Somewhere, Theodor Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) is smiling. "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" for iPhone turns the classic tale into a superb interactive e-book, one that's as much a learning tool as it is an entertaining diversion.
With all the fuss over Kindles, Nooks, and other e-book readers, I've often wondered why there's been so little focus on children's books--arguably the ideal media for a portable device.
After all, what parent hasn't wished for something wholesome to keep young kids occupied during car rides, long waits in a restaurant, endless hours on a plane, and so on?
Kids can tap a word to hear it pronounced and see it grow big.
"Grinch" offers two modes: "Read to Me" and "Read It Myself." In both cases, readers are treated to the original artwork and text, but with some clever panning and zooming that adds an animated touch.
The reader, professional actor Lee Abbott, lends just the right kind of kid-formal voice to the story. And because each word is highlighted as he reads, kids have the opportunity to learn along the way.
Another perk: each page is interactive. Kids can tap an item on the screen (such as "tree" or "Grinch") to hear it pronounced and see the accompanying word.
In short, this is exactly what you'd hope for from a Dr. Seuss book made electronic. And the $3.99 price tag is more than reasonable, especially considering that the noninteractive hardcover lists for $15.
As the parent of a learning-to-read 7-year-old who loved every bit of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" on my iPhone, I'm sold. Note to developer Oceanside Media: keep the Seuss books coming. (Can I get my order in now for "Yertle the Turtle"?)
Much like Stanza identifies songs, Cry Translator identifies cries.
In the classic Simpsons episode "Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?", Homer's long-lost brother Herb invents a baby translator. The baby cries, the machine announces its meaning (in Danny DeVito's inimitable voice) in plain English.
Seventeen years later, there's an app for that. Cry Translator promises to identify the "five distinct cries" made by infants.
In other words, you no longer have to wonder if your ankle-biter is tired, hungry, mad, stressed, or just bored. It's like Stanza for crybabies.
My first reaction: That's cheating! My second reaction: Why wasn't this around nine years ago when I needed it? And finally: No way does this actually work.
Unfortunately, I'm fresh out of babies on which to test it. So I'll throw this out to anyone willing to invest $9.99 on the promise of easier parenting. Put the app to the test, then report your findings here.
For what it's worth, the app not only translates Junior's cries, but also offers suggestions on how to calm him. You can also enter emergency contacts, like your pediatrician, for quick and easy access.
Again, I have my doubts about whether this really works--but wouldn't it be awesome if it did? The developer cites a study--conducted in Spain--that reported a 96-percent success rate in calming crying babies when following the supplied suggestions.
If nothing else, it might be $10 well-spent just to calm fretful parents. Once upon a time, I was one of them.
KidZui's closed-system browser for children upgrades to version 4, but fans of the program won't notice many changes initially. Available for Windows and Mac and as a Firefox extension, the update encompasses a range of changes, including optimization for Netbooks, client- and server-side caching, simplified animations, and a number of bug fixes. Most importantly, the program is supposed to run faster, although that was hard to judge from 10 minutes of use. It's not slower, though.
KidZui 4 looks a lot like KidZui 3, but with a few options to better control the clutter.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)The big changes that kids and their parents will pick up on mainly involve smoother integration between the interface and the features. There's now a grid button on the bottom right that allows kids to jump back to their most recent search results after they've proceeded to a page. Videos now can be set to auto-play in the default mode as well as the maximized "Go Big" mode. The Explore and Friends navigation bars on the left and right side are now minimizable, expanding screen real estate for larger video and image viewing. This last change is significant since KidZui's interface can often feel cluttered and chaotic.
Changes to the social-networking tools include removing online/offline notifications from the Event stream in MyKidZui, which creates more space for tags and sharing with friends. Kids can also add an unlimited number of channels to keep track of. Overall, though, the program feels like it hasn't changed much since version 3, and that's a good thing for fans.
KidZui for Windows and Mac seems like a kid-ified browser with social networking rolled in. Children can find their favorite YouTube videos, rate content using tags, and share opinions with other KidZui friends, all from a colorful interface with big buttons and labels. KidZui is anything but a standard childrens' browser, though, and what makes it so unique is precisely why it's such a safe tool for children.
KidZui is a closed system, not filter-driven, so all content that's available has been approved by editors into a whitelist database. Children can explore the Internet by using the search/URI bar, or search by a left-navigation sidebar that's organized by topics including science, movies and TV, games, sports, and animals. Just below the search bar are three tabs, for Web browsing, Photos, and Video.
Parental registration is required before your child can create "Zui," in the program's parlance. Children can customize their avatars to a limited degree in the free version, with more options available via a paid upgrade. Free KidZui is fully functional, but upgrading definitely offers more. Among the additions: children get more content rating tags, more avatar clothing, and more backgrounds, while parents get the capability to block individual sites, can view an unlimited history of the child's browsing, and can force-add sites to their children's favorites list.
KidZui offers children one of the safest Web browsing methods I've seen. Parents get the peace of mind that their children are both learning and having fun without relinquishing their role as the final arbiter of the Internet experience. If you're hesitant, KidZui offers a Firefox extension that replicates the KidZui experience in Mozilla's browser.
I'm going on vacation for the next few weeks, so this will be the last Featured Freeware until January 2009. You can peruse the past nine months of Featured Freeware here. Have a happy and safe holidays!
When you first look at it, KidZui seems a bit like a kiddified Flock, a Web browser with social networking rolled in. Children using Windows or Macs can find their favorite YouTube videos, rate content using tags, and share opinions, all from a colorful interface with big buttons and clear, clean labeling.
Billing itself as "the Internet for kids," it turns out that KidZui is anything but a standard kids' browser, and what makes it so unique is precisely why it's such a safe tool for children to use.
What you see when you log in to KidZui.
(Credit: CNET Networks)KidZui is a closed system of pre-approved content, and although it seems to function like a browser, there's no way to use it to access the Internet directly. Instead, all the content that's available from KidZui has been approved by a group of editors. These moonlighting parents, teachers, and retired teachers started from a database built by a spider that checked dmoz directories across the Internet--similar to how Yahoo searches the Web. From there, they looked at each video, image, and Web site that KidZui lets children see, and then added the safe ones to an age-delineated whitelist. Four-year-olds, for example, can not see content that 10-year-olds can.
When KidZui launched in March 2008, the list of approved content included around 500,000 sites that, according to KidZui's chairman and CEO Cliff Boro, took two years to build. Eight months on, that's now expanded to more than a million pieces of content, with 50 editors still contracted to review new material and purge links that have changed or are dead.
Being closed doesn't mean that that the KidZui experience is limited. More secure than a haphazardly-applied algorithm from a Web blocker, but less limiting in part because it includes kid-appropriate social networking, KidZui in many ways seems to offer a more comprehensive Internet experience to children.
The Zui, the KidZui avatar, features customizations that draw kids in.
(Credit: CNET Networks)The basic version is free, and includes a solid core of features for both children and their justifiably worried parents. Remember the old use of Whitehouse.com, and how easy it was to get there by mistyping whitehouse.gov?
Since KidZui is closed to actual browsing, accidentally or intentionally reaching improper content means that's no longer an issue. There are three main tools for kids to explore the Internet with. There's a search bar at the top, a left-nav sidebar organized by topics including science, movies and TV, games, sports, and animals, and a bottom scroll bar that shows your most frequently-viewed Web sites. KidZui's URI bar includes predictive text similar to Firefox, Chrome, and Opera, but only for the pre-approved content. Below the URI bar are tabs for your default Welcome page, Games, New, Most Popular, and Most Tagged.
Once you start looking at content, three new tabs replace the default five. The Photo and Video tabs work much like Google's Image and Video searches, where you type into the URI bar what you're looking for and the tab automatically narrows it down to the specific type of content that you want under that topic. The Web tab allows for more open, Web browser-style exploration of the whitelisted content.
The right-side nav is taken up by the social-networking features, but again there's little cause for concern by parents. Kids can not e-mail or instant message each other, and there is no personal information that gets revealed when your child "friends" another. They can only see each other's avatars, known as Zuis within the program, usernames, and recently viewed or recently tagged content. By emphasizing the sharing of likes and dislikes as they pertain to videos, photos, and Web sites, and eliminating the ability to communicate directly, KidZui is able to keep the kids who use it focused on positive experiences.
KidZui also hopes to keep kids from being distracted by other local content on the computer by always running in a maximized, full-screen window. It also requires two clicks on the Exit button on the bottom right to fully log out, and parents can require that they enter in their username and password to prevent kids from accessing the rest of the computer.
After the parent has registered KidZui, the child needs to create an online identity. Kids can customize their avatars clothing, skin, face, and hair to a limited degree in the free version, with more options available if you upgrade. The more kids explore via KidZui, the more choices get unlocked, including background options, additional emoticon tags, and Zui customizations. Parents get weekly updates on all the sites that their kids have been looking at.
MyZui pages let kids create their own channels and see where they've been.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Free KidZui is fully functional, but the paid version definitely offers more to both parents and kids. Among the additions, children get more tags for rating content, more avatar clothing, and more backgrounds, while parents get the ability to block individual sites, and can view an unlimited history of the child's browsing. Parents who upgrade can also add Web sites, such as a personal family site, that they approve of on their own through the parental control panel. Upgrading also gains access to a Homework Helper feature, too, divided by subject and academic level from pre-school through eighth grade.
There's no such thing as perfect software, and KidZui is no exception to the rule. I noticed that when you're using the program in Windows, you can use the ALT+Tab hot key combo to access other concurrently running programs. On Vista, this can be used to gain access to the desktop. Walt Mossberg found a somewhat circuitous way to turn up a story on the Eliot Spitzer sex scandal when he looked at the program when it launched.
Even with these holes, KidZui looks as effective as anything I've seen at balancing the dual concerns at play when trying to educate kids with and about the Internet. It's important and difficult to give them the freedom to explore and learn how to use the Web while creating an environment that parents can feel they have control and influence over. KidZui beautifully manages to navigate those concerns and their implications, and is a must for any parent with children under the age of 13 to check out.
Parents on the lookout for carefree, unintimidating ways to urge the sprout of their young kids' creativity ought to take a look at Ten Amazing Fruits. As the product name suggests, Ten Amazing Fruits stars a sampling of botanical characters, including the frequently miscast tomato (hurrah!) These are not, however, your garden-variety fruits. Each outsize organic possesses arms, feet, and a blank face upon which children can attach, Mr. Potato Head-style, a variety of digital features and appendages. A posh voice recites object names when the cursor mouses by, but a quick trip to the options can put an end to it.
Hidden in the branches of the app's help manual are instructions on playing the loosely defined game, and an accompanying story written cheerfully in passable English translation. The goal? Help the fruit escape certain death-by-digestion by dragging and dropping on eyes, ears, and noses so they can find their way out of the fruit bowl. Yawn. Without the app's interaction, it's much more satisfying to dream up new stories for each character, and save the fertile faces to the computer as BMP or proprietary FRD files, or print them out to adorn the fridge.
While light-hearted fun, Ten Amazing Fruits is no study in sophistication. Woefully short on graphic finesse, additional backgrounds and accouterments, and space to type new stories, the app nevertheless offers a whimsical and wonderfully silly way for young kids to personify produce.
And at the very least, an early lesson on the tomato's true horticultural alliance. My dapper three-eyed Mr. Tomato, vested in black hat and bow tie, would surely agree.
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