Tag Archives: Kids

Disney Joins The Private Social Networking Craze With New Photo & Video Sharing App Called “Story”

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The latest to join the cadre of startups offering tools for more private sharing outside of Facebook’s massive footprint is not, in fact, another startup, but rather another media giant: Disney. Citing its “rich heritage in storytelling,” Disney’s Interactive division, best known for games, sites, and virtual worlds like “Where’s My Water?,” “Temple Run: Brave,” “Club Penguin,” Disney.com, and more, today launched a personal, mobile memory maker simply called “Story.”

The new app, which debuts first on iPhone, takes the photos and videos saved on your device, then automatically organizes them into sharable, but by default, private albums that can also be personalized with captions, text and various themes and layouts. The albums’ content is also saved in iCloud, so it can be backed up and synced to other Apple devices.

Separating a collection of photos into albums isn’t exactly a new trick. Practically every photo-management application today, including Apple’s own Photos app, allows for some level of organization. What makes Disney’s app a bit more cutting edge is the way it automatically organizes the content for you based on the time and location of the photos and videos it finds.

Though our saved digital memories have long since included time, date and location information, only more recently have we begun to see a steady stream of newer mobile applications that use that data for grouping photos or creating shared albums with friends. Color was the big example standing out in everyone’s mind of how not to handle location-based photo albums, but others that followed, including Flock, Cluster, Tracks, Flayvr, Moment.me, Everpix, and many more, have been experimenting to varying degrees in this space.

But because of Story’s scrapbooking-esque annotation and customization features, it also shares a similarity to mobile photo-book makers like Mosaic, SimplePrints and KeepShot, for example. Unfortunately, Story stops short of actually allowing you to order a printed book at the finish of your creation. However, Scott Gerlach, Senior Director of Engineering at Disney Interactive, says that’s something that’s “definitely” being considered for the future.

“In our extensive usability testing of Story, we heard clearly from our users that they’d like to purchase high-quality printed materials for themselves and others,” he tells us, adding that the company is “absolutely looking at different options to help users share their stories.” Those options may even include other photo-based gifts, too.

These extra options would likely be added to Story as in-app purchases alongside other premium features the company has in the works, such as upgraded themes, for example. But for now, the app itself is entirely free, with no ads.

Story itself is simple to use. To further edit any of Story’s automatically created albums, you can tap a button to add more content, including photos, videos or text, or change the theme. You can also tap on any individual item to caption it, remove it, or change the size. You can also drag and drop items around to swap their positions in a way that’s reminiscent to what the Kleiner Perkins-backed startup Erly once offered years ago on the web, before it sold to Airtime in March 2012.

Once you’ve created your “story,” you can then email it to your family or friends, or choose to share it a bit more broadly by posting to Facebook. Stories can also be embedded on your own website, if you choose.

If there’s any complaint with the app, it’s that it has launched only half-done, despite having the resources of a larger corporation at its disposal. Story would make the most sense on iPad, but support for both that and Android isn’t yet available, nor is the option for printed books or other trendy features like photo filters or stickers.

That being said, from the sounds of it, Story will slowly morph into a micro social network for families and/or other close friends over time, as Gerlach hints at plans for “more social and collaborative” features in time. That speaks to things like commenting, liking or shared albums, perhaps, and could put Story up against other family-first mobile apps like Famil.io, Familiar, or Tweekaboo, for instance.

But for now, Story sits somewhere in middle of all these competitors, not quite finished on any front. If you’re leaning towards photo-book creation or private, family-focused social networking, there are other apps that still lead this space for now.

Story is available here in iTunes.

Family Safety App Alert.Us Goes Beyond Kid Tracking With Message Boards, Battery Alerts & More

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Alert.Us, a recently launched mobile family safety application, has some interesting ideas about the direction that these sorts of GPS tracking apps should go. In fact, says CEO Antoine Martin, the company’s goal is to have kids actually accept and recommend the app. That’s a bit different from the other parental control or safety apps on the market today which generally launch with the needs of parents, not their offspring, in mind. It’s also a fairly lofty goal, since kids don’t generally want to be tracked.

Currently, the app currently offers the usual round-up of family safety functions: a geo-fenced alerting function to let others know when someone has arrived at home or school, for example, as well as an emergency alert button which, when triggered, sends out a message to a pre-configured list including family, friends, neighbors, and anyone else who can rush in to respond.

Though these types of “emergency” alerting functions haven’t yet been seen to thwart any serious crimes – like kidnappings, for instance, families can still take advantage of the functionality for more common incidents, like a kid who falls off his bike or the little brother calling on his older brother for help with bullies, maybe.

Some of these ideas have been tried before, through apps like Life360, iHound, Norton Safety Minder, React Mobile, Rapid protect, and others. But Alert.Us also offers a few extra tools not all the apps have, including a family message board for the everyday missives between family members (can you get the milk?) – something which would somewhat compete with other startups like Tango or newly launched Hubble.

Alert.Us offers a battery monitoring function, too, which is one of its smarter features at launch. When a child’s battery is empty, the app alerts the parents. It’s such a simple idea, but it goes a long way to help parents to avoid the panic they encounter when a child doesn’t answer their phone. (It also helps with the kids who claim “oh, my battery was dead,” when it wasn’t. Gotcha.)

But back to the problem of getting kids to actually like the app? Martin tells us that will be the focus in the months ahead, and hints at plans to head into the Quantified Self space to add value on top of basic GPS tracking.

Alert.Us quietly launched two months ago, but the company hasn’t done much outreach or marketing. The cross-platform application has already added over 25,000 users (70 percent on iPhone) during that time, and now finds that active parents open the app six times per day.

The Paris-based company had a launch partnership with e-commerce site vente-privee.com to drive initial downloads, and on the first day after launch, the app climbed to number three in the French App Store, and remained there for two days. It also spent a week at the top of the Lifestyle category, Martin adds.

Parents can use the app on a trial basis for up to 900 minutes and/or 3 alerts, then it’s $6.99 per month ($64.99 per year) afterwards. To date, the app has converted 100 of its early adopters into paying customers, out of the 10 percent of the user base which has reached the end of the trial period.

Alert.Us is backed by $500,000 in angel funding, from an undisclosed group that include four “super angel moms.”

The app is available here in the Apple App Store, on Google Play, or for BlackBerry.

App Discovery Service Appolicious Launches appoLearning – A New Way To Find The Best Educational Apps For Kids

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Appolicious, the app search and discovery portal which helps users find new mobile applications for iPhone, iPad, and Android, is today launching a new service today aimed at parents, teachers and others in search of the best educational apps for children: appoLearning. This new resource is Appolicious’ attempt solving the inherent problems with app search today, starting with a focus on apps for learning.

“We realized that whenever you get into a deep, vertical area like education, the metaphor of search doesn’t work,” explains Appolicious founder Alan Warms. “First of all, search is very contextual – I’m not just looking for ‘an educational app,’ I’m looking for a ‘seventh grade app.’ Also, I need context. I need transparency. I need to understand why was this app is rated the way it’s rated, who rated it, and why should I trust this person?”

On appoLearning, those questions are answered. The site groups educational app recommendations into eighty-four categories, like “reading,” “number sense,” “life science,” “social interaction,” speaking and listening,” and many others, which are also grouped into stages including “Early Childhood (ages 2 1/2 – 5),” “Elementary School,” “Middle School,” and “High School.”

Within a section, a selection of five apps are shown, each rated on a scale out of 100. These are meant to represent the five best applications within that particular category, as chosen by an educational expert whose bio appears on the site, detailing their experience. This section also includes an explanation about why these apps and the skills they teach are important, also written by the educator.

To be clear, these app recommendations aren’t just chosen editorially – on the backend, app reviewers (who are paid contributors), must rate apps using a Q&A rating system designed by Appolicious meant to normalize the ratings process. For each application, reviewers have to analyze  specific educational objectives on a scale of 1 to 3 – numbers which are totaled to give the app its final score. After rating all the apps within the category, the top five based on scores end up on display.

Many of the best apps here will likely end up being the paid apps, because they don’t bother the child with promotions, ads, or disruptive pushes to buy more content through in-app purchases. However, a comments section at the bottom of each app category page allows others to make suggestions as to how the list can be improved, or other applications people may like. These comments will be both vetted and monitored, helping to flag when the category may need a refresh.

A sixth spot for a paid, sponsored listing, clearly labeled as such, allows advertisers to promote their own apps to a very narrow target audience. This is available for $250 per week.

Warms says that the idea for this service occurred to him around six or so months ago, when his daughter was entering seventh grade. “I wanted to find an app for her that would help her practice fractions, decimals, and reciprocals. It was a horrific experience,” he says, explaining how difficult it was to determine which app or apps were of better quality.

But given the recent App Store turmoil surrounding AppGratis, and Apple’s ban of its app discovery service for apparently selling paid promotions, as well as Apple’s revised guidelines banning apps offering app discovery, it’s unclear how Apple would respond to a native app version of the appoLearning service, especially given its included sponsorships.

“We’ve talked to a lot of app developers in education, and they’re  frustrated because it’s really hard for their apps to be discovered right now unless they’re popular,” Warms says. “This service, if it’s as successful as we hope it’s going to be, is going to be great news for Apple also because it’s good for their ecosystem.”

Warms admits, though, that the company is unsure of the rules here – as most app discovery publishers seem to be these days. Instead, for now, appoLearning has been designed with a responsive website that adapts to both mobile and tablet-sized screens.

Now that the site is launched, the plan is to now rapidly grown from its current 84 categories to reach around 150, each with its own educational expert contributor. The plan is to also adapt this same process into other verticals like travel, business, finance, health, and more. A move into Android will also follow.

Interested parents and teachers can now browse the site here. AppoLearning competes with a number of new entrants narrowly focused on educational app discovery, including KinderTown, YogiPlay, as well as other app discovery and search services.

Can You Afford to Start Parenting at Middle Age?

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Advances in reproductive technology and a trend towards marriage later in life have led to an increase in older parents. But do these old fogies know what they’re getting themselves into, financially speaking? Actually, there are some economic advantages to having children when you’ve reached a more mature age (for more, read Jeffrey Kluger’s story in the new issue of TIME, available to subscribers here). Older parents tend to be more financially stable. They’ve (hopefully) eliminated their student loans and dug out of any ill-conceived credit-card debt run up in their young adult years. They’re more likely than parents who are barely out of their teens to own a home and have money set aside for retirement and emergency expenses. There’s a “but” here, though. Taking on parenthood at a more advanced age can mean paying for things like tuition and textbooks when many of your peers are enjoying the financial freedom of being empty-nesters. And with a growing number of adult children returning home to live after college, there’s a good chance that your kid could still be raiding the fridge when you’re eligible for Social Security. None of this has to be a dealbreaker, of course; it just requires more forethought and planning. Here are some questions experts in financial planning and late-in-life parenting suggest that you should ask yourself before trying to have a child. Who’s paying for college? The biggest financial challenge for older parents is that they’ll probably be looking to retire just when some major financial obligations hit. “Retirement dates coincide with college and wedding expenses,” says David Lamp, a certified financial planner at Brighton Jones. “I’d say the cluster of life events is a little bit tighter now.” (MORE: Got Stuff? Typical American Family Home Cluttered with Possessions — And Stressing Us Out) As a parent, the impulse to give your child the best of everything is only natural, but it also can be financially devastating, he says. The smart move is to “favor putting money towards retirement, with the idea being that there

Kytephone, The YC Startup Making Smartphones Kid-Safe, Now Helps Parents Monitor Teens’ Smartphone Usage With Kytetime

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Kytephone, the Y Combinator-backed startup making smartphones kid-friendly and safe, is now expanding its focus beyond the “little kids” crowd with the introduction of a new platform for teenagers and parents. Called “Kytetime,” the system is designed more for keeping track of a child’s location and their phone usage, rather than strictly locking down the phone or offering a simplified user interface.

The company first launched last summer to address the problems associated with smartphones being put into the hands of ever younger children, whether as their own device or on loan from their busy parent, caving into the kid’s request to play games. With the original Kytephone Android application, the software is able to take advantage of apps’ ability to deeply integrate with the Android platform, and presents a kid-friendly interface that also lets mom or dad control who the child can phone or receive calls from, which apps they can access, and more. It also taps into the phone’s GPS for a location-tracking feature.

Now Kytephone has repurposed that same technology for its teen-focused product, Kytetime, which is reminiscent of the “Net Nanny” applications which tracked kids’ Internet usage on desktops, and restricted access to inappropriate content.

Similarly, Kytetime, can also track how the teen is spending time on their phone, what websites they’re visiting, how much time the teen spends in each app, when apps are used, who the teen is talking to and texting with, and more.

However, because it’s the next step up from Kytephone’s “kiddie” interface, the system doesn’t actually block sites or apps entirely, though it does allow a parent to set up “time of day” controls for app. This prevents teens from using apps after a designated bed time or during school hours, for example.

So yes, no more Snapchatting in class, it seems.

“Kytetime is focused on awareness rather than control,” explains Ktyephone’s Anooj Shah. “Our goal was for the child and parent to be aware of how the child uses the phone and highlight opportunities where the kid can use the phone more responsibly,” he says. “We wanted Kytetime to facilitate a conversation between the parent and the child, rather than all out control.”

Unlike the original app, Kyteime doesn’t offer an app sandboxing functionality, nor does it present a child interface. Instead, the teens get full access to the Android interface, as they would normally.

However, parents still have the location-tracking feature available to them, and they have an online and mobile-friendly “Parent Dashboard,” where they can configure settings and track activity in real time. Parents can also receive email reports, summarizing their teen’s activities.

But like the Kytephone kids application, the new Kytetime app is also available as a free download from the Google Play app store. Access to the Kytetime Parent Dashboard and the email activity reports will only be available on a subscription basis. The fee is $40 per year, or $5 on a monthly basis. A two-week free trial is available upon sign-up, and it doesn’t require a credit card to try out.

To date, Kytephone has been installed by tens of thousands of users (Google Play shows installs between 10,000 and 50,000 but the company didn’t want to share exact numbers publicly). It has users in 60 countries worldwide. Kytetime, which now has over 1,000 installs of its own since launch a couple of days ago, is already gaining parents’ attention.

Though not everyone is happy, of course. Writes one user in his review: “I hate it !!!!!!!!! Say one who it is used on,” laments the teen.

Sorry, kids.

Circuit Playground Is Adafruit’s Educational Series For Helping Kids Learn About Electronics

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Adafruit, the DIY electronics website and marketplace, is espousing the popular strategy of “get em’ young” with a new live action short video series broadcast on YouTube. The series, called Circuit Playground, takes an alphabetical approach to teaching kids about the basics of circuits, components and concepts that will come in handy if the tots watching have aspirations of becoming electrical engineers, or just of building their own hobby projects at home.

The inaugural episode covers amperes, the unit of measurement for electric current flowing through a circuit. The co-hosts are Adabot, an adorable robot puppet helping keep the kids entertained, and Adafruit founder Limor Fried, providing easy-to-follow, but not patronizing explanations of the concepts involved. The intro features a number of animated characters representing circuit components, and there’s even a special guest appearance from André-Marie Ampère, after whom the ampere is named, so there’s an element of science history in the mix, too.

At less than 5 minutes, you also won’t have to keep your kids focused too long to take in the message. And if you’re a big kid who might not be all that well versed in the basics of circuits and electronics, you’ll probably learn something, too.

Fenway Park Drops Beer and Food Prices … And Red Sox Fans Get Angry?

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Cheaper beer prices? Free food for kids? How insulting! Following in the footsteps of the Cleveland Indians and other teams that have dropped concession prices at pro baseball stadiums, the Boston Red Sox are offering fans cheaper beer and food, as well as free kids meals. Team executives said the price cuts were intended to thank fans for their support. How nice, right? Unfortunately for Red Sox ownership, many fans reacted to the news by venting that the team has been gouging Fenway Park visitors for years, and that the promotional prices on concessions amounted to a hollow “too little, too late” gesture. The Boston Globe broke the news on Tuesday that for the month of April, Red Sox games at Fenway Park would feature buy-one-get-one-free hot dogs, half-price hot chocolate, free kids’ meals (hot dog, Goldfish, juice box) through the third inning, and 12 oz. beers starting at $5—down from the usual $$7.50 to $8.50. “We’re looking for ways to fill the ballpark, and hopefully this will help,” said Red Sox chief operating officer Sam Kennedy. “But more importantly, that it be received as a thank you given everything we’ve been through the last nine, 10 years together. We thought it was an appropriate gesture.” (MORE: NBA Teams Struggle to Fill Arenas, Even When ‘Cheap Seats’ Are $1 — Or Free) Based on the angry response from fans calling into sports talk radio and commenting online, however, the gesture isn’t being taken that way. “I would rather them do nothing,” wrote one commenter at the website of sports radio station WEEI. “This front office is unbearable. How stupid do they think Redsox fan’s are.” Another typical comment, at Boston.com, reads: “Hey Sox brass, you guys are deplorable. It costs a family of four approx. $240 to go to a game at Fenway, so now you’re going to be ‘generous’ – for April ONLY, how thoughtful! – and it will only cost the family of four $225.” Instead of being received as an olive branch by diehard fans after last

Kids App Maker Toca Boca Expands With Zinc Roe Acquisition, Sets Up Studio In Toronto

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Kids app maker Toca Boca, which operates like a startup out of the 200-year-old Swedish publishing company Bonnier, is making good on its earlier promise that it will soon begin to expand its product portfolio through acquisitions. Toca Boca is today announcing an all-cash deal with Toronto-based studio zinc Roe that includes its line of children’s apps.

Toca Boca CEO Björn Jeffery explains that his company is not actually acquiring zinc Roe outright, because it has some co-publishing deals with others that Toca Boca was not interested in inheriting. Those will continue under the zinc Roe brand, but will no longer be worked on or actively developed. Instead, the deal with zinc Roe was specifically for its 10-app “Tickle Tap” app series, aimed at those ages 2 to 4, as well as the studio’s 10-person development team.

Terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but the new members of Toca Boca will continue operations out of their Toronto offices. Former zinc Roe founder Jason Krogh will become CEO of the new studio, which will be called Sago Sago. Though the company’s Tickle Tap apps will now come under the Toca Boca brand, they will not be rebranded “Toca Boca” following the acquisition. However, they will be getting a makeover in the months ahead and relaunched, says Jeffery.

“We’re going to polish them up, make them universal, and there will be some changes in interaction and scope,” he notes. In addition, the Toronto Sago Sago team will also begin work on a Sago Sago-branded app series, which will be aimed at slightly older children (5 or 6 and up), which will involve more complex interactions, playing around the device’s camera and “unexpected outcomes”, Jeffery hints.

He says that zinc Roe’s product and team are a good acquisition for Toca Boca, because they shared a similar vision. “It was a good cultural fit. The apps follow a lot of the values that Toca Boca has, focusing on a graphical consistency, having an interesting brand, focusing on creativity, and doing it in a family friendly way,” Jeffery tells us. “They don’t use aggressive in-app purchases and no big advertising for other apps, similar to the Toca Boca apps.”

Toca Boca, which has 17 apps aimed at young children, only offers a couple of free applications, choosing to instead charge somewhere between 99 cents and $2.99 for its creations. It’s a decidedly less-spammy way to do business, which has earned it a good reputation in the kids’ app space. And those values are paying off. In less than two years, the company has now reached over 30 million cumulative downloads for its apps, up from 22 million in December.

Going forward, Toca Boca plans to continue its expansion through acquisition, going for a “multi-brand approach.” Jeffery says that a few discussions are underway with other companies, too, but for the time being the focus is on getting its two studios running in parallel.