Apps

Get your adventure caps on -- it's exploring time. This week's app collection for kids is all about taking the road less traveled.

The market for children’s and educational apps continues to grow — evidenced by Apple last week announcing 1 billion downloads of educational apps from iTunes U — and that growth is leading to both consolidation and new business models. In one of the latest developments, TabTale, a publisher of children’s and family apps, has bought Kids Games Club, maker of apps like “Paint Sparkles” (a…

iPhones. iPads. Android. Windows Phone. We've updated all of our essential apps lists to include a few forgotten favorites, some long awaited arrivals and, as always, even more amazing apps. Check them out!...

China is now the world’s largest smartphone marketplace, with Flurry estimating that there will be 246 million smart devices in China by the end of this month. It’s a potentially lucrative market for app developers, but almost impossible to crack without the necessary language or cultural understanding to reach Chinese users. Educational app makers, however, have SmarTots to help.

In the age of social media, we can track disease outbreaks like never before. Now, a new game from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention takes the armchair epidemiology to a whole new level. The CDC created "Solve the Outbreak," a new iPad app, to increase awareness of public health outbreaks. If you were a fervent fan of movies like Contagion or 28 Days Later, you can put those hours of Internet research to work.

The iPhone comes with a bunch of apps you never use. Some of them are poorly implemented. Others are lacking important features. Fortunately, there's a whole world of developers offering some very viable third-party alternatives. Unfortunately you can't delete the apps your iPhone comes with, but here are some alternatives that will free you from their boring grips....

Just how much does your brain functionality affect what you hear? Your gut reaction to that question might be “not a lot,” but the staff at the Exploratorium, a hands-on science museum in San Francisco, asks you to reconsider that position with its new Sound Uncovered app for iPad. According to the Exploratorium, you ultimately owe your sense of hearing “not so much to your two ears as to what’s between them.”...

This week brought with it some fantastic new apps. Tempo, a new smart calendar from Siri's birthplace, launched for the iPhone, and Tamagotchi celebrated its 16th anniversary by releasing the popular pocket pet as an Android app. Slacker Radio updated its Android and iOS apps this week, and San Francisco's Exploratorium released a new app to help you learn about sound in new and interesting ways.

See which apps your kids will love this week.

It can be tough to keep up with all the new apps released every week. But you're in luck -- we take care of that for you, creating a roundup each weekend of our favorite new and updated apps. This week we saw a new smart mobile calendar from the birthplace of Siri. Several popular music apps saw significant updates, and one of our favorite pieces of tech from the '90s got a new lease on life in the form of an Android app.

This batch of the week's best iPad apps is all about learning. Whether it's U.S. presidents, or human anatomy, you're beefing up your brain muscle....

Experiencing something hands on is the best way to learn about it and sound is no exception, a maxim that's proven in the San Francisco Exploratorium's new Sound Uncovered app....

See what's in store for the best kids apps this week.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) can't be everywhere at once, so it's crowd-sourcing the weather report with a new app called mPING....

With the likes of Draw Something going from strength to strength, and alternatives arriving by the barrel-load, it seems that almost any activity can be made a social experience with nothing more than a smart device and an Internet connection....

Flip through the gallery to see this week's collection of the 5 best apps for kids.

The iPad has proven to be an especially useful communication tool for young people with autism. It provides a way for young people to express themselves through words and images; it can be used to teach them about everyday scenarios and give them more independence. It's also far less bulky than some communication devices of the past. Autism Spectrum Disorders are developmental disabilities that effect about 1 in every 88 children, and 1 in 54 boys.

Choosing a baby name is one of the most important decisions a parent makes for a child. After all, who really wants their bundle of joy to be called Hashtag for the rest of their life? The Nametrix app takes the decision-making process one step further, giving parents-to-be some insight into their child's future profession and personality. Nametrix: Doctor or Dancer? lets users search a name, then lists likely professions, political parties and popularity associated with it.

Chegg has long been known as a textbook company, becoming one of the first companies to bring textbook rental online and reach widespread adoption. But with Amazon, Apple and others moving aggressively into the textbook market — and the market and textbooks themselves increasingly going digital — Chegg has been re-positioning. Today, the textbook company is eying EdTech’s Holy Grail of becoming…

Being a new parent is such an exciting time, but also an extremely busy one. If you need advice or organizational tools, smartphone apps can save you time, provide solutions and let you focus on what's really important -- your baby.

It’s easy to get lost in the Silicon Valley and Bay Area tech bubbles, where it seems that everyone carries five phones, owns three laptops and just had lunch with a sentient robot. But, the reality is outside of the bubble is a little different. Digital literacy is a privilege, and more the exception than the rule. Not everyone owns a computer or is employed at a startup that just raised $10…

The story of Anne Frank is one of the most well-known first-hand accounts to emerge from the Second World War, one telling in intimate detail the persecution suffered by Jewish people in Europe....

See what's on the docket this week for the best kids apps.

Burgeoning artist? Aspiring yogi? Doesn't matter what you want to be this month, we've got some apps for you in this addition of the best apps of the week....

MoMa Art Lab—a new app from New York City's Museum of Modern Art—will teach a kid who Henri Matisse is at a very young age. And mom and dad might learn a little something too....