My iPhone apps | Apptism.com (Photo credit: Bart Claeys)

I just read a very interesting article from Renata Rowe, Prevent your child from downloading Kik, Instagram, Keek, Hatr, Snapchat, Tumblr…….. that I would like to recommend here.

Are we always sure that our children download the right apps? Some of them are adult-oriented. Did you know that:

Some are 12+ such as Instagram, and Keek others such as Kik and Tumblr are rated 17+. In the iTunes Store Tumblr, a favourite of teens, is rated 17+ because it has:  ‘Frequent/Intense Sexual Content or Nudity’

Renata Rowe, who is Deputy Head of Campus/Head of Secondary, Ivanhoe Grammar School, Plenty Campus, and writes important articles about “the latest cyber safety issues, and the latest social mediums that their children and teens might be using” did also write an article about the Kik Messenger (see also an article about Kik on this site).

If you are not sure if the apps your child would like to download, check also on  bewebsmart.com, a site that “offers articles, tips, guidance and reviews for parents who want to keep their families safe and productive online.”

PressReader is a great app for expats because it offers the access to 2,300 full content newspapers from 97 countries in 54 languages. It offers the complete digital replicas from the entire papers, exactly like their original layout and every “article, advertisement, crossword puzzle and cartoon is presented in its original context”.

On the “shop” level you have several search options: you can enter a search term (a topic) specifying the newspapers you want to do the search in – or “all newspapers” -, the language or “all languages”, the date (you have the option “today”, “last three days”, “this week” or “this month”) and you have the option to search per author.

Once you’ve choosen a newspaper, you can read it on page view, with the layout of the newsletter, or SmartFlow on iPad (but not for iPhone). Smart Flow removes the formatting and design from the original paper and makes it iPad-friendly to read. It displays the articles “as a continuous, horizontal stream of stories that flow across the iPad”. The size is easily changeable: with the two-finger pinch you can adjust font and image sizes.

Once you’ve finished reading an article, you can easily access the next one by rolling right (or left for right-to-left languages). The reading is very smooth, without interruption. The only problem I encountered was that an article in Smart Flow was ripped in two pieces – even title and subtitle. This funny effect did also affect the audio…

Therefore I preferred the page view:

You can access the translation of the articles in 12 different languages. Not all the languages are available for all the newspapers. Just a few examples: the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung is translated in English, French and Russian; Le Monde in Dutch, English, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, whereas the International Herald Tribune can be read in Croatian, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish.

You can also listen to the publications by choosing the on demand audio. It’s offered for almost all the articles, but, for obvious reasons, only in the language of the newspaper. With PressReader you can share stories by email, facebook or twitter and copy entire articles and paste them into note taking applications. You can also print full pages or articles and share your opinion by supporting or opposing a story.

All in all PressReader is a great app. Not only it’s eco-friendly (no paper!) but you can have your newspapers on your device wherever you are. What I found the most appealing is the quality of the layout on iPhone and iPad. It is much better than the one of the single newspaper online versions. The option to search for a topic in all the newspapers or those you choose reminds me of stumble-upon through newspapers and magazines.

If you read several newspapers from different countries and in different languages, you might wonder which newspapers are available at PressReader. You can find 1263 newspapers in English, but only 8 in Chinese, 68 in German, 128 in French, 10 in Italian, 39 in Portuguese, 65 in Spanish (cfr. 15.4.2013). Unfortunately, some newspapers are not included, like New York Times, Süddeutsche, Tagesanzeiger, Corriere della Sera, just to name a few. But on the other hand, you can also find newspapers in languages like Zulu (4), Telugu (1), Tagalog (6), Pandschabish (1), Nepalese (2), Marathi (3), Malayalam (4), Malaiish (6), Gujarati (1) etc. which, in my opinion, is brilliant. – Please find a list of the newspapers on PressReader for Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland, United Kingdom in my next post.

You can find more technical details here.

1) Know how your child’s phone works (e.g. Bluetooth, Internet access etc.)

2) Agree the type of content that you would be happy for them to download, knowingly receive or send on to others

3) Save any abusive messages or inappropriate images for evidence purposes

4) Decide together what are acceptable bills

5) Encourage balanced use (switching off at mealtimes, bedtime etc.)