We listened closely to the feedback from our first three applications — Shapes, Colors, and Letters, and made Numbers even better. Not only are children asked to identify numbers 0-20, but there are counting screens mixed in where children are asked to count colorful party hats, cupcakes, and more.

Head over to the app store to get them while they’re hot!

While we originally conceived of A Story Before Bed for grandparents and parents to read to their kids, there’s been a clamor for kids to use the service to read to their parents and grandparents. We’re excited for the site to be used in any way that brings families closer who can’t be together.

In addition to free recordings, we’ll be giving away coupons to put in the care package, so those deployed parents who can get access to a computer and webcam with internet access can record their own stories to send to their children here at home. Families will also be encouraged to sign up for our Military mailing list for regular free offers.

If you’re an eligible family, we look forward to seeing you there. If you know of an eligible family, please pass the word. And if you’re a family with a deployed parent in the U.S. Military who would like us to provide free stories for a similar event, please get in touch with us to arrange.

Saturday should be fun!

A few years ago, I tried videotaping my parents reading stories to my young kids. My parents live on the east coast and I wanted my west coast children to have bedtime stories from their grandparents, even when they were far away. The effort was cumbersome and the results were not great. For the last several months, we’ve been working on creating a website that makes this process dead simple and creates beautiful results.

Anyone with a webcam and a web browser can choose a book from our library of licensed and digitized high quality children’s books, record audio and video of themselves reading that book, and share it with a special child in their lives. We’ve worked closely with our three launch publishing partners – Immedium, Charlesbridge Publishing, and Bubblegum Books to create a launch library of over 50 books. Our growing library includes over a dozen classics such as The Emperor’s New Clothes, The Frog Princess, and The Itsy Bitsy Spider, as well as state-of-the art modern children’s books like the Octonauts series created by Meomi and the first several books in the Tales from the Chinese Zodiac series. We even have a small start at our Spanish children’s library with Insectos para el Almuerzo and ¡Qué Nervios! El Primer Dia de Escuela.

These visionary publishers recognized the potential for personalized digital versions of their content. This new marketplace will not only bring them additional revenue, but reinforce the existing market for physical copies of their books. No other genre of books lends itself to this type of digital personalization. We’re working with our existing publishing partners in addition to new high quality children’s book publishers to expand our library – rapidly.

With live 1-800 technical support (uncommon for websites these days), A Story Before Bed is for parents away on business, remote grandparents, split families, military parents stationed away from their children, and even parents just going out for the night. Ultimately, we believe that these recordings of parents and grandparents reading stories to children may become family heirlooms passed down from generation to generation – “let me show you my grandpa reading me a story when I was little.” Some early users have even used the site so children can show off their reading skills to grandma and grandpa.

Military parents can sign up for our special mailing list, which offers free and discounted recordings for men and women in the United States armed forces stationed away from their children. And everyone can follow us on Twitter for deals, sales, and new book announcements. We’re currently offering recordings at a special introductory price of $6.99 per recording.

We hope you enjoy A Story Before Bed. It’s the first of its kind and there’s nothing else like it on the web. We’d love to hear your feedback. We intend to make it even better over the coming months and years.

Hippo Hooray Colors, Shapes, and Letters are great ways to help young children learn their colors, shapes, and letters as well as keep them entertained. Colors, shapes, and letters appear in a variety of contexts on colorful backgrounds with rich imagery. A young voice encourages the child to choose the right colored object, shape or letter, helps them if they don’t pick right the first time, and pats them on the back when they choose correctly. Every so often a short video will pop up congratulating your child on doing a great job.

Amid beautiful illustrations, you’ll find Honey the Hippo and Raphael the Robin (yes, he paints!) peeking out from behind scenery, and coming out to encourage your child. (Keep an eye out for the monkey with the cupcake hat.) In addition to high quality artwork, the user interface is as simple as can be letting your toddler focus on cognitive, language, and motor development — not to mention fun.

Each of these new apps for the iPhone are available right now in the App Store for only $0.99. Search for Hippo Hooray, or click on one of the screenshots below and let us know what you think. Fun!

Also on the docket (though we can’t make it to this one) is LessConf by our good friends over at Less Everything. In keeping with their philosophy, the conference looks pretty simple and straightforward. LessConf is Saturday, October 17th in Jacksonville, Florida. I like how even the name of their event has less (actually fewer) characters. (I guess FewerConf wouldn’t be as catchy.)