PeeWee PC makes PCs for children: desktops and laptops that are rugged, include swivel and touch screens and come with software intended to protect children from the dangers of the Internet and the excesses of sitting in front of a screen for hours at a time.

Now the company is offering an inexpensive software version of some of its features: the $30 PeeWee Kit includes seven age-appropriate childrens’ games, plus PC security and adult monitoring software, all on a U.S.B. drive. A CD-ROM version with four games will also be available for $20.

The security software protects children against malicious Web sites, takes screen shots, limits  time on the Web as well as the time spent gaming and using the PC in general, and allows the computer to be controlled remotely. The PC is also protected against changes to its operating system.

The PeeWee Kit, available this month, is compatible with Windows 7, Vista, and XP.

A couple of days ago Foursquare’s iPhone application disappeared from the iPhone App Store due to “hiccup”. If you doubted that was true, worry no more, as the application is back in the store.

Here’s the official explanation of what happened: “Last week, Foursquare accidentally released to the App Store a new version of its app before it was totally ready. It was pulled shortly after, unfortunately, many users had already went through the update, and were left stuck with a non-functioning app.”

The version currently available is 1.6.1, but the folks at Foursquare say that the redesigned 1.7 update should appear in a few days.

One of many upcoming tablet alternatives to the Apple iPad, HP’s forthcoming Slate device was teased briefly by Steve Ballmer at Microsoft’s CES keynote earlier this year. HP and Adobe teamed up to offer a couple of video demos of the HP Slate (embedded below), with an emphasis on showcasing its Flash and AIR support.

Punctuating even further Adobe’s row with Apple over the lack of Flash on the iPhone and iPad, both videos lay it on thick with emphasis on how Flash support lets you “access the full web and not just a part of it.” The first demo video below shows off photo-sharing and editing, interactive crossword puzzles, Flash games, and more as well as the on-screen keyboard and other elements of the HP Slate user interface. The second video is a 30-second marketing reel showing off the HP Slate in action.

We still don’t have any more solid details about what’s under the hood, when the HP Slate will be released or a target price, but these videos are another milestone in the brewing year of the tablet. The HP Slate has the distinction of being one of the few we know about that will run Windows 7. Are you excited about the new tablet form factor, and do you have any favorite in mind that might earn your hard-earned dollars? Will it be the iPad, the HP Slate, the Courier or something running Android? Let us know in the comments.

HP Slate Adobe Flash and AIR Demo

HP Slate Commercial

Foursquare is battling for your SXSW check-ins with a musical scavenger hunt. Rival Gowalla is going to go after them with free gadgets – specifically free Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus devices as part of a promotion the location-based social networking service is unveiling in conjunction with their just-launched app for webOS.

The app should hit the Palm App Catalog on Tuesday, and like the company’s applications for other platforms (including its recently launched Android app) it detects your location to show you nearby venues, lets you know where your friends are located, and has a gaming element called “stamps” that can be accrued as you check-in to various places.

The SXSW connection is part of a push by Gowalla into virtual goods. Users will be able to discover virtual Palm Pre and Pixi devices as they use the application (essentially, the more you use it, the better your chances – it’s random), and then be able to redeem those at specific parties at the festival to get the actual device. Another partner – Lomography – has inserted virtual cameras into Gowalla, that once found can also be redeemed for free gear.

This is one way Gowalla hopes to differentiate itself from the competition, and, truth be told, it’s not a bad one. No one wants to leave an event like SXSW empty handed, and by teaming up with brands to offer free gadgets to users at an event that will be loaded with tech enthusiasts could encourage some splitting (or at least doubling up) of the check-ins across services.

Now that Gowalla’s starting to catch up in terms of platform support, much of the battle might come down to marketing – where Foursquare has also recently invested heavily by forming partnerships with a host of media companies.

In any event, here’s a look at some of the features of the webOS app:

Which service will you be using to check-in at SXSW? Let us know in the comments!

This month, the only good way to get Skype for Symbian on a Nokia Series 60 smartphone was to download it from Skype’s Web site or a site like CNET Download.com. On Wednesday, Skype announced that its VoIP calling app is now available through Nokia’s Ovi storefront.

The free Skype app for Symbian smartphones (which really should be renamed Skype for Nokia) has the usual Skype features of placing and receiving VoIP calls and support for IM and international SMS. Beyond the basics, this build is also capable of transferring files and integrating with the phone’s camera and address book. Skype is not be available on all Nokia models.

It is little surprising that it’s taken Skype so long to get its app listed in the Ovi catalog, especially since the Ovi store came into being in just about 10 months ago. Still, new and existing users will find it easier to keep the communications app up-to-date on their phone.

Enterprising hobbyists Tim Heath and Ryan Hickman have created cellbots — with names like Tankbot and Truckbot — that are simply robots powered by Android devices.

With just $30, an Android device, and a little creativity the pair were able to create the cellbots which process commands via telnet on PCs. The bots can move around in specified directions thanks to the built-in compass functionally on certain Android phones.

While actual robot activity is minimal, the focus of the project was to utilize Android phones as the brains of the robots. The pair hope to expand robot functionality and make the most of Android’s software. Wired speculates that:

“This means they could utilize every hardware and software component of an Android phone, programming the bot to avoid obstacles, recognize faces and voices, pinpoint its location and go places.”

Heath and Hickman have documented the entire project on their cellbots website, which means that with the right know-how you too could create your own Android-powered robot.

Watch a video of the robots with Android intelligence below:

Independent research boutique Change Wave surveyed 3,171 consumers and found that consumer pre-launch interest in the iPad is high.

Data demonstrates that consumers are more interested in purchasing an iPad than they were the iPhone prior to launch. Also, 27% of existing e-reader owners indicated they would have purchased the iPad over the model they own now.

The study — which was conducted after the iPad announcement — also shows that 40% of respondents in the market to purchase an e-reader in the next 90 days say they will buy an iPad.

That number is quite remarkable on its own, but when compared against the respondents who indicated preferences for the Kindle (28%), Nook (6%), and Sony Reader (1%) the bigger picture starts to become clear. If these numbers are reflective of the larger population, Apple is most certainly a threat to Amazon and the e-book/e-reader industry as a whole.

Some other interesting highlights from the ChangeWave study include:

- Prospective iPad buyers are likely to wait a few months before they make their purchase. 20% will buy two to three months after release, 23% four to six months after release, and 19% seven to 12 months after release.

- 68% of prospective iPad owners are most interested in using the iPad to surf the internet.

- 25% of consumers buying iPads may cut back on previous plans to purchase other Apple products. 10% are putting their iPhone purchase plans on hold, while 9% are saying they may not buy the laptop or iPod they had previously planned to.

Given that the iPad launch date is just a few weeks away, we should soon be able to tell how accurate some of these findings are and whether or not the iPad will put a significant dent into Amazon Kindle sales.

The iPhone and iPod touch app for the popular location check-in service Foursquare has temporarily dropped from Apple’s App Store.

The Android and BlackBerry versions are still available, but the iPhone is by far the most popular platform for Foursquare users. This is just a temporary technical setback, though. Foursquare tweeted the following.

Earlier this week, the new 1.6 version of the Foursquare iPhone app was accidentally added to the App Store before it was ready. The problem was corrected, but now people who have 1.6 are unable to use the service. They’re being directed to the app store to download the regular version, but it’s not there.

Foursquare is in the middle of unveiling new features and deals so these technical issues could have come at a better time, but it won’t be a major setback. Don’t worry, Foursquare fans; you can keep looking forward to the new features in version 1.6 this week.

Apple announced on Friday that the Wi-Fi versions of its long-awaited iPad will arrive April 3 in stores in the United States. The models that can tap into AT&T’s 3G wireless data network will be available in late April.

Customers can pre-order the iPad on Apple’s Web site beginning next Friday.

Apple’s tablet computer is expected to ship with 12 new applications designed specifically for the device, and it will run almost all of the more than 150,000 applications available for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Apple has been aiming the iPad squarely at e-book readers like Amazon.com’s Kindle. And in its news release Friday, Apple said that an updated version of its iBooks app that will include Apple’s iBookstore will be available as a free download on April 3 in the United States, with additional countries to be added later.

The company has been aggressively recruiting personnel for the new iBookstore, listing a variety of iBook-related job openings on its corporate job board — including “Manager, iBooks Asia Pacific & Canada,” “Independent Publisher Acct. Mgr., iBookstore” and a “Merchandising Manager, iBookstore.”

Apple said that pricing for the device will be the same as it initially announced in January:

iPad will be available in Wi-Fi models on April 3 in the United States for a suggested retail price of $499 for 16GB, $599 for 32GB, $699 for 64GB. The Wi-Fi + 3G models will be available in late April for a suggested retail price of $629 for 16GB, $729 for 32GB and $829 for 64GB. iPad will be sold in the United States through the Apple Store (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers.

Apple said the iPad will be available in both Wi-Fi and 3G models in late April in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, with more countries added later this year.

Since Vlingo first introduced its voice control app for the BlackBerry more than a year and a half ago, smartphones and voice-to-speech technology have evolved quite a bit. Today, the company has launched a pretty major update to its iPhone app, adding the ability to send e-mail and SMS messages, plus a redesigned new interface.

When Vlingo was first released for the iPhone back in December 2008, the voice-to-text market was still pretty small for mobile devices. Sure, Google’s iPhone app introduced voice search, but the market in general was pretty small.

That’s not the case anymore. Dragon Search, Dragon Dictation, Bing for the iPhone and Siri are all recent voice-to-text applications that can offer some of the similar functionality as Vlingo. The big difference is that Vlingo lets you do more from within a single application.

You don’t have to open up a new or different app to do a web search, send an e-mail or SMS or update Twitter or Facebook, you can do it all within one app.

Check out this video that Vlingo put together to show off the new features in Vlingo for iPhone:

The interface for Vlingo has been totally revamped and it is now much more streamlined and easier to select what you want to do. Moreover, corrections work better too.

Bing joins Google and Yahoo! as an option for doing voice-activated web searches — and you can select your default search engine but still search using another search engine if you so choose. Just say “Bing movie times Alice in Wonderland Atlanta” for instance.

SMS and Email

SMS and Email have long been part of the BlackBerry application but are just now coming to Vlingo for iPhone. The implementation is solid. You can create a text or e-mail by speaking the message type and then your contact name — Vlingo uses your address book to find your contacts. So I could say, “Email Grant, Subject Dinner, Message Pick something up” and an e-mail would be created with those parameters.

The voice recognition is pretty good — in my own tests, Dragon’s apps still set the standard — but I was able to do much of what I needed on Vlingo with little correction.

I spoke with Hadley Harris, the VP of Consumer Business at Vlingo and he told me that the application gets better as you go. As it starts to learn your voice and your accent, the applications accuracy rate improves. Moreover, Vlingo can tap into its entire network of users to learn new words or names.

In-App Purchase

While Facebook and Twitter updates, maps and web searches remain free in Vlingo for iPhone, if you want to use the new Email or SMS feature, you need to purchase it via an in-app upgrade. The features are $6.99 individually or $9.99 if you buy both together. That’s not bad when you consider how much you can do with the app — though we do wish a more generic “to-do” feature also existed for making quick notes.

You can download Vlingo for the iPhone for free and try out the included features to see if you want to then upgrade to e-mail and SMS. Hadley told me that an Android version of Vlingo is also in the works.

Voice-to-text apps are improving at a startling rate and Vlingo is unique in its convergence of multiple functions into one application.

Do you use any voice-to-text apps? Let us know!