iPhone4idiots » Kids

iPhone4idiots App Review – Lola’s Alphabet Train

hirtme — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 11:17:54 +0000

Lola’s Alphabet Train, BeiZ, Ltd. $1.99, is a great little app to try and get your pre-school or kindergartner spelling. The app claims to be designed for 3 to 8 year olds but I would say 3 to 6 is more like it. The game includes both capital and lower case letters and comes in four languages: English, French, Spanish and German. Both my 4 and 6 year olds seem to think they are playing a game as opposed to spelling. It’s actually gotten them to stop playing Chop Chop Ninja for the past few days! The game is quite simple. Lola, a cute Panda, needs help filling her train with presents to take to her friends. There are three levels (easy, medium and hard) and four different games to play. The easiest game is just identifying a letter out of a choice of three. My four year old can handle that by himself. One shows a picture and asks what it is offering up three words as choices. Another shows a picture of something (like a truck) with the letters scrambled as seen here above. You have to touch and drag each letter into the correct position to spell the word. These range from simple three letter words to harder words like penguin. The fourth game shows 7 pictures and asks which one starts with a certain letter. With each word you get correctly you earn coins that you then buy gifts with that you place on the train’s cars. I’m not sure how long this game is going to hold their interest (it’s only been 5 days so far). However, getting them off mindless games they prefer to play on the iPhone makes me feel like a slightly better dad – and its hard to put a price on that

iPhone4idiots App Review – The Lorax – Dr. Seuss

hirtme — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 17:19:19 +0000

Another quality children’s storybook, The Lorax – Dr. Seuss Oceanhouse Media $3.99, that definitely gives you your money’s worth. The app is available for iPhone, iTouch or iPad. I just sat down with my boys before nap and chose “read to me” mode. The only issues – I was falling asleep and forgetting to swipe to turn the page before the 25 minute story was over. Now that’s not because the story was boring, but because it was so long and the kiddos wear me out! I would have just given them my iPhone, but they want me to “read” it with them. For those that don’t remember, The Lorax is a tale of industry versus environment. The Lorax, a short furry creature, tries to save the Truffula trees in the forest, but the factory owner ignores his pleas and cuts down every last tree. As you can see in the picture here on the right, the birds are flying away due to the smog and deforestation. Below all the humming fish are leaving the pond due to the pollution. There is a glimmer of hope at the end, however, as there is one seed left. Oceanhouse Media does a fantastic job with children’s storybooks. The Lorax includes all three modes you’ve come to expect: “Read to Me”, “Read it Myself” and “Auto Play”. Many pictures on each page are touchable and the words zoom up in bright letters and are spoken when pressed. The narration and pictures are beautifully done and the length is as long as you are going to find in kid’s storybooks. So if you are looking for another children’s storybook for you iPhone, iTouch or iPad, you should consider giving this one a try.

iPhone4idiots App Review – Dr. Suess Storybooks for Children

hirtme — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 02:58:33 +0000

Oceanhouse Media lowered the price of its six Dr. Seuss storybooks to $0.99 this week to celebrate what would have been the author and illustrator’s 106th birthday. I have to say “Bravo!” These are the best storybooks I have found on the iPhone! Much longer, with more pages and touchable pictures too. While not an authority on the subject, I’ve read more children’s storybooks on the iPhone than most people. I found Little Red Riding Hood and The Boy Who Cried Wolf to be enjoyable for both my kids and daddy. However, after having read both The Cat in the Hat and Dr. Suess ABC, Oceanhouse Media blows these others away. Like all children’s storybooks for the iPhone you have the option of reading the books or having them read to you. These Dr. Suess storybooks are significantly longer. Both have over 25 pages and many of the pages have multiple paragraphs. One effect used that I haven’t seen elsewhere is a “zoom-in”. On many pages when you first turn it the focus is on a certain section of the page. For example, in the picture just below on the right, the book might focus on the bottom right section when you first turn. Thus, you only see the owl at first. However, when you swipe to turn to the next page it zooms out revealing more text and the rest of the picture. This combined with the many pages makes these some of the longest children’s storybooks I’ve come across for your iPhone or iTouch. I spent over 25 minutes with the 5 year old having ABC read to us. The illustrations are excellent of course as you can see in the pictures in this post. What’s also great is that images in the pictures can be tapped and the word will be said. See the picture of the cat above to the left. I had just tapped the ball and red fan and the words are spoken and appear briefly on the screen. This is great for the kids. I had to hold my iPhone out of the reach of my 5 and 3 year olds to goto the next page as they wouldn’t stop tapping the first time we read Cat in the Hat. In Dr. Suess ABC most of the taped worlds are followed by a sound effect as well. So far I’ve had both books read to my and my kids twice. Generally, I’m the one swiping to get to the next page and move the process along as they are enjoying tapping the pictures. So if you are a fan of iPhone or iTouch storybooks for your children, go grab some of these Dr. Suess apps while the sale lasts!

iPhone Storybook – Little Red Riding Hood

hirtme — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:17:22 +0000

ManualiPc just released another fairy tale storybook for the iPhone. They were nice enough to give me a promo code so I eagerly checked it out. Little Red Riding Hood, $0.99, is very similar to The Boy Who Cried Wolf which I reviewed a few weeks ago. The illustrations which according to the app store were made by a “contemporary cartoonist” are nice and caught the eye of both my 3 and 5 year olds. On the downside, I wouldn’t mind a few more pictures as there are only six. Nonetheless, overall this is one of the better storybooks I’ve found for the iPhone as it has an interactive drag feature for the illustrations that I haven’t seen in other apps. When you open the app you are taken to a screen with three options. Start Story, Options and Credits. Options include volume of story, volume of background noise in story and different ways to transition from one page to another. Personally, I like turning the background noise up to hear the chirping birds. Covering about the bottom quarter of each page is the text which you swipe to get to the additional text for each page. To get the narrator to read you press the sound icon in the upper right corner of each page. It would be nice to have an option to play the new text each time you swipe, but I believe the developers were wanting to encourage the kiddos to get used to swiping and tapping. They may do this a lot as one of the nicest features of the app is that most of the images on each page can be pressed and dragged. I hadn’t seen this with other storybooks and its a great feature. The story is the one everyone knows with illustrations of the wolf, Grandma and even the hunter. I like the image of Grandma tied up on the floor as you can see here on the left. Not sure what this says about me but I laughed out loud the first time I saw it. Overall this is a high quality storybook. Much better than most of the free ones you will find.

iPhone Storybook – The Boy Who Cried Wolf

hirtme — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:12:43 +0000

OK, all you parents out there. Ever feel guilty that all your kids do is watch TV on your iPhone or iPod? Yeah, me too. That’s why I encourage them to play matching games or animal sound games like Animal Farm. But when that runs out where do you turn. Well, for I’d say 2 to 5 year olds storybooks are another great option and Stepwork’s The Boy Who Cried Wolf, $0.99, is very impressive. When you open the app you are taken to the screen at the top left. You can have the story read to you or try and read it yourself. Select your language (English, Spanish or Cantonese) and off you go. I just hit read to me and hand my iPhone to my three year old. The story rings when its time to turn the page which is as simple as touching the arrow on the bottom right. A three year old has no problems turning the pages and having the recorded childs voice read the entire story to him/her. The pictures are cute and have a little bit of movement in them. My only problem with this app is I haven’t easily found another ten classic stories to add for a little variety. Stepworks also has the Little Red Hen and another storybook should be out soon. I’ve also come across Five Little Monkeys, Bumblebee Touchbook and The Bird and the Snail but that’s about it. All of these are a little different and IMO not quite as good as The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Disney – where are you???

For fun I just filmed the video below where my 3 year old starts the story, but decides he wants Animal Farm instead this time. He really was liking the wolf in the story the past three nights.

iPhone Restrictions – No Solution for Parenting

hirtme — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:01:41 +0000

My guess is most you, even the ones with kids, don’t know about the iPhones Restrictions settings. Believe it or not, they are there. I mean who doesn’t share their iPhone with their children – like when they are driving you nuts in the backseat of the car who doesn’t pass the iPhone back to shut them up. Well I guess you might not want them to turn on Bruno or some other movie you might have on the device. This is where this setting could come in handy but there is a better solution!! Settings – General – Restrictions gets you to the screen seen here on the left. The first time you select this setting you setup a passcode which you’ll need to remember. As you can see you can prevent your kiddos from using Safari, YouTube, iTunes, Installing Apps, using the Camera or Location. It’s good in theory. When you disable any on the apps shown their icon disappears. Good if you don’t want them seeing something R or X rated on YouTube, but bad if you want them to watch Scooby Doo on YouTube.

Honestly, I was surprised that the Movie and TV filters seemed to work so well. You can see my settings here on the right at TV-PG level. With this setting when I went to watch Breaking Bad or Sons of Anarchy the audio comes through, but the video is scrammbled. If you want to hide the ears from Cris Rock type profanity you are out of luck, but the video is hidden. I would show you the picture, but when I took a screenshot the scrambled lines go away for a split second and the picture is clear? Not sure why but no big deal. The bottom line is you can easily keep your child from seeing all those naughty movies and shows you have stored on your iPhone. The audio is likely muted as well just my jailbroken iPhone with dropped in mp4 files is messing some filter up. Apparently apps have a similar rating system as seen here on the left. I didn’t even know this existed. With the setting at 4+ I still could use all my apps including Dexter and Baberoo. Again, I’ll assume this is because my iPhone is jailbroken. Even assuming this works the way its supposed to – it can drive a Toddler nuts as it disables too many apps. Its even worse for teens because they would know all they have to do is restore the iPhone with any computer (at home or friends house) and the Restrictions are gone. Backup all your apps before you restore and the iPhone looks the exact same. The only way you’d be able to tell is by going to Restrictions and seeing that your passcode failed. So what do you do. Well there’s a better option for those under 10 called Mobicip. BUT the best iPhone restriction is good parenting. Then hopefully you trust your kid or teenager. When it comes to the iPhone most are smarter than you anyway.

Restrictions

Why Jailbreak? WinterBoard Themes – To Poof or Not?

hirtme — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:41:15 +0000

When I first jailbroke my iPhone well over a year ago every must have Cydia app list included WinterBoard. Until recently, however, I’ve never really used it. As most of you know, WinterBoard enables you to customize the look of your jailbroken iPhone in many ways. In this post I will show you the five themes I’ve had on my iPhone most recently and ask the key question – To Poof or Not to Poof? At this point there are thousands of themes you can download for your iPhone. Some are very basic and essentially just change the background or wallpaper of your iPhone or iPod. Others do this, plus add customized icons and sliders to give your theme an even more artistic look. And still others, do all this plus add customized sounds to your iPhone (for when you lock, unlock, get voicemail, etc.) and customized looks for certain icons like your phone. The first theme I’ve had on my iPhone recently is Leopard OS X Theme seen above (xSellize Source in Cydia). I really like this theme. The custom icons for the phone (picture of iPhone) and Installous (jolly roger flag) are two of my favorite. The entire theme just looks pretty and cleaner than most. The only downside is that I personally don’t like the look of the customized phone keyboard. Just looks weird to me, but I’m sure there is a way to use the default keyboard if I really wanted to. The simple lockscreen, however, looks nice and the iPhone says “locked” and “unlocked” when you turn it on and off. The second theme I’ve recently had on my iPhone is the Tennessee Titans theme – the lockscreen of which is seen here on the right (ModMyi Source in Cydia). As you can see it clearly shows what team I support. There pretty much is a theme for your favorite sports team whether college or pro. I like the way most of the icons are the flaming helmet logo as opposed to squares (see pic below after article). Some of the icons are still squares as there are so many apps that its impossible for any theme to have customized icons for every app out there. Given the pathetic 0-4 start, I no longer use this theme for the moment. A third theme I’ve used recently is A Nature Theme (ModMyi source in Cydia). This one is simple as well, but the background wallpaper image is really nice. The icons are also dimmed down a bit. Check out the images in the photos below the article. Speaking of the beauty of nature leads me to my favorite theme of the moment (dope theme from xSellize). This theme is too funny. When you use the slider on the customized lock screen you hear the bubbling water of a bong. There are a half dozen or more pictures that rotate as the background all of which show the beauty of this flower. You can see the quality of the screen in the picture here on the left. When you get a new voicemail or text message a song lyric will play which is again devoted to the dope theme. For a voicemail I get, “I want to get blunted my brother.” Of course, this one probably isn’t for the office unless you work at a really laid back place. The last theme I’m going to mention in this post is Kids theme (ZodTTD & MacCiti). Seen just below here on the right, this one has some of the best icons around. Check out the Photos, Settings, Camera, Clock, App Store and Mail icons. All very nice. My 5 year old loves the Thomas the Trian slider on the lock screen (see pics below). When you slide it you hear a voice say “Hi Daddy”. My guess is it wouldn’t be too hard to insert your own audio file there, but I hear my kids voices enough already. The phone keyboard also has a clean artistic customized look I would describe as crayon (again see pics at bottom of article). So as you can see there are lots of ways to give your iPhone or iPod a new look and feel. It’s so simple to switch themes, just open Winterboard to select new theme and respring, that I now change themes almost daily.

So since I change themes so often and am paying attention to the way my screen looks, I want to know how many people use Poof? Poof lets you hide your icons. Yes, you can dim them in Winterboard, but I like them gone. Some of the themes backgrounds are so nice that I want to see it without icons. This is exactly what Poof does. Hide your icons so you can see your wallpaper. As I mentioned even your best themes can’t have customized icons for every app. So generally, I like to hide most of my icons and appreciate the wallpaper. I think I’m way in the minority on this however. It’s simple to do though, just open BossPrefs – Poof and toggle them on and off. So let me know what themes you like and do you Poof away your icons???

Phone keypad for Kids Theme
Kids theme lockscreen – They all love Thomas!
Nature Theme
Snow Leopard Lockscreen
Titans Theme with flaming icons

New TV shows & Movies – all mp4

admin — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 18:10:09 +0000

New mp4 movies for your iPod, iPhone or iTouch were only 4 this week as a lot was added to TV Section and we did some jailbreakin videos too. I will categorize the TV show section soon – I promise. Just My Luck for queen101, Medea Goes to Jail (Tyler Perry) for metalgearx (Thelma you like this one?), Next Day Air for 62GAY3BK (what kind of a username is that?) and White Chicks for tt1903. Let me know if you like them. New TV Shows were Deadliest Warrior for owenbas (like the show names on this one), 10 Things I Hate About You for queen101 (give Dexter or Weeds a try?), Warehouse 13 for AbhiSingh and lots of Scooby Doo Where Are You for cw75158. Thanks for making the point about lack of kid friendly TV. I swear I’ve seen all 25 episodes and most many, many times. A Tiki Scare is No Fair is classic! I will get to building out the Kids section more at some point. Please comment on any of our videos from the previous week. Contest coming within a week

Don’t forget we also have all the good HBO and Showtime up in good quality for those wanting to see keep up with True Blood, Weeds, Entourage and Hung (final episode is this Sunday I believe). Almost all files are mp4 for your convenience.