Top 10 Educational Apps for Toddlers and Pre-schoolers

1. iPlay&Sing

 Category: Learning Music
 User Ratings : 4 stars out of 5
 iPhone App, Free
 Developer: Penrillian

Description: App uses an onscreen piano with keys highlighted in sequence for the child to tap out familiar nursery tunes. It is kind of like a really slow-paced Guitar Hero, with a piano, and no scoring.


2. Baa Baa
 Category: Learning about Shapes, Colours and Words
 User Ratings: 4 stars out of 5
 iPhone App, $1.99
 Developer: Duck Duck Moose

Description: Child can drag and drop various shapes into their matching slots. Most of us probably have come across these shape toys, usually made out of wood. Now we don’t have to find them strewn everywhere with this app.


3. SingSing ABC
 Category: Animated Flash Cards
 User Ratings: 3 stars out of 5
 iPhone App, $0.99
 Developer: Ninewheels Co Ltd

This category of apps is the ‘low hanging fruit’ of educational apps for toddlers. Relatively easy to develop because the concept is straightforward – take the traditional flash card-based learning system, add in snazzy graphics (sometimes animated but not in this app), put up on the appstore, repeat.
Again, another useful app that will save parents time and effort from picking up cards strewn all over the floor.


4. Word Magic
 Category: Learning 1st Words
 User Ratings: 4 stars out of 5
 Universal App, $0.99
 Developer: Anusen Inc

Description: This is Hangman for toddlers with only 1 or 2 missing alphabets. And since it is for toddlers, you get the picture clue as well. Toddlers are really excited about this one.

5. Bob Books Reading Magic #2, Bob Books Reading Magic #2 HD
 Category: Learning 1st Words
 User Ratings: 4 stars out of 5
 iPhone, $1.99; iPad, $3.99.
 Developer: Closure Associates

Description: This is tougher than Word Magic. The kid will have to assemble whole words from the jumbled-up alphabets. Parents will be pretty excited when their kids unexpectedly complete their first difficult word, words like 'iphone'.


6. Shape Builder
 Category: Learning about Shapes
 User Ratings: 4 stars out of 5
 iPhone, $0.99.
 Developer: Darren Murtha Design

Description: Drag and drop shapes into matching slots. This is one of the early educational apps that have been in the appstore since 2009. Probably one of the first apps that kids would be interested in.


7. I Write Words
 Category: Tracing Alphabets
 User Ratings: 4 stars out of 5
 Universal App, $2.99.
 Developer: gdiplus

Description: Tracing alphabets and numbers onscreen is another concept that is tailor-made for iPhones and iPads. Also available in Spanish and French.


8. Teach Me 1st Grade or Teach Me Kindergarten or Teach Me Toddler
 Category: Learning about Addition, Subtraction and Spelling.
 User Ratings: 4 stars out of 5
 Universal App, $0.99.
 Developer: 24x7 DigitalLLC

Description: This app allows several kids to create their own accounts within the same app so that they can complete the lessons at their own pace. It is in the Question-Answer learning format and covers Addition, Subtraction and Spelling. For older preschoolers who can read.


9. Fish School
 Category: Animated Flash Cards for Alphabet, Numbers, Shapes and Colours.
 User Ratings: 3.5 stars out of 5
 iPhone or iPad, $1.99
 Developer: Duck Duck Moose

Description: Schools of fish swim in tight formations that look like Alphabets, Numbers, Shapes. Sometimes all of them have the same colour. You get the idea.


10. 123 Kids Fun Games
 Category: Animated Flash Cards for Alphabet, Sounds, Numbers, Animals.
 User Ratings: 3 stars out of 5
 Universal App, $2.99.
 Developer: RosMedia

Description: Another app that uses animated flash cards for learning. Probably needs a better app name rather than one that is made for search engines.

Angry Sperms: For play and not an Angry Birds clone

There must be an Appstore 101 rule somewhere that says: Thou shall not name your apps to resemble a highly successful app, because it will be highly suspect. In the case of Angry Sperms, the tongue in cheek reference to Angry Birds is therefore quite unfortunate, because I actually think that the game play is rather innovative and cute, and the app quality is not bad. At $0.99 without a free lite version, most people would be hard-pressed to justify downloading this game, thinking that it would turn out to be a lemon. So let me tell you more about Angry Sperms.



Imagine if you are an Ovum (from the latin word for ‘egg’). Now imagine billions of sperm swimming towards you, trying to penetrate your outer shell in order to fertilise the ovum (aka You). Then imagine that you (as the Ovum) are able to dodge incoming sperm by tilting your iPhone or iPod Touch (and in turn moving the Ovum). If you happen to have any sperm latching onto you, you can get rid of them quickly by shaking your iPhone or iPod Touch. The game ends if you do not shake off the sperms in time!



Now that you know how the gameplay is like, can you think of a better app name for Angry Sperms? How about Dodgy Egg?

(Warning: you must be above 17 to download this app!)

The developer of Angry Sperms is based in Seoul, Korea. They seem to be a pretty new set-up, not having had many other apps in the market yet. Their facebook and twitter presence is also very new (Facebook page over here).

The only other game that Sidemaster has developed is Galaxy X, another very unoriginal sounding app name (think "Samsung Galaxy __" )

Gameloft announces surprise sale starting from Feb 24th: 30 apps for $0.99 each.

Gameloft has just blogged about their surprise app sales (grab them while you can!) starting yesterday (Feb 24th). Their blog post is over here.



Now, Gameloft has always produced high quality games and there’s a little rivalry going on between them and EA so this announcement is to be expected given that EA recently had a sale.

The list of Gameloft offers on sale for the iphone is pretty cool and I am sure there is something for everyone. Again, it is for ‘a limited period only’. There’s also quite a few apps for the Ipad that you might want to pick up. My top picks would be: Real Football 2011 (that’s soccer), Star Battalion, NOVA, NOVA 2 HD, Dungeon Hunter HD.

I’ll end this post here so that you can go over to the Itunes store now..:)

iDos Emulator gets pulled a second time from the Appstore

I’ve had wonderful memories when as a kid, I spent several blissful years with my IBM PC XT clone experimenting with Dos programming and played cutting edge games like Ultima IV , Wizardry, Autoduel and Star Control.


(screenshot of Ultima IV taken from abandonia.com)

The iDOS emulator ported by Fast Intelligence was able to deliver an unmatched wave of nostalgia and within a day of installing iDOS on my Ipad, I was trying out some of these classics again – mostly just to see them again in all their glory - 256 VGA colour and adlib sound. There wasn’t even a need to jailbreak to get the programs to work.



iDOS 2.0.1 re-appeared on the Appstore as a free app after first appearing on 26th Oct as iDOS 1 (price $0.99) which got pulled within a day for not meeting App policy requirements. Sad to say, history repeated itself and iDOS 2.0.1 disappeared just as quickly.

To the amazing folks at Fast Intelligence, I just have this to say:

Thank you for creating this emulator. It shall be on my Ipad for a very long time.

To those who decided to pull it:

We are a small and endangered breed, those of us who were fortunate to see the birth of the gaming industry through Dos. You were never there and if you were, you never understood.

Email Interview with JVL MOBI, developer of game app Balloonia

(This article was also posted at my blog post with iphonelife.com here)

My kids have tried this pipe strategy game Balloonia from Canadian game developer JVL MOBI and liked it. Pipe strategy games have a long pedigree in hand-helds and Balloonia is among the first to have ported it nicely to the Iphone/Ipod platform. I had never heard of JVL MOBI before, and recalling a similar pipe strategy game on the Palm V (which kept me company for several years in the 90s), I was spurred to write their spokesperson Brian Williams with a request for an email interview.

(Note: For those of you who are not familiar with pipe strategy games, it is a casual but addictive puzzle genre that usually involves re-arranging a series of unaligned pipes to form a complete connection in a race-against-the-clock format .)

INTERVIEW WITH BRIAN WILLIAMS, JVL MOBI

Tell us about JVL Mobi.
JVL Corporation was founded more than 25 years ago. What began as a small, coin-operated machine repair service quickly grew into a fully integrated engineering company – conceptualizing, developing, and manufacturing a wide range of multi-media consumer products (amusement, music, gaming, and most recently, mobile applications). We created JVL Mobi in 2008 in order to enter the game app market and have thus far achieved upwards of 3 million downloads on Apple’s iTunes store.

Where are you based?
JVL MOBI is based out Toronto, Canada.

How long has your team/company established itself and how did it happen?
JVL MOBI is now 3 years old. However, JVL Amusement has been developing and publishing games for years. With 150 titles and counting, we have among the largest inventory of casual games out there, many of which have been rendered in HD. So, it was a logical next step to begin converting our games for use on a portable device. We have released 11 games to date, and will continue to port our other titles to mobile platforms.

Can you tell my readers how your game/app was inspired? Given that there has been a long history of pipe strategy games going back all the way to the Palm OS, how did you set about to differentiate your app?
We’re all big fans of strategy games, here at JVL MOBI, and needless to say “pipe-type” strategy games. When discussions commenced about creating our version of such a game, our design team took creative license and envisioned a Salvador Dali-like world where a mad scientist ruled all; his environment ordained by imagination to no limit. It is in his whimsical production factory, that he plays conductor, orchestrating and controlling the manufacturing of each element of pipe. With a few key flicks of the organe de couleur, he guides the multi-colored tubes through their many twists and turns, creating perfectly linked pipelines to the hot air balloons of tranquility.

How long did it take to plan, develop and program the game/app?
We put in a lot of effort in the conceptualization and development of all of our games, and although our turn-around time is impressive – our designers will always make the necessary effort to incorporate unique, interesting nuances to make JVL games fun, and keep players engaged. We feel players want games that are enjoyable to play, will keep them interested over time, and are both nice to look at and listen to. We strive to provide that in each of our offerings. So, it is never a rushed process, and like fine wine, the more time invested in refinement, the better the wine in the glass.

What other apps and projects has your team/company undertaken recently? What are your plans for your next app? Are there any interesting news that we can watch out for in the next 6 months?
We will continue to adapt games that have seen success in countertop amusement play to a variety of hand-held gaming platforms. Our hugely popular “What’s The Difference?” app will soon grow to offer players the same, great game-play experience, but with additional versions, and new, exciting themes to be enjoyed alone, or among friends and family. Recently we have also launched a new social media marketing strategy and in-app advertising campaign with the intent of positioning JVL MOBI as a top game app producer and to help build a community of loyal gamers.

Aftermath of Skype-Fring Split: Comparison of Int’l Calling Rates to Mobile lines

(Blogpost also appeared on my Blog for Iphonelife.com)

In the aftermath of the Skype-Fring split in July last year, Skype has finally caught up with Fring’s smartphone video-call capability by introducing its own. Since Skype has a larger user-base given that it also has software for PC and Mac while Fring is only available for smartphones, Skype clearly has the upperhand now and will probably grow its market share at the expense of alternative VoIP providers like Google Voice and Fring, even though some skeptics may say that the video call feature isn't necessarily a key feature at this point in time. (Picture taken from article on connectedphone.com)

Skype has disclosed that it reached 560 million users in June 2010 with a revenue of $406.2 million in the first six months of 2010. Fring on the other hand, has a user base of an order of magnitude smaller, estimated to be in the tens of millions. However, there is clearly room for alternatives to Skype even without considering the importance of video calling to the mass market given that international call rates to mobile lines are still relatively pricey on Skype:



Note: This list was compiled on 5th Jan 2011 based on posted rates on the Skype and Fring sites which may change at short/without notice. Check out the latest Fring rates here and Skype rates here.

*Skype rates are based on the non-subscription Pay-as-you-go rates including VAT, and excludes any connection fee charges that are not listed.

Infinity Blade from Epic Games to debut at App Store on 9th Dec!

Remember Epic Citadel? That awesome game app that wasn’t really a game? If you recall sometime ago, Epic Citadel enjoyed a brief moment on various Top App lists several months ago when lots of curious folks downloaded this free demo of the Unreal 3 Engine for the Iphone/Ipad. It didn’t do anything much in terms of fun except let you wander around a medieval castle but the graphics were stunning and controls were intuitive.


(Screenshot courtesy of the makers, EpicGames)

So here comes Infinity Blade which will debut on Thursday 9th Dec at $5.99, promising game-changing visuals and *spoiler alert* a new way of sustaining re-playability by regenerating the player as ‘the son’ (like a multi-generational fruit-fly experiment with experience points) with all of your equipment intact if you, *and you will*, die before completing your quest. Official Trailer’s over here on Youtube.

The price tag is in a way justified if it’s as cool as promised and apparently it’s a universal app, or what I call: ‘D1P2’- download once, play it twice, on both your Ipad and Iphone.

Pigs beware! Angry Birds Xmas edition is here and Angry Birds Day is officially 11th Dec 2010

Rovio, the Finnish Developers of top iphone app, Angry Birds, have hinted in their twitter feeds that there will be an Angry Birds Christmas edition. Apparently it’s going to be a free update for those who purchased the Halloween edition but probably a round of $0.99 donations for the rest of us.

Not content to sit on their laurels, it also looks like Angry Birds is going to take on life outside the iphone in a big way (where it started). It’s already possible to purchase Angry Birds T-shirts and plush toys. Now what’s really amazing is that the 11th of December has been declared a world-wide Angry Birds Day (That’s a Saturday BTW). That means there’re going to be flash mobs comprising of Angry Bird fans gathering in most major cities (Android fans are invited too).

Apparently, there’re plans to release console versions of Angry Birds on the Xbox, PS3 and Wii as well. Imagine playing Angry Birds using the Xbox Kinect.....:)

Skyfire browser brings Flash Video to Iphone and Ipad

The Skyfire browser app has reportedly been approved by Apple and that's going to be a pretty exciting development for those of us who have had to forego watching videos from some of our favourite Flash-heavy sites like the Dailyshow, Colbert Report, Collegehumor etc.


Skyfire’s nifty work-around is to stream users’ browser requests for flash video from their servers, thus circumventing the Flash-hating iOS4. CNET has reported about how it is supposed to work: “When you get to a site that plays video, Skyfire will display the usual error message or symbol and then pop up a thumbnail with a "Play" button on it. That's what you press to launch the video playback.”

The downside is, Skyfire will only work for Flash Video. That means no Flash interactivity or Flash games (but who plays flash games nowadays anyway). And it doesn’t work with popular TV-streaming site Hulu cos they said no thanks. (But I’m not based in the US so that doesn’t bother me since Hulu isn’t offered outside the US anyway...)

Given the upside and downside, will we pay for this app at a launch price of $2.99? I predict that it will at least make Top 25. At the moment, Skyfire’s website, blog and facebook entries are all quiet about this momentous approval milestone and I can only guess that their PR guys are celebrating outside the office (guys you need to update your website!)

Cut The Rope: The Game App that will dominate 2010

In my Iphone Life blog entry, I mentioned how I was pretty shocked that no one has yet blogged about the latest game app Cut The Rope that has taken hold of my kids for the past few days and globally, has ‘sold 1 million apps in 10 days’. Or maybe folks are just too busy ‘cutting those ropes’ to care :)

I haven’t been very excited about iphone/ipad game apps in a while because I usually don’t care to pay more than $0.99 for a game (I bought Civ Rev, Air Attack and Angry Birds for $0.99) and many games involve far too much time and effort after the initial buzz(Kingdoms at War), or don’t seem to be going anywhere when you get the hang of it (lvl 33 in Godfinger All Stars, what next?).

However, little known Russian app developer, Zeptolab managed to come up with an arcade IQ test type of a puzzle that has hit the sweet spot of Iphone/Ipad gaming: attractive pricing ($0.99 iphone, $1.99 ipad), quick learning curve, simple premise (get the candy to the frog), and yet provide sufficient challenge through ingenuous and well-thought out levels. The graphics are well drawn, and every level is brilliantly designed. The game progressively involves more variety and challenge, but the objective always remains the same – acrobatic manoeuvres in order to get a piece of candy from start to finish.
There’s a little something for everyone in this game, since it is a little bit of an IQ test, but sometimes you need quick reflexes, but always never too difficult to deter anyone since you can always choose to progress to the next level without having to achieve maximum points. There’s a lite version that you can try but if you choose to buy, don’t tear your hair out when you realise that you will need to start all over from the beginning :)

Iphone Life blog

I received a pretty nifty email today from a representative of Iphone Life. They've agreed to try me out as one of their bloggers on their fantastic Iphone Life online magazine. I've been following news and reviews from their site for some time now and thought it could be useful for someone (c'est moi!) to offer an asian perspective on the eccentricities of owning an Iphone/Ipad in Singapore. It's made my day cos I think the whole point of blogging is to get your message out there and i think Iphone Life is going to be one of those platforms.

Check out my Iphone Life blog entries here.

Blogging with Blogbooster app for iphone

This is my first posting from my iphone. I was pretty lucky to download this blogbooster app when it was still free (now $2.99). It syncs well with my blog and has an easy interface. This app will definitely be going into my top 10 app list. Too bad it doesn't yet have an Ipad version but I'm guessing that the iphone version will work just as well - the iphone isn't really suitable for long blog postings given the small keyboard (I've made about 10 typos that I've had to correct so far and at this point, my fingers are seriously cramping...that's all for now...)

Update: My blogbooster app is not working...it's dropping out of my top app list pretty soon if noone fixes this app.

Update 2:I'm now using PenMyBlog for my postings cos it's free. For reasons why I don't want to pay for blogging apps, refer to my previous post below "When we hesitate to pay $0.99 for that killer app"...