Parents in the know are all aware that iPhones are a lifesaver when it comes to preventing meltdowns in public. Hand the kid a phone with a great app and you’re golden for another 15 minutes of shopping!

The My Living Stories digital storybook apps combine beautiful artwork, narration and interactive features in an easy to use platform that is perfect for preschoolers to read along all on their own, without any help. My Living Stories are a great solution for entertaining on-the-go or as an aid for teaching children to read at home. The apps allow for your child to read along with English or French narration or read the stories themselves. Interactive sounds and animation bring stories to life. Another great feature is the ability to record your own voice to go along with the story (this feature requires an iPhone or iPod Touch with microphone capabilities). My Living Story classic stories include Princess & the Pea, King Midas, The Tortoise & the Hare, Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks and the Three Bears – fairy tales you’d want your children to know anyway.

Story apps are some of my faves, because I don’t feel like I’m contributing to my kids’ future video game addictions but rather to their literacy & tech-savvy…ness. Unfortunately because our server was in the (flooded) basement and that’s where my iTunes folder is, I haven’t been able to play with My Living Stories yet, but they’re there waiting for me whenever my *^$!ing basement is done!

Win it! Canadians only: Enter to win a $25 iTunes card! Just leave a comment on this post before Friday August 6 at midnight mst telling me which My Living Stories story you would like the most.

For extra entries:

1. Tweet about the contest @opinionated with the hashtag #MyLivingStories and leave an extra comment when you do so.
2. Blog about the contest and leave an extra comment when you do so.

…and all of the usual extra entries apply too!

Contest is unfortunately, only open to Canadians. You may enter this contest on multiple blogs, but are only eligible to win one iTunes gift card as part of the My Living Stories contest.

Disclosure – I am participating in the My Living Stories program by Mom Central on behalf of Decode Entertainment. I received 3 free apps and a gift card as a thank you for my participation. The opinions on this blog are my own.

Built-in camera

Color Collector (or Colour Collector for my fellow Canucks) is a really neat concept for a game that appeals to a wide range of ages.

This is another game offered by the fine folks at Tickle Tap Apps, is available from the iTunes App Store for a budget-conscious $1.99.  It’s rated 4+, (and now I’m starting to understand that “4+” actually translates to “everyone” — most people don’t trust their phone with a 3-year-old though!)

The basic premise for this game is to send your children on a scavenger hunt collecting each of the six colours represented in the colour wheel.  You do this by finding objects of the appropriate colour and snapping a picture of them (by tapping the screen).

Snapping a picture

It’s ridiculously easy to use, and pretty darn accurate.  Occasionally, it will get the colour wrong (my testing showed most problems with Orange and Purple — it doesn’t do well identifying dark versions of those colours), but I’d say that it gets it right at least 85% of the time.

When you tap the screen, it will instantly identify the colour for you, and play a short animation.  A star will then appear in the upper-left corner representing each of the colours you’ve collected.  Every 2 pictures, a short animation will play (nice touch, but gets a little pointless and repetitive after the first couple of times).

My only real gripe is that once you’ve collected all 6 colours, the game just resets.  There’s no “final animation” or some indicator to show that you’ve collected them all.  That’s one of my complaints though, my kids have never commented on it. -by Jon

The amazing Jonathan Lane is the founder of Industry Interactive and Discover Gulf Islands. He blogs at Flying Troll and tweets here. He has worked with my brilliant & incredibly hot husband and according to him, Jon is one of the nicest and smartest guys you’d ever care to meet. My husband is a damn good judge of character, so there you go.

Win it! Tickle Tap Apps is giving away a $20 iTunes gift card to one randomly selected T.O.P. reader who’d like to try Tickle Tap Apps. Just comment below to be entered. Due to technical issues, we’ve extended this contest to close at noon mst on FEB 24, 2010.

Counting by 2s

This game taught me a very important lesson: my 5-year-old son is more patient than I am.  But first, the details!

Count Caddy from Tickle Tap Apps is a great interactive game that teaches you counting skills.  You start off counting by 1s, then move on to counting by 2s & 3s.  Count Caddy will set you back $1.99 and is available from (where else?) the iTunes App Store.  It’s rated 4+, which in my experience is right on; my 3-year-old lost interest pretty quickly, but my 5-year-old (who has Good Will Hunting-like math abilities), got a kick out of it.  He really put the game through it’s paces, and ended up showing me that it progresses in difficulty (I got bored after counting by 2s).

Inter-level animation

The game progresses through a series of levels; on level one you count by 1s three times, on level 2, you count by 2s and so on.  As you pass each level, you’re treated to a short animation.

Count Caddy has proven to be highly re-playable; in fact my son is constantly asking me if he can play it whenever we’re out.  It’s simple, bright and lots of fun.  Everything that a children’s game should be. -by Jon




The amazing Jonathan Lane is the founder of Industry Interactive and Discover Gulf Islands. He blogs at Flying Troll and tweets here. He has worked with my brilliant & incredibly hot husband and according to him, Jon is one of the nicest and smartest guys you’d ever care to meet. My husband is a damn good judge of character, so there you go.

Another Tickle Tap App will be reviewed tomorrow, and we’ll be including an iTunes gift card giveaway so y’all come back now!

Illustration from The Queen Bee

In my last review I looked at an app by PicPocket Books: Sea Creatures.  This review is for a similar app; Storychimes – another sort of “enhanced storybook”.  The Queen Bee is a Brothers Grimm fairy tale.  It’s available from the iTunes app store, and will set you back $0.99.  It’s officially rated 4+ in the App Store, but truthfully, my 3 year old and his friends enjoyed the story way more than my restless 5 year old.
I’ve got a confession to make: I love this genre of app.  I live on an island and have to catch a ferry to go to “the big city”.  As a result, I frequently end up with time to kill with the kids in tow.  I’m your typical dad, so I’m never actually prepared with books or toys or games to keep the boys entertained, but I seem to always have my phone (go figure).  Short, simple apps that can grab the attention of the kids for a few minutes are lifesavers.

Simpleton searches for pearls

The Queen Bee is similar in a lot of ways to a regular storybook: there are great illustrations, and you swipe your finger across the screen to turn pages.  They provide a number of handy options like turning the background music on and off, and either showing the text of the story or hiding it and displaying illustrations full-screen.  There’s an option to Autoplay the book, so you don’t have to flip the pages.

I love that the audio is synched up with the story, so if you get interrupted you can just flip back to where you left off, and the story will start from that point (a bookmarking feature would be even better, but it’s not like we’re talking a 300 page book here!)

My 5-year-old has learned that I have games on my phone, so it’s hard to get him to sit through a story now, but my 3-year-old and one of his friends were completely entranced throughout the entire story, and then had great fun flipping the pages back and forth.

The production quality is great, and the story is a good one.  In my opinion, well worth the dollar. -by Jon
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The amazing Jonathan Lane is the founder of Industry Interactive and Discover Gulf Islands. He blogs at Flying Troll and tweets here. He has worked with my brilliant & incredibly hot husband and according to him, Jon is one of the nicest and smartest guys you’d ever care to meet. My husband is a damn good judge of character, so there you go.

Win it! We’ve got TEN Storychimes codes to give away. To enter, visit the Storychimes site and comment with which book(s) you think the little people in your life would enjoy or make a suggestion for a Storychime you’d like to see added. Due to technical issues, we’ve extended this contest to close at noon mst on FEB 22, 2010.

Sadly, I don’t have an iPhone. I know. So sad.

We get a lot of pitches from people wanting us to review apps for kids & parents, and we’ve always felt a little bad about ignoring them but there wasn’t much we could do about it. In light of that, I’d like to welcome T.O.P.’s newest team member & techie extraordinaire, Jon, with his first review. Welcome Jon, and thanks for helping out!

Just as the name suggests, this application is a short book about Sea Creatures, available from the Apple iTunes App Store.  It’ll run you $0.99, and is rated 4+ (so pretty much anyone will be fine viewing the contents) PicPocket lists the age range as 2 to 6, and I’d agree with that.  The easiest way to explain this app is to call it an illustrated audio book.  I clocked the total play time at 90 seconds.

Sometimes it’s hard for a parent to really get a feel for whether something will be interesting for their kids, or not.  I loaded up PicPocket Books: Sea Creatures onto my iPhone and thought to myself “I just don’t see this holding their attention”.  Maybe I am more mature than a 5-year-old afterall.

The first test was my three year old.  We live on the west coast, and are pretty familiar with ocean life, so Sea Creatures was actually neat for him and something he could relate to.  The illustrations in the book are really vibrant and the words are read back at a good pace.  He sat through the entire reading and then asked me to put it on again (always a good sign).  The second time through, he started tapping on the screen which brings up a set of on-screen controls for pausing and skipping ahead in the book.  It interrupted the flow, and sort of confused him, but I was able to help him out and get back on track.

Next up was my five year old.  Like his brother, he sat through an entire reading and asked me a number of questions.  He wanted to know why we see jellyfish where we live, but not all of the other animals illustrated in the book.  A great question that led us to talk about differences in water temperature and habitats, and I reminded him that we saw a number of similar fish at the Vancouver Aquarium on our last visit.

Overall, this proved to be a great app for killing a short amount of time.  There really isn’t any interactivity to speak of, and personally I get bored of the same 90 second story over and over again: but I’m really not the target audience on this one.

PicPocket Books offer a number of other stories in the App Store if your kids aren’t into the ocean.  In fact, I’d buy “Big Rigs” right now, but then I would probably have trouble getting my phone back from the boys.
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The amazing Jonathan Lane is the founder of Industry Interactive and Discover Gulf Islands, . He blogs at Flying Troll and tweets here. He has worked with my brilliant & incredibly hot husband and according to him, Jon is one of the nicest and smartest guys you’d ever care to meet. My husband is a damn good judge of character, so there you go.

Win it! PicPocket Books is giving one T.O.P. reader their choice of book. To enter, choose your fave and comment here before noon mst on December 11, 2009.

CONTEST CLOSED & WINNER EMAILED

[This is a guest post from Travis Peterson of the fab No Starch Press. I haven't read the book so I couldn't honestly review it, but knew you'd want in on it anyway!]

You finally did it—you bought the gizmo that everyone’s talking about. Maybe you’ve already figured out how to play music or make phone calls, but then what?

How does the voicemail work? And that keyboard? What about all of those cool apps—which ones do you need, and how do you get them? You need a book like My New iPhone to make everything easy.

San Francisco’s No Starch Press has posted a big chunk of its My New iPhone book on Scribd for free, plus is selling it cheap-like-borscht as a PDF.

No Starch has a new version of Wang’s iPhone book coming out with the release of iPhone OS 3.0 this summer. In the meantime, the publisher is making about 50% of the current version of the book available for free. As a special deal, they are offering this PDF for free when you preorder a copy of My New iPhone through the No Starch Site—you’ll get the free PDF emailed to you right away and get the book—covering all of the latest and greatest 3.0 features—when it comes out this summer. You can preorder the book and get your free PDF here. Or you can view a chunk of the book on Scribd here.

Win it! No Starch is giving away a No Starch Press prize package to one randomly selected commenter that includes copies of the books My new iPhone and My New Mac, a No Starch Press t-shirt, shot glass, and mug, as well as stickers! The prize package will be mailed when My New iPhone is published this summer. Leave your comment before noon mst on June 4, 2009.

CONTEST CLOSED & WINNER EMAILED

We have only owned our iPod Touch for 2 months, but are amazed by the quantity and quality of apps available. What has really impressed us is how great a device it is for children. The size and the touch interface are perfect for kids and easy for them to master.

Letters A to Z from True Learning is a flash card alphabet game for kids that runs on the iPod Touch and the iPhone. Each ‘card’ shows a large letter and a cute drawing.

The controls are simple:

* Intuitively scroll to the next letter with a flick of the finger.
* Tap the large letter to hear the name of the letter.
* Tap the object to play a fun animation and hear the phonetic sound as part of a word.

Our family had the perfect age ranges for testing this app. After showing the game to all 3 kids here’s what we found.
Ethan, 6, was at the older end of the target audience for this app. We liked practicing the letters with him, but it didn’t hold his interest. He knows there are other games on ‘daddy’s iPod’ and wanted to move on. We liked using it as flash cards to work on letters he’s had difficulty with.
Ben, 4, will go through the whole alphabet and likes seeing the animations.
Jamie, 2, loves this app. She will sit in my lap and loves going through the alphabet over and over again.

What I love about Letters A to Z is that it makes reviewing the alphabet with your children so easy and fun. We have the alphabet letters on the fridge, but if the kids aren’t using them as hockey pucks, the dogs are launching them across the room with their tails. We tried flashcards, but haven’t had the full deck since we opened them.

With Letters A to Z we not only have a complete flash deck available anywhere we go, but it is more engaging for our kids than traditional flash cards and letter games. Ethan and Ben understood the controls immediately, while Jamie needed some coaching. Once we had helped her through the first few cards she had a blast using the touch screen. At first she eagerly zipped from card to card, but now she is going through more slowly, playing the animations, and learning to identify the letters.

Overall, we couldn’t be happier with this app. With 3 kids in various levels of school, we had been working on letters on and off all year, but our efforts had stagnated. The addition of this game to our teaching tools gave us the boost we needed to keep teaching our kids and improving their letter comprehension and early reading skills.

Letters A to Z is available for 99 cents from the iTunes App Store. - by John

Win it! We’re giving away the Letters A to Z app AND an awesome jam-packed-with-educational-fun True Learning CD to one lucky winner. To enter, leave a comment on this post before noon mst on Friday, April 24, 2009.

CONTEST CLOSED & WINNER EMAILED