Darcy Padilla for The Wall Street Journal by Ben Worthen I first let my son use a borrowed iPad on a cross-country flight. He was two and a half, and spent five hours playing games, drawing pictures and watching TV shows. I walked off the plane amazed both at what my son could do and also that the device could command his attention for that long. Our family bought an iPad a year or so later, loaded it up with word games and puzzles and let my son have at it. Almost immediately his knowledge of letters and interest in words picked up. (So did his ability to slingshot birds.) But my wife and I also noticed something else. Our son would zone out when ... Continue reading →

More than half of the young children in the U.S. now have access to an iPad, iPhone or similar touch-screen device. For parents, their children's love of these devices raises a lot of questions. Kids for years have sat too close to the television for too long or played hours of Madden on family room game players. But pediatric neuroscientists and researchers who have studied the effects of screen-time on children suggest the iPad is a different beast. IPads can be wonderful, but are they wonderful for toddlers? Ben Worthen on Lunch Break explains why pediatric neuroscientists and researchers suggest that the iPad differs from TV and video games. Photo: Darcy Padilla for The Wall Street Journal. A young child will look away from a ... Continue reading →

BY JESSICA E. VASCELLARO A race to liberate computer users from the mouse is kicking into high gear, inspired by the potential of turning hands and other body parts into digital controllers. The goal: to manage computers and other devices with gestures rather than pointing and clicking a mouse or touching a display directly. Backers believe that the approach can make it not only easier to carry out many existing chores but also take on trickier tasks such as creating 3-D models, verifying whether clothes fit, training athletes and browsing medical imagery during surgery without touching anything. Such possibilities have spurred furious action at ...BY JESSICA E. VASCELLARO A race to liberate computer users from the mouse is kicking into high gear, inspired by the ... Continue reading →

BY JESSICA E. VASCELLARO A race to liberate computer users from the mouse is kicking into high gear, inspired by the potential of turning hands and other body parts into digital controllers. The goal: to manage computers and other devices with gestures rather than pointing and clicking a mouse or touching a display directly. Backers believe that the approach can make it not only easier to carry out many existing chores but also take on trickier tasks such as creating 3-D models, verifying whether clothes fit, training athletes and browsing medical imagery during surgery without touching anything. Such possibilities have spurred furious action at ...BY JESSICA E. VASCELLARO A race to liberate computer users from the mouse is kicking into high gear, inspired by the ... Continue reading →

In the Bay Area's tech culture, you're judged not by the appearance of your clothes, but by the style of your desk. Custom-furniture designers who sell to tech companies say business is on a tear, driven by a flood of funding for start-ups, shifting fashions and new ideas about how employees work together. Furniture makers who survived last decade's dot-com bust say the cubicles, odd accent chairs, neon colors and lava lamps that were hallmarks of 1999 are out of fashion today. Looking back, "people were saying we're going to show how cool we are by getting the craziest, funkiest stuff there is," says David Pierce, who founded furniture maker Ohio Inc. in San Francisco in 1998. "Today we are designing and building things that ... Continue reading →

Manufacturers say Apple has placed an order for larger display screens for the next generation of iPhone. The WSJ's Juro Osawa tells Deborah Kan about what's in store for the new device. HONG KONG—Apple Inc., which is expected to launch its next-generation iPhone later this year, has ordered screens from its Asian suppliers that are bigger than the ones used in iPhones since they debuted in 2007, people familiar with the situation said. Production is set to begin next month for the screens, which measure at least 4 inches diagonally compared with 3.5 inches on the iPhone 4S, the latest phone from Apple, the people said. The move suggests that the Cupertino, Calif.-based company is trying to make its popular smartphone more appealing amid intensifying ... Continue reading →

Apple Inc. is preparing an upgrade of its online service iCloud that includes new photo-sharing features, according to people familiar with the matter. The new features, expected to be announced at Apple's world-wide developer conference beginning June 11, will allow iCloud users to share sets of photos ... Continue reading →

Apple Inc. is preparing an upgrade of its online service iCloud that includes new photo-sharing features, according to people familiar with the matter. The new features, expected to be announced at Apple's world-wide developer conference beginning June 11, will allow iCloud users to share sets of photos ... Continue reading →

Socialcam in the @WSJ today! Great article by @JVascellaro. @socialcam http://t.co/TjyxAgQs Continue reading →