PBS Gives Parents More Control Over Kids’ Screens With New App

Screentime is something just about all modern parents struggle with. How much is too much? Is an app collecting personal information? Is my child actually learning?

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A new app from PBS KIDS aims to give parents better tools for controlling what their kids are doing online–at least on the PBS KIDS’ site–and eventually on PBS KIDS mobile applications too. The PBS KIDS Super Vision app lets parents enter a code from the website into their phones, and then track kids activity on the site in real time. You can see how long they’ve been watching videos, which shows they watch, what games they play and more. It also tells parents what the purpose of the games or shows are–for example one might be designed to build interest in science–and suggests activities families can do together afterwards to reinforce those goals. One of the best features, however, is a way to shut the site down altogether, remotely.

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Parents can set a play timer that will give their kids either a set amount of time, or a hard stop time to get off the computer. When that time comes, the app or video stops and kids are presented with a message prompting them that it’s time for something else–it might note that it’s bed time, for example. Best of all, it means you can monitor what your kids are up to remotely–because the app is token based, you don’t have to be on the same network or even nearby to control it.

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PBS KIDS has an amazing selection of apps and shows for children, but this is a great tool for parents. In the demo given to WIRED, the monitoring function was really well done, and the remote shut down feature was something truly novel. We’re looking forward to trying this one out. The app is free.

Adobe Voice: A Happy App for Making Explainer Videos

You know Adobe, right?

This is the company that makes extremely complex software for professionals. This is the company whose flagship product, Photoshop, has more than 500 menu commands. This is the company that earned the world’s fury when it decided to stop selling its software — and offer it only as a monthly subscription. This is also the company behind the handy, but once potentially dangerous, PDF format for documents.

So what does Adobe go and do this morning? It releases one of the simplest, most creative, most joyous apps ever written — and gives it away free.

It’s called Adobe Voice. It’s for the iPad only right now; click here to get it. Adobe says it will bring it to other gadgets if the app is successful. And it will be.

Trying to describe Adobe Voice is tricky, both for Adobe and for me, because there’s never been anything quite like it. You truly don’t get it until you try it.

But if you had to force words around this app, you could say it’s an effortless way to make explainer videos.

You’ve seen them, even if you never knew what they were called. They’re a cross between videos and slideshows. There’s a happy little soundtrack—often ukulele or pizzicato (plucked) strings. There are charming little drawings, quivering or animating. And there’s an unseen narrator.

You see these videos all the time online: describing a new website or service, unveiling a Kickstarter project, walking you through a point of science or math, calling you to action for some cause.

Adobe Voice was born to make explainer videos. But because it’s a heady brew of drawings, photos, typography, music, and voice, it swings wide the doors to all kinds of other projects. School reports (kids will beall over this app). Business reports. News updates. Invitations. Storytelling. Instructions. Slideshows. Apologies. Congratulations. Business proposals. Wedding proposals.

When you open the app, you name your new project and then choose a template for the kind of video you want to make. The choices includePromote an Idea, Share an Invitation, Tell a Story, Teach a Lesson, and so on.

The app presents you with a storyboard at the bottom of the screen, which serves as a sort of outline for your video. You can ignore it and just add a “slide” at a time, if you prefer.

For the first slide (or, rather, the first screen of the storyboard), tap the +button. You’re offered a set of three buttons: Icon, Picture, and Text. These are the visuals for this page. They’re quite amazing:

• Text. You can type in some text (in addition to a graphic or an icon, if you like).

• Icon. You type in what you want: “Teardrop.” “Umbrella.” “Happiness.” “House.” Whatever. The app displays dozens or hundreds of professionally drawn icons that match your search. (Adobe says “tens of thousands” of these icons are available.)

These icons are livelier than they appear at first. In the final video, they’ll move, twist, and glide, as though you spent hours animating them in Adobe After Effects. (In fact, somebody at Adobe has already done exactly that.) You can put one on a slide, or two side by side.

• Picture. If you want a photo, you can choose from what’s on your iPad, in your Dropbox, on Facebook, in your Adobe online account — or you can take a photo on the spot with your iPad.

By far the most exciting option, though, is the Find Photos command. It searches the Web for photos that match your search term and presents a scrolling palette of photo thumbnails to incorporate into your project.

Well, yeah, Google Images can do that. But Adobe Voice shows youonly the pictures that you have the rights to use, for free. (The photographers have placed these works under the Creative Commons license.) And at the end of your presentation, The app automatically inserts a tasteful Credits screen, so those photographers get credit.

Admit it — that’s kind of brilliant.

Adding narration is a similar joy. You hold down the microphone button and talk. The app automatically uses professional audio “sweetening” to make your voice sound as professional and sound-boothy as possible. You can hold down the button again and rerecord the narration for the “slide” as many times as necessary until you quit messing up.

(Tip: The narration controls the timing of each slide. If you want to linger on a photo a bit after the narration stops, leave your finger down a couple of seconds after you finish speaking.)

At the top of the screen, three more controls await. One lets you choose a layout for the current “slide” (one visual element, two side by side, and so on). One lets you choose among the 35 pieces of music that come with the app — your ukulele, your pizzicato strings, and so on. (In version 1.1, due shortly, you’ll be able to incorporate your own music files.)

And a third lets you choose a “theme” — a look and feel for your movie. Each theme includes choices of font, background, and animation.

Once you’re satisfied with your masterpiece, you can post it on Facebook or Twitter, or it send by email or text message. You can make it public or private. There is, alas, no way to save it as a file on your computer — it’s online only. That’s really my only nit to pick.

Adobe Voice may be an incredibly simple tool, but it can generate an incredibly wide variety of results. In that way, it’s like the great creative tools of old: HyperCard, say, or Lego before that, or colored chalk before that.

In a week, I’ve already found a couple of uses for it. For example, Voice let me whip together a spectacularly professional, joyful 12th-birthday slideshow for my niece in another state. She never needs to know it took only 15 minutes to create (unless she happens to spot this).

And, of course, I used Voice to make the introduction to the video that accompanies this review.

If you have an iPad and a single creative bone in your body, you should download and explore Adobe Voice. It’s free, it’s creative, it’s incredibly easy to use, it’s a blast — and it’s the last thing you’d expect from a company that makes complex, pricey software.

Could Donald Sterling succeed in a legal fight against selling the Clippers?

In a newly released recording, embattled Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling is purportedly determined to stay at the helm. “You can’t force someone to sell property in America,” says the voice in the recording, which was obtained by RadarOnline.com.

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Media reports portray Mr. Sterling as ready to hunker down and litigate any attempts by the National Basketball Association to force him to relinquish the team.

Is it possible that Sterling, himself a lawyer, could succeed in that litigation?

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He does have some legal options that could at least drag out the proceedings – and a few things may be in his favor, legal experts say. One area that might become especially complicated: The Clippers are reportedly owned by a Sterling family trust, which includes Sterling’s estranged wife, Rochelle Sterling, who apparently does not want to sell the team.

“One always has a fighting chance so long as the party in question has deep enough pockets and strong enough resolve. Donald Sterling not only has both but he has ... these advantages,” says Jason Maloni, chair of litigation practice, sports, and entertainment for Levick, a public relations firm in Washington and New York. Mr. Maloni comments were made via e-mail.

Sterling’s most effective course may be to focus on the recording that was released previously, allegedly featuring him making racist remarks. It was those remarks that prompted the NBA to vow a forced sale of the Clippers and to sanction Sterling with a $2.5 million fine and a lifetime ban from NBA activities.

The remarks were recorded illegally and disseminated without Sterling’s consent, says Jesse Choper, a constitutional specialist at the University of California’s Berkeley School of Law. Therefore, he says, they might not meet the NBA constitution’s admonition that “an owner will not take any position or action that will materially and adversely affect a team or the league,” as ESPN puts it.

“This was a confidential conversation with a lady friend: He certainly wasn’t taking any position, and he never made it public,” Mr. Choper says. “The key words are ‘position’ and ‘action.’ ”

One important issue to watch could be how California’s status as a “no-fault” divorce state figures into the case, should it come to that with the Sterling family trust, says Steve Mindel, a family law specialist at the Los Angeles firm of Feinberg, Mindel, Brandt & Klein. The city already went down a somewhat similar path with Frank and Jamie McCourt, who were owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Mr. McCourt sold the team for $2.15 billion in 2012, five months after Mrs. McCourt accepted $131 million in a divorce settlement, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“If two people own a house together and one of them burns it down, the court can assess penalities,” Mr. Mindel says. “It will be interesting to see if the court thinks Sterling’s actions were tantamount to destroying an asset.”

In terms of the litigation that may lie ahead, some legal experts have zeroed in on the comment from the newly released recording – “You can’t force someone to sell property in America.”

“The fact is that you can make people sell property in America under certain circumstances,” says Dan Lazaroff, director of the Loyola Sports Law Institute at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

“In this case, Sterling is a party to the NBA constitution and bylaws,” Mr. Lazaroff elaborates. “That document provides for a forced sale when specific procedures are followed and articulated conditions are met. The league's position is that Sterling's comments satisfy the requirements for ownership termination. He obviously disagrees. That's why we have lawyers, juries, and judges.”

In the newly released recording purportedly of Sterling, he maintains that he is not a racist. The voice on the recording has not been confirmed as Sterling’s.

Police eye California mountains in hunt for fugitive fire chief

SACRAMENTO, California (Reuters) - Homicide detectives searching for a California fire chief suspected of fatally stabbing his girlfriend turned their attention to the state's massive mountain ranges on Thursday, saying he may be hiding out along trails and backroads.

The Sacramento County Sheriff's Department said Orville "Moe" Fleming, a 55-year-old battalion chief with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, has deep knowledge of the Sierra and Santa Cruz mountains and the picturesque Yosemite Valley.

Fleming, who has fire department keys giving him access to gated trails and roads, disappeared a week ago after his 26-year-old girlfriend, Sarah Douglas, was found stabbed to death at the home they shared.

The hunt for Fleming, believed to be armed, comes just over a year after former Los Angeles policeman Christopher Dorner fled into Southern California mountains after a murderous rampage targeting police officers and their families. That case ended in a fiery standoff that left Dorner dead.

The Fleming case has not yet sparked the same kind of intense manhunt undertaken for Dorner, in which hundreds of officers joined, in part because he had targeted law enforcement officials and their families.

Investigators said Thursday they have not yet been able to narrow down Fleming's location, and hope public attention could bring reports of sightings to help mount a targeted search.

The case took a prurient turn when sheriff's investigators said someone from an escort service may have helped Fleming evade capture.

"Investigators have discovered that Fleming has had contact with many escorts he met through the website "My Redbook," the sheriff's department said on its Facebook page.

After the murder, the fire department car that Fleming used was found abandoned in a Sacramento suburb, the department said.

"Investigators are looking into the possibility that someone Fleming knew, either through his contact with escorts, or through his personal or professional life, picked him up and drove him away," the Facebook post said.

Fleming has been fired from his job for not showing up for work from April 30, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesman Daniel Berlant said.

The sheriff's department, in a separate Facebook posting on Wednesday, noted that Fleming had changed his appearance in the past by shaving his head and mustache. He frequently wears a baseball cap and has tattoos on his left arm and bicep, it said.

Even though a week has passed since Douglas' death, her assailant would probably have sustained cuts on his hands and arms that would require bandages, investigators said. They said Fleming owned two pistols and should be considered armed and dangerous.

Federal land worker threatened in Utah as conflict simmers

SALT LAKE CITY (Reuters) - A pair of motorists in a pick-up truck brandished a firearm and flashed a threatening sign at a federal land management worker in Utah, officials said on Thursday, about a month after a widely-publicized armed standoff with a rancher.

There was no indication the suspects in the incident on Tuesday were connected to supporters of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy in a dispute over $1 million in grazing fees and the larger issue of federal control over public lands.

"Threats against Bureau of Land Management employees will not be tolerated, and we are pursuing this matter with local law enforcement," said Megan Crandall, a spokeswoman for the bureau in Utah.

A BLM employee was driving an agency vehicle on Interstate 15 near Nephi, about 90 miles south of Salt Lake City when two motorists whose faces were covered pulled alongside him and made an obscene gesture, officials said.

The suspects pulled away but returned minutes later, flashing a gun and a hand-scrawled sign that read: "You need to die," officials said. The car's license plate appeared to have been covered with duct tape.

As a safety measure, the bureau is stripping logos from some agency vehicles, BLM Fillmore Field Office supervisor Eric Reid said, according to The Salt Lake Tribune newspaper.

The federal government controls huge swaths of land across the western states, which often prevents state and local governments from using it.

In recent years the conservative state's rights advocates have pushed for taking back public lands. In Utah more than 60 percent of all public lands are under federal control.

Frustration with the BLM has mounted across Utah. A coalition of Utah ranchers has sued the agency for failing to manage the wild horse population and one central Utah county has said it would conduct its own roundup if the BLM fails to act.

"This type of intimidation is unacceptable and must be dealt with immediately," Steven Horsford, a U.S. Congressman from Nevada, said in a statement. "Unchecked militia groups are setting a precedent for lawlessness in the American West, and it is repugnant that this menacing behavior is spreading."

Marijuana banking scheme passes first test in Colorado legislature

DENVER (Reuters) - Colorado lawmakers on Friday passed a bill that if enacted would lead to the first marijuana financial system in the United States, potentially granting legal cannabis businesses access to the Federal Reserve's money transaction system.

Traditional banks have been wary to knowingly serve legal and medicinal marijuana businesses because the drug remains illegal under federal law, said the bill's sponsor, Representative Jonathan Singer.

The cash-only nature of marijuana businesses is making them targets for crime, limiting access to capital, and impeding the state's ability to track revenues, Singer said.

"This sets up a new type of financial structure to the gap we're seeing between banking and the marijuana industry," said Singer, a Democrat.

The proposal calls for new "cannabis credit co-ops" - similar to credit unions without deposit insurance - to be governed by the state's financial services commissioner. But they would need Fed approval for access to banking services, such as credit card processing and checking accounts.

Voters in Colorado and Washington state passed statewide ballot measures in 2012 legalizing the possession and use of recreational pot by adults. Both states are among 20 that allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes.

In January, the first recreational retail shops opened in Colorado, and Washington is set to follow suit this year.

The Obama administration in February issued new law-enforcement guidelines aimed at encouraging banks to start doing business with state-licensed marijuana suppliers, like those in Colorado, even though such enterprises remain illegal under federal law.

On Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew insisted in testimony before lawmakers that it was not tacit approval under federal law.

The Colorado measure passed on Friday on a preliminary vote and will be formally voted on next week. It needs approval by the state Senate and Governor John Hickenlooper to become law.

The banking cooperatives would not be traditional credit unions or banks because deposit insurance would not be required under the measure.

Many have expressed doubts that the Federal Reserve, which requires credit unions and banks to have insurance, would sign off on the plan.

Nevada court rejects U.S. request on Okada probe, says Wynn suit can proceed

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - A Nevada state judge ruled on Friday that a civil lawsuit between Wynn Resorts and Japanese billionaire Kazuo Okada could proceed, rejecting the U.S. government's request to keep it on hold for another six months to protect the identity of witnesses in a criminal probe into Okada's business in the Philippines.

In requesting a third, six-month "stay of discovery," Department of Justice attorney Laura Perkins told a hearing that allowing the civil case to proceed risked causing "irreparable harm if the witnesses' identities are revealed."

Clark County District Judge Elizabeth Gonzales, who had already granted two previous motions suspending the civil proceedings for a total of 12 months, said the U.S. government had already been given enough time.

"I'm tired of waiting. It's been a year," Gonzales said, adding that she hoped her ruling would prompt the government to accelerate its criminal investigation.

She did, however, grant the government's request to have the names of anyone cooperating with the investigation redacted in court files.

The existing stay of discovery - the process by which parties in a lawsuit exchange information and evidence - is due to expire on May 5.

A spokesman for Wynn declined to comment.

No representative for Universal Entertainment Corp, the Japanese gaming machine maker founded by Okada and the company at the heart of government's criminal investigation, could be reached for comment.

For more than two years, Okada has been locked in a legal battle with Wynn Chief Executive Steve Wynn, during which the former business partners have exchanged allegations of illegal conduct.

Wynn forcibly redeemed Okada's 20 percent stake in the U.S. casino operator in 2012 at a discount, alleging Okada had made improper payments to Philippine government officials to advance his planned $2 billion casino project there. Wynn's civil lawsuit against Okada centers on allegations that Okada breached his fiduciary duties as a director in making those payments.

Okada has denied any wrongdoing and filed a counterclaim to nullify the share redemption.

The U.S. criminal investigation is focused on $40 million in payments made by Universal affiliates to a consultant in the Philippines in 2010.

The payments, which were made around the same time Universal lobbied for concessions for its casino on Manila Bay, are also being investigated by the Philippine government and the Nevada gaming regulator, according to people familiar with the matter.

Universal has filed a defamation suit against Reuters in Tokyo for its reporting on the $40 million payments. A Reuters spokesman said the news agency stands by its reporting.