shape

Part of the Baby Bus suite of learning tools, Baby Learning Shapes HD focuses on teaching shapes to young children.

In the case of this app, the same basic Baby Bus interface greets you when the app is first started. This is one of the apps' biggest weak points as the screen is cluttered with menus, upgrades, and other apps that the developers entice you to download, not to mention ads that your children will almost certainly find a way to tap. Once you get past the home screen interface, however, the game is well-constructed and enjoyable. The animations are … Read more

This is a new kind of flat-pack furniture. There are no Allen keys, no screws, no scratching your head over Ikea-style instructions. Instead, Noumenon designer Carl de Smet's Memories of the Future furniture just needs a little loving warmth.

It's made from shape memory polyurethane (SMP), a material invented by Mitsubishi Heavy Industry that expands when heated. This allows de Smet to manufacture the chair and squash it down to 5 percent of its size for packing and shipping. When the owner gets it home, it blows up like a balloon with the application of a little heat. … Read more

Designed to deliver an entertaining learning experience to small children and enhance their hand-eye coordination, this app also promises hours of fun. Baby Shapes and Animals does deliver on some of these promises, but it has far too many drawbacks for the everyday user to include it in their application collection.

At 26MB, Baby Shapes and Animals seems to be one of the largest applications of its kind. Given its simple graphics and extremely limited functionality, there is no reason it should occupy so much space. Download time can be horrendous and the application also lags considerably. It opens painfully … Read more

At first glance, A-Shape seems like an app designed to go over the heads of most users. The opening screen discusses X and Y coordinates and the intricacies of geometry. However, after a few moments spent playing with the app, you'll find that it offers a unique experience even for those that aren't mathematicians, or even mathematically inclined.

The goal of A-Shape is to give you complete control over the dimensions and intricacies of a shape with affine transformation. If this means nothing to you, that's okay -- the shapes you create are incredible and can be … Read more

To be sure, more parents than ever before are using electronic devices like their iPads and iPhones to entertain young children. These amazing devices are tailor-made for kids to swipe and tap games or movies. But some of the games, developed specifically for toddlers and other preschool-age children, utilize certain shortcuts that can present problems.

One such game is Coloring Shapes for Toddlers. The app is fairly straightforward in that, once you open it, you press the "Touch to Color!" button and can start coloring one of many shapes. Tap a color and the brush and start coloring … Read more

Many applications used to create diagrams and graphics are costly, especially for small businesses and individuals. Shapes for Mac's basic features leave much to be desired, but could work for some basic uses.

The program's free trial version restricts the ability to save created diagrams. To unlock the full version, a payment of $4.99 is required. While Shapes for Mac states it supports product updates, it does not appear that there is active technical support. Instructions were not available and would have been welcome, but some users will probably be able to work with the menus as … Read more

Communicating with the help of images is powerful, but it often requires additional work, and that can be discouraging. ShapeOnYou for Mac can fulfill your need to add simple 3D shapes as support materials for your work. It is designed to be quick and easy to use and won't require any modeling to achieve satisfying but simple results.

ShapeOnYou for Mac consists of a 3D vector shape library that allows easy export to images. Those images can then be used in your text document as illustrations. The program itself already contains basic shapes and other examples that are of … Read more

A triumvirate of companies have come together to deliver a new way of handling playlists, both in the browser and through Spotify.

Microsoft, Spotify, and a "music intelligence" start-up named The Echo Nest announced yesterday the launch of a visual playlist tool called MixShape. The feature allows users to toss their Spotify playlists of up to 300 tracks into MixShape and come away with a finely tuned playlist, complete with visual display. MixShape analyzes the tracks and creates a mix for the "optimal flow between songs." That flow depends on the "mood" the user … Read more

Sure, we've heard of 3D-printed iPhone cases, dinosaur bones, and even a human fetus -- but something massive, like a building?

This is exactly what architect Janjaap Ruijssenaars has been working on. The Dutch native is planning to build what he calls a "Landscape House." This structure is two-stories and is laid out in a figure-eight shape. The idea is that this form can borrow from nature and also seamlessly fit into the outside world.

Ruijssenaars describes it on his Web site as "one surface folded in an endless mobius band," where "floors transform … Read more