Today, You Tube launched a spin-off called You Tube Kids. This app is meant to educate and entertain young children. It’s also meant to shelter them from adult oriented content found on regular You Tube.
Parents can download this child friendly app through Google Play or Apple Store. As of right now, You Tube Kids is only available in the USA. It’s simpler for kids to manage this app than it would be to manage the original You Tube, thanks to larger images, voice commands, and other tools designed for child usage and attention. You can either search videos or browse four categories: shows, music, learning, exploring. There is a heavy basis on educating the youngest of minds, with focus on early literacy, math tutorials and science tutorials. Shows and companies contributing content include Sesame Street, Reading Rainbow, National Geographic for Kids, Mother Goose Club, and Thomas the Tank Engine. You Tube Kids is designed for kids under 10 years of age. Even infants can benefits from You Tube Kids.
You Tube and Google did it again, this time making better lives for children. How many times have you got on You Tube and stumbled onto an ‘age restricted website’? Do you want young children stumbling onto that? There are even some channels and videos that aren’t age restricted I would not allow anybody under 10 to see. I think this would be a powerful safe haven from that. Look at the crisis of education in America today. Do you want yet another generation of American children to place last in every subject, except for obesity and drop outs? I think You Tube Kids can help our children get interested in learning early, as in the first 2 years of their lives. So by the time they start school, they will want to learn and do well, and that yearning for knowledge will carry on throughout their education, even through high school, college and beyond. I’d like to see more character building channels on this new app. Let’s teach kids to be kind to each other and love each other. I’m tired of reading about kids literally getting bullied to death. How do you feel about You Tube Kids?
Tonight is Super Bowl 49. The halftime show will be headlined by platinum record selling recording artist and A-Lister?Katy Perry. But she’s not stopping there.
This year, the halftime show and social media will be intertwined like never before. During her show tonight, February 1, Perry and her sponsors will be advertising her products throughout the Internet and social media. Katy Perry merchandise will be promoted and sold on Twitter, You Tube and Shazam and through devices like Roku, Samsung and LG electronics. It’s the first shopping enabling Super Bowl halftime show in history. We can thank online commerce provider Delivery Agent and credit/debit card giant Visa for backing this potentially historic occasion. For example, You Tube has Katy Perry’s VEVO channel, which has nearly 15 million subscribers. The subscribers should be able to ‘click to buy’ through that channel tonight. Roku customers can use their remotes to shop through the Shop TV app, on certain, but not Samsung and LG devices. Won’t be able to get your hands on Perry backed products tonight? I bring you good news. These products will be available until 8pm Tuesday, February 3rd, assuming there’re still some goodies left by then.
I must say, this is a bold step linking the Super Bowl and advertising. For decades, it’s been the most watched TV event of the year, at least in the USA. Advertisers spend millions for 30 second ads during the game. But this is the first time fans can buy merchandise from the halftime show headliner while the headliner is performing. Other ads convince you to buy their cars, beer, snacks, etc tomorrow. This new venture is getting you to buy right now! But how many people tonight can pry their focus away from the game or show to go online shopping? That’s the question. Will this venture be a hit or flop?
Apparently I am an old fuddy duddy, and I had no idea that this comments phenomenon even existed. Now I have watched and used YouTube videos to help me get through a difficult part of a game, or to find hidden items, but this is ridiculous. Watching someone else play a video game, and listening to his absurd comments and ramblings may be the end of a functional society as we know it. Last night while watching my favorite show “South Park” they were actually making fun of this phenomenon, specifically a famous YouTube personality Pew Die Pie. I mean, just typing out this guy’s name makes me want to puke in my soup. To go on YouTube and see MILLIONS of views and comments on his video’s is just mind boggling.
When I was growing up, parents couldn’t fathom why we all loved video games so much. They told us we were wasting our lives away by not going outside and enjoying real life. I didn’t see it back then, but maybe what my generation started, this new one is taking it to a whole new level. To be so lazy, that you can’t even play the mind numbing video game, and you have to watch someone else play, so you can listen to them comment on playing the game, is the end of a functional society as we know it.
If this is where the internet and the world as a whole is headed, then it is a dark day my friends. Here at Computer Geeks, we love technology, and we love the internet. But this is not some marvel of technology, this is the opposite. I almost don’t even want to post this blog to draw more attention to this, but deep down I am hoping that people will read this and inform others of how stupid this is, and stop it.
So go and look up this Pew Die Pie on YouTube, see what he is doing to the youth of America, and give this kid a piece of your mind. If we let this continue, in 10 years the internet will just be a vast wasteland of people commenting on people’s comments on comments that they saw of some guy throwing a baseball against a wall, because he has nobody to play catch with since they are all watching the comment video. That and pictures of an oiled up Kim Kardashian…
