Project Ara is a brand new development based on Dave Hakken's Phonebloks idea you might remember from about a month ago. Now Motorola, Google's Motorola, is in cahoots with the Phonebloks developer Dave Hakkens; with the intention of turning his so called, pipe dream, into a reality with their help. Hakken is now the community evangelist, if you will, bringing in interest, while Motorola brings the substance. What they want to achieve is “a free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones”. Basically the coolness is the ability to swap out one module or another. And what you can swap is entirely up to you. Is your screen cracked? Have you been wanting that fast processor? Rather have a bigger battery than all that local storage?

How many of you out there write notes on pen and paper still? Do any of you use a smartphone or tablet app like a notepad to do it? I find lack of pleasure and ease in typing in an note app with a teeny weeny keyboard on my phone. But, there is a cool new pen and pad set called Livescribe 3 that transfers your notes onto your smart device instantaneously! All you do is twist a ring on the pen and write on the Livescribe dot paper. Then what you wrote quickly appears in the companion app via Bluetooth LE. There’s also a little mic on your pen to record words and have them show up as readable notes. Prices start at 149.95-- for the pen, 50 sheet notebook, charging cable and black tungsten ink cartridge.

How about having a robot your kids prgramming instead of you or a teacher! Existing products meant to “teach kids to code” are usually designed for older children, or they require technical guidance from a parent or teacher. Play-i wants to make a difference by showing that children as young as 5 years can grasp programming. Play-i teaches very young children the basics of coding--sequences of instructions, subroutines, events, conditional statements, all in a fun way. Starting from simple concepts like controlling an object to using instructions, and then seeing the robot do the function allows the little kid to learn. The company just launched a crowd funding campaign on Monday to raise 250 thousand for the first two models. Hopefully, Play-i robots will be available next summer.