StoryKit by ICDL Foundation is today’s Recommended Children’s App of the Week. The iPhone app is free tool that lets you and your child create your own digital storybooks.

The app is great for toddlers and older kids alike. You can use it to write text, create digital drawings, capture audio recordings and take photos and then assemble all of these pieces to make your own storybooks. Here is more from the app’s description:

The application includes four public domain children’s books that you can rewrite and rearrange into your own new story. These are scans of the original bound books that have been specially processed for use on the iPhone. Take ‘The Three Bears’ and make them four. Rewrite ‘The Three Little Pigs’ with the wolf as the victim. Or, start with a blank book and write whatever story is on your minds.

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Do you shoot in vertical video mode? YouTube Chescaleigh is talking to you!

if your video is the dopest but it’s portrait
then it’s bogus
don’t want some hocus pocus up in adobe
to choke these bonus components
that shouldn’t show in your video
if you go with an aspect ratio that’s not the grossest
you need atonement, if you haven’t turned your phone yet

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Facebook is opening its beta testing program to all Android users, so if you have a hankering for the latest and greatest from the social network, head over to the Google group. Why Google? Facebook is utilizing Google’s new beta testing program that allows companies to roll out updates in stages, by joining you’ll be getting previews of updates before most users.

Anyone can join the beta program. When you join, you will get a small batch of fixes and new features every month. We ask that you use your app as you normally would, but submit a report when you encounter a bug or other issue. Because the beta build will have features that are still in progress, the app may be less stable than you’re accustomed to. Feedback on stability, as well as any other performance issues you experience, is crucial and deeply appreciated.

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Designer Matt Miller has created an app called, “Instagram Vs. Vine,” which compares these two leading apps which thanks to Instagram Cinema are now competing for video.

The image visually spells out how Instagram dominates. According to the graphic, Instagram has 130 million users, while Vine only has 13 million. And the app points out that Facebook is a lot bigger than Twitter. We’ve embedded the entire graphic after the jump.

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If getting inside the heads of celebrities sounds appealing to you, then you are going to love Miranda July‘s latest project “We Think Alone.” The author/filmmaker has asked ten famous people to share previously sent private emails so that she can use them to craft digital portraits. Participants include: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Lena Dunham, Kirsten Dunst, Sheila Heti, Etgar Keret, Kate and Laura Mulleavy, Catherine Opie, Lee Smolin and Danh Vo.

Readers can opt in to receive a weekly email newsletter with communications from all ten of the personalities. The emails were all sent prior to this project to someone in their life. The emails were personally chosen by the sender. Every week will have a different theme. The first theme is money. Here is more from the project’s description:

…our inner life is not actually the same thing as our life on the computer — a quiet person might !!!! a lot. A person with a busy mind might write almost nothing. And of course while none of these emails were originally intended to be read by me (much less you*)  they were all carefully selected by their authors in response to my list of email genres — so self-portraiture is quietly at work here.

The List – A Thriller by J.A. Konrath is today’s Free eBook of the Day.

The book is one of six books in the Jack Kilborn series. Check it out:

The List is a bit of a departure for Konrath. It’s a technothriller about a group of ten people who each have tattoos of numbers on the bottoms their feet, and don’t know why. One of them, a Chicago Homicide cop named Tom Mankowski, has had one of these strange tattoos since birth. When he investigates a violent murder and discovers the victim also has a tattooed number, it sets the ball rolling for an adventure of historic proportions. To say more would give away too much.

Amazon has the free download.

There are lots of great sites to find free eBooks, but now there is an app that helps make it easy to search for free eBooks across various sites.

eBook Search has more than 2 million listings in their catalogs culled from free eBook sites like Smashwords, FeedBooks and Project Gutenberg to name a few. You can search the app by category be it classics or modern day, or genre – thrillers, mysteries, fantasies, or science fiction, for instance. Once you pick a book, the app provides you with links to download the book in your favorite eReader app including Kindle, Nook, iBooks, Bluefire and so forth.

For more free eBooks, check out our 10 Websites to Download Free eBooks list, as well as our Free eBook of the Day archive.

DuckDuckGo, an anonymous search engine that is not being tapped by the NSA’s PRISM project, has released a new iOS app. Like the desktop version of the service, the app does not store personal information and lets users search without having their searches tracked.

The app has two main features: search and stories — a search engine and a news feed which is curated with crowd-sourced stories. It works pretty much like Google or Bing, but the company claims that its searches are totally anonymous.

“DuckDuckGo Search & Stories recreates the web search experience on your iPhone or iPod touch, enabling you to search anonymously and find instantly,” stated Gabriel Weinberg, founder/CEO of DuckDuckGo. “Our new app features a homepage with stories we know you’ll love, based on
their proven social value.” Read more

Sometimes “where on earth…” just doesn’t cut it. I’m talking about buying digital music, paying for ebooks, and catching up on terrestrial bills while planet-hopping. Now there’s Paypal Galactic, who can provide the perfect solution for these interstellar financial transactions. Naturally, space experts like the SETI Institute and former astronaut, Buzz Aldrin are also involved.

Creating a secure and functional commerce system that can operate in space at scale will not be easy, but with the support of the scientific community, other technology companies and the public at large, we hope to find the solutions to address these challenges. This is just the beginning. Specific details still need to be addressed, and we look forward to keeping you updated with our progress and to the day when we are truly able to make space a commercial reality.

What’s a fair transaction fee for interplanetary payments or a good currency with great intergalactic exchange rates? I’m sure someone out there with experience can help me out, because now all I have to do is figure out how to leave the planet.