French Women Don’t Get Fat, The Okinawa Diet, The China Study, Dr. Atkin’s New Diet Revolution, and The Best Life Diet are but a few of the the most notable diet books from the last decade, each one acclaimed in its own right, each one later lambasted, and each heavily featured on various bestseller lists. Anyone can argue that one such diet will make you lose weight rapidly, but that another is better for your heart, that this other diet will give you the clearest complexion, but no one can truly say that one diet is better, overall, than another – or, at least, not any one of the modernized diets we see lining our bookshelves today. Many physicians today agree that some generalized form of a Mediterranean diet is the healthiest one to subsist on, if we define healthy in terms of a localized population with a low incidence of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and a host of other modern conditions. The principal aspects of this diet include a high consumption of olive oil, legumes, grains, fruits, and vegetables; a moderate consumption of dairy products (mostly as cheese and yogurt), wine and fish; and a low consumption of meat and meat products. Of course, dietary jargon like moderate consumption often fall on deaf ears – how do we define moderate? Everything, after all, both diet and people, is relative to one’s own health and experience. Dietary factors, really, are only part of the reason for the health benefits enjoyed by these cultures – genetics, lifestyle (notably heavy physical labor), and environment are also involved. The putative benefits of the Mediterranean diet for cardiovascular health are primarily correlative in nature: while they reflect a very real disparity in the geographic incidence of heart disease, identifying the causal determinant of this disparity has proven difficult. Here is where my dad would pump a fist in the air and exclaim, with all the enthusiasm of a closet theorist, the correlation between cholesterol, cardiovascular disease, and Vitamin D.

One diet book bestseller that has been captivating people around the country doesn’t so much advocate a diet, in the traditional sense, as it advocates a simple substitution method when eating out. Their motto? Eat This, Not That! Rather than require readers to plow through literature on why certain foods are better than others, or vaguely telling readers to eat only moderate amounts of something, Eat This Not That instead takes a visual approach, inundating readers with pictures of food commonly eaten at fast food establishments, or during holidays, common snacks, breakfasts and more. The idea of the book, and its recently released app by Men’s Health Magazine, is to familiarize people with the concept of which foods are healthier – mind you, on a modest scale – than others of seemingly equal caloric value. If anything, the idea is pared down to the simple, but everlastingly true dogma of “calories in, calories out” – if you eat less, you will weigh less. Obviously, this isn’t a diet book that focuses on health, per se; if it were, then it wouldn’t advocate eating at fast food establishments. The meal substitution principle is a good one, though, because many people do dine at these establishment on a frequent basis, and if you can’t deter them from eating there, you may as well steer them toward the better choices.

The Eat This Not That app takes the visual principle a step further by plugging it into a game – a transportable one, at that. I’ve often lamented at how little people read, but the fact of the matter is people are highly visual creatures – when it comes to diet books, or recognizing portions and alternate food options, images are key. There won’t always be nutritional information available for everything you eat, and even with the caloric information now required by law for many places, there’s still no solid verification that people will always be interested, or patient enough to read this information and make better choices. With the Eat This Not That game, users will slowly become adept at recognizing which foods offer them the best bang for their health; they’ll learn, along the way, that mashed potatoes, while heavy in their own right with cream and butter, still make a more well-rounded choice than a slice of sweet potato pie. A shortbread cookie, while smaller in size, and seemingly innocuous and unassuming, has nearly three times the saturated fat of a chocolate raspberry brownie, which clocks in a modest 5 grams with 370 calories. The game presents you with two images, and you must decide, based on appearances alone, which is the better choice based on potential levels of saturated fat, sodium, and calories. As the clock ticks down, nutritional info starts popping up, to help you make a more informed choice, but you’re only docked points if you play in the speed round.

Yikes, the calories.

Many of the foods contained within this game are establishment-specific, like a Wendy’s Frosty or a Double Whopper with Cheese and Fries from Burger King. The game is particularly exceptional in this regard, for sorting out the caloric, sodium, and saturated fat values for these foods because I, personally, find it very difficult to weigh my options at these places. A burger is a burger, to me, so how do I know which one actually has four times the amount of already catastrophic sodium… and why? It never ceases to amaze me the disparity in calories and fat between two, seemingly identical entrees. Other foods featured in the game, however, are a bit more vague in origin, labeled simply as “slice of pumpkin pie” or a “blueberry cheesecake.” A blueberry cheesecake from Lindy’s in New York may very well be a heart attack on a plate, but not all cheesecakes are made in the same ilk. Portion sizes, too, remain vague in the slice arena. A quarter of a pie slice of pumpkin pie could very well rival a small slice of cheesecake; of course, this is making the argument against standard pie slice sizes, which frankly, I’m sure most people are unaware. Some choices make me scratch my head, it being completely obvious to anyone which is the healthier choice, but then I have to remember the general state of the nation: we’re obese, on a cattle scale, and most people probably will choose that deep-fried crab cake with 19 grams of fat and 300 calories over the 12 shrimp cocktail with sauce, averaging around 165 calories and zero fat. Sometimes, you just want that turducken.

Regardless of personal choices, Eat This Not That is a host of information on things we really don’t want to know about. The true success of this game, and book, lies in the scare tactic when users realize, with horror, that a salad from Wendy’s, with all its innocent iceburg lettuce, can range up to 700 calories, making a burger the unforeseen better choice. It may not be a revolutionary diet plan, and it may not be the most accurate in its representation, but it does fascinate you (albeit in a somewhat horrific and masochistic way) into making wiser decisions… and for a nation that scares itself silly over trite, inconsequential things, that isn’t a bad thing at all.

Nerdiness aside, this is what IPMG Publishing hopes to accomplish with Tic Tac Math. They take the basics of elementary mathematics – addition, subtraction, multiplication, division – and plug them into the setting of a tic-tac-toe game. The idea is to instill a sense of fun and playfulness in a subject that otherwise fails to incite passion in those young minds learning it. Math can be tricky – for many, its rules and regulations prove to be too constricting for a youthful life otherwise unbounded, free and unfettered. I think in this country, especially, children become disinterested in math from an early age, and end up hampering any future interest in the subject; whether this a product of California’s educational system and its teachers, I do not know, but I do know that when my family moved from the east coast to California, I was mathematically light years ahead of my peers (junior high). Of course, that only lasted as long as my interest.

The game has a nice design and interface, and there’s the option to play either solo or two-player, so you may engage in a game with a friend. For one-player, there are three levels of difficulty – easy, advanced, expert – and you must select one before commencing the game. For subtraction, say, easy mode would only involve single digits. Take it up a notch to advanced difficulty and you’ll start seeing double digits. Continue this way and you’ll see triple digit subtraction problems in expert mode (the same goes for the other ones, i.e. division). A tally is kept at the bottom of the screen so you can keep track of who’s in the lead with tic-tac-toe wins. Of course, as anyone knows, it’s impossible to win at tic-tac-toe, so if you’re age 8 or above, this game may challenge your mental math skills, but won’t entertain you with its win-less game. The only way I could get a screenshot of a winning game was to play two-player, by myself, and make one of my characters lose.

Of course, the patterns and predictability in a tic-tac-toe game may not be as apparent to a younger mind, so in that sense, Tic Tac Math could prove to be an excellent choice – only, some of the division problems are pretty difficult, even for me, if it were strictly mental math. I suppose you could do some rounds on paper, but that kind of defeats the point of having a game on the iPhone (factory equipment only?). I wish there were more incentives to play, because tic-tac-toe does get dull, very fast, regardless of whether you feel like you’re becoming more proficient in mental math or not. Something simple would suffice, things like unlocking an immunity round, or taking two turns in a row for answering all the questions right in the previous round, or maybe expanding the tic-tac-toe board so it’s a 5×5 grid, rather than the typical 3×3. There are plenty of routes to take to make the game more exciting, more engaging and interactive, and this is what you want to do with a math game – they do require that extra oomph. I applaud Tic Tac Math for taking a step in the right direction, and they do deliver in the countless math problems, but I hope in future updates they add a bit more dimension to the otherwise flat tic-tac-toe game.

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*When using the promotion code to download for free, it’s on a first-come, first-served basis. Out of courtesy, please leave a comment below mentioning you’ve used the promotion code.

After playing it, I’ve decided Numbl is definitely my choice in math games, for improving basic speed skills in mental math. No one wants to play a game of decoding differential equations and higher end calculus, except for those few and far between math majors, but nearly anyone can partake in a game of speedy arithmetic – and that’s essentially what Numbl is, coupled with the strategy of using the least moves possible to clear the entire board.

The game is shockingly good-looking. Good sound effects of the right pitch and digital cheeriness bring to mind a retro computer system, only it’s paired with a contemporary blue sheen that reminds me of the Chase credit card company. The setup reminds me of a calculator, with numbered buttons in a 5×4 area, an arrangement I suppose, is a good likeness to have when the game revolves around calculating a sum. The object of the game is to clear the board with the least moves as possible; in other words, it’s best to use the most numbers possible per turn, to faster eliminate numbers from the board. The number 11, for example, when shown at the top to be solved, could simply be solved by the addition of the two numbers 9 and 2. But, since 11 isn’t a terribly high number – as opposed to, say, 17 – then it’d be wiser to use an allotment of small numbers, like 3+2+2+4 – given of course, that you have these numbers available. Should you worry that you may receive a number that you cannot create with the remaining numbers at hand, fret not: Numbl takes into account such limitations and allows you to use a single number of equal value to the number at the top (e.g. use a 6 for a 6). Obviously, for the purposes of clearing the board, I recommend not to tap a number 9 to solve for 9 when you could instead use 2+2+5. Besides, when a pesky 17 shows up, you’ll want to have that 9 on hand.

Easy to pick up and easy to learn, Numbl also offers a nice split-screen mode for two-player. Also, both the one-player and two-player modes are timed, making speed a crucial element to the game. I prefer one-player, myself, because I enjoy improving my own mental acuity at my own pace (faster, Jackie, faster!), but to each his own. I hope in later versions Numbl will offer a similar version of play with subtraction, multiplication and division. You may as well cover all the preliminary bases, right? In any case, whoever is lucky enough to nab the sole promo code won’t regret downloading this game.

Promotion Codes:

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*When using the promotion code to download for free, it’s on a first-come, first-served basis. Out of courtesy, please leave a comment below mentioning you’ve used the promotion code.

iTouchiLearn Words consists of three parts: two word games and a series of animations based on the same pool of words to reinforce learning. Simply touch, play, learn and enjoy. Unlike static flash cards, iTouchiLearn Words provides a fun, interactive way to learn, while keeping the sessions short to keep the child’s mind engaged and attentive. The app is simply, but effectively designed – some of the illustrations and animations aren’t the greatest, but I’m sure most young children won’t mind, so long as the adult can get past whatever preconceived biases they may have against less fastidious-looking artwork.

The main menu shows three tabs in the form of torn out sheets of notepad paper, one with ABC, one with a magnifying glass, and one with a film slide showing a baby crawling. The first tab, ABC, is a word game where a picture is shown, along with four possible word choices. The narrator, for example, says, “Touch the dog,” and your child has to figure out which word represents dog. When a wrong word is selected – let’s

Positive reinforcement in action

say cat – the narrator reads the word aloud, but then a buzzer noise is heard, and the narrator repeats the command, “Touch the dog.” This process of elimination continues until your child selects the right word, dog, and applause is heard, a WOOHOO! and a ringing bell. The game is all about positive reinforcement, indicated all the more by the smiling, happy star that appears when a right answer is selected. Over time, the idea is that your child will begin to associate the visual imagery with the word, itself.

The next game, indicated by the magnifying glass, is nearly the opposite of the aforementioned game: this time around, a word is given – i.e. balloon – and three possible images are shown. The process is the same as the last game – your child gradually eliminates choices until the correct one is chosen, with negative and positive reinforcement along the way. The last game, though, is where iTouchiLearn Words truly shines. The last game takes the cognitive skills up a notch by introducing animation in tandem with words, so your child may recognize different words that may be used with the same image, depending on the situation at hand. I really like the egg animation, in particular. First, an egg is shown, with the word “egg” spoken aloud. Next, the egg breaks open and lands in a skillet, where the phrase “fried egg” is heard, along with a sizzling sound. A chicken is then shown, it lays an egg, then egg hatches open and reveals a chick, with the narrator using words the entire time. The chick then goes through a quick growth metamorphisis back into a chicken. It’s actually quite brilliant, and I’m sure, fascinating for a child to behold.

A few of the animations may be a bit difficult to conceive – the animation where the boy is playing catch with a small, rubber ball comes to mind – but given the expansive, cognitive abilities of a growing child, I’m sure everything contained within this app is completely fathomable, and able to be deciphered, tucked away into knowledge. Sure, the illustrations aren’t the greatest, but the app performs well, the narrator is loud and clear, and the app definitely has more potential than other, more static flashcard type apps in the App Store.

Promotion Codes:

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*When using the promotion code to download for free, it’s on a first-come, first-served basis. Out of courtesy, please leave a comment below mentioning you’ve used the promotion code.

I once had a Spirograph as a kid. It’s a strange-looking contraption, of the plastic and rotor kind that with its bright colors is meant to attract children, but really, is just a toy conceived and appreciated by adults. Any inherent mathematical properties to the Spirograph is appreciated only by the most astute adult, and even then that’s a rare appreciation – most people enjoy the Spirograph for its seeming whimsical wizardy, the ability to churn out impeccably arranged lines in one spiral after another, an overlapping pattern continuum ad infinitum. I enjoyed using the Spirograph, seeing the same patterns emerge, unidentifiable from each other in their perfection save for a different use of color, and I remember keeping an ever-growing pile of my spiro drawings. But relying on a mechanism to produce drawings proved limiting for me – as I’m sure it did for many kids – and my interest quickly waned in favor of coloring books, whose blank pages and free reign of crayons seemed liberating by comparison. Just like the hypotrochoids and epitrochoids a Spirograph produces, the Spirograph is a rigid, unwavering setting for a game.

I suppose this is why when I discovered Finger Spiro+ by Chlova, I had some reservations. Do not misinterpret – I think the Spirograph is a fantastic tool, that produces beautiful curves and lines in an increasingly circular shape, but its novelty lasts for a few hours, and then it’s over. There is a slight hypnotic quality to Finger Spiro, and other spirographs, in just tracing a line over and over and over, while watching this wheel move around within a larger wheel, your pencil wedged in one of the holes drilled into the rotor’s plastic side. As with physical Spirographs, in Finger Spiro+ you have a choice between different sized rotors, each of which, based on its size, produces lines of a different curve and degree (you may download more rotors (or gears) for a price if you desire). Each rotor also has a few holes that you may select with a tap, to change the degree of the line produced. There are 7 colors to choose from, 4 background canvases – of which each may be moved around a bit to allow for more drawings -, and you may choose to roll your spirograph in a clockwise or counterclockwise motion. Should you particularly proud of any one creation, you may take a picture of it using the app, and save it to an album, perhaps email to a friend.

The whole app is laid out very well, with pleasant graphics, but there are a few shortcomings. The 7 colors are what you’d find in a basic crayon deck, with the odd gray included, as well. Every kid loves gray… right? The background canvases are nothing spectacular, but given the surface is hardly as important at the drawing, this is a minor quibble. The background surfaces range from different woods to what look to be handpressed, custom papers, with dark blotches of the kind you’d find at Papyrus or some other high-end letterpress store.There are only 4, and there’s no option to upgrade the amount of canvasses you can have, so this feature remains pretty limited.

Finger Spiro+, itself, is very smooth, and the results fantastic, but once again there’s that debacle of longevity – seeing the designs emerge is fun for a few minutes, but after that it’s not terribly tempting to download more rotors to keep the idea fresh. Maybe if Finger Spiro+ strayed from the usual circular design and included rotors within stencils of different shapes, something more elliptical or bean-shaped (it can be done), just any other shape, then perhaps the game could hold a user’s interest more.

The app contains all the elements within the first game – alphabet flashcards with image and pronunciation tabs – but in addition, the developers tacked on two more game-oriented abilities that add a great deal more dimension that allows children to interact more. The See It, Say It section is a game where the user matches one of the three letters on top to the image pictured below. If a kite is shown, for example, and the letters K, J, Q, appear above, it’s up to the kid to figure out which letter works with the image, and then drag that letter onto the image. The letters are all drawn in a toy cube fashion, and

L for lion!

differentiate from each other with the use of different colors. The user may tap each block to hear the letter pronounced, and then tap the image to hear kite read aloud. The objective is for the user to logically reason which sounds mostly closely mirror each other, and therefore, which letter belongs to that word. Otherwise, if the user chooses incorrectly, the letter will simply disappear. Then it becomes a process of elimination – there are now only two letters left to choose, so obviously, it must be one of them, right? Eventually, your child will get the solution, right, and in the process, understand that J and Q have nothing to do with kite.When the correct letter is dragged onto the image, the image animates for a few seconds, as a reward for the user’s efforts.

The other new play option is Hear It, Hit It. In this section, an image appears below, as is customary, and three dots appear above, in the colors of blue, yellow and red. Each dot, when tapped, gives an audio clip of someone pronouncing a letter, such as “wuh” for W or “juh” for J. Once again, the user has to figure out which sound is appropriate for the image, and then drag that corresponding dot onto the image. If the selection is correct, the user is rewarded with a brief animation, sometimes children cheering and clapping. This section could definitely prove to be challenging for the young mind, and is definitely effective at encourage a memorization of sounds and their corresponding letters, and objects/animals that begin with that particular letter.

ABC Shakedown is what kids apps are meant to be – fun, interactive, and most of all, educational. For any child still learning his A,B,Cs and general language skills, this app is excellent for nurturing that beginning ability, and has a long shelf life due to the time it takes to acquire this ability. The animations could be livelier (how about a lion roaring instead of licking his lips?) to further engage the user, and some of the pronunciations are a little hard to interpret – the “f” sounds more like “shhh” and could just be a technical obstacles given microphones and recording equipment. Also, despite being very interactive, the app lacks any intuitiveness. You must read the directions to figure out how to use it – an older child or adult could obviously figure it out after some tinkering, but a young child definitely needs some direction. After initial instructions – a rubric how to use – it’s easy for a child to navigate. But, these are but a few flaws in an otherwise spectacular app.

fffff for fish!

People in this country tend to view bilingualism with an air of impressiveness, that it’s a rare skill few possess. They often reply, when asked if they speak another language, with astonishing sincerity coupled with a step back, “Oh god no, I don’t speak a word of Spanish.” There are many people who point to Europe as a role model, with its polyglot culture, and aspire for Americans to learn languages other than English – considering the large population of Spanish-speaking peoples in California, and the greater presence of China as a global power, it make sense diplomatically, to learn other languages. Given the United States’ position as a world power, a center of influence and global relations, it can seem embarrassing that many of our citizens cannot act as ambassadors for our country, only being able to communicate in their mother tongue. In some ways, it’s borderline lazy given our long-term status as the most powerful country in the world – English, after all, has long been considered the business language through which all other countries communicate. This may be changing, though, with China emerging as possibly a greater influence than the United States, and so our monolingualism has lately become an even larger issue of contention.

The developer of Little Pim Word Bag, Julia Pimsleur Levine, had such thoughts when she originally created the Little Pim concept in 2006. Having grown up bilingual, she felt there weren’t enough ways for a child in the United States to reap the benefits of a bilingual upbringing – foreign language classes usually don’t appear in public schools until junior high, and little to no educational programming was available for children to absorb, aside from maybe those Muzzy videos I, and the rest of my peers, remember from French class. The Little Pim DVD series is exceptional, has received many awards, and covers plenty of languages, including Spanish, French, Chinese, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, English, Arabic, German and Russian. The DVDs are heavily interactive, and involve many repetitions of phrases and words and concepts for children to watch and learn, much in the same way children imitate an adult’s word formations, later adapting these linguistic rubrics to their own, original thought. Given the exceptional nature of the DVDs, I had high expectations for the app by Animax, especially given the fairly limited supply of language apps peppering the App Store.

Little Pim Word Bag is cute, if lacking. Little Pim, himself, is as cute as ever, carrying his bottomless messenger bag wherever he goes, and pulling out objects of every type to share with you. I was a little disappointed that Little Pim only shares with you two languages – Spanish and French. It’s true, the original DVDs covered Spanish and French, possibly just French initially, and this app may very well just want to cover the original concept. I was hoping for Chinese to be included, though, instead of French, given its near vital importance today, but let’s face it: everyone loves the French language. It’s not entirely the most useful language, and it’s heavily romanticized, but many people desiring to learn another language favor French for its fluid and unique sound, resplendent with deep, guttural notes accented by a fluttering airiness, like the wind beneath a hummingbird’s wings. Chinese, also, is very difficult for Westerners to master, given its heavy reliance on pitch differences – one example would be that the sound “ma” depending on pronunciation, can mean either horse or mother. Regardless, I’m hoping the next Little Pim app will contain more languages to choose from.

The app is divided into three sections – eating and drinking, wake up smiling, and playtime – each of which contains its own unique set of words that correlate to the theme. The pictures for each section bob up and down, inviting your child to tap on them. Little Pim is shown in each, staring at you through googly red glasses, wielding a fork and knife, or laying back in redolence, happy obviously, from playing. For each section, Little Pim will bounce on screen, and introduce himself – “Hola! Yo me llamo pequeno Pim” for Spanish, and “Bonjour, je m’appelle petit Pim” for French. Little Pim will stand there on the grassy knoll waiting for you to tap him to begin the exercise; otherwise after several seconds, he’ll start on his own. Your child will watch as the Panda rummages about in his bag, and takes out something, which he’ll identify with an enlarged image of the object, and the written name beneath. For Eating and Drinking, Little Pim first brings out a cake, which miraculously remains pristine in all its chocolately goodness, and says the name aloud for the user: in Spanish, he says un pastel, and in French, he says un gateau, which funnily enough, almost sounds like un gato in Spanish, meaning cat. He’ll continue in this manner, until the section is complete; at any point, the user may tap one of the previous objects to hear the word repeated, and to give the image a second look.

Given my fluency in Spanish, I spent quite a bit of time brushing up on my basic French vocabulary (I was fortunate to begin both Spanish and French at an early age in private school, along with more intensive study in Junior High). My French accent isn’t the greatest – I have a tendency to roll my syllables together as in Spanish, and rumble my r’s, unconsciously – but despite being an adult, I really enjoyed listening to the bright music and reading aloud the names as they were voiced aloud to me. There’s no question: Little Pim Word Bag is an effective game, and it does have a trance-like quality to it. Besides, Little Pim is just so gosh darn cute. But, more languages would definitely be a great asset, as would a secondary feature in the app that would use the vocabulary learned in a contextual situation, possibly using the words together (“Let’s have lunch! What would you like to have?”) – having just a list of words may become boring, quickly, for most youngsters.

But, Little Pim Word Bag has its heart in the right place. Many people never become fluent in another language, and whatever bits and pieces they jumbled together in High School often go unused, and then, after a period of stagnation, most knowledge eventually just disappears. Starting off our kids young, on programs like the Little Pim series, can go a long way in at least instilling basic groundwork in languages other than English. By using the Little Pim Word Bag app, hopefully parents will see its benefit, and be inspired to check out the full DVD series.

Awhile back I wrote a review on Peekaboo Barn, exclaiming how cute and clever it was, piquing a child’s imagination to see what was behind those barn doors, making whinnying noises, or cock-a-doodle-doos. I enjoyed the app so immensely I included it in the article 6 Apps That Make Mom’s Life Easier, because the app served well as an entertaining distraction while mom was busy cleaning up all those toys little Ophelia left on the wayside in favor of mommy’s iPhone. In Night & Day Studio’s latest incarnation, they take the same concept away from the barnyard and into the wild.

A lion!

Peekaboo Wild had plenty of exotic animals to tickle your kid’s fancy, from lions and crocodiles to giraffes, hyenas, and my personal favorite, the baboon. The app takes place on the arid plains of Africa, with gently billowing yellow grasses, dried from the blazing orange and yellow sun overhead, and a lone acacia tree gently swaying in the background. The artwork is, once again, beautiful and slightly abstract, with a modernized feel despite the commercial application. Just as with Peekaboo Barn, you may opt for the narrated voice to be in either English or Spanish, and the voice, once again, comes from a cheery bubbly little girl. One by one, animals appear behind the rustling grass, making the noises for which they are known, the animal revealing itself once the grass is tapped. It’s an interesting experiment in animal call recognition – most kids in this

The hippopotamus

country are very familiar with dogs barking, cats meowing, and sheep baaing, but what about a cheetah’s yell? A hyena’s laugh? Or a baboon’s general monkeying around? It’s a good way for kids to become familiar with these other, more exotic but still commonplace animals.

Once the grass is tapped, the animal making a hullabaloo behind the wheaten field is revealed – a short animation of the animal roaring or sqwaking is done, and then the girl’s voice rings out, “ostrich!” in a happy, upbeat voice, along with the written name. And, just as in Peekaboo Barn, in Peekaboo Wild the animals are shown all together, in an entourage shot of wild beasts, once the user finishes cycling through all the animals. At the close of the app, the prairie settles to dusk, a soft red glow just along the horizon, and all the wild beasts wild no longer, sleeping together in a docile turn of events. It’s a sweet ending for any wild thing.

Goodnight.

Color Me!!! loading screen

Color Me!!!, by Izabela Zabek, is a coloring app for kids from 2-6 years old, so the app says, but really I don’t think it’s an app for anyone of any age. Don’t get me wrong, the app is presented very nicely and runs smooth; there are plenty of different drawings which one can color – there are sea creatures, mammals, birds and numbers; the graphics are nice and the previews of the drawings are of exceptional quality; there are nice features such as the color chooser sliding as you tilt the phone. The only problem is that the app lacks any kind of creativity. Here’s the app in a nutshell:

Choose a picture, move the slider and press on the screen to fill in a section of the picture.

Choose the drawing type

What’s the problem with that, you may ask? Well, how is this in any way stimulating? There are plenty of apps out there that are intuitive, pretty and stimulating, but this isn’t one. There is nothing here to stimulate hand-eye coordination or problem solving. In fact, the app is so well developed that it takes away from the functionality. Take, for example, the preview pictures – they’re very illustrious. Now, try re-creating the picture you see. The color pallette at the bottom of the screen does not allow for much of anything beyond the primary colors. There are different shades and different colors, but nothing that resembles the color in the previews. In fact, try to find brown or dark green, I dare you.

A seemingly cool feature this app has is the ability to shake the phone to reset the picture. “Neat”, I thought, when reading about it. But then I realized this was an app for kids. How will a child feel about losing his or her masterpiece on the way to school when the phone drops out of his or her hands as a result of mommy going too fast over a speed bump? The use of the built-in sensors is a good idea and can work, but a simple reset option (with an “Are you sure?” fail-safe) would work better. Sure, the parent may have to intervene, but they already have to intervene in order to export the photo to the camera roll or to Facebook (good idea, by the way, parents love to brag!).

1 is the loneliest number

One drastic change I would like to see would be to have the child color in the picture manually, as opposed to just pressing on the screen. Maybe the developer could have the app recognize the area of the screen first touched and only allow that to be colored until the finger is released. This may be difficult to implement, but I’m sure there’s a way to keep the children in the lines while still allowing for creative license.

There are some good ideas in Color Me, and it was developed with care, but the app just isn’t thought out and executed well. Color Me!!! may be worth taking a look at, if your child needs a distraction; or better yet, if you need your child distracted. But all in all it doesn’t stand up to criticism, let alone practical use. And if there’s any demographic that really uses things, it’s children.

Promotion Code:

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ABC Shakedown, upon first impression, is cute and colorful, with happy, upbeat music sure to grab a young child’s attention. I particularly like the artwork – it’s nothing extraordinary by any means, but it’s youthful in its presentation, each image looking as if it could appear in a regular coloring book, clad in the appropriate Crayola crayon striations and color. Each flashcard shows both the uppercase and lowercase form of a letter, an image representing a word that begins with and showcases the letter, and a volume symbol at the bottom that lets the user hear the pronunciation of the sound. The very first flash card is, of course, the letter A, written as Aa, with a picture of an apple beneath. Tap the letters to hear the letter pronunciation (i.e. long A versus short A, as in “bay“), and tap the image to hear a voice say apple out loud, the A really emphasized. When the user taps the volume symbol, a short A is heard (“aah” as in “cat“), so a child can recognize the different sounds of the letter. Obviously, there are more ways a letter can sound (hello IPA guide), but for the purposes of beginning speech, this is a great way for a child to learn. I can remember learning the more difficult sounds of -ch, -th, and -sh as a kid, accompanied by these funny pictures of mouths contorted in such a way so as to effectively reproduce these sounds.

While most of the images are pretty dead on, a few of the images aren’t nearly as intuitive as the others. For I, the developers chose Itch, along with a drawing of an unfortunate person clad in painful-looking red welts, with a hand itching. I suppose it’s good practice to include words that aren’t concrete objects or animals – the word “itch” is much less tangible and requires more critical thinking than, say, “igloo” and dealing with such abstraction can teach children that letters, and the alphabet, are applicable to other areas. In any case, it’s a way to bring attention to the developer’s name. For X, the developer chose “box” instead of the usual “xylophone,” and this forces the child to examine the last letter of the word, rather than the usual first. The app goes a little beyond most children’s conceptual abilities, though, with the inclusion of “edge” for E, accompanied by the visual aid of an arrow pointing to a table’s edge. This might be a little beyond what most children are capable of recognizing, in the same manner that kids at this age are conceptually incapable of recognizing that a shorter glass contains as much volume as a larger one. It’s just a natural part of development and cognition, so perhaps the app would do better with any number of other, excellent choices, like “eel,” or “elephant.” Another case where the app is just ever so slightly off is with the word J. The picture shows a jar of strawberry jam, where both jar and jam begin with the letter J. Here, it’s good to include an image where two objects within are representative of the letter J (it challenges critical thinking), but the image focuses so heavily on the jam, with all its red, strawberry goodness, that most children would immediately think “jam” for the picture, and not conceive of “jar,” which is the word the app chooses to voice aloud. For more intuitive purposes, the app should have voiced jam to encourage an association between the image and what a child would initially think of. Then, an adult can point out to the child that the jam is within a jar, which also begins with the letter J.

Overall, though, ABC Shakedown is a good flashcard app for kids learning the alphabet to practice on their own. Navigating is easy enough with arrows at the bottom of the screen, or a shake to produce a random card. I’m surprised there isn’t also a flipping gesture to switch flashcards, so that kids can rely both on their gesturing abilities, and their symbol recognition (using the arrow to move forward or backward), because it seems both of these conceptual abilities are nurtured in extra doses today, with our iPhones and all their gesture/symbology technology. Regardless, ABC Shakedown is a cute and educational app that will nurture your child’s letter recognition, conceptualizing, and application.