Here to facilitate that skill is an awesome website we’ve just added to Kidyos called StoryJumper. The website offers you the means of either simply illustrating a story that has already been written, or of creating both the story and the images that will accompany it. All in all, it’s a great way of unleashing your child’s creativity and fostering his or her love of books. The window in which you create the story is already set up to look like a book, so you can picture what the finished product will look like. The tools–you can add props, scenes, photos, and text– are on the left side of the screen and are easy to use and intuitive. And if any of this seems confusing, StoryJumper has a very helpful tutorial.

Your kids will have the chance to create their own book, and you might be able to fulfill your dreams of becoming a writer but you’ll definitely have the perfect gift for the grandparents.

Stop motion in action (paradox?)

One of Kidyos’ best features is that it presents its videos in sets, so once you have seen one video, there’s already a range of other similar videos to enjoy. One of our new sets focuses on stop motion animation which we are all familiar with because of such classics as “Gumby” (which terrified me, personally), “Wallace and Grommit” and “Chicken Run.” These features are all clay-mation, but our set features videos that use very differing media. They are perfect for kids of all ages. The ones we feature are fun, playful, and engaging.

“Western Spaghetti”

Our favorite is “Western Spaghetti.” I guess the guiding question was what inedible objects can we use as stand-ins for the usual meal ingredients? Instead of oregano, for example, they used a dollar, and instead of tomatoes, they used tomato-shaped pin cushions. I can’t imagine how many freeze frames they had to do to make this, but it was definitely worth the effort.

What ingredient do you think the Rubik’s cube is supposed to be?

“Pig and Wolf”

Another very entertaining one is the story of the Wolf and the Pig. In this one, we follow a huge series (dare I say googolplex? Not really, but I did want to use the word) of photos that illustrate a Wolf chasing a Pig while simultaneously moving around the room. As the creator put it, at first he photographed the story, then he placed the pictures around his room. Difficult to explain, but much easier and more enjoyable to visualize:

“Sweet Dreams”

Another outstanding video called “Sweet Dreams” chronicles the life of a cupcake who dreams of sailing the ocean, lands on the island of vegetables , then finds out that they all live in the Tree of Life, which grows on a huge deposit of a transparently named element like Unobtainium and tries to destroy their land only to ultimately learn that their way of life is superior. 3-D glasses not provided. Oh wait, I’m sorry, that’s “Pocahontas.” But really, the cupcake learns from the vegetables a better way of construction, and the lesson is obvious: vegetables are better than sugars. Perfect for kids, and beautifully shot.

These 3 videos and 5 other awesome ones are available on Kidyos!

This is no joke. This. Is. Supa. Strikas.

2010 is the year of the World Cup in South Africa, so it is only fitting that we should commemorate the event by writing a feature on the South African web animated series perfect for kids 5 and up. Originally a comic strip, Supa Strikas is about a soccer team in pursuit of the Super League trophy. The show, so far, has three episodes, but for the purpose of this post, we’ll be discussing only one of them: “Cup Final Survival Tips.”

Supa Strikas‘ opponents, of course, are formidable: Invincible United. With a name like that, the odds are stacked against our heroes. Invincible United, a team of men with menacing scowls and scars, are armed by their coach with the following inspirational words: “Remember, no one will remember how you play today. They will only remember who won.” Thus, they shamelessly cheat, commit fouls, and deliver such snarky lines like, “See, I also have special skills,” after deliberately tripping Supa Strikas’ star player, Shakes. In the locker room during halftime, placed in the shadows, Invincible United’s coach demands that they do whatever it takes, as the players lift weights and ominously flex their muscles.

Meanwhile, Supa Strikas learn from their coach that winning dishonestly does not taste as sweet as winning with the pure talent they have. They learn not to sacrifice their integrity just because their enemy has. The teammates support one another, and when one does not succeed in making the goal, the wise captain is always there to ensure solidarity. The lesson is clear: honesty is the best policy and teamwork is invaluable. Cheating, we learn, is never the way to success, and results are always proportional to effort: you get out what you put in, the team’s captain teaches us. Overall, the show is full of positive messages that apply to more arenas than just sports.

Every clip averages about one minute in length, so the only annoying part is that you have to watch the intro every minute or so to see the whole episode unfold. But if you have the patience for that, watching the underdog win is, as we all know, always rewarding. Indeed, it’s a truth universally acknowledged that everyone loves an underdog, so I leave you with this video, inspired by the underdogs, the 1980 US Olympic hockey team.

PS: Have you seen the recent episode of “How I Met Your Mother” in which we discover that Barney Stinson always roots for the powerful bad guys? How did he react to the ending of “Terminator,” you ask? “Who among us didn’t shed a tear when his little red eye went out at the end, and he didn’t get to kill those people?”

For parents: Interested in the World Cup? FIFA happens to know a lot about it. Supa Strikas aren’t playing (boo!) but many other countries are participating.

Who are you rooting for?

Check it out on Kidyos

Supa Strikas World on Kidyos

Cup Final on Kidyos

Classic Supa Strikas on Kidyos

The man, the myth, the legend: Johnny Saddles

Kidyos features a lot of exciting content for kids, and Johnny Saddles is no exception. Johnny Saddles is a show perfect for kids between the ages of 3 and 5 that features 10 minute long episodes hosted by the singing cowboy (you guessed it!), Johnny Saddles.  The show is set in the American Old West, a place and time that have always fascinated the creator of the show, John Bankhead, who also plays the title character. The webisodes, called “Round Ups,” follow in the steps of the Muppets and Sesame Street, “delivering content with a fresh and colorful retro-modern approach,” as Bankhead describes it. They feature both people and hilarious puppets like the Three Tenors and the Prairie Reasoner. Behold:

Let's be honest, animals in human clothes and accessories will never stop being funny.

The show begins with the opening of a pop-up book that the audience then inhabits. Every new page is a new segment–from the extremely catchy opening song to the show’s different segments like the musical interludes (one of them randomly features a musical collaboration between some toads, a fly, a dolphin, a duck, and a lamb. According to Bankhead, this is one of the more popular segments. It’s called “Badoobadoo” and while it would seem “like just a silly song with various animals singing the parts[, i]t is actually designed to teach children musical arrangement, through visual and auditory stimuli. Kids can physically hear and see the parts coming in and going out through watching the different animals perform the song.”) Kids will learn spelling with a bee (who would have known?), and math with a cowboy lizard. The show also includes a lesson in geography and environmentalism in a segment on Yellowstone National Park. A reference to the website brought me to some kid-friendly games: one of them asks you to match the animal with its horns or create a new animal and another one illustrates the letters of the alphabet using the animals that live in the park.

Johnny Saddles also teaches good lessons. In one episode, we learn that wearing glasses is not something to be mocked. Glasses, we learn, are just a tool for seeing better. I don’t want to give it all away, but the skit does include a memorable pun. For Bankhead, teaching kids these basics is a duty. He writes, “as far as I’m concerned, this is the most important developmental time in a human being’s life. Every segment is painstakingly thought out to make sure the message is delivered in a way that children can process. Sometimes making it simple is the hardest part.”

The Prairie Reasoner: your source for geographical knowledge. Also, his eyebrows are impeccable.

The show also keeps things simple because it is advertisement free, ensuring that the only lessons your child learns are the one that Johnny teaches them. Johnny Saddles is an independent production, unaffiliated with commercial television, although it does have big plans for the future: Downloadable Video, iPhone Applications, CDs, Television Distribution, After School Specials, and Movies are a few projected goals of the show.

What I found most  valuable about Johnny Saddles was the absence of condescension: as Bankhead writes, “we never talk down to children, we talk to them.” And while kids are the intended audience, “children and adults really enjoy the show,” Bankhead remarks.  “Adults that don’t have kids enjoy the show. Shouldn’t a hard working stay at home mom – or dad – be able to enjoy and interact with their child when he or she is watching? When Jason (Newmark, the show’s co-producer, along with Bankhead) and I create a segment, we have to like what we’re making. It needs to make us laugh. It needs to make us smile. It needs to make us think and learn. It needs to make us feel good. Because if we’re feeling all of this, we’ve done our job.” Its tone is not condescending, but upbeat, funny, and easily accessible. There may not be a Mr. Rogers to welcome us to the neighborhood, but there’s Johnny Saddles to guide us through the ranch.

There are more than 1,000 iPhone apps for kids, so picking the right ones is not that easy – in fact, there’s even a website devoted entirely to reviewing these apps which I recommend you read if you want a thorough review of everything that’s available.

Personally, I don’t really have the time so what I end up doing is getting recommendations from friends and trying things out over time. Here are some that have stuck for longer than usual.  My recommendations are based on the experiences of a 3-and-a-half year old (super-adorable) girl, so mileage will vary for other age groups.

One of the frequent feature requests we get at kidyos is for an iPhone app to access kidyos when on the go. That app is definitely in our plans for the future, but we’re not quite sure when just yet. Please help prioritize this feature by letting us know (comments or by mailing info at kidyos.com) if this is something you’d use.

My top iPhone apps for 3-year old kids:

A very simple scribble application. You can select the brush color/size and use a color background or a photo from the camera-roll. It may take some time to learn how to scribble and there was more than one incident of frustration from that, but all in all, it’s a really fun way for kids to pass time – especially when you use photos of friends & family and draw mustaches and bunny ears and things like that. You can also purchase the paid version which removes the popup screen.

- cost: free
- pros: repeat value by picking new photos to scribble on top of.
- cons: can be a bit hard to use the controls and scribble.
- annoyance level: low

HippoColors / HippoShapes
Two similar games in which the child needs to pick the color (or shapes) called out. Really simple but fun.

- cost: $0.99 each
- pros: simple to master, so you don’t need to spend lots of time explaining it
- cons: gets boring quite quickly. Requires sound which doesn’t always work (i.e. when in a noisy place) or can get annoying to the surrounding (i.e. when in a doctor waiting room)
- annoyance level: medium

Dress Chica
Dress up game for chica the (overweight) chicken. I personally know many kids that found this to be a very entertaining app, though personally I don’t quite get it. Be warned: if the volume is up it can get really annoying to listen to.

- cost: free
- pros: simple to master, kids love it for the first few times
- cons: very basic so gets boring very quickly.
- annoyance level: high

Colorama
is a simple coloring book app. There are dozens of different patterns to chose from so it provides a fair amount of entertainment. The controls were a bit tricky to master at first but after a while we got used to it.
cost: $0.99
pros: interest lasts for a long time, but only if your child is into coloring
cons: interest lasts for a long time, but only if your child is into coloring
annoyance level: low

Koi Pond
turns the iPhone into a beautiful Koi fish pond. You can feed the fish (by shaking the phone) and create ripples in the water by touching the surface. It’s just fun to look at. Hint: try touching both top corners for some surprises…

cost: $0.99
pros: fun to look at
cons: it’s not really a game and some kids will likely grow out of it quickly (mine has loved it for a really long time)
annoyance level: low

do you have other apps you (and your kid) like? please share in the comments…

I built kidyos to solve this problem. For us at first, but then for many other families. After several months of operation, I took some time to speak with many of these early users to try to understand what they like about kidyos, so I can make it even better and more fun to use.

This is us!

Here is a summary of why parents like kidyos so much:

♦ Great content: While it is a matter of taste (I am sure others would disagree), the vast majority of kidyos parents dislike the programming available on TV or found in commercial DVDs. It’s loud, it’s loaded with commercials and is annoying. The web has tons of gems that many parents prefer.  Old classics, mellow and fun material. The challenge is finding them, and kidyos does just that.

♦ Small chunks: The content on kidyos is short. an average piece is around 5-10minutes, so it can be consumed in small portions. There is also a useful feature to set the play-time to a certain amount so limits can be enforced automatically and easily. This makes it easy for kidyos-parents to control the amount of time their child spends “watching TV” to what they think is appropriate.

♦ It’s safe: All the content on kidyos is pre screened and safe for kids under the age of six. So kidyos-parents do not need to pre screen sites or videos themselves, a great time saver.

♦ Helps find new content: Kidyos helps parents find new material their children may like. Some parents browse the different channels to find certain types of content, other use the recommended content section to find something new.

♦ Easy enough for kids to use: Let’s admit it, it’s annoying to rush to the computer (or TV) to switch to a different program, or pause or resume or whatever. Kidyos is designed to make it easy for kids to do these basic operations, so parents don’t have to.

♦ Fun games for young kids: Kidyos is not just about videos. There is a large collection of small games and educational sites that are really fun for kids under the age of six. Things like musical games, coloring books and memory games which parents rarely have the time to look for online. A great way to spend a rainy afternoon together.

♦ Great for bilingual families: While not relevant to everyone, kidyos is particularly useful for bilingual families. For example, one kidyos family lives in France but also speak Hebrew. It’s pretty much impossible to find Hebrew content for their kids in France (DVDs and certainly not TV). Kidyos is a great alternative because it has a pretty large  library of content in different languages. (PS: I’m looking for help in collecting content in different language. If you can help, please let me know through email: oren@kidyos.com)

♦ Great for travel: Because kidyos isn’t an application you need to download you can access it on any computer, anywhere. This is great for traveling, visiting friends, etc.

If you have a child six years old and younger and want to expose them to fun, entertaining and educational content in a measured and safe fashion, you should try kidyos.

1. Interviews and conversations with users. I really want to make kidyos as useful for parents and as fun, educational and safe for kids as I possible can, so after the first wave of customers, I slowed down registrations to spend time talking with and getting to know those early users through phone calls, coffee meetups, and email exchanges that have all helped me tremendously in understanding why people like kidyos, what they don’t like about it, how it can be improved and what should stay the same. Many of these points have already been taken into account, some will be added in the near future. All are greatly appreciated.

If you have more feedback to share, please let me know by email (oren at kidyos.com). Or better yet, use the feedback button on the site so the entire community can discuss.

2. Web-site redesign: kidyos is in a much needed web-site face lift. It needs to be more appealing to new users, and simpler and more pleasing to existing ones. There are many, many ideas we have around improving kidyos in those regards, and the process starts with a new site re-design that aims to be more polished and simple to operate. Since this is not my personal strong suit, I decided to invest in this area and hired several UI & web-design consultants to help me over these few weeks. I’m excited about the results from the web-redesign, I think they are really pleasing and i hope you will all like them too. You can see a sneak-peek below and can expect the new design to go live in a few days.

3. Infrastructure improvements: kidyos started off as a site for one user and has been steadily growing since. There are many things that work OK for a very small amount of users, but cannot support a larger community. But, a lot of work has been put in behind the scenes to ensure the site continues to works well, no matter how many new users  join (or at least that’s the plan

Oh!

and 4. The most requested feature on kidyos–the ability to add your own videos to the library has also been in development and almost ready for use

All of this is culminating to a major new release of kidyos. And Voila!

Our new and improved look

YouTube is certainly one place on the web where there is a lot of great content for kids and we’ll continue to make sure we maintain the best, freshest kids-friendly library of YouTube videos, but  today we’re starting to experiment with different content as well.

From now on, when you log-into kidyos you’ll see a new service:  kidyos sites.

There are many great online resources for toddlers and young kids across the web: quick small games to have fun with, educational sites to learn about anything and everything, arts&crafts ideas, and more,  but as with videos, it is very hard to find the good sites, leaving both parents and kids who try frustrated. With kidyos-sites, we will try to tackle this and provide a library of websites for children that is easy to explore and fun to use. Hard-core web users can think of kidyos-sites as a mini StumbleUpon, geared exclusively for kids content.

One important note to remember is that typically kidyos-sites sessions should be experienced together with an adult, as most children of this age are not skilled enough with a computer to do it themselves. It’s a great way to teach your kids something new, or learn something new from them

We’re starting off with a pretty minimalistic version of kidyos-sites, and will improve it based on interest. Please check it out. If you like the idea let me know (you can use the feedback button). It would be a big help if you suggested your favorite sites as well!

Here is one example from the library. Does your kid like horses and singing? Try that combination here and continue to explore…

To all the new users. welcome! please let me know if you have any questions or comments. You can use the feedback button on the site or just email me at oren@kidyos.com. If you have a few minutes to spare, please consider answering a quick survey to help me better understand how to make kidyos better.

I’ve learned a lot this week on how to improve and simplify the service for new users. Some lessons learned are:

♦ more guidance / explanations on the homepage to help new users orient themselves faster

♦ a feedback button so that anyone can send feedback/idea/suggestions/praise, even if he or she does not feel comfortable emailing me directly at oren@kidyos.com (though you’re still very much welcome to do so)

♦ a need to improve the registration flow with sample content to entice people checking kidyos out for the first time to give it a try.

In parallel, i’m moving forward with adding new content and capabilities. More on these shortly.

The web is full of great content for kids: videos on YouTube, movies on Netflix, games, fun websites and beautiful photos, but finding that great stuff on the web is hard. It is mixed in with adult content, it’s scattered across the web, it is not well organized or catalogued. Honestly, it is also sometimes difficult to tell the good content from the mediocre (and there’s a lot of that too).

Kidyos solves this by bringing the best content on the web for kids to one site where it is all clearly organized and easy to find. There is no need to maintain a list of bookmarks ‘for the kids’ or to remember the exact YouTube search phrase for the  green dancing gummybear video.

Kidyos is very easy to use. You don’t have to sit there to click the ‘next’ button when it’s time – it does that for you. The icons are clear and big and easy for kids to identify. In fact,  older kids can pretty much use kidyos by themselves.

The web is at its best when it learns what you like and helps you find more of it. This is especially true for children because they seem to always want more and more. Kidyos recommends content based on the things you, and the community as a whole, like. It tunes its recommendations to your child’s age, language and style.  With kidyos, you don’t have to look for new content, because we do – we constantly search for new material and bring community suggestions into our library. most importantly, all the content on kidyos is pre-screened and suitable for kids.

kidyos is just starting. The site is built and maintained by oren, alma and elai’s dad.  I opened it up for people to try and use because I want it to be fun and useful for everyone. Please let me know what you think using the feedback button on the right or filling in my 2-minute survey. iIll be using this space to update on progress and share ideas, so please stay tuned and stay in touch.

Please check it out at www.kidyos.com

Here area  few favorites from kidyos, for starters:

Good night, Moon

The Pink Panther

The Elephant Song, by Eric Herman