CHILDREN’S COOL TECHNOLOGY ENCYCLOPEDIA

INTRODUCTION

   Not so long ago, a cell phone was the size of a brick and the music on your MP3 player would have filled shelves with old vinyl discs. The times are changing fast. Today, we are experiencing a revolution in technology. Every week, smarter gadgets, more advanced medicines, and more powerful computers become part of daily life. Modern machines can think with microchips smaller than this period. They can be superlight and ultra-tough, built with advanced metal composites. They need no trailing wires, because they have Wi-Fi radio links. Progress seems unstoppable. But technology can also overwhelm us. How do the latest widgets work? Which of tomorrow’s breakthroughs should we be ready for? And who’s in charge us or the machines? Find out inside. This book has the know-how on the latest, coolest technology out there.

FUN AND GAMES

   Stone Age people had no MP3 players, computer games, or wide-screen TVs. What on earth did they do with their lives? Today, an incredible array of hi-tech gadgets lets us escape from real life and daily routine into a fantastic world of sights, sounds, and action. We can battle against imaginary monsters, fulfill quests, and find treasure, or just sit back and listen to our favorite tracks-from gadgets that fit into the palms of our hands,

MP3 PLAYER

  Only a few years ago, music on the move meant a large, portable CD player- and if it got jogged it skipped. Now “flash” memory devices mean hours of skip-free portable tunes can be stored in a gadget as small as a finger.

IPOD

The IPOD, first released in 2001, is Apple’s version of an MP3(short for Mpeg 1, Audio Layer 3) player. It must be used with Apple’s music application(program), iTunes.

An online music store

  Music is usually transferred to an MP3 player from a computer. To get the songs into the computer, they are ripped from a compact disc(CD) or similar source into a compressed audio format, the most common of which is MP3. They can also be downloaded onto the computer from a music store on the Internet.

FLASH VS. DISC

   Sounds are stored by MP3 players in two main ways. One is the flash drive, which is a memory microchip with no moving parts. The other is a tiny hard-disc drive, like the spinning magnetic disc in a computer’s hard drive. Flash drives are smaller, lighter, use less power, and do not skip if banged. Hard drives store much more-thousands of songs, photographs, or movies-but the moving part makes them less durable. One gigabyte(GB) of memory them holds roughly 250 songs.

Surfers, kite-surfers, and snowboarders say that listening to music on a waterproof MP3 player helps get in the right mood before competitions.

An MP3 dock (docking station) has a slot to plug in the player, which feeds the music into a powerful amplifier and loudspeakers. The MP3 player charges its battery while docked.

MP4 WATCHES

  These store music, video, photos, games, and other information downloaded from a computer in the MP4(audio and video) format. The watch has a flash memory, a small screen, and plug-in headphones. Some can record sounds. They also tell the time!

GAMES CONSOLES

When you play a video game, you enter into a world of make-believe through a game's console. This is an interactive entertainment computer connected to a video display. All you need is quick thinking and fast fingers!

GAME GRAPHICS

  Every year computer graphics and animation are clearer, faster-moving, and more realistic. The first two-dimensional computer games were slow and jerky; today’s games place you in an interactive three- dimensional world. Details, such as moving shadows and reflecting light are added to make the graphics more real.

The Xbox 360 is a “7th generation” program from Microsoft. You can use it to play with others online.

MAKING GAMES

   Making a computer game can take a team of people up to three years. Graphic designers decide on the look of the scenes, the colors, characters, and backgrounds. Animators work out how objects move, appear, enlarge, or shrink. Strategists decide on the game’s rules. Software specialists convert all this information into a language the computer understands.

One of Nintendo’s most successful games is Donkey Kong, featuring a giant gorilla. He first appeared in 1981 and has had four makeovers since.

Nintendo’s DS Lite (“DS” is for “dual screen” and a touch-screen one. A wireless link allows you to play with others nearby.

MINI GAMES

In the fast-growing world of mini-games, you can play a simple game just to fill a few minutes, while you’re on a bus, bored, or waiting on line. Mini-games need or waiting on line. Mini-games need little memory and have simple controls. They can be played on cell phones, MP4 watches, MP3 players, and handheld portable games consoles.

Wii

   The Wii, launched in 2006, is the fifth home games console from Nintendo. Its coolest feature is the handheld Wii Remote (nicknamed Wii mote), a wireless controller that can sense motion and rotation. The Wii can also connect to the Internet.

The on-screen batter makes your hit.

  In the Wii version of baseball, the player steps up to the plate and whacks the baseball as hard as he or she can Using the Wii mote as a bat. From the console’s rumble function and the speaker comes the thunderous roar of the crowd. The player can also swing the Wii mote to pitch to the batter. Playing with a team of friends adds to the fun.

The Wii is Nintendo’s smallest console, at 1 ¾ inch (44 mm) wide, 6 inches (157 mm) tall, and 8 ½ inches (215 mm) deep-about the size of three DVD cases side by side. Its media drive slot accepts older game discs.

The Wii mote is easy to use and is designed to appeal to grown-ups and kids alike. It also contains a speaker that makes sound effects as the player strikes an object.

ACCESSORIES

  There are a number of accessories that make the Wii gaming experience even more realistic. These include a steering wheel, which comes with such games as Monster 4*4 World Circuit, plus swords, knives, gloves, and a sports pack that contains a tennis racket and a golf club. The Wii-mote slots into each one of these handheld accessories and visualize the player’s action on the screen.

HOW IT WORKS                    

  The Wii-mote is a revolutionary controller that can sense its position in three-dimensional space. This is because it contains devices called accelerometers, which detect acceleration, or movement, in three dimensions as you wave it around. The Wii-mote is connected to the console wirelessly. A wrist strap prevents the player from accidentally throwing the Wii-mote across the room in the heat of the action!

 DIGITAL CAMERA

With a traditional film camera, you have an annoying wait of days before you see your photos printed. With a digital camera, you can check the images on the camera’s screen right after shooting dump the dud ones, and make printed photos minutes later.

The Canon IXUS is a pocket-size camera with a zoom lens. The photos it takes are each seven megapixels(MP)-one MP is a million pixels in size.

The camera casing contains and protects the lens, memory card, rechargeable battery, CCD chip, and a microprocessor that analyzes the images for their correct exposure.

A single-lens reflex (SLR) camera has a camera body plus various lenses, such as a wide-angle to fit in a big scene or telephoto to bring distant subjects nearer.

HOW MANY PIXELS?

  “Pixel” is short for “picture element.” A pixel is one tiny part of an image. An image is made up of many pixels, each with its own color and brightness. The number of pixels in a certain area is called the resolution. Higher resolution means more, smaller pixels, which makes the image sharper and more detailed.

The camera’s memory card stores the photos electronically on a set of microchips.

Here, a pixel is pulled out as an individual block of color. Resolution is measured by the number of pixels in each inch of the image.

LIGHT WORK

  Inside a digital camera, light from the scene shines onto a microchip called a charge-coupled device(CCD). This has millions of tiny pixels. Each pixel senses the brightness and it to an electronic signal. All the signals from all the pixels make up a version of the scene in electronic form, which is stored in the camera’s memory card.

MAKING PRINT              

 The data from the memory card is sent to a printer. This converts each pixel of the picture into a spot of ink of a particular color and brightness. Thousands of sports close together from the whole image.

DIGITAL CAMCORDER

 Birthday vacations, ceremonies, new baby, accidentally falling flat on your face-they can all be captured forever on home video by the camcorder, a combined camera-recorder for pictures and sounds.

The camcorder fits neatly into a cupped hand so that all the main buttons and zoom, are at the user’s fingertips.

The zoom lens enlarges the central scene, allowing you to see the action in close-up.

DIGITAL BRODCASTING

  Digital television and digital radio (known as DAB-digital audio broadcasting), use fast, on-off pulses to represent the 0s and 1s of digital code, which are converted by the television into images and sounds. Digital signals give better quality pictures and sounds compared with non-digital broadcasts. They also pack more channels into the same range of radio waves.

Digital video enables TV sports programs to provide faster replays and interactive elements. Such as different camera angles.

The eyepiece hood keeps out light for a clear view of the scene.

A rotating fold-out screen provides instant viewing.

DIGITAL EDITING

  Video editing programs, such as Final Cut Pro, let the user selected and combine audio and video segments in order to tell an interesting story. These programs allow the footage to be broken up into individual frames. You can edit to make a sudden change or fade from one view into another.

Extra controls are hidden under the fold-out tilting screen, which shows menus and choices, as well as the scenes recorded.

SHARPER, CLEARER

 The 3CCD camcorder has three microchips called charge-coupled devices(CCDs). Each one has many tiny pixels that are sensitive to only one of three colors: red, green, or blue. For example, the red CCD detects the brightness of red light rays falling on each of its pixels and converts them to electronic signals. The result is three complete sets of signals, one for each color. These can be fed to the red, green, and blue sports in the pixels of a television screen for more realistic colors.