GabbaPhone

Toddler Tablets: Vinci & Sifteo (CES Reviews)

2011-01-08T22:44:00.000-08:00

This year i attended CES for the first time and the show was much more exciting that my normal haunts like CTIA or Ad Tech. In between looking at TV and connected home products for my cool day job i was able to cruise the floor to look at cool stuff for my other interests such as children's technology.

VINCI: Inspire the Genius

The first product that caught my eye was a prototype of the Vinci tablet being produced by Rullingnet Corporation. The tablet was not yet ready for market but it's got a lot of good ideas that I hope they can pull off. As you can see from the photo they have protected the device with a "medical grade" rubber handle that has been drop tested from over one meter. The rep was harping that the key design motive is safety, and to bolster that they are going to replace normal tablet screen glass with tempered glass like the shatter proof stuff they put in cars windshields. It's going to be an Android device with no internet connection, so parents can be sure to be safe from excessive Smurf Berry purchases.

I really liked the idea of this device. One of my key worries about kids usage of Apple and other great mobile products is their durability, which i wrote about a little last year. A device with features like this is a great solution for introducing your kids to technology. Apps will continue to improve, especially for Android devices, if products like this can find a market. Rullingnet is looking at a $479 price point which seems steep, but supposedly they are looking at a smaller or lower end device to lower the price point.

The software package that i saw demonstrated was pretty weak, with mostly demo products on display. I think it may be hard for a device maker to produce both a quality device and software so they may need to pick one side of the fence or another if they want to make a go of it. Their time would be best spent perfecting the device and manufacturing process to get the cost down vs. trying to build kids oriented software when that is being done by developers for both iOS and Android. Expected release date is unknown but their rep at the CES booth told me the target was 2011 so I hope to see something soon.

Sifteo

The second device I saw that caught my eye was the Sifteo cubes. Sifteo has developed an alternative platform and device that is not really a tablet, but from a toddler's viewpoint, it accomplishes many of the same things.

The Sifteo cubes are 1.5 inch little devices that have color screens and motion sensors that enable a more tactile type of game play. The cubes connect to each other to create a seamless experience for story books, games, or any other experience a developer can dream up. I actually couldn't figure out how to use it in my limited time but the concept was cool and given your limited actions I don't think it would take to long to figure out.

What caught my eye here was the size. The cubes are tiny, imminently portable, and fun to play around with. I can totally see keeping these in my back pack and breaking them out on a plane or on vacation with the kids. The biggest downside I envision is the lack of applications due to small developer community and the reliance on PC to be the main conduit for loading games onto the devices. While a similar issues exists for the Vinci, since it doesn't have any Wi-Fi, you can at least load it up with a ton of applications. Still, as a possible technical/creative outlet for kids, i think this device has a lot of potential and will be interested to see if it finds a market.

3D TV's

On a side note.... 3D television was a big push from the CE manufacturers. From the Gabbaphone perspective, as in a parent reviewing technology for children, I cannot envision a world where i would be handing glasses to any child under 13 to watch a TV show. Given the demonstration content they were definitely not targeting parents, who are used to putting up with a very broad array of content that includes Baby Einstein to Dora to Barney.

Sound Shaker - Great Design, Cutest Ever

2010-09-27T15:43:00.000-07:00

Sound Shaker by Tickle Tap Apps is a great app for the small toddler set. The design is amazing and the functionality is straight forward. The recommended ages is 3-5 but i would decrease that to 2-4, I don't know any Pre-K kids that would like this for more than a few minutes - like when they pick up an old baby toy.

That said... once you choose your sound, which is manageable for the older users it is easy to use and encourages discovery. When you press the screen it creates a ball, and the noise you picked in the set up screen, accompanies the ball. If the user continues to press the screen the ball grows and then hatches into a cute little chick that flies away. There is a motion control aspect that if you create multiple balls you can tile the iPhone or Touch and send them flying and bouncing all over the screen.

I love this app, I think the functionality was simple, easy to use, and the design and sound were fantastic. Sadly, it never seemed to capture my kids attention very well. Wormie was a little too old, 4+ and Oso, was just a little to young still at 1.5 years. Oso is starting to show some more interest so I'm holding out that well designed apps like this will win his attention.

Age Range: 2-4
Difficulty: 4/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel : 5/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 2/5 (5 being helpful)
Price $1.99

Netflix App - Rad for Kids if You Got Connection

2010-09-20T14:00:00.000-07:00

I spent this summer getting my daughter ready for Spanish Immersion Kindergarten by watching videos on Netflix's "Watch Instantly" service. I realize that sounds way too California/Silicon Valley but the way I saw it, the more she could hear Spanish in a format she was used too (cartoons and movies) the more comfortable she would be when she started school. Watching the cable channels seemed too complicated and show's like Dora are just way too thin on content. The streaming online service that Netflix offers is a great streaming video service and there is no extra cost attached, which was great since this was pretty experimental. There are a lot of spanish language shows/films to choose from but only a handful were appropriate for kids. My favorite was Elpidio Valdes, a Cuban cartoon from 1980, about one of the failed or successful revolutions against the Spanish. It was probably a little too violent and political for my five year old, but what would life be without some inappropriate TV?

I was excited when the Netflix App came out and had such good reviews. As an active user of their streaming service it seemed like a good fit. I use the iPhone a lot when we travel to watch TV shows I download, and sometimes review, from iTunes. This theoretically would cut down my iTunes bill substantially.

The App is not designed for kids so if you want to set you child up with a show you'll have to do all the work. The easiest method is to set up your watch instantly queue online. Once that is completed navigating to your queue and watching a show is literally two clicks. You can still search by name and genre but I found that flow too cumbersome. The actual video quality was quite impressive and as long as my connectivity was decent the experience was exponentially better than any other streaming video's i have tried to watch on my phone.

The app is really targeted at using the streaming service, and given that the library is substantial and growing every day this is a great feature for Netflix families.

Age Range: 3-6
Difficulty: 2/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel : 3/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 5/5 (5 being helpful)
Price: Free if you have Netflix

Toddler Time! Spanish - There has to be something better

2010-09-13T12:59:00.000-07:00

As part of my work to make my Kindergartner fully bilingual I downloaded a bunch of apps aimed at teaching spanish. Toddler Time was one of the higher ranked apps in the store so I dove in head first and paid the $1.99.

I can't say i was impressed with most of the spanish language education apps aimed at young kids. Toddler Time functionality was fine. The app is geared at some simple vocabulary related to colors, numbers, shapes, and animals. Without headphones I found the sound hard to hear. My daughter Wormie liked scrolling through the different shapes but there wasn't anything to prompt her to repeat or get involved other than whipping through each screen.

Another issue I had with the functionality was that the primary vocabulary word had two different call out points. If you clicked on a work like "Azul" which means blue, a voice would say the word. If you clicked on the picture of a blue ballon on the page it would read off a translation of the picture ie."globo azul. " It didn't resonate with me and my daughter was completely missing both the key word and the noun it was describing.

I will add in another odd behavior. On the menu page there are some characters you can choose to follow you and jump onto pages through the app when you press the screen in non-vocabulary word areas. This seemed completely gratuitous as these characters did not add a thing to the experience.

I wasn't super happy with the quality of the app as i felt the art was second rate, and the education component was lacking. Overall not happy with the $1.99 i spent.

Age Range: 3-5
Difficulty: 3/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel : 1/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 2/5 (5 being helpful)
Price $1.99

Fantasy Dolls - GabbaPhone's Most Time Spent By Daughter Award

2010-06-03T14:56:00.000-07:00

I try to veer towards apps that will education my kids as well as entertain them but there are days where i just need an hour of silence. Most apps can only keep Wormie, now 5 years old, entertained for a maximum of ten minutes. I downloaded Fantasy Dolls thinking that her recent obsession with Barbie Dolls, which i might add were given to her by her proto-feminist grandmothers and aunts, might translate to an iPhone application. After searching for paper dolls in the App Store i discovered Fantasy Dolls.

At first i felt a little deceived. The icon looked pretty harmless but when i opened the app the doll characters looked a little too grown up and suggestive for my taste. Granted, they were not much different from a Barbie, but i wanted to be part of the solution in my daughters burgeoning self image not part of the problem. I tried moving around the clothes and found it a little tricky. They clothes which you move from a right hand column and layer onto the figurine seemed hard to maneuver. I handed it over to Wormie with some reservations.

The surprise for me was that she then spent the next hour play with the application, and has continued to be a heavy user. The only downside is that she saves every figure that she makes into my photo collection clogging it up with suggestive looking little faeries. Apparently this app was made for finely tuned fingers of a five year old girl. I'd classify this as a huge success in the time wasting/baby sitting category.

Age Range: 4-6
Difficulty: 4/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel : 5/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 4/5 (5 being helpful)
Price $.99

iPad - A Parents View

2010-03-10T11:54:00.000-08:00

One post a month is a horrible schedule - I will try to get Wormie back on a normal testing schedule...she needs to earn her keep and all. She continues to test a few apps but I have mostly been thinking about the iPad and what it means for Wormie, who turned 5 the other week, and her brother Deadly who is still more interested in using the iPhone as a hammer than as a device.

Durability
The big question for the toddler set is going to be durability. How well this device stands up to toddler abuse is an unknown. It is easy to put a polyurethane guard around my iPhone and Touch but I am not so sure that it will work as well with a much bigger device. The beauty of my Agent18 Shield Case is the sides have become indestructable and even the screen gets protection from the raised beveled edge. With a larger device it is going to become harder to protect the screen and minimize damage to the edges from the inevitable falls.

Screen Size
The biggest advantage I see I see with the new device will be in video viewing. I will be able to get rid of the portable DVD player we occasionally lug around as a replacement for the iPhone. While a smaller device has been useful in a pinch i worry about eye strain, sound, etc that come with a smaller device. More importantly i no longer have to deal with as many sharing issues. I know it is not just my daughter that wants sole ownership of the device when she is watching a video or story. A larger screen will make sharing that much easier, especially if we get some headphone splitters. I think the larger screen will also make the children's story books more accessible since the art, pictures, and text will be so much more accessible when enlarged.

Screen Manipulation
I also see an advantage to having a bigger "field of play" for smaller fingers. Once challenge i have seen kids have with applications, especially the younger ones, is moving objects with motor skills that are still in development. The bigger screen will allow for some forgiveness when a child is trying to move, trace, or draw and object and provide a more rewarding experience.

Overall I'm excited to try it out and see if we can get through a month without breaking one.

Wormie goes off the reservation with PreSchool Tap Animals Time

2010-02-02T18:03:00.000-08:00

I downloaded preschool TAP Animals Time based on the world "Pre-School" being in the title. Technically I do not think that my app selection criteria is all that rock solid but I am getting obsessed with trying to find apps that have some educational value. The available resources on apps for kids are obviously not that great, or else i wouldn't be reviewing them, or else i wouldn't have to use trial and error.

Animals time is a sound picture matching game. There is another version for "Toddlers" so I'm curious as to the distinction. App functionality breaks down like this. Four animal pictures appear. Kid hits sound button and kid then chooses matching picture. A correct match gets a smiley face and "Yes!". An incorrect match gets frown and "Oh No!" Aside from how this will monkey with your child's self esteem and heighten their sense of anxiety I think it might be a little lost on the pre-school set. Wormie diligently played with the app for a quite a while until i realized she was purposely getting all the matching items wrong to hear the voice to "Oh No" and "No, No." It felt like she was making my iPhone squeal for the fun of it so i took it away. If and iPhone had feelings it would have been upset.

Overall this is a solid app but the target is for younger kids. I would say 2-3.5 are a good group for this sound picture matching game - the older preschoolers just end up teasing the poor phone.

Age Range: 2-4
Difficulty: 4/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel : 4/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 3/5 (5 being helpful)
Price $.99

Dial A Phone: Deadly's First QA Job

2010-01-25T15:00:00.000-08:00

Recovering from the Christmas holidays has been hard. Going back to work and managing Deadly and Wormie after multiple present offerings and grandparent visits basically wrecked my side projects like GabbaPhone. To get back on the horse i decided to give Deadly, 14 month old boy, a whirl on the hot seat. Deadly treats the iPhone like the golden prize of items he can get his hands on. It is cute because he will pretend to hit phone numbers with his finger, then try to talk to it under his chin, before turning it into a hammer. Making the phone a hammer has not bothered me since I am using an Agent 18 Hard Case for my first generation phone and the combination appears to be bullet proof. Seriously...totally impressed with this case, I can't believe I don't have a cracked screen yet!

Deadly's first app was a free download I found called Dial-A-Phone. I was thinking I would have Wormie run through it but after Deadly has taken a run at my phone so many times I thought i should make it worth my while. The Dial-A-Phone is just a replica of the iPhone Keypad with colored numbers and reads off the numbers when you hit them. Pressing "Call" gets you a ringing sound and the reverse button enables you to erase numbers that you hit. It functions just like the real phone keypad and given Deadly's rock solid mimicking of adult usage, I thought it would be perfect for him.

Deadly started off well, punching in numbers, making calls, and doing pretend baby deals with Gordon Gecko or who ever occupies his little head. I turned my back for a second and when check in on him he was navigating a weird menu that subsequently launched him to the App Store. The "Info" button in the lower right corner of the app brings up a list menu of the publishers, Blue Onion Soft, other applications like All-in-1, Flash Cards, Letter-board, etc. He was actively hitting the screen which launched one of the menu items to the App store effectively killing the session.

The general idea of this app was great but to use a toddler app as a lead generator for other apps didn't work so well for me, or Deadly. I was disappointed since I felt it was hitting a good niche for very young toddlers that are ready to do nothing more than poke some buttons. Given the fact that I couldn't let him use the phone for a minute without hitting the wrong button made this app all but useless.

Age Range: 1-3
Difficulty: 5/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel : 3/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 1/5 (5 being helpful)

The Free App Quest Continues! Animals and Christmas Adventures

2009-12-22T23:03:00.000-08:00

One of the free apps i came across in my searches was Pet the Animals. It sounded cute but there is nothing more damning than when a four year old uses and app for two seconds and emphatically asks for a "new game." I had to agree with Wormie that Pet the Animals is hurting. The premise is pet the animal on the screen and the animal will "buzz" with excitement and make the appropriate sound. Dog's bark, horses neigh, cows moo. The graphics look like cheap stock photos and the app looks worse than AOL 2.5. Add in a overdose of the vibrate function and you've created one of the most popular free apps in the iTunes Free library. Strong work Apple.

Wormie got it right away and i actually think she was stunned at the stupidity...she had a look on her face like, "There is more right?" Sadly i couldn't find anything else. I did make the mistake of hitting the info button where users are prompted to buy other applications including Bikini Baristas and a WTF moment, apps that sound so lame they can only be real.

Age Range: 2-3
Difficulty: 4/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel : 1/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 1/5 (5 being helpful)

Wormie has gotten pretty good at navigating herself around my menu's and found one of the apps I was lining up for her to test on her own. The Christmas Card Match game was a free seasonal app similar to the Halloween matching game i reviewed in October. Wormie started it up and played a few games before making her way back to Santa's Cookies which I reviewed two weeks ago. The Christmas Card Match really wasn't in the spirit of Christmas cards but it was 1. free and 2. very Christmassy. My only complaint were the sounds were a little too "Space Invaders" for me so I guess the a publisher couldn't get his hands on any seasonal bells or something. That said I don't think Wormie minded too much since she played it for a good 5 minutes before moving on. All said and done I was impressed that Wormie made her way back to Santa's Cookies and proceeded to use the app for the rest of a car ride to day care which was another 10 minutes. I might have underestimated Santa's cookies!

Age Range: 3-5
Difficulty: 3/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel : 3/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 3/5 (5 being helpful)

SantasCookies is Free But Not to Filling!

2009-12-09T09:48:00.000-08:00

It is very likely that Christmas will kill me and while I am using iPhone to track present shopping I really was hoping for some cool Christmas applications. My “Free App Review Week” didn’t work out quite as I planned (house remodel, work crisis) I figured free Christmas apps was my next target.

I searched high and low and first decent free Christmas app I could download was called SantaCookies. The idea is cute; you decorate cookies to be left for Santa. The start function is straight forward; you just touch the screen and are in the app. At first I had some trouble figuring out that to decorate the cookies you had to press the cookie decorations in the bottom navigation. The tricky part was that the decorations would appear in the middle of the four cookies to be decorated, when I was looking to drag it up to the spot I wanted to place it. I showed Wormie and she got it right away. Her bad habits had not been trained like mine.

Wormie spent a good 15 minutes playing with the app the first time I gave it to her. After her initial session she never spent much time with the application again. There were additional little features like you can leave a note for Santa and save the cookies you decorated to your photo album but those were not of any interest to Wormie. Overall I would rate this as a good free download with some seasonal appeal but in the larger scheme of things it will get deleted shortly after the holidays.

Age Range: 3-5
Difficulty: 3/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel : 3/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 2/5 (5 being helpful)

Price:Free

Peekaboo Barn - A Solid "Lite" Small Child App

2009-12-01T17:11:00.000-08:00

I picked up Peekaboo Barn based on a recommendation from a friend who said her daughters were really into it. I went for the free version and got Wormie started right away. The start button was easy for her to figure out and the game play was well done. Here's a quick run down. Open to a barn scene. Barn shakes, touch doors, reveal animal, animal makes noise, door closes, repeat.

As per all "Lite" apps there are only a few animals to cycle through where in the full fledged app there are a supposedly a bunch more. I swear i read someplace there is a night time barn party scene. That sounds a little too Cinimax for me, but that could be a mis-read. Wormie liked the app, but it was a little too young for her. I'd peg this for 2-3 year olds since the game play is simple and tight. In addition the limited number of animals made it a pretty quick play session.

Age Range: 2-3
Difficulty: 4/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel : 4/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 2/5 (5 being helpful)

Price:Free

The Free App Conundrum: Shape Builder - Lite Version

2009-11-24T23:47:00.000-08:00

So i take a rather loose interpretation of iTunes App store lists of the top Free or Paid Apps. I'm sure the algorithm that determines what ends up in the "Top" lists is so complicated that they have an army of mathlete optical laser engineers who work on it. However - I hope that a good dose of fun gets worked into the equation somehow. Wormie and I try to tease out the fun strings from the messy App Store algorithm when we are testing applications. I mix up the free and paid applications we review, but given this is cyberweek i'm going to try and do a free app a day during down time at work. Here's the catch...i'm going to do a "Lite" review.

In general a lot of the free applications that are appropriate for kids are limited in functionality and are designed as free trials with the goal of upselling you to their paid version. Shape Builder Lite is a puzzle application that was high up in the Free Education Apps section of the iPhone App store. This fit my criteria of peceived value and the right price.

The premise is simple - you get an outline of a puzzle and the missing pieces. You then drag pieces into the corresponding spot on the outlined shape and build your object. Once it is complete the object forms into a picture and makes a sound. I make a puzzle guitar, the puzzle turns into a guitar, the guitar then plays a little ditty.

Wormie grasped the basics right out of the gate. She could start the app on her own and quickly started trying to drop the pieces into the relevant spots. The challenge, and my only complaint about this application, is that the game play of dragging pieces was a little off. Wormie and her four year old fingers wanted to direct the puzzle piecec by holding it right in the middle. It was much more effective by dragging the lower right corner of each piece and dropping that slighly past where the puzzle ended. That was an impossible concept to explain, but after a few frustrating tries she seemed to get it down well enough to complete a puzzle with limited cries for "Daddy." After several days she had the game play down cold and did not need any help.

Wormie likes it. I don't think there is any educational value to forming the letters or objects but she likes it and i think is a fun brain teaser. I am tempted to get the full paid version since she cycles through all the free puzzles (5-10) quickly.

Age Range: 3.5+
Difficulty: 3/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel : 25 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 3/5 (5 being helpful)

Price:Free

ABC Tracer: First Step in Making My Girl a Genius

2009-11-18T21:45:00.000-08:00

As previously mentioned Wormie has become extremely interested in reading her books. So much so that she will pass watching TV or a movie after dinner so she can pour over her library books. After the success of the iPhone kid book app i figured i would try something more educational. My first experiment with educational flash cards didn't go so well. I'm giving that app some time before writing the review but it left a bad taste in my mouth.

My method for picking my apps for review is not very complex. I usually use the app store on the phone and will try a mix of paid and free versions to keep it balanced. I found the ABC Tracer in the Education channel in the iPhone store. My assumption there is that the best selling or most popular will be the versions that Apple puts at the top of the list. It's not a complex equation but I figure its worthwhile to work through the top apps first before digging down into the weeds.

So... i found ABC Tracer to figure out the basics before handing over to Wormie. This apps got everything for type A parents.

Flashcards? CHECK!
Phonics? CHECK?
Freestyle drawing to express your innner Picasso? DOUBLE CHECK!

The basic gist is that you can trace letters (upper case/lower case) and numbers in order to practice you writing skills. There are other little features like you can change the color of your ink and sound features (phonics i guess) like touching an object associated with your letter, which will then make the appropriate sound. Trace an A, touch the alligator, alligator roars... Wormie nailed it.

Like i said last week the iPhone book was in Wormies top spot, until she found ABC Tracer. I showed her how to start the app and she started cranking away on the tracings. I thought that i would have to show her how to work the menu but she was comfortable navigating all on her own. She even discovered some features i had missed, like a free drawing component that was probably designed for letters, but she used for pictures. Wormie went through each letter and number all on her own and would then go back to the beginning to start over.

The look and feel reminded me of a Fisher Price toy a la 1983, but the functionality is so strong, and Wormie was so engaged that I can forgive the lack luster aesthetics. Aside from dated artwork the only other criticism i have is that the app is trying to teach a "right" and "wrong" way to write a letter. I'm sure there is some theory and method behind this but for hte life of me i couldn't figure it out or see a way to explain the "correct" way to write a letter to Wormie. Perhaps I am just a roadblock on her way to a James Joycean understanding of the printed word, but I think she will be just as smart if i don't let her know that the red lines in her tracing means she did something wrong. Regardless this was not a blocker for using the application and Wormie has continued to bang the heck out of the ABC Tracer. I would highly recommend this to parents whose children are just getting into reading and letters.

Age Range: 4.5+
Difficulty: 4/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel :1/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 5/5 (5 being helpful)

Price:$1.99

iStoryTime: The Brave Monkey Pirate - Quirky, Quick - PERFECT!

2009-11-15T05:25:00.000-08:00

I saw a post not long ago on Twitter from App Develop @iStorytime promoting their kids story application. I thought it was a great idea and posted something about it to @gabbaphone twitter account. @iStoryTime wrote me back and gave me a free promo code to check out one of their story apps. I felt a little weird reviewing a free game, i'm all about the journalistic impartiality don't you know, so I went ahead and bought one for $1.99. I went for 'The Brave Monkey Pirate" based on the funny title and cute art.

I checked it out myself before handing it over to Wormie and there were some controls for audio (ie. do you want a childs voice or adult voice) and some other basic set up controls. It was nothing you need to do before using the App with your child but i was curious at how robust the reader controls were - the answer is, not very. I went through the story myself and found it a quirky and cute. Its about a little monkey who takes a magical (read trippy) journeym and along the way he finds a way to make trips to the doctor visit less scary. The minimalist art is cute and cool, and the little parable going on about being brave when you go to the doctor is light enough that it does not come off as a "Oh my go could Berenstein Bears be less subtle" life lesson. A subsequent search turned the book up on Scribd and the Robert Hayes, the authors, site http://www.bluebison.net/. My only complaint about the application was that i wish the page turning functioned more like the Kindle application - but this item really had no impact on the 20 something page iBook.

I gave the App to Wormie thinking it would be a short trial. For what ever reason i figured she would get bored quickly and ask for a different game. I was SO wrong. Wormie is just starting to get into writing letters and has been pouring over books from the library. I can only assume that this new found interest in the written word helped spur her obsession with "The Brave Monkey Pirate." When I handed Wormie the App she figured out the page scrolling right away. She also liked the audio feature, which i know because when i turned it off after another viewing, she complained how the App was broken. When she got to the end of the story, she rewound all the pages and started over. She read and re-read the story for a full 10-20 minutes, which must have been about 10 reads of the story. The "pirate story" as she called it, has became the top requested app on my phone until I downloaded some letter tracing apps.

Overall - i was surprised, and pleased, at how much she really liked it. I believe the combination of quality art, cute story, professional audio, and her new found interest in "reading" sealed the deal. My only complaint is that at $1.99, for what is a considerably short story, this is an expensive proposition. However, if I broke down how much i've paid on a per viewing basis, I'm sure its beat most of the childrens books we buy at our LBS, Kepplers, at about $.10 a view and going down! I have been meaning to buy another story for some time to see how much is the form vs. content but until then Wormie still likes to log a few reads of "The Brave Monkey Pirate" while we wait for our breakfast every Sunday.

Age Range: 3-5
Difficulty: 3/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel :4/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 5/5 (5 being helpful)

Halloween Treats: It's not spooky, but its smart!

2009-10-27T22:13:00.001-07:00

In an attempt to get in the Halloween Holiday spririt i did a search on the iPhone app store for Halloween. I was suprised that i did not find much appropriate, and while i was tempted by Halloween Hotties i settled for a safer seasonal matching game. A later check on the PC dug up a lot more seasonal options in the App Store that I wanted to check out but I was already committed to a free app titled the Halloween Match Memory Game

I had tried one of the higher ranked memory games with Wormie to no avail a few months ago. I don't know if it was the game play or the graphics but the Halloween Memory Match was much more effective. The game is a good at keeping Wormies interest for a few plays at a time.

The game is simple... open the game and it loads asap, which is perfect for my toddler. Wormie is not big on waiting and i find it a hassel when I have to get involved with the set up of the next game. The premise is a straigh forward card matching game. Each turn you flip two cards with Halloween themed artwork. You go through the cards and match the different pairs like most of the other matching games in the App store. After the game is completed you get a count of how many bad pairs you rang up, which Wormie doesn't care about, but is easy to get by. Some ghostes and halloween characters float through the screen and you are onto your next game.

I think it was a cool little app, and the memory component made me think that I was contriburing to her later success in life. Lord knows, she's going to have to do some matching at Harvard.

Age Range: 3.5-5
Difficulty: 5/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel :3/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 4/5 (5 being helpful)

iPhone Moms on the Rise!

2009-10-26T09:47:00.000-07:00

TechCrunch reports that iPhone mom's downloading apps for their kids!

"The report shows several interesting patterns. For example, over 59% of iPhone moms surveyed say they let their children use their iPhone. And 41% of moms who own iPhons download apps specifically for their children to use.

Five Little Monkeys: Are going to follow me to my grave!

2009-10-20T22:06:00.000-07:00

I am not particularly sophisticated when it comes to how I pick applications for Wormie and me to tes t. Five Little Monkeys belongs in the bucket of Apps i call "Songs Wormies Loves." It's above the "Apps i think will make Wormie smarter," bucket and below the "Cute Disney Like Apps."

Like the category says Wormie loves the Five Little Monkeys song. We sign it over and over and over. I don't mind the repetition, my wife however...well it drives her crazy. So, I'm thinking maybe i get the app and Wormie sings it to herself with the headphones on. Genius right? I know..i know, I'm a genius.

The app turned out to be a winner a "time waster" tool. The premise is easy... you pick the background music (Rock, Pop, and Country.) This was the only piece that Wormie had trouble with since the action wasn't completely obvious. On that note the music selections sound like the categories in a Gorbechev era Soviet Uniion music store. Who buys a "Rock" album...its all about Classic rock! Zepplin, AC/DC, and Wormies favorite...QUEEN!

Once you are in the game its a chinch. There are a few easter eggs you can click on and get an action like a ball, a baloon, etc and they are easy to spot. You touch a monkey, he falls off the bed, he breaks his head etc etc. The doctor pops up and says... you got it.. "NO MORE MONKEYS JUMPING ON THE BED." Then you go back and there are four little monkeys on the bed. Repeat, repeat, repeat, and done! Wormie got the action required straight out of the gate and even though its a little boring from a parents POV it seemed to be a winner.

Frankly, the art is mediocre, the music is best described as "elevator like" but the package works well and can keep the girl occupied for a little stretch of time in a moment of high need.

Age Range: 3-4
Difficulty: 4.5/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel :2/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 4.5/5 (5 being helpful)

Preschool Adventure: Simple Pleasures

2009-10-13T22:10:00.000-07:00

This is a great starter application for your 3-4 year old. Even better, its a good way to figure out what kind of applications your kids might like. One challenge I have had is spending money on applications that Wormie will play for all of two seconds before getting bored. And thus GabbaPhone was born, where i strive to deliver the unmitigated truth of how an application meets the needs of my child's finely honed technological pallet. Or...how much time i can get or to play it while we are at a restuarant.

Preschool Adnventure is a collection of six games that have no discernible tie to one another other than that they are simple and easy to use. The "games" are labeled Colors, Numbers, Shapes, Body, Matching, and Sounds - while not winning any awards for creativity they work for Wormie. The coolest part about giving the app to Wormie is that she intuitively started jumping between the games. The buttons were big and inviting and she was able to quickly figure out what to do with each game once she hit the button. Watching her explore the application and figure it out each little bit on her own was cool from a parent's angle. I've rated each game below with the number of "Wormie plays" before she would jump to another game.

Colors - Hit little ink spots and sea animals pop up with a little sound. (4 plays)
Numbers - Connect the dots (numbers) in order and draw an animal (6 plays)
Shapes - Hit the shape and it pops out of a crater in a planet (1 play)
Body - Touch body parts of a monkey and they reattach, kinda weird (2 plays)
Matching - Match animal body parts and animal does something cute, like yodle (3 plays)
Sounds - Touch cute animals on the farm and they make farm sounds (no recollection)

I was surprised, and excited. that she liked the numbers game the best. Overall she will spend a good 10-15 minutes sorting through the different options on Preschool Adventure jumping from one game to another. I wouldn't recommend this for an older kid (5+) or "genius" child but it was a great fit for Wormie, who likes her independence and the freedom to use the device all on her own.

Age Range: 3-4
Difficulty: 4.0/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel :2.5/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 4.5/5 (5 being helpful)

Price $.99

Wheels on the Bus: The "Titanic" of toddler apps

2009-10-06T23:27:00.000-07:00

I had great expectations of "Wheels on the Bus." It is continuously one of iPhones best sellers making it a Hollywood style hit in iPhone land. Legend goes this was created by three friends looking to entertain their kids (GENIUS!) who must be ka-jillionaires by now. I even liked the name of the publisher "duck, duck, moose," its cute, creative and nails the spirit of fun and humor i want to have in front of my children. To cap it off "Wheels on the Bus" is one of Wormies favorite song requests... which comes complete with dance steps, hand gestures, and made up verses not found in the official lyrics book.

The first run through of the application with Wormie was pretty successful. She got the actions down p quickly, and figured out how to get through each screen on her own. I figured it was game on and walked away assuming she would be at it for a while. About two minutes later she was back... "I want a new game," she demanded, sounding much, too much like Arnie in "The Terminator." I was bummed - this was not the James Cameron blockbuster i was expecting!

The game play is simple and straight forward making it ideal for the toddler set... swipe the buss to move it forward, swipe the doors to open them, push the teddy bear to make him jump. For what ever reason though the song and iPhone app did not click for her. In a nutshell i think it was too tame, and not as good as the real life version for Wormie. Maybe she was too much of a fan, and maybe hollywood has upper her expectations but this app was a miss for us.

One of the parent hooks for this is that you can make the song play in several different languages. While i think this is awesome for you overly competitive, want your child to rule the world types, my kid had no interest when she realized that all the verses we have made up in our family were not in the application. When she heard the song in French is was all the more reason for her to "Move on Back" to one of her more engaging apps.

I have not completely given up though I will try it with Deadly when he gets a little older, since my gut tells me thisit is better suited to a slightly younger toddler who can handle a device. Given my childs disinterest, and my desire to like the app I would be interested in hearing other folks experiences.

Age Range: 2-4
Difficulty: 4.0/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel :4/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 2.0/5 (5 being helpful)

Price $.99

This could be good! Whiteboard Pro

2009-09-29T21:16:00.000-07:00

I wanted a drawing application, any drawing application, so i went to the iTunes app store and this was the top rated one in the list. I was thinking of going with the Free/Lite version but that experiment did not work so well with the Faries Fly Lite.

This application comes with a collaboration feature so if your toddler wants to whiteboard an escape out of their daycare they can silently share the plans amongst themselves. Other than that somewhat overboard feature this is a pretty cool tool. The big problem is its not really toddler friendly. The ability to adjust the "pen" size and color is easy for an adult, but not a toddler feature.

That said...once i got the little drawing board set up Wormie was enthralled. She cranked out six different drawings over a period of 20 minutes. As we refined the the pen size and played with colors she became more and more excited. While it wasn't the best parent helper in my tool kit but it was one of the most gratifying since we were able to play with it together. Currently its the application she most wants to use, making it great for restaurants, but not so good for car usage.

A week after playing with the App I discovered a cool feature. I was scrolling through my photo library and all the drawings Wormie had made were saved. It was kinda cool to go through and check out all of the odd little butterflies and stick people she had made when we were playing with it.

Age Range: 3+
Difficulty: 2.0/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel :3/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 4.0/5 (5 being helpful)

Price $1.99

Faries Fly Lite: Not Enough Disney Magic

2009-09-22T21:14:00.000-07:00

I was skeptical but hopeful when i saw the Faries Fly Lite app by Disney Interactive Studio. The rating was 4+ and i figured it was worth a shot since a free version , hence the "Lite" moniker, was being offered.

If you happen to have a small child, specifically a girl, chances are you are in the midst of Fairy/Princess obsession that appears to have a lot of legs.

We took Wormie to Disney in April, which was a lot of fun, and while she was shy of the real life avatars - she has continued to gush about all the Princesses and Faries she met at Pixie Hollow and Ariels Grotto attractions we took her too. So... enter iPhone - Faries Fly Lite - stage left.

The real game enables you to choose from one of several faries, where Faries Fly Lite you can only pick Tinker Bell - which is fine - and you can only play the game located at the "Beach Cove" world. The production value is amazing... it has a great video intro, good music and fantastic art.

The game itself is pretty simple. You tilt the iPhone to control TinkerBells vertical postion. I found it easy, it was a more difficult concept to teach Wormie. Tinker then has to avoid obstacles, birds and tree stumps, and pick up what look like screws, coins, and magic bubbles for points. You can only get through one level before getting an upsell message but the restart path was easy enough that Wormie could get the game going again.

Wormie lost interest pretty quickly and wanted to go back to scoops. I think the game play and avoiding the cute little birds was pretty lame. She had no interest in the points, of course, and once the video portion had concluded her interest was gone.

Overall i could see this being popular with slightly older girls who are still in a Fairy phase of their childhood. I imagine that is a somewhat limited group but who can tell. It's a total bummer because the subject matter is perfect for her age group. To me this looks like a recycled game with first class music an art. With a modicum of effort on the game play and targeting for the little girl market this would be great - especially for our next trip to Disney!

Age Range: 5+
Difficulty: 2.5/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel :4.5/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 2/5 (5 being helpful

Price: Free

iToddler Tamer - Not sure I want to give my phone to a kid that likes this!

2009-09-19T21:51:00.000-07:00

Both my kids have been perpetually obsessed with my iPhone, well... all my phones, in fact. At one point i even glued on print out of Palm menu glued it to an old Palm 650 and told Wormie that i fixed it. When i got a Blackberry i started letting Wormie play the Brick game that came with the ATT factory install. Now "Deadly", all of 10 months, wants in on the action and Wormies refinement about games is getting more complex, much like her taste in television - she has a complex low brow/high brow mix of "Care Bears/Nausicca Valey of the Wind" thing going.

Anyway...i was extremely excited by the title of iToddler Tamer -I mean, come on... it speaks to my whole desire of what a iPhone can do for me while waiting for Pancakes at Stacks! I downloaded iToddler Tamer and passed off to Wormie - tester, age 4.5. When i playedthe game i thought it was super lame - of course, i am not toddler and therefore not a adequate judge of how well this pupper works.

It is simple - and a little boring. Of course, i say this about an age group that has equal amount of fun splashing in puddles and popping bubble wrap. It does not have much functionality yet it avoids the "Mail To", game points, general confusion, and restart issues I have found with other applications. The general concept is that you can pick a Scene/Level- Babies, Ocean, etc - then different pictures (shell, baby bottle, etc) scroll through. You can move the pic and make it multiply before it darts off the screen and a new image shows up. BAM - that's it. That's all there is to it. Not good for 38 year old dad or mom... in fact the wife was super adamant that this was a stinker.

All that said Wormie was able to figure it out on her own so I liked it for that component. So many games i have to walk her through the functionality before she gets the hang of it. I'd say she actually spent 10 minutes with the game before getting bored which was not too bad. Still... not the best investment ever made. I think it will be good for slightly younger childern but I'm not sure i want to give the phone to a one year old so I will have to wait a bit before trying it out. on a younger set.

Age Range: 2+
Difficulty: 5/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel :3.5/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 3/5 (5 being helpful

Price .99

Sneezies Chain Reaction - It could have been so great!

2009-09-13T18:43:00.000-07:00

Well, i downloaded Sneezies a few months ago. I think when i originally got it it was ranked pretty high in the children's section of the app store. The art, cute furry animals in bubbles, and description "Sneezies is an overload of cuteness" made it sound perfect. However...its actually a pretty standard linking game. You pop one bubble and then it goes and pops a whole bunch more. The art and game play are totally professional but they don't really go well together.

I gave the game to "Wormie", thats the 4 year old's nick name of choice, I'm going to call the 1 year old Deadly...pretty cool names i think, and she really loved it. For like 5 minutes...then she hit some button and i had to restart the game. After a few tries she was able to move from screen to screen but the bubbles that the cute little guys float in get progressively smaller and after a point it was too annoying and she gave up. In face it wasn't just the size of the bubbles she was getting annoyed with it was the fact that you only get to hit one bubble and then you watch the chain reaction as the bubbles pop each other. I think the general concept was within her grasp but the strategic component, and level of patience required, were not ideal for a four year old girl.

I think this game looks good for kids but is more suited to adults. I think i would be embarrassed to be caught playing this on the train. Ultimately it is more suited to cat lady in 11a who gives us cute styrofoam ornaments of her pets every year. I liked the game but my kid would NOT pay .99

Age Range: 6+
Difficulty: 3/5
Look & Feel :4.5/5
Parent Helper: 1/5

Price .99

Dora The Explorer: I get int on the iPhone so i don't have to watch it in real life!

2009-09-11T15:16:00.000-07:00

This isn't necessarily iPhone specific, in face I originally downloaded Dora for my iPod but the larger has given Dora episodes i downloaded a year ago new live. My girl (going on 4.5 years old) does not get to watch cable at our house because we believe in the good old hippie way of life. Wool socks, sweatty homemade peanut butter, and no cable. I lie, we skipped getting cable after moving to Califorina because we found that Netflix did a better job of getting us timely TV episodes, and enabled us to truly feed our addictive tendencies by watching a whole season of 24 in two nights. The by product has been our kids don't get access to a lot of the normal shows. This has an upside... my daughter can sit through a two hour movie because thats all she ever watched (for some reason we had a lot of Disney/Sudio Gibli DVDs) and that when we do get 20 minute cartoons she watches them like they are Child Approved Narcotic.

My first experiment was downloading Dora the Explorer. We were going to Canada for several weeks and I wanted to get a some shows for the plane ride. I ended up downloading Season 1,2, & 3 of Dora to keep the kid occupied. I would say from a value perspective i got at least 3-4 viewings per episode making the $1.99 or 19$ per season worth my while. My daughter liked it for a solid 3-4 months before nixing Dora all together. I even occassionaly would let her watch it on the Mac at home...which actually is not preferable to the iPhone. On the iPhone i don't have to listen to the repetitive and interactive components like when Dora repeats the mission objectives with her sly hypnotic chanting.... "Bridge, Chocolate Mountain, Ice Castle!" in an attempt to brain wash my girl. I don't mind the brain washing Dora... i just don't want to hear it. I reccomend whole seasons of Dora...the shows go by quick and the kids get engaged. If I'm lucky my daugther will be fully bilingual by the time season 10 roles around.

Age Range: 3-5
Difficulty: 1/5
Look & Feel :4/5
Parent Helper: 4/5

Prices
Per Episode
Season 1
Season 2
Season 3

Scoops: The first iPhone ap I downloaded for my toddler

2009-09-10T13:30:00.000-07:00

I was telling a friend of mine about this great iPhone application i had for my kid. He told me in a not so subtle way that it was a stupid idea, and that he just had his kids play with "Scoops." (I'm still working on my genius idea and will let you know when i get it going but until then i have to content myself with what ever i can jerry-rig for my 4.5 year old.) My friend, Chris, who i think is going through a "downer" period described the functionality that his two daughters liked and it did sound good for the age i was looking at.

The look of Scoops is perfect for the pre-school set. Its bright, has great colors and the general game play is appropriate. The objective is to get as many scoops of ice cream, and other falling objects onto your cone by tilting your phone. When you tilt your cone veers in the direction you want it to go (left of right) all be it a little fast. The speed of the moving cone was the biggest issue I had with the game as it worked well for me but was a little too "slippery" for my daughter. I think the game would work better for slightly older kids who are not jaded by the loss of Santa Claus or questioning a world in which ice cream scoops are randomly falling from the sky. Overall the game nature seemed to be a little overkill, since what adult, or self respecting teenage is going to want to save their "Scoops" high score.

The biggest drawback was a mail button that could be found after i entered my name in the high score. I had given this game to "The Girl" and she was able to get through all the screens, despite not being of reading age, except for this one. She kept hitting the mail button which is assumedly for "viral marketing" purposes and would end up in my Gmail account trying to send her high score to the CEO of some start up we are working with. That said "The Girl" liked it enough to request it, though i did have to intervene when she would hit the mail to button.

I'd buy it for 5-7 year olds, its okay for slightly younger but functionality requires some parentaly involvement.

Age Range: 5.5-7
Difficulty: 3/5
Look & Feel :4.5/5
Parent Helper: 2.5/5

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