September 2010

Dr. Seuss iPhone/iPad apps – get them whilst they’re half price!

by on September 16, 2010

I am planning to review the Dr. Seuss e-books and apps in future posts, but this offer is too good not to mention, and is time limited, so I thought better to post now and review later.

I discovered, whilst the geekdaughter was playing with her “Cat in the Hat” e-book today, that all Dr. Seuss iPhone/iPad apps are currently half price in the app store. This is to celebrate the fact that it is the 50th anniversary of Dr. Seuss’ classic book “Green Eggs and Ham” (one of the geekdaughter’s favourites). It doesn’t say within iTunes how long this promotion is running, but I have read elsewhere that it may only be until the end of this week. I’ve already grabbed a couple of the e-books that we didn’t already own, and I will take the opportunity to get hold of one or two of the games as well for future review.

The e-books are currently on sale in the UK iTunes store for £1.19 each, and the games are just 59p. Here’s the full list of all available items:

e-books at £1.19:

Short story e-books at 59p:

Games and apps at 59p:

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eBook Frustrations

by on September 15, 2010

I am usually an early adopter of new technology. However, eBook readers have left me cold, and I haven’t been able to work up any enthusiasm for them. That is, until I got my iPad. I love my iPad. I use it copiously. And I particularly love the overlap of apps between it and my iPhone. I can have pretty much the same apps on both, and just use whichever device comes to hand. There are two main eBook readers available for the iPhone and iPad – Apple’s iBooks for iPhone and iPad, and Amazon’s Kindle for iPhone and iPad. Both apps are free, and some free books are available for each format, but in general you need to buy the books you wish to read.

Geekdaughter and Geekdaddy share a story on the iPad

The geekson is now three months old, and I’m a great believer in setting a bedtime routine from an early age. So I’ve already started reading him a short story before bedtime. Of course at this age he doesn’t understand the words, so I’m trying to pick out rhyming books (the Miffy series are a personal favourite) so that he gets used to the pattern and rhythm of the words. The geekdaughter is almost three, and a real bookworm. She loves having stories read to her, and can recite several favourite books from memory. She loves books like The Gruffalo and Meg and Mog. I would love to get some books like these onto my iPhone and iPad, books that the geek-kids enjoy that I would always have with me, easily accessible for whenever required. It would mean if we were away from home, either in a planned or unplanned fashion (we’ve already had unplanned hospital stays for each of our kids), we could still bring some familiarity into the bedtime routine in the form of a favourite book.

And this is where I have my main gripe. Neither Apple’s iBookstore nor the Amazon Kindle bookstore are easy to browse. Which means if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, you’re left lost and wandering through a sea of unsuitable books. And quite often the book I’m looking for is not available in eBook form, so I spend hours in a long, fruitless search. So what I’d like is to be able to browse the books in both stores, specifically the books suitable for babies and pre-schoolers.

In Apple’s iBookstore they have a “Children and Teens” category. If I try to browse this category I am simply presented with a list of all the authors who have one or more books in this category. It’s quite a long list, and as far as I can tell the only option I have is to click on each author in turn, and then each book in turn to see if it is suitable for my children. Now in my mind, the category “Children and Teens” is just too wide – there’s a big difference between a book that would be suitable for a three year old and a book that would be suitable for a thirteen year old, and it’s just not helpful at all to have all such books grouped together.

Browsing the iBookstore - any idea which of these are suitable for toddlers?

In Amazon UK’s Kindle store there are at least some subcategories of their “Children’s Books” section, but they’re really not very useful in helping me find what I want:

So where do I find toddler books?

In attempting to find suitable eBooks for my children I came across the @KindleKids Twitter account, where new and noteable kids books on Kindle are announced. It’s US-based, and some books they mention may not be available in the UK, but they are very helpful people. I asked them if they knew any suitable books for young children, and they sent me a link to the Amazon.com US Kindle store, which has some more useful subcategories for their Kindle books catelogue. Specifically in their “Children’s Book” section is exactly what I was looking for – a “Baby – 3” category! I was very disappointed to discover that there are only 11 books in this section, and a very limited selection indeed. Nothing that really fitted what I was looking for for my kids. And as my Kindle account is registered as a UK account I can’t buy from Amazon.com. So I end up in the silly situation where I have to browse for books on Amazon.com, and then switch over to Amazon.co.uk to search for the specific book I’ve found, and then find out if it’s available in the UK or not.

Amazon.com - getting closer, but not many to choose from

I have noticed on Amazon.co.uk that there is a link on each book’s product page that says “Tell the publisher: I’d like to read this book on Kindle”, which I’ve been clicking on every time I’m looking at a book that my kids love. I don’t know if the publishers take any notice of this at all, but it feels like the only thing I can do to communicate that I want to use the eBook format more, but can’t find the books that I want.

In the meantime, I’m continuing to watch out for suitable eBooks for my kids, and will of course report here on my progress. I am aware that there are many “single book” applications, and in fact we possess several of these which I shall review separately, but I’m specifically trying to find a collection of stories that the geekdaddy and I can read to our kids ourselves.

I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments – have you found any great eBooks for your kids?

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You meet other geek mums in the strangest places

by on September 8, 2010

Yesterday we went to the doctor’s clinic, as the geekson had been recalled for a weight check. It’s a long story, but we were a bit later getting him to his 6 week check (he was 10 weeks), and when he was weighed, he had dropped through the percentiles a bit (although he was still gaining weight). So they wanted to see us again a month later to check him over.

So yesterday’s 6-week check clinic was comprised of three other mums with their 6-week olds, and my 14-week-old who completely dwarfed them all! We all sat in the waiting area, and one by one the other mums were called in to see the doctor, until there was just us and one other mum left.

At which point she leaned towards me, and rather shyly said “I like your husband’s T-shirt”.

I had to glance over to see what the geekdaddy had chosen to wear this particular day, and was surprised to see it was his “Alliance Crest” T-shirt from Jinx. Something only other World of Warcraft players would recognise.

I rather shyly replied “So, you recognise it then?”, and she nodded. So of course my next question was “Are you Horde or Alliance?”. At which point she was pleased to learn that I played too. She told me she was Horde (Boo! Hiss!), and we had a nice chat about the game and how hard it was to find time to play with little ones in tow.

I found it refreshing, as in all my social encounters with other local Mums and babies, I’ve never found another geek Mum. But then I tend to shy away from wearing any of my T-shirts which would identify me as a WoW player in these circumstances. Perhaps I’ll take a leaf out of the geekdaddy’s book, and wear one of my WoW shirts next time I go!

The geekdaddy and I have a great collection of WoW shirts from Jinx. I love Jinx shirts, and if you buy any after clicking through my links I will receive a small Jinx store credit to buy more geeky clothes for my kids. You will not be charged any more for your purchase.

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CBeebies iPlayer for the kids

by on September 6, 2010

The geekdaughter, like all the other toddlers I know, loves CBeebies. I love CBeebies too – I haven’t yet found a show on that channel which I wouldn’t want her to watch. Excellent quality programmes, entertaining and educational.

The entire geek family watching television

The challenge of course is balancing the official advice that toddlers should not watch too much television with the geekdaughter’s desires (given the choice I think she’d watch television all day). We try to monitor and ration her television watching, and one of the ways that we do that is to only allow her to watch shows that we have pre-recorded. She never watches “live” shows, and that way there is a defined “end” to the activity, plus we can ensure that she’s only watching stuff that we approve of. I’m sure I’ll talk more in future posts about our geeky home television setup, but for now suffice it to say that we have a good library of Peppa Pig, Charlie & Lola and similar shows for the geekdaughter.

Sometimes she talks about something that she’s heard about at nursery, or we hear about a new show and want to check it out, and for that we use the BBC’s iPlayer. This is a website accessable from computer or selected other devices (PS3, Wii, smartphone etc) where the BBC make available recent television shows from all their channels for streaming. Apologies to my non-UK readers – this service is only available in the UK.

I only discovered recently that the BBC provide a CBeebies-specific version of iPlayer. You can find it at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/cbeebies. It’s easy to navigate, and much easier to find shows suitable for the kids, as the only content available are things that is shown on CBeebies. You can of course still get at the same shows through the standard iPlayer site, but as the geekdaughter is generally sitting next to me watching what I’m doing, I like knowing that with the CBeebies iPlayer the shows highlighted on the home page are all things I would let her watch. Well, except for In the Night Garden (that may be a subject for another post!).

Another nice feature of the CBeebies iPlayer is that it will remember where you got to in the last three shows that you watched, so you can pause viewing, and pick up where you left off later. Shows are removed after a period of time, so don’t wait to long to finish watching something or it may not be there any more!

It’s a really useful service, the geekdaughter loves it, and I love that the BBC is embracing new technology like this.

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Blog Recommendation – Mila’s Daydreams

September 3, 2010

I found Mila’s Daydreams through the Bambino Goodies blog, and I immediately fell in love with it. Mila’s Mum (Adele) has developed a unique maternity leave project, and that is to try to imagine what her baby girl might be dreaming about when she sleeps, and then to build the scene out of everyday household [...]

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How I keep my daughter in bed for longer

September 2, 2010

A couple of months before the geekson was born, we moved the geekdaughter out of the nursery and into her own “big girl” bedroom, complete with “big girl” bed. She coped with the change really well, and loved (still does) her new room. Up until this point she had been happy to stay in her [...]

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Why I love my video baby monitor

September 1, 2010

When my sister-in-law got a video baby monitor for her firstborn, my first reaction was that she was taking paranoid parenting to a completely new level. Was it really necessary to be able to spy on him sleeping all the time? Well, then the geekdaughter arrived, and brought with her a new understanding for me [...]

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