Talking Tom and Friends

Talking Tom and Friends is the flagship franchise of multinational entertainment company Outfit7 Limited. As of August 2015 there are six characters (Talking Tom, Talking Angela, Talking Ginger, Talking Ben, Talking Hank, and Talking Pierre) and 15 apps within the Talking Tom and Friends umbrella brand. Since June 2010 the apps have achieved more than 3 billion downloads.

The characters

Talking Tom

Talking Tom is the lead character in the Talking Tom and Friends franchise. Tom is a wisecracking, adventure-seeking anthropomorphic cat, described as the "world’s most popular cat."

Talking Tom is a fully animated interactive 3D character that users can tickle, poke and play with in the apps. Users can also get Tom to repeat what they say. The original Talking Tom Cat app was launched in July 2010 for iOS, closely followed by Talking Tom 2 in 2011.

The My Talking Tom app was launched in November 2013. This interactive app sees users raise their very own Tom from a kitten to a fully-grown tomcat, caring for him and customizing his fur, clothes and home. My Talking Tom had over 11 million downloads and was the top games app in 135 countries worldwide within 10 days of its launch.

Talk

Talk may refer to:

Software

Books

Film and TV

Music

Albums

Songs

Ben

Ben is frequently used as a shortened version of the given name Benjamin (as well as Benedict, Bengt, Bennett, Benoit, Benvolio, or Ebenezer, among other names). It is also used as a given name in its own right.

Ben (in Hebrew: בֶּן‎, Son of) forms part of surnames, e.g. Abraham ben Abraham (Hebrew: אברהם בן אברהם‎). Bar-, "son of" in Aramaic, is also seen, e.g. Simon bar Kokhba (Hebrew: שמעון בר כוכבא‎). The Arabic "Bin" (بن) or "Ibn" (ابن), also meaning "son of" is an obvious cognate.

People with the given name Ben

Talking Angela

Talking Angela is a chatterbot app developed by Outfit7 as part of the Talking Tom and Friends series. It was released in December 2012 for iPhone and iPad, January 2013 for Android, and January 2014 for Google Play. The My Talking Angela app was released in December 2014.

Internet personal information hoax

In February 2013, Talking Angela was the subject of an Internet hoax claiming that it encourages children to disclose personal information about themselves, which is ostensibly then used by pedophiles to identify the location of these children. The rumor, which was widely circulated on Facebook, claims that Angela, the game's main character, asks the game's user for private personal information using the game's text-chat feature. (This feature is turned off when "child mode" is turned on in the game's preferences.) Other versions of the rumor even attribute the disappearance of a child to the app, or claim that it is run by a pedophile ring. The former rumor originated from an article on Huzlers.com, which has since been shown to be fake, as are many articles on the (satirical) website.

Big Ben

Big Ben is the nickname for the Great Bell of the clock at the north end of the Palace of Westminster in London, and often extended to refer to the clock and the clock tower. The tower is officially known as Elizabeth Tower, renamed to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II in 2012; previously it was known simply as the Clock Tower. The tower holds the second largest four-faced chiming clock in the world (after Minneapolis City Hall). The tower was completed in 1858 and had its 150th anniversary on 31 May 2009, during which celebratory events took place. The tower has become one of the most prominent symbols of the United Kingdom and is often in the establishing shot of films set in London.

Elizabeth Tower

Elizabeth Tower (previously called the Clock Tower or St. Stephen's Tower), more popularly known as Big Ben, was raised as a part of Charles Barry's design for a new palace, after the old Palace of Westminster was largely destroyed by fire on the night of 16 October 1834. The new Parliament was built in a Neo-gothic style. Although Barry was the chief architect of the Palace, he turned to Augustus Pugin for the design of the clock tower, which resembles earlier Pugin designs, including one for Scarisbrick Hall. The design for the tower was Pugin's last design before his final descent into madness and death, and Pugin himself wrote, at the time of Barry's last visit to him to collect the drawings: "I never worked so hard in my life for Mr Barry for tomorrow I render all the designs for finishing his bell tower & it is beautiful." The tower is designed in Pugin's celebrated Gothic Revival style, and is 315 feet (96.0 m) high.