Source: Consumer Report

In a recent survey, we asked subscribers about how they use their mobile devices. One finding: Twenty-eight percent of tablet owners said children 17 or younger also used their tablet. Some portion of parents who share their tablets with their kids surely must long to get the kids their own devices.

If you’re willing to add another screen to your children’s life, you could, of course, simply buy an additional iPad, Android, or other “grownup” tablet. But we recently took a look at four new Android tablets made just for children: the Fuhu Nabi Jr., Fuhu Nabi XD, Polaroid Kid Tablet, and Vinci Tab MV. The existence of these kid-specific tablets begs an important question. What (if anything) makes these kid tablets better for children than any other tablet? Here are some points to consider.

Most have comprehensive, robust parental controls. The Nabi tablets we tested have a separate mode for parents that let them access full Android settings, and from there, add apps for kids, put time restrictions on app use, and filter websites. And the Polaroid Kids Tablet has a filtered Safe Mode and the Maxthon Safe Browser: Parents can add the sites they want kids to be able to access, and it creates clickable icons to take them to each site. The Vinci Tab MV offers optional password protection for specific apps, but no browser security.

You can, however, use or add parental controls on many “adult” tablets. The Apple iPad lets you password-protect specific apps and features, content types, and game features. The Amazon Kindle Fire HD and Barnes & Noble Nook HD each lets you set up individualized user profiles for up to six kids, controlling content they see and whether or not they can get to the Web. Other Android tablets let you password-protect the Play Store, so purchases can be made only when a PIN is entered.

Beyond all this exists a plethora of third-party apps (some free) that can make regular tablets more kid-friendly—from locking them down entirely (for really young ones) to blocking inappropriate apps and sites, and setting time limits for various activities. But the built-in controls on most kid tablets give you these kinds of protections out of the box.

For more tips, reviews, and advice, see our guide to video games, consoles, and tech toys.
Most kid tablets come loaded with content children will enjoy. This includes games (many focused on learning activities), interactive e-books, videos, music players, and art-studio apps. (The Vinci Tab MV requires you to download its content but doesn’t charge for it.) And all of them let you add what you want, customizing content to your child.

Of course, you can choose and download a huge array of games, e-books, music, video, and apps for kids to any tablet. But having appropriate content preloaded lets children enjoy the kid tablets right out of the box, and saves parents a lot of curating time.

Prices can be lower. In general, you’ll pay less for a kid tablet than for most others. The ones we tested ranged from $150 $100 to $250. But you can get the Google Nexus, Samsung Galaxy Tab 2, and Kobo Arc for $200 to $250, and we recommend all of them. So those are some good non-kid tablets that cost as little as the more-expensive kid ones.

If you can just afford one tablet for your household, you’ll probably want to consider a “grownup” tablet that scored well on our full array of tests. But a kid tablet could make a great additional device that will keep the young ones away from yours.

Some have high-quality components. Just as with regular tablets, kid tablets vary in terms of the quality of components, such as displays, processors, memory, and cameras. Some of the ones we’ve tested had fast processors and high-resolution, responsive screens, but others were lacking.

When we asked a group of children to try our kid tablets last year, we noticed that the devices that had sluggish performance and unresponsive screens frustrated them. So make sure you know what you’re getting before you plunk down the cash: There’s not much point in buying a tablet your child won’t want to use.

Bottom line. You should determine what’s most important to you before you purchase a tablet—whether that’s having strict control over your child’s tablet experience, choosing a tablet that the whole family can share, or letting kids have their own devices. Then check our reviews to find the tablet that’s right for your needs.

Another consideration is sturdiness, which we didn’t test. Some kid tablets come with rubber bumpers, which make drops and bumps less dangerous to the device. You can also purchase bumpers and tough cases separately for other tablets.

—Carol Mangis

SOURCE

Via PC Advisor UK

Maxthon Cloud 4.05 review: a web browser you should install and try today
Free
Manufacturer: Maxthon
Our Rating:
By Roland Waddilove | PC Advisor | 29 April 13
Maxthon Cloud is a web browser that takes the engines from Internet Explorer and Chrome and adds a new skin and features. It’s well worth trying out. Here’s our Maxthon Cloud 4.05 review–
EXPERT REVIEWUSER REVIEWSREQUIRED SPECSOUR VERDICTRELATED PRODUCTS-
Maxthon Cloud is a browser that takes the engines from Internet Explorer and Chrome and adds a new skin and features. The current version of Chrome is 26, but Maxthon uses version 22. However, Chrome is updated so frequently that v22 is only around six months old.

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Maxthon uses whichever version of Internet Explorer is installed on your PC, so it’s down to you how up to date it is. A button at the right-hand side of the address box switches from IE to Chrome engines.

A large number of extras are bundled with the browser. For example, there’s an optional dock that sits on the left side of the screen and this provides icons to launch various features. One opens a ‘downloads’ window that’s more convenient than Chrome’s download tab.

There’s a note-taking widget, which is handy when using the web for research. An RSS button opens a newsreader tab and you can subscribe to news feeds and import feeds from Google Reader.

The dock can be customized and there’s a palette of extra items like eBay, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest and others. See also: Beginner’s guide to Twitter

The status bar at the bottom of browser windows is rarely used for anything beneficial, but Maxthon adds a system monitor. It can display CPU usage, upload and download speeds, memory usage and more.

This is excellent and useful information. You also get a button to access an advert blocker so you can browse the web ad-free. There’s a Safari-like reader mode that strips web pages of the clutter and just displays the content; magic fill for online forms; a night mode for browsing in the dark (we’re sure there must be a legitimate reason for doing this).

Maxthon Cloud, as the name suggests, provides a cloud service that performs several useful functions. It syncs browsing data across all your computers, tablets and smartphones (iOS and Android) like Google Chrome does. You can also send a web link from your desktop to your smartphone or tablet.

Plus, there’s more: you can push content to other computers and devices, such as links, text and images, and downloads are also stored online, which enables them to be downloaded to other computers and devices.

Maxthon Cloud 4.05: Bottom line

If you like feature-laden browsers, this will be right up your street. It has some useful cloud-based features that are not available in other web browsers. There are useful extensions too.

SOURCE

Via CNN Money

It’s just gone mobile.

FORTUNE – There was a time when web browsers duked it out for dominance on the desktop. But with users consuming information more and more on smartphones, tablets, and newer form factors like “phablets,” the battleground has shifted to mobile. Who’s winning?

As recently as June 2012, the competition was in a dead heat: Android led with nearly 22%, followed by Opera at 22%, then Safari on iOS with 21% according to StatCounter. Google’s (GOOG) Android has cemented a solid lead since then with 31%, iOS at 24%, and Opera trailing with 15%.

The stock Android browser pulled ahead of Opera and Safari for iOS last summer.
That shouldn’t come as a surprise, given the proliferation of Android devices. According to the analytics firm IDC, Android phone makers shipped 162 million devices during the first quarter of 2013; Apple (AAPL) shipped 37 million. (And in case you’re curious, Windows Phone came third, with 7 million.)

RockMelt, a desktop-focused web browser that launched in late 2010, recently announced it was changing course. In the two-and-a-half years since launch, the innovative browser which integrated social network and RSS feed integration right into the browser window, only signed up 4.5 million users. Like it or not, the desktop market is a landscape ruled with a virtual iron fist by the likes of Microsoft (MSFT) Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome. “Browsers today are just big dumb windows in [consumers'] way,” Rockmelt co-founder and CTO Tim Howes told The Wall Street Journal recently. Rockmelt recently announced Rockmelt for Web, a content aggregator any Internet user with a browser can access.

On iOS, there’s no shortage of Web browsers to choose, from Opera to the lesser-known Atomic Web Browser, all of which try to put their own spin on mobile Internet browsing to stand out: features like accelerated Web site loading, different ways to juggle Windows, bookmark syncing, among others.
MORE: Where online shopping is killing retail

But there’s a problem for third-party developers. Much like Internet Explorer is the pre-loaded browser on Microsoft Windows, Android is the default browser on the Android operating system, as Safari is on iOS. Which is why, according to StatCounter, such offerings are at a distant fourth place right now. “The thing is, Safari and Android are default recipients of your link, and what’s going to overcome that?” explains Forrester analyst Charles Golvin. You can download other browsers, but there isn’t a setting like on the PC that makes a browser like Firefox or Google Chrome the go-to browser. “Until that’s the case, we’re not going to get as much real competition.”

Still, companies like Maxthon, which The Journal reports has 120 million users, is pushing forward with its own desktop, mobile, and in-car browser offerings, which includes a deal this year with Pioneer Electronics where drivers and passengers can surf the web via touch-screen device.

Translation: The browser war is far from dead. They’re just more cross-platform than ever.

SOURCE

Via Geek Insider

By  Mohseen Lala •  geekinsider.com • May 15, 2013
Getting bored of the same old browsers? Then welcome to the 4 best specialized web browsers, all of which sport special features and uses you won’t find in traditional desktop web surfing portals.

Specialized Web Browsers
Sometimes, there is a need for precision, special features and even a change of scenery in one’s web browsers. There are times when the big five, Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer just don’t cut it anymore. Times when we need new blood that’s faster, more specialized and just plain different.

So, without any further buffering, let’s get started.

#4
Lunascape
Lunascape is unique for the three rendering engines that it is built upon, namely Gecko (Firefox uses Gecko), Webkit (Safari uses Webkit) and Trident (used by Internet Explorer). The browser was developed in Tokyo, by the Lunascape Corporation, and is currently available on Windows, all iOS devices and Android. Although Android users should note that it doesn’t work very well on low end processors. The Mac OS X version is tagged as “Coming Soon” on their website.

The Lunascape browser is not as add-on friendly as Firefox, or as fancy looking as Safari when on Windows, but its three engines (they can seamlessly auto switch) means that there isn’t a website, image, video or web code it cannot display. This specialized web browser is perfect for web developers and designers to use as a compatibility and comparability tool for the websites they build.

#3
Zac Browser
The Zac browser is the only specialized web browser developed from the ground up to help teenagers and children with autism, and the homepage shows that. The project kicked off in 2009 when developer John LeSieur’s grandson, Zack, was diagnosed with severe autism at the tender age of 13. Of course, normal browsers were simply too frustrating to use, and so John got to work modifying the KidCD browser into Zac Browser. Keep in mind that although it is free, the Zac specialized web browser is proprietary software and does restrict access to certain websites.

This specialized web browser is currently  available for both Mac and PC, and requires a free download of Adobe Air before installation can proceed. But it’s absolutely perfect, as it is simple and very efficiently organized for people with autism, EDD and various other attention issues.

#2
Songbird
Do you ever wish your web browser and music player were the same thing? Apparently so did a certain Rob Lord and friends at Pioneers of the Inevitable. They got to work making Songbird, which is a specialized web and music player that allows users to access the internet and download, purchase, listen, play, import and sync music while surfing the internet. Users can also have Songbird scan their local hard drives and import playlists, songs and albums. So, even if there’s no internet, there still is a music player to listen to.

This musically specialized web browser/music store can play all the common music formats (MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, Apple Lossless, WMA), is highly customizable via skins referred to as “Feathers” and is cross platform with full support across Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, Android. The Linux version is christened Nightingale; audiophiles  and netizens of the world, this is the perfect music browser for you.

#1
Maxthon
The world is now one giant, interconnected hub of vitally trivial information, and that’s where Maxthon shines. A cloud based alternative web browser, that prides itself on its “stop anywhere, pick up anywhere” functionality. Maxthon is Geek Inside’rs best specialized browser, for it does everything Google Chrome can do, but more efficiently. The browser is designed to take full advantage of dual core CPUs, and this makes it feel smooth, fast and quick even in older systems.

Originally known as MyIE2, the browser uses a passport system, and can work across any range of mobile or stationary devices that are signed up to an individual user’s passport. History, tabs, information, password and preferences are all saved in a cloud, which can also be used to share files, videos and images. Maxthon is the proud winner of CNET WebWare 100 Awards in 2008 and the following year, and ranked number 97 on  PCWorld’s list of the 100 Best Products of 2011.

There you have it, the best specialized web browsers if you’re into online music, deal with autism, enjoy tinkering on the web and love the convenience of cloud browsing. Which are your favorite web browsers? And why do you like them? Tell us in the comments below!

SOURCE

By JESSICA E. LESSIN

Mobile phones, wearable devices and self-driving cars are generating buzz as the future of technology. But the old Web browser is being reinvented too, in a trend with implications for how consumers work and entertain themselves online.

Companies from Google Inc. GOOG -0.31% to small startups are introducing new features, such as taking and syncing notes and files within the browser, voice-recognition, video calls and messaging. They are also reinventing the browser for newly connected devices like cars.

In one new front of experimentation, browser company Maxthon Ltd. will next month offer users the ability to sync downloads and local files across devices via its browser, in potential competition with file-sharing services like Dropbox Inc. Consumers will be able to download or send the data to a cloud storage account or other device running the browser from a drop-down menu within the browser. The company already offers the ability to take and sync notes in the browser.

Maxthon
Browser company Maxthon Ltd. will next month offer users the ability to sync downloads and local files across devices via its browser.

The little-known software, which Maxthon says has some 120 million monthly users, more than half of them in China, aims to capitalize on consumers’ desires to access their files from a range of devices. The company offers browsers for desktops, mobile phones, tablets and even in-car systems. Earlier this year, Maxthon announced a deal with Pioneer Electronics to enable users to browse the Web from an in-car touch-screen device.

“It’s clear we’re shifting to a multi-device world and that creates a lot of pain points,” says Karl Mattson, vice president and general manager of Maxthon, which has about 220 employees. “The browser is the natural frame for this,” he says.

The browser industry may have appeared staid in recent years, with the market dominated by tech giants such as Microsoft Corp., MSFT +1.04% Google andApple Inc. AAPL +0.39% Microsoft’s Internet Explorer remains the market-share leader for desktop browsers, according to Net Applications, with a 56% share of the desktop market globally. Apple’s Safari browser leads on mobile phones and tablets, with 59% share, thanks to the popularity of the iPhone and iPad.

But behind the scenes, many companies have quietly been enhancing and reimagining the Web browser, as new technologies have made it possible to do numerous activities in the browser instead of through software downloaded to a computer or mobile device. The set of new programming techniques enabling the features is often referred to as HTML5.

Companies have opened up to “add-ons” and apps, allowing users to access features like games and third-party software from a homescreen. Earlier this year, Google, which develops the Chrome browser, released software that allows developers to add voice-recognition to their Web pages, so users can browse the Web by speaking. It also released a Chrome app for its Google Keep note-taking service that syncs notes directly with its Google Drive storage service.

Microsoft has been tailoring its Internet Explorer browser for touch, focusing on making it responsive and fast for tablets like its Surface. The latest version of Internet Explorer also is designed to work well with its SkyDrive storage service.

Maxthon
A Maxthon browser

Apps have stolen some thunder from browsers, especially as consumers find apps faster and more convenient to use than the Web. That has spurred some of the latest browser innovation.

Jay Sullivan, chief operating officer of browser maker Mozilla Corp., says browsing is going to become more social through new and easy ways to share what people are browsing with friends. “It will be more lively, quick and fun,” he says.

Mozilla’s Firefox browser has rolled out new features, such as the ability to integrate with social-networking sites so users can see updates and messages from Facebook Inc. FB +0.52% within the browser’s frame. It is also testing the feature with Sina Corp.’s SINA -0.76%Weibo for Chinese users.

Mozilla also is working on embedded communication features. For instance, consumers could open up a chat screen within their browser and drag a video from a Web page into the screen to share immediately. Mozilla is also trying to persuade websites to adopt a new identity system called Persona that aims to eliminate passwords. It allows users to log into websites using existing accounts and passwords.

Past attempts to spiff up browsers haven’t always taken off. Onetime Web-browser startup Rockmelt, which once trumpeted its integration with Facebook, says its desktop browser had 4.5 million users but will be discontinued in the next few months. It has changed course to become a discovery service for finding interesting Web content.

Tim Howes, Rockmelt co-founder and chief technology officer, said in a statement that “browsers today are just big dumb windows in [consumers'] way.”

Some new browser features, like file-sharing, aim to replicate functions or Web services that are already easy to access across multiple devices through services like Google Drive or Dropbox.

Mr. Mattson of Maxthon says integrated features are more convenient for users. He likens some of the stand-alone services to “using a five-pound hammer to kill a mosquito” when something simpler within the browser will do.

Write to Jessica E. Lessin at jessica.lessin@wsj.com

Via Venture Beat

The DeanBeat: Maxthon offers an alternative browser that won’t crash while running multiple games

Maxthon has carved out a name for itself as a reliable alternative web browser built with the cloud in mind. The company has more than 120 million monthly users for its browser, which isn’t as crash-prone as those made by its rivals.

Now the Beijing-based company hopes to transform the web experience further by releasing a WebKit core for Android browsers so they can become better foundations for web-based games. The new release of the browser, which has achieved a billion downloads, will make it work even better with web-based games, the company says.

Karl Mattson, the general manager of Maxthon International, told GamesBeat that the Maxthon cloud browser has carved out a niche among gamers because it allows them to sign into as many as five separate accounts simultaneously. That allows them to play different games at the same time. It is also more reliable since memory-management technology was built into the browser from the ground up. If you’ve ever had a browser crash on you during a game or a multi-window session, you’ll come to appreciate memory management. This is basic plumbing for the internet. And it’s something that is holding up the progress of the game industry, along with the difficulty of making games that can run across various platforms.

“We’ve grown by word of mouth in the gaming community,” Mattson said. “We’re the you’ve never heard of. Now we’re offering the world’s best support for HTML5,” the lingua franca of the web. In a test running HTML5 canvas using the CanvasMark benchmark, Maxthon scored the highest of the major web browsers in running HTML5 pages.

That improved support for HTML5 will make it easier to run both 2D and 3D games in web browsers, enabling games to be written once for the web and run on a variety of platforms. Maxthon is available as an app in Apple’s iTunes App Store and the Google Play store for Android devices.

“Gamers are the canaries in the coal mine in leading support for fast browser performance,” Mattson said.

Mattson said that the browser has become the favorite of pro gamers who play web-based games in professional tournaments. It also offers a split-screen feature on the desktop. Maxthon says it can render web pages on Windows, Android, and iOS faster than any .

Maxthon is growing in a variety of regions, but its market share in browsers is still below that of rivals like Opera, Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer. The company is now expanding in the U.S. market. Another rival is OnLive, which offers a cloud-based browser that loads pages really fast. But Maxthon doesn’t put quite as much of the computing task in the web-connected data centers, or cloud, itself.

“Our goal is to make the actual software faster,” Mattson said.

Jeff Chen, a student in Singapore, started the browser in 2003 when he created a browser out of frustration. He was tired of the poor performance of the big browsers and found an abandoned browser projected dubbed MyIE. He decided to craft his own browser, dubbed MyIE2. He formed the company Maxthon in 2004 and kept adding features. In 2005, Chen renamed the company Maxthon, and the browser became the first one with tabs. Then it added sandboxed tabs in 2007 for added security. In 2008, Maxthon offered cloud-based services for syncing bookmarks and history.

With memory management, Maxthon allows you to pick up where you left off, no matter what you were working on, with any of your Internet-enabled devices.

“We started with a high-performance web-browsing experience,” Mattson said. “We made a strong commitment in the last year and a half to HTML5 support. We’ve got support in the gaming community because of this. We’re making HTML5 games work really well. As a company, we believe that the browser should change the computing experience.”

That meant that users could log into their browser and access their own favorite web pages and history of browsing from any location. In 2010, Maxthon came out on Android, and it has reached more than 500 million downloads to date on that platform. In 2011, the browser came out on Android tablets. Maxthon is also getting chip makers such as Intel and Advanced Micro Devices to support its software in their hardware. The company received one round of funding from Charles River Capital and WI Harper. Today, the browser is used in more than 150 countries.

Maxthon provides HTML5 support in Android, allowing for high-quality video support and Web GL enhancements. Other new features include the ability to run 2D games at 60 frames per second on devices that can support such graphics. It can also run WebGL 3D graphics.

Maxthon has more than 220 employees and is profitable. Now that’s a company that should be on the radar of all of the major game companies and platform owners.
SOURCE

Via Engadget

Maxthon Cloud Browser adds local network file transfers for Android and Windows  Mobile

By Jon Fingas posted May 8th, 2013 at 8:30 AM 7

While many browsers sync through the cloud, few know how to cope with the local network — what if we just want to push a file to another device nearby? Maxthon doesn’t think we should have to resort to an online service or a dedicated app for the purpose, so it’s rolling a LAN Transfer feature into its Cloud Browser. Starting with Android and Windows versions available today, the web client lets users shuttle files directly to others on the same network, with nothing but the browser in between. Both iOS and Mac users should join the party soon, which could turn Maxthon into a rare (and very unconventional) cross-platform file manager.

SOURCE