Can These iPad Apps Teach Your Kid to Code?

Hopscotch and Kodable aim to teach kids the programming basics.
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Dell Laptop Does Flips to Try to Be a Thick Tablet

The latest attempt at a convertible laptop comes from Dell and is especially creative, and even kind of cool, says Walt.
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A PC and Tablet “Brick” for the Price of One

The Asus Transformer AiO offers dual software and hardware systems, but they don’t offset a weighty downside.
Asus Transformer AiO

Weighing In on Wi-Fi Scales

Can these high-tech scales help you keep those New Year’s resolutions?
From left to right: The Withings WS-30 and the FitBit Aria Smart Scale.

News Byte

Computing Pioneer Ada Lovelace Gets Deserved Google Doodle

Google does commemorative logos — called Google Doodles — pretty regularly now. But today, it’s a much-deserved tip-of-the-pen to celebrate the 197th birthday of Ada Lovelace, a woman who is one of computing’s earliest pioneers. She was a collaborator of Charles Babbage, designer of the ground-breaking mechanical computers — which he never actually built — the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine. Lovelace’s notes on the Analytical Engine are considered to be among the first algorithms created; she also theorized about the larger potential of computers beyond mathematics, including to make music. All that with just a quill and some paper.

Making Sense of All the New Laptop Flavors

Walt’s annual fall buyer’s guide to choosing a new laptop amid all the confusing new choices.
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Digital Interrogation

They knew everything about me … My computer was arrested before me.

Taymour Karim, a Syrian anti-government activist and one of many hacking targets since the country’s rebellion began in 2011

Yoga PC Flips and Bends, but as a Tablet, It’s Clumsy

The Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 contorts into a clamshell laptop or a tablet, but it has big flaws.
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Voices

If Your Computer Cared About You (Comic)

Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears three times a week in the Voices section of this site.
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Back to School With Two Thin Laptops — One Pricey, One Not

These two new Windows laptops from Lenovo and Hewlett-Packard are aimed at different ends of the market.
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White MacBook, It Was Good Living With You