Nine-year-old Malaysian prodigy codes iPhone app

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You’ve got to envy Lim Ding Wen. Although I didn’t do too badly in my pre-10-year-old geek cred (I learnt BASIC on a BBC Microcomputer), he blows me out of the water by learning six programming languages and coding an iPhone app.

The application in question is called Doodle Kids, and it allows users to paint with their fingers, and then clear the screen etch-a-sketch style by shaking the phone. It’s been downloaded more than 4,000 times in less than two weeks. His next project? A sci-fi game called “Invader Wars”. Pretty soon he’s going to be coding SkyNet

(via BBC)

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Microsoft launches 'Time for a Story' – bedtime stories via Windows Live Messenger

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There are many families who have to cope with the pain of separation – if Daddy has to fly away on business trips a lot, for example. Well, now Daddy (or Mummy, we’re a politically correct organisation here) can read a bedtime story to his (or her) little sprog over MSN Messenger, wherever they are.

The website – timeforastory.com – is currently populated with three Noddy stories. ‘Rocket Ship’, ‘Rainbow Chaser’, and the intriguingly titled ‘Bounce Alert!’ The stories are interactive – as Mummy or Daddy reads, their kid can click on images to trigger animations.

All you need to get it going is a PC, a copy of MSN Messenger on each PC, a microphone and a webcam. Modern laptops generally have all those things inbuilt. So if you’re in Japan, thousands of miles away from your poor son or daughter, and it’s their bedtime, then stop reading Tech Digest and go read them a bedtime story.

Time for a Story

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Swedish kid collapses after 24-hour WoW marathon

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Fuelling further tabloid hysteria about the dangers of online gaming comes a story straight outta’ Laholm in western Sweden. Some poor 15-year-old kid was enjoying the new WoW expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, with some friends, but 24 hours into their mammoth gaming session, he collapsed and suffered what seems to have been an epileptic fit.

Doctors told the father that his son’s bodily systems had been disrupted by a combination of sleep deprivation, lack of food, and the prolonged period of concentration playing the game. He’s expected to make a full recovery, but seriously – this is just an idiot kid. The fault isn’t in the game, it’s in the parents who didn’t tell him to stop or at least get him to eat some food and have a nap.

Krell's KID – "the world's best-sounding iPod dock", also the most expensive

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When something’s touted as “the world’s best-sounding iPod dock”, it honestly makes me want to get a sledgehammer to my monitor and tear up the words. But, nonetheless, the sad fact is most people have iPods now, and they’re all wanting docks to pop them into. So here are some details about Krell’s KID dock.

To achieve that ‘best-sounding iPod dock’ claim, Krell has stolen some “audiophile grade” components and stuck them in the KID shell, along…