the Jungle Book app.

For preschoolers, the Jungle Book, which is available for $4 on Android devices, mixes visually rich 3-D page transitions with nine playful activities inspired from Rudyard Kipling’s story. The background illustrations can be controlled by the tablet’s accelerometers, giving the pages an eye-catching look. The narrated text is available in four languages.

A screen shot of the Toca Builders app.

For ages 5 to 11, Toca Builders ($2 on iPhone and iPad ) brings a new type of block play to your touch screen with six playful building machines and a floating grid. Figuring the controls is part of the fun and challenge; each has different controls and a gentle learning curve, so children learn common touch-screen control mechanics. Like the blocks used in Minecraft, the large blocks here don’t allow for much detail, and removing a misplaced block can be tricky.

Grandma’s Kitchen, created by Fairlady Media.

Four- to 7-year olds will enjoy Grandma’s Kitchen, which is $2 for the iPad and iPhone. Seven food-theme games are presented by an eccentric grandmother figure, who serves up jigs and snappy one liners along with math and reading games. You can customize this app for your child in the parent menu to turn on and off the activities. Don’t tell the children, but the brain behind the grandmother is Connie Bossert,  who has a doctorate in educational psychology.

Critic’s Notebook: ‘All My Children’ and ‘One Life to Live,’ on Hulu and iTunes

Yes, jumping into the new versions of “All My Children” and “One Life to Live” is not easy if you missed the first 40-some years.

These two soap operas were among the longest-running shows in television history when ABC canceled them in 2011. On Monday the production company Prospect Park, amid much anticipation from the faithful, brought them back, not on TV but on the Internet, via Hulu and iTunes, using a mix of actors from the network versions and new faces.

Soap operas, once a staple of daytime television, became an endangered species as prime-time television adopted many of their themes and plotting devices, and more women went into the work force. Who had time to block out a couple of hours in the middle of the workday to keep up with the daily machinations of a bunch of fictional families?

The Internet removes a significant obstacle faced by the network versions of the shows; now fans can watch them any time and, with the right technology, any place. That flexibility opens up a whole new world of potential viewers, but are the reboots going after them?

No. At least, that’s how it looked to this potential viewer, one of the vast millions who never watched the original shows because they had jobs. The new “One Life to Live” and “All My Children” did not, from this week’s episodes, seem to be trying to make themselves welcoming to the uninitiated. If anything, the opposite was true. Every minute or so, it seemed as if the shows were throwing up a neon sign that said, “Reference Understandable by Longtime Fans Only; Others Should Turn Back Here.”

One scene in “All My Children” can serve as representative of what it’s like trying to crack into these shows. Some people whose relationships to one another are still unclear are gathered.

“How is Bianca?” one says.

Miranda, a young teenager, answers: “She’s O.K. I mean, as O.K. as she ever is since the night —— “

A J, a second teenager, interrupts her: “Can we let it go, people? It happened, it’s over, we need to move on.”

It did? It is? We do? And who the heck is Bianca?

Such maddening vignettes came along at regular intervals in both shows. So did characters whose surprise-it’s-me appearances were calculated to thrill the fan base but were just annoying for newbies. A woman is in a public establishment when a man, his face hidden by a newspaper, addresses her. They trade a few words. The man lowers the newspaper to reveal himself. A beat to allow for recognition. Then a cutaway to a new scene. Repeat endlessly.

Sure, if you stuck with the episodes for the week, you could begin to pick up some of the dynamics and back story and discern some plotlines that might be interesting. On “All My Children,” someone’s daughter is kidnapped. On “One Life to Live,” Dorian Lord, a United States senator, gets herself into a vaguely defined scandal that has something to do with C.I.A. black ops.

And yes, there are fan sites and Wikis with laboriously written-out story arcs for each and every character, so theoretically the newcomer could spend hours plowing through them and get up to speed on who impregnated whom in the distant past, who tried to kill whom back in the 1980s, and so on. The real question is, Is it worth the effort?

And the answer, again, is, no. Unless you’re into camp, why put in the time it would take to decipher these shows when there are much, much better ones beckoning? The new versions have been promoted as racier than their predecessors, but there is more skin in prime time and much more skin on pay cable; the most the reboots offer is a very occasional curse word. Although both shows had groundbreaking moments during their long network runs — a lesbian relationship, themes involving drugs and rape — it seems unlikely that the reboots will hold many in the anything-goes age.

The acting ranges from mediocre to outright bad, especially on “All My Children.” Any scene involving a couple over the age of 50 has the treacly gloss of a Viagra commercial. Any young characters are played by actors far too old for the roles. Any parent with a teenager is clueless about how to communicate with him or her. And the writers do not always seem up to the task of giving the actors signature moments. Fan boards were full of complaints when, on “One Life to Live,” Victor apparently came back from the dead, and the other characters seemed only vaguely surprised.

Shows like “Downton Abbey,” “Revenge,” “Scandal” and even “Game of Thrones” are in essence soaps — lots of characters, intertwined story lines that evolve over entire seasons — and they’re far better written and acted than the new “All My Children” and “One Life to Live.” They’re no easier for a newcomer to decipher, but they haven’t been on for four decades, so through DVDs or downloads it’s still possible go back to the beginning and get on board.

The new soaps do have the advantage of offering daily bite-size episodes, each about 25 minutes long. They’re short enough and mindless enough to make the train ride to work pass more quickly. For a newcomer, perhaps it’s best to think of them as you would a learn-a-language tape: Listen often enough and eventually, say in a year, you might be able to converse in soap-opera-ese.

New Online Privacy Rules for Children

The regulations also reflect innovations like voice recognition, location technology and behavior-based online advertising, or ads tailored to an individual Internet user.

Regulators had not significantly changed the original rule, based on the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, or Coppa. That rule required operators of Web sites directed at children under 13 to notify parents and obtain their permission before collecting or sharing personal information — like first and last names, phone numbers, home addresses or e-mail addresses — from children.

The intent of that was to give parents control over entities seeking to collect information about their children so that parents could, among other things, prevent unwanted contact by strangers.

The new rule, unveiled at a news conference in Washington, significantly expands the types of companies required to obtain parental permission before knowingly collecting personal details from children, as well as the types of information that will require parental consent to collect.

Jon D. Leibowitz, the chairman of the trade commission, described the rule revision as a major advance for children’s privacy. “Congress enacted Coppa in the desktop era and we live in an era of smartphones and mobile marketing,” Mr. Leibowitz said. “This is a landmark update of a seminal piece of legislation.”

The agency’s expanded privacy protections for children also represent the first step in a larger effort by a few regulators and legislators to give adult consumers some rights to control data collected about them.

“The Coppa rule revisions which we are announcing today are a critical piece in our overall approach to how we deal with consumer privacy in this technological age,” said Julie Brill, a member of the commission.

Industry analysts said the new rule represented a partial victory for Web site operators, app developers and advertising networks because regulators watered down some of their original proposals to which companies like Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter had objected. Apple and Google, for example, opposed proposals that suggested they would be responsible for the data collected by children’s apps sold in their app stores. Regulators have now clarified that general-interest app stores would not be held liable for that.

Yet, few companies lent any support to the commission at its news conference; Viacom and Disney sent representatives, but other companies were absent.

“What we’ve got here is an expansion of Coppa that some in the industry would say has gone too far,” said Alan Friel, a lawyer who leads the media and technology practice at the firm of Edwards Wildman Palmer. “But the F.T.C. has provided exceptions that continue to allow internal use of a child’s data, including one-time use of contact information for facilitating promotions and send-a-friend e-mails.”

In an era of widespread photo sharing, video chatting and location-based apps, the revised children’s privacy rule makes clear that companies must obtain parental consent before collecting certain details that could be used to identify, contact or locate a child. These include photos, video and audio as well as the location of a child’s mobile device.

While the new rule strengthens such safeguards, it could also disrupt online advertising. Web sites and online advertising networks often use persistent identification systems — like a cookie in a person’s browser, the unique serial number on a mobile phone, or the I.P. address of a computer — to collect information about a user’s online activities and tailor ads for that person.

The new rule expands the definition of personal information to include persistent IDs if they are used to show a child behavior-based ads. It also requires third parties like ad networks and social networks that know they are operating on children’s sites to notify and obtain consent from parents before collecting such personal information. And it makes children’s sites responsible for notifying parents about data collection by third parties integrated into their services.

Collecting data to show children contextual ads based on the content of a site or app, however, will not require parental consent. “The only limit we place is on behavioral advertising,” Mr. Leibowitz said. “Until and unless you get parental consent, you may not track children to create massive profiles” for behavior-based ads.

Stuart P. Ingis, a lawyer representing several marketing associations, said that reputable online marketers did not knowingly profile children to show them behavior-based ads. He added that industry guidelines prohibited the practice.

He agreed with regulators that privacy protections for children online needed to keep pace with new technologies. But he said he was concerned that the restrictions on cookie-based identifiers might cause some children’s sites to reduce their use of ad networks to avoid having to notify parents about data collection by those services.

“There might be overreaction that would limit just general third-party collection of data, which is very useful to businesses and consumers,” said Mr. Ingis, who represents the Direct Marketing Association and the Association of National Advertisers.

The revised rule also clarifies requirements for sites that are not primarily directed at young children but whose audience may include them, like a Disney family site, for example. Those sites can now screen visitors by age, but they will be required to obtain permission from a parent to collect personal data about children under 13.

Children’s advocates generally welcomed the strengthened protections.

“Clearly, this is a major step forward, but the devil is in the details,” said Jeffrey Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, an advocacy group in Washington.

Mobile Apps for Children Fall Short on Disclosure to Parents, F.T.C. Report Says

The apps often transmit the phone number, precise location or unique serial code of a mobile device to app developers, advertising networks or other companies, according to the report by the Federal Trade Commission, released Monday. Regulators said such information could be used to find or contact children or track their activities across different apps without their parents’ knowledge or consent.

The agency reviewed 400 of the most popular children’s apps available on Google and Apple platforms, and reported that only 20 percent disclosed their data collection practices.

“The survey results described in this report paint a disappointing picture of the privacy protections provided by apps for children,” the report said.

Regulators said they were investigating whether the practices of certain apps violated a federal law requiring Web site operators to get parents’ permission before collecting or sharing names, phone numbers, addresses or other personal information obtained from children under 13.

The report comes as the agency is preparing to strengthen those protections by requiring site operators to obtain parental consent before collecting many other kinds of personal information from children.

But over the last few months, the agency’s efforts have met with pushback from Apple, Facebook, Google and Viacom as well as from technology associations and marketing industry groups, who say the agency’s proposed solution is so broad that it could inhibit companies from offering sites, apps and other services for children.

In its report, the agency did not disclose the names of apps it found problems with.

“We think this is a systematic problem,” said Jessica Rich, the associate director of the F.T.C.’s division of financial practices, adding that parents should not think “if they avoid certain apps, they are home free.”

Representatives of the app industry said they had already been working with app developers to make disclosures about data collection clearer and simpler for consumers. But “the F.T.C. report is a reminder that there is more work to do,” said Jon Potter, the president of the Application Developers Alliance, an industry group.

The agency’s researchers also reported that most apps failed to tell parents when they involved interactive features like advertising, social network sharing or allowing children to make purchases for virtual goods within the app.

For instance, researchers found that 58 percent of the children’s apps contained ads, even though just 15 percent disclosed this before download. Moreover, of the 24 apps that stated they did not contain in-app advertising, 10 did contain ads, the report said.

Children’s advocates said the report’s findings reinforced the need to strengthen online privacy protections for children. The agency has not substantially revised its regulations based on the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or Coppa, since the law’s introduction more than a decade ago.

“This makes the case as to why we need major revisions,” said James Steyer, the chief executive of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit advocacy and education group in San Francisco that focuses on children and technology. “It shows that parents don’t have enough information to make good choices.”

The timing of the report suggests that the agency is trying to lay the groundwork for its push for broader children’s online privacy protections. In interviews, agency officials have said the protections needed to be modernized to keep pace with developments in mobile apps, voice recognition, facial recognition and comprehensive online data collection by marketers.

For example, regulators have proposed a longer list of data about children that would require parental consent for Web site operators to collect, including photos, voice recordings and unique mobile device serial numbers. Agency officials have also emphasized that they considered the precise location of a mobile device to be personal information whose collection required parental permission.

If the agency includes these changes in the final version of its updated regulations, apps would need to get parental consent for a number of data collection practices that are in widespread use.

For example, agency researchers reported that almost 60 percent of the children’s apps in the study transmitted a device’s ID number, most commonly to an advertising network or another third party. But only 20 percent of the apps disclosed information about these kinds of practices. Regulators said their concern was that marketers or other entities could use these unique device numbers to follow individual children across multiple apps over time, compiling detailed dossiers on their activities.

“The transmission of kids’ information to third parties that are invisible and unknown to parents raises concerns,” the report said.

Although state and federal regulators, along with industry groups, have been working to improve disclosures for consumers about how mobile apps collect and use their data, progress has been incremental.

Kamala D. Harris, the attorney general of California, signed an agreement this year with seven leading app platforms to make sure apps available through their stores displayed privacy policies. She also recently sent letters to 100 companies whose apps, she said, did not comply with a California law requiring them to post privacy policies.

Last week, Ms. Harris’s office sued Delta Air Lines for not warning users of its Fly Delta app that it collected personal information like a user’s full name, phone number, e-mail address, photographs and location.

App industry associations have also been working to improve transparency for consumers and parents. For instance, the Application Developers Alliance, in a joint project with the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups, has created prototype disclosure notices that apps could voluntarily display before consumers download them.

“I think the app industry continues to work with our members, companies and consumer groups to identify and eventually implement more effective ways of communicating with consumers,” said Mr. Potter, the president of the app developers’ group.

Ms. Rich of the Federal Trade Commission said she hoped the agency’s report would “light a fire” under such efforts. She added that the agency intended to conduct studies regularly on the children’s app market and publicly report its findings.

Gadgetwise Blog: The Nabi Jr.: A Tablet for Children

Arriving by mid-December, Nabi Jr. is a 5-inch, 8-gigabyte $99 Android tablet that can do double-duty as a baby monitor or a karaoke machine. Educational apps, games and videos are pre-loaded. It has a single rotating front and back camera.

The maker of the device, Fuhu, brags: No cartridges; no AA batteries and includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. If the tablet is successful, it could mean serious competition for toy-based options from LeapFrog and VTech.

The Nabi Jr. has its own app store, with the promise of being able to load apps from the Amazon Appstore. If so, this could be a major advantage; previous Nabi tablets have made it very hard to download mainstream apps that don’t go through the Fuhu tollbooth.

Fuhu is also selling add-ons, and this is where things get interesting. The add-ons include an infrared night vision camera with a remote zoom for use as a baby monitor. When synced to Fuhu’s cloud server, you can use a second Android phone to have your own video baby monitor on steroids — with two-way communication abilities, a room temperature display, sound level meter and a low-battery alert. Other add-ons include a karaoke machine that plugs into your big screen through the HDMI cable, and a cash register simulator will be available in toy stores mid-December. Add $30 for the 16-gigabyte model. Accessories will be available in February 2013.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 5, 2012

An earlier version of this post misstated when the Nabi Jr. tablet would go on sale. It is expected to be available by mid-December, not January.

Gadgetwise: Devices for Children: Tablets, Toys or Both?

The boundary between toy tablets and real tablets keeps getting thinner. Cases in point: the LeapPad 2 from LeapFrog and the $100 Wi-Fi-enabled Innotab 2S.

The InnoTab 2S from Vtech

As the price and processing power of these types of toys begin to approach those of real tablets, more parents are finding themselves with a tricky choice. Is it better to invest in a toy that acts like a tablet, or a tablet that has been configured to impersonate a toy?

To help you plan your child’s digital path, consider recent history. Over the last 12 months, a variety of Android tablets for children have been released. They are often more similar than they are different; with a girl-or-boy themed silicone frame for protection, slots for adding more storage, 7-inch multitouch screens and a handful of preloaded $1 apps like Angry Birds. There’s also a key selling point: parental control features to keep a child from drifting into, say, YouTube.

Examples include LexiBook ($150), Kurio ($200), Nabi 2 ($200), Meep ($170) and Tabeo ($150). Each is trying to distract your child from Apple’s iPad and its new little brother, the iPad Mini ($330).

Throw into the mix three additional $200 tablets, each made for adults but also easy to configure for children. There is the Amazon Kindle Fire, Google’s Nexus 7 and Barnes & Noble’s Nook HD ($200).

This fall, toy rivals VTech and LeapFrog have updated their portable platforms, succeeding in offering the lowest price of entry to the world of apps and touch screens.

The cheapest option is VTech’s MobiGo 2 ($50), followed by the updated LeapsterGS ($70). Both are solid choices, despite having smaller screens that can process only one finger on the screen at a time. These editions come with faster processors and separate log-in accounts so multiple children can share the same device while saving their progress. Both also now have accelerometers, letting you tilt or lean in some of the games. MobiGo’s microphone and fold-out keyboard are noteworthy, and the back-facing camera on the LeapsterGS is the best yet, especially because of the improved photo and movie editor.

Designed to fool a child into thinking he or she has a real tablet, VTech’s InnoTab 2 ($80) comes with a new rotating camera. A second model, the InnoTab 2S ($100) has built in Wi-Fi that does nothing more than let your child browse apps, while generating e-mails telling you which ones you should buy. The InnoTab devices have less storage capacity than the LeapPad, but the storage can be expanded by way of an SD card. The LeapPad2 Explorer ($100) starts faster and comes with two better-quality cameras, in front and in back.

All four devices let you purchase new software the old-fashioned way: by driving to a store and paying $20 to $25 for a cartridge. Each also has an online option that involves downloading and installing an app store on your Mac or Windows computer and plugging in with a USB cable. If you forget to unplug, you can drain the AA batteries — just one of the many clunky steps to this process.

All of the devices share one consistent attribute. They are not shy about pestering a child to find a grown-up to help them download more apps.

The bottom line is that the differences between this year’s Leapster, InnoTab and LeapPad models are slim. Whichever you choose, remember that each is a platform that can lead to a significant investment in software. After you add up the $100 for, say, a LeapPad or an InnoTab, and then buy four $20 cartridges, you’ve already spent more than the price of the latest iPod Touch ($175), a device with a high-resolution display, parental controls and an app store with thousands of $1 treasures. Not to mention no need for AA batteries.

If you’ve somehow managed to raise children who have not yet touched an iPad or a Nexus 7, you might be able to sell them on the idea of one of these lesser tablets. But be warned: once they’ve sampled a good app on a glossy, responsive multitouch screen, it’s hard to go back.

Museums Engage Children With Digital Programs

Every year, the program, “Virtual World Institute: Cretaceous Seas,” for children ages 11 to 14, fills up quickly.

One attendee in last summer’s program, Tammuz Frankel, a 12-year-old student at Hunter College High School, said, “From a very young age, I have been interested in paleontology, but I don’t know much about prehistoric seas. I wanted to learn more about this little-known part of the Mesozoic Era.”

The program has been so successful that the museum has since added two more August seminars on different topics.

The natural history museum is not alone in seeking innovative ways to engage children and families in the museum-going experience. The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and others have also been active.

Because digital platforms are relevant and accessible, they are familiar to “digital natives,” young people who have grown up with technology, said Rebecca Edwards, education specialist for family audiences at the Getty. One advantage of digital games is that many visitors already have smartphones. And the games let museums offer a broader menu for youngsters without requiring more staff members, like tour leaders, or printed materials, although creating the games is not an inexpensive challenge.

Not all museums are enamored with technology, however. Some are hesitant to encourage families to bring on the iPhones. For example, next summer the Philadelphia Museum of Art is planning five simultaneous exhibits oriented to families, including an interactive watercolor project inspired by the award-winning artist and author Jerry Pinkney as well as an environment using fancy dress costumes from the early 20th century for children in a setting designed by the artist Candy Depew. “There is a small amount of technology, but that is not the focus of what we do with kids,” said Emily Schreiner, associate curator of education for family and community learning at the museum.

“Technology is kind of a contentious issue,” she said. “Adults are not always comfortable with their kids being on iPhones. What we want them to take away from the museum is an opportunity to slow down, look closely and spend time as a family.”

Already the museum has a monthly series of “Stroller Tours” for parents and caregivers that lets them spend time together looking at art. “We have found them to be extremely successful,” Ms. Schreiner said. “We find that our visitors come back, become members and feel welcomed into the museum.”

Nevertheless, technology is a component of many programs.

For example, the Getty has a new youth-oriented application for smartphones through a game it calls Switch, in which an evil genie has wreaked havoc at the museum. The paintings in an app are not the exact duplicates of the paintings on the wall, so players must find the differences. The challenge is to correct details in a copy of the museum painting on the iPhone so that it matches the actual image.

In the first test, there were a series of details including the absence of a brooch in an oil painting of Leonilla, Princess of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, by Franz Xaver Winterhalter. The player has to figure out and correct what is inaccurate.

The game consists of four paintings, a deliberately small number to keep the game from feeling repetitive and to encourage youngsters to go on to other things at the museum.

The Getty has also created an audio tour in which animals in various works of art talk about themselves.

Since admission to the museum is free, the games are not intended to increase revenue, although more visitors are certainly a benefit. “What these do is provide parents a way for their children to focus on art that perhaps they could not have done themselves,” said Ms. Edwards of the Getty.

In another game strategy, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has introduced “Murder at the Met,” a game for any smartphone that children can download and then use to search for the person who murdered “Madame X,” the woman in John Singer Sargent’s portrait. They must check out statues, paintings and objects throughout the American wing, following clues to the murderer and the witnesses. Though the museum does not aggressively publicize the game, children can find it on the museum’s Web site.

F.T.C. Moves to Tighten Online Privacy Protections for Children

The moves come at a time when major corporations, app developers and data miners appear to be collecting information about the online activities of millions of young Internet users without their parents’ awareness, children’s advocates say. Some sites and apps have also collected details like children’s photographs or locations of mobile devices; the concern is that the information could be used to identify or locate individual children.

These data-gathering practices are legal. But the development has so alarmed officials at the Federal Trade Commission that the agency is moving to overhaul rules that many experts say have not kept pace with the explosive growth of the Web and innovations like mobile apps. New rules are expected within weeks.

“Today, almost every child has a computer in his pocket and it’s that much harder for parents to monitor what their kids are doing online, who they are interacting with, and what information they are sharing,” says Mary K. Engle, associate director of the advertising practices division at the F.T.C. “The concern is that a lot of this may be going on without anybody’s knowledge.”

The proposed changes could greatly increase the need for children’s sites to obtain parental permission for some practices that are now popular — like using cookies to track users’ activities around the Web over time. Marketers argue that the rule should not be changed so extensively, lest it cause companies to reduce their offerings for children.

“Do we need a broad, wholesale change of the law?” says Mike Zaneis, the general counsel for the Interactive Advertising Bureau, an industry association. “The answer is no. It is working very well.”

The current federal rule, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, requires operators of children’s Web sites to obtain parental consent before they collect personal information like phone numbers or physical addresses from children under 13. But rapid advances in technology have overtaken the rules, privacy advocates say.

Today, many brand-name companies and analytics firms collect, collate and analyze information about a wide range of consumer activities and traits. Some of those techniques could put children at risk, advocates say.

Under the F.T.C.’s proposals, some current online practices, like getting children under 13 to submit photos of themselves, would require parental consent.

Children who visit McDonald’s HappyMeal.com, for instance, can “get in the picture with Ronald McDonald” by uploading photos of themselves and combining them with images of the clown. Children may also “star in a music video” on the site by uploading photos or webcam images and having it graft their faces onto dancing cartoon bodies.

But according to children’s advocates, McDonald’s stored these images in directories that were publicly available. Anyone with an Internet connection could check out hundreds of photos of young children, a few of whom were pictured in pajamas in their bedrooms, advocates said.

In a related complaint to the F.T.C. last month, a coalition of advocacy groups accused McDonald’s and four other corporations of violating the 1998 law by collecting e-mail addresses without parental consent. HappyMeal.com, the complaint noted, invites children to share their creations on the site by providing the first names and e-mail addresses of their friends.

“When we tell parents about this they are appalled, because basically what it’s doing is going around the parents’ back and taking advantage of kids’ naïveté,” says Jennifer Harris, the director of marketing initiatives at the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, a member of the coalition that filed the complaint. “It’s a very unfair and deceptive practice that we don’t think companies should be allowed to do.”

Danya Proud, a spokeswoman for McDonald’s, said in an e-mail that the company placed a “high importance” on protecting privacy, including children’s online privacy. She said that McDonald’s had blocked public access to several directories on the site.

Last year, the F.T.C. filed a complaint against W3 Innovations, a developer of popular iPhone and iPod Touch apps like Emily’s Dress Up, which invited children to design outfits and e-mail their comments to a blog. The agency said that the apps violated the children’s privacy rule by collecting the e-mail addresses of tens of thousands of children without their parents’ permission and encouraging those children to post personal information publicly. The company later settled the case, agreeing to pay a penalty of $50,000 and delete personal data it had collected about children.

It is often difficult to know what kind of data is being collected and shared. Industry trade groups say marketers do not knowingly track young children for advertising purposes. But a study last year of 54 Web sites popular with children, including Disney.go.com and Nick.com, found that many used tracking technologies extensively.

“I was surprised to find that pretty much all of the same technologies used to track adults are being used on kids’ Web sites,” said Richard M. Smith, an Internet security expert in Boston who conducted the study at the request of the Center for Digital Democracy, an advocacy group.

Using a software program called Ghostery, which detects and identifies tracking entities on Web sites, a New York Times reporter recently identified seven trackers on Nick.com — including Quantcast, an analytics company that, according to its own marketing material, helps Web sites “segment out specific audiences you want to sell” to advertisers.

Ghostery found 13 trackers on a Disney game page for kids, including AudienceScience, an analytics company that, according to that company’s site, “pioneered the concept of targeting and audience-based marketing.”

David Bittler, a spokesman for Nickelodeon, which runs Nick.com, says Viacom, the parent company, does not show targeted ads on Nick.com or other company sites for children under 13. But the sites and their analytics partners may collect data anonymously about users for purposes like improving content. Zenia Mucha, a spokeswoman for Disney, said the company does not show targeted ads to children and requires its ad partners to do the same.

Another popular children’s site, Webkinz, says openly that its advertising partners may aim at visitors with ads based on the collection of “anonymous data.” In its privacy policy, Webkinz describes the practice as “online advanced targeting.”

If the F.T.C. carries out its proposed changes, children’s Web sites would be required to obtain parents’ permission before tracking children around the Web for advertising purposes, even with anonymous customer codes.

Some parents say they are trying to teach their children basic online self-defense. “We don’t give out birth dates to get the free stuff,” said Patricia Tay-Weiss, a mother of two young children in Venice, Calif., who runs foreign language classes for elementary school students. “We are teaching our kids to ask, ‘What is the company getting from you and what are they going to do with that information?’ ”

City Of Miami Upset With Lil Wayne, Juicy J & 2 Chainz…Exploiting Children In New Video “bands make her dance”

Several members of Miami Northwestern’s famed band, the marching Bulls, unwittingly appear in the explicit remix music video of a strip club anthem by rapper Juicy J, featuring Lil Wayne and 2 Chainz, along with exotic dancers and stacks of cash.

The steamy video celebrating the strip club culture has school officials, parents and students fuming.

The video for Bandz A Make Her Dance, released Sunday, features six drummers — in their signature royal blue and gold uniforms, white headdress and MNW insignia — in the background as the three rappers take turns spitting verses about the particulars of pole dancing.

“It’s just outrageous to think you have an individual take advantage of a school and students for a video,’’ said Northwestern Principal Wallace Aristide. “They’re playing their instruments and thinking it’s something innocent, wearing our uniforms, only later to find out they edited the video with racy content,” Aristide said.

“Everyone has a heartache, the kids and the teachers and the Northwestern community.”

John Schuster, spokesman for the Miami-Dade County Public Schools, said administrators were told it would be “a drum line type video.’’

School Board Attorney Walter Harvey is reviewing the video. The unauthorized use of the school’s logo is of particular concern, Schuster said.

The video was shot mostly in a darkened warehouse with mounted poles to resemble a strip club. However, the students’ performance was filmed separately in another location. The band members’ faces are hidden mostly by the shadows and their hat visors.

In August, Northwestern band director Chad Norton and activities director Natalie Baldie were contacted by producers who requested to have some band students in uniform perform in a video.

While it is not clear how much vetting was done, the school allowed six members to go on a field trip to a TV production studio in Miami’s Design District, Schuster said.

The filming took place in August; band practice had started but school had not officially opened.

“They were filmed in front of a blue screen by themselves playing their instruments,” he said.

It wasn’t until last weekend that officials saw the true nature of the video. Twitter was also ablaze with commenters questioning the band’s role in it.

“Administrators from the school learned that a video had been released and that the footage of the students in front of the blue screen had been edited into the video that included some very racy lyrics and some scantily clad performers,” Schuster said.

One of the women appearing in the video is porn star Alexis Texas, who was featured in a few Bang Brothers videos. She is also wearing a T-shirt advertising the pornographic site Brazzers.

At no point were the students filming with the women who appear in the video, which was filmed in a Miami warehouse.

The incident is under review by district and regional administrators.

Calls to Juicy J representatives or the Creative Dream Production company were not returned.

Generally, school principals and regional directors must OK off-campus band performances but for a broadcast film, a band or student performance requires district approval, Schuster said.

“As filming, it should have been presented to the district for approval,” he said.

The band, a pride of the community, has performed for several high-profile events, including one with President Barack Obama in 2008, according to the band’s website.

Juicy J, who’s real name is Jordan Houston, is a member of Three Six Mafia, the Memphis-based group that won an Academy Award in 2006 for Best Original Song from the of Hustle & Flow soundtrack.

College and high school marching bands are a pop cultural element of some music videos, particularly those by Southern hip hop artists. And is not the first time a rapper has turned to the Northwestern band for a video feature or cameo.

More than a decade ago, Miami’s Trick Daddy, who attended Northwestern, featured the band high-stepping down a football field for his single, Shut Up.

School Board Member Dorothy Bendross-Mindingall, whose district includes Miami Northwestern and who graduated from the school, said she wanted to find out what producers set up the video.

“We should hold them accountable and responsible,” she said. “If I can find a way, they won’t get away with it.”

Read more here: Miami Northwestern marching band in racy music video with rappers Juicy J, Lil Wayne and 2 Chainz – Schools – MiamiHerald.com .

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Paul Nassif — Children & Family Services Says Adrienne Maloof’s Child Abuse Claim is Unfounded

Paul Nassif
Child Abuse Claim
UNFOUNDED


TMZ has learned ... the Department of Children and Family Services has determined Adrienne Maloof's child abuse claims against estranged hubby Paul Nassif are unfounded, and Paul will go to court tomorrow to get his kids back.

As we first reported, Adrienne went to court last week, claiming Paul choked one of their kids and struck another.  Adrienne submitted declarations by several people, including Dr. Charles Sophy, who claims he interviewed the boys and they verified the abuse.

But we've learned DCFS strongly disagrees.  Sources tell us DCFS has written a report -- after interviewing the boys -- categorically concluding there was no such abuse.

Sources tell TMZ ... Paul is going to court Wednesday to ask a judge to throw out the temporary custody order -- along with the order prohibiting Paul from going near his kids -- on grounds Adrienne phonied the claim. 

What's more, we're told Paul will ask for sanctions against his estranged wife, claiming she viciously concocted the abuse story to get revenge.

App Smart: Go Go Xylo, Meet the Orchestra and Other Music Apps for Children

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Evolving Technology Gives True Voices to Children Who Cannot Speak

Enrique has Down syndrome and speech apraxia, which means that he cannot speak, aside from a few grunts and “Ma” in the word “Mama.” He was able to speak to his brother, though, with an iPad loaded with the latest version of a widely used text-to-speech application, Proloquo2Go.

“The voice now matches the boy,” said John Mendez, Enrique’s father.

Until recently, devices that help children like Enrique speak used modified adult voices. The effect can be startling to those listening because it doesn’t sound like a child’s voice. Most existing children’s voices sound “like adults on helium,” said David Niemeijer, chief executive and lead developer at AssistiveWare, which developed the software Enrique tested.

AssistiveWare and its partner, Acapela Group, developed the next version, Proloquo2Go 2.1, which features two children’s voices — known as Josh and Ella — actually recorded by children. The $190 application can be bought on iTunes Wednesday, but people who already own the app can add the latest voices at no charge.

Few, if any, other companies offer true children’s voices, largely because of the challenges of recording children. The average 10-year-old cannot spend hundreds of hours in a sound booth recording the library of phrases needed to create a synthetic child’s voice.

Sound engineering can manipulate adult voices, adding filters that adjust for the higher pitch of a child’s voice, for example. But without a baseline recording, the voices to date have lacked the natural sound of a child’s voice. With little competitive pressure to replicate children’s voices, most companies decided children could get by with the altered adult voices.

The release of Proloquo2Go’s boy and girl voices — the company also has two other children’s voices with a British accent for that market — is an indicator of new progress in the decades-old text-to-speech industry.

The progress is, in part, a side effect of the adoption of automated voices in everything from credit card company service lines to the grocery store checkout kiosk. But faster computer processors with more memory have empowered sound engineers to make artificial voices sound more human. Many of the larger voice companies like Nuance, in Massachusetts, and Ivona, in Poland, now offer voices in multiple languages and accents.

Proloquo2Go, which runs on Apple’s mobile devices, is used by tens of thousands of children with disabilities like autism and cerebral palsy. The company estimates that 80 percent of its users are under 18 years old and 60 percent are under 11. The new voices are for children ages 6 to 14. In December, Acapela Group will begin licensing the voices to companies for use on other devices.

Proloquo to go “can be a good fit for some people, but not for everyone,” said Janice C. Light, a professor of communication sciences and disorders at Pennsylvania State University.

Said Mr. Niemeijer, the AssistiveWare chief: “You definitely need to look at the child and think about what would be a good situation. A degree of assessment is definitely necessary because the parents often just go out and buy the device and it doesn’t work out. Parents often have too high hopes.”

When Shanay Finney, 30, learned that her 10-year-old autistic son Dahmier might be able to have an age-appropriate voice, she reacted with mixed emotions. On one hand, when he goes to the store and interacts with people in public, the sound of his voice would be more normal, but on the other hand, all the other little boys using Proloquo2Go would have the same voice.

“I’m going to keep it real,” she said. “It’s not my son’s voice. But I know it might help.”

The software cost AssistiveWare about $100,000 to develop. During the recording sessions for Proloquo2Go 2.1, audio engineers collected several thousand phrases and hundreds of words, including profanity, which Mr. Niemeijer believes is a step toward empowering children who cannot speak, giving them the same vocabulary as their peers.

From this bank of words, the application can synthesize any word in the English language. For example the word “impressive” is stitched together from the words impossible, president and detective.

Most text-to-speech devices do give users the ability to say almost anything, and many allow users to choose whether they want to sound happy, angry or sad. The challenge facing the industry, whose biennial conference starts Saturday in Pittsburgh, is how to develop text-to-speech technologies that can predict the emotion, or tone, a person might want to use in a given situation.

Many in the industry and other experts in the field agree that a synthetic voice, even one that expresses basic emotions, is barely adequate to allow someone with a speech disability to speak normally, let alone have a sense of individuality.

“When we’re in conversation, we use tone of voice for all kinds of things, to express respect, gratitude, to influence the way a conversation goes backwards and forwards,” said Graham Pullin, the designer behind a pilot project called Speech Hedge, which is aimed at molding the tone of a person’s voice.

“You often can’t really chip in sharp/sarcastic comments,” wrote Martin Pistorius, a 36-year-old Web developer and author, in an e-mail. He lost his voice after contracting meningitis when he was 12 and has been using text-to-speech technology for 10 years. “By the time you’ve composed it, the moment has gone so it wouldn’t really be funny or appropriate any more.”

“I’m pretty quick at getting my message out, but even so I still can’t keep up with the pace of normal conversation,” he wrote.