Many of the children’s e-book applications for iPad today use a combination of animations, video or even games to make books more “interactive” for their young readers. Me Books, a London-based digital e-book app and retailer launching today in the U.S., has a slightly different take. Instead of animation, the app uses audio to add an additional element to stories. The e-books are narrated, and… → Read More
New York-based Hullabalu is launching today with a new take on children’s storytelling – instead of digital books with interactive bits as is now common on iPad, this new tablet app itself is the story where the action progresses as children engage with the magical world Hullabalu introduces. → Read More
Artkive, an app designed to eliminate the overwhelming guilt you get tossing your children’s brilliant artwork into the garbage, now has another purpose, too: you can order printed out books of their creations. Instead of just hiding the child’s crumpled up drawings and precious finger-paint covered handprints that school sends home – what is now, like every day? – under… → Read More
Timbuktu, an adorably designed educational and entertainment-focused iPad app for kids, has finally revamped its business model – a model which had previously been a terrible example of how children’s apps too often try to grow their revenue by tricking kids into purchasing in-app content. The company now admits that its virtual allowance mechanism was too misleading, and has moved forward… → Read More
Alert.Us, a recently launched mobile family safety application, has some interesting ideas about the direction that these sorts of GPS tracking apps should go. In fact, says CEO Antoine Martin, the company’s goal is to have kids actually accept and recommend the app. That’s a bit different from the other parental control or safety apps on the market today which generally launch with the needs of… → Read More
Kytephone, the Y Combinator-backed startup making smartphones kid-friendly and safe, is now expanding its focus beyond the “little kids” crowd with the introduction of a new platform for teenagers and parents. Called “Kytetime,” the system is designed more for keeping track of a child’s location and their phone usage, rather than strictly locking down the phone or offering a simplified user… → Read More
Famil.io, a new service for privately sharing photos and videos with your family across web and mobile, is today officially launching to the public. The sharing platform can serve as a complement to Facebook, where most families network today, though in a more restrained fashion. Or for those family members who aren’t even active on Facebook, Famil.io can, to some extent, serve as a… → Read More
Kids app maker Toca Boca, which operates like a startup out of the 200-year-old Swedish publishing company Bonnier, is making good on its earlier promise that it will soon begin to expand its product portfolio through acquisitions. Toca Boca is today announcing an all-cash deal with Toronto-based studio zinc Roe that includes its line of children’s apps. → Read More
The market for children’s and educational apps continues to grow — evidenced by Apple last week announcing 1 billion downloads of educational apps from iTunes U — and that growth is leading to both consolidation and new business models. In one of the latest developments, TabTale, a publisher of children’s and family apps, has bought Kids Games Club, maker of apps like “Paint Sparkles” (a… → Read More
Fresh on the heels of its partnership with UK educational app maker Mindshapes, San Francisco-based kids’ app platform Fingerprint is today rolling out a new version of its software which introduces kid-safe multiplayer gaming, messaging and more. This news was hinted at in January, when CEO Nancy McIntyre, formerly of LeapFrog, spoke of a forthcoming release which would introduce new features… → Read More
WishPop, an iPad application designed to help children, parents, and other family members better manage gift lists and thank you notes, is launching today on the Apple App Store. The app sends kids into a world where they can browse through a kid-friendly catalog of toys and games, add items to their wish list, share messages with contacts their parents approve, and play educational games in order… → Read More
When the family-based social network FamilyLeaf first made its debut as part of the Y Combinator Spring 2012 class, the startup set itself up as a kind of anti-Facebook: a place where relatives could come together in a private network built with family networking in mind without some of the trappings like advertising and the wider sharing with your network of friends (and, as we’ve… → Read More
You may remember Evergram as the company whose co-founder, Duncan Seay, pitched the media in a wedding dress in the Startup Alley at this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt SF. The dress may have brought him attention, but the gimmick wasn’t necessary – Evergram can stand on its own as a startup worth noting. The first product from the service was a way for wedding guests, friends, and family to leave… → Read More
HashTip is a new mobile app targeting savvy shoppers, primarily moms, who want to share tips with each other about kids’ products, activities and deals. (OK, cue snarky comment about how we already have Pinterest for that.) But unlike Pinterest, HashTip isn’t about posting “inspirational” imagery, it’s more heavily focused on social commerce. The service augments its tips with extra info… → Read More
Care.com, the site that helps parents and families find babysitters, nannies, childcare, and senior care professionals, is today releasing a new iPhone application called Karoo which is designed to connect parents with their child’s caregivers as well as record memories. Unlike some of the privacy-focused social networking apps that have launched in recent months, Karoo isn’t just about… → Read More
The screensaver is not dead! Familiar, a startup that lets friends and families privately share photos directly to each others’ Macs, PCs, smartphones, and tablets, has been steadily gaining traction following its beta launch last winter. The company just hit a milestone of 21 million photos shared through its platform in the month of August, and is today announcing that it closed a $1.3 million… → Read More
Rootsy is the latest entry in the private, family-focused social networking space – an area which has seen a surge of startups in the wake of Facebook’s rise to become the largest social network worldwide. With little hope of taking on the Facebook behemoth, the new companies are attempting to carve out a niche for more personal sharing. With Rootsy, the angle is that it lets users build their… → Read More
Funium, a Provo-based startup that’s merging personal ancestry research with virtual worlds in its new game “Family Village,” has raised an additional $1.8 million in seed funding, the company is announcing today. This new investment is on top of the $1.2 million it raised in February 2011. The round was led by Family Odyssey, a company owned by early Ancestry.com investor and GeneTree… → Read More
Want more proof that the private, mobile social networking space is exploding? Today, there comes yet another entrant into the game: an iOS and web application called Sidebark, which targets families and friends interested in sharing photos and videos privately via mobile.
Because there are so many of these apps, with Path perhaps being the one to beat in this space, each has to offer some… → Read More
HighScore House, the family-focused startup whose previous app was a “gamified” chore list tracker for iPad, has today released its latest creation: FamJam. Parents might call it an inter-family communication tool, but that sounds boring. It’s just a fun way for kids to send their iPad drawings to grandma and grandpa without needing their email address.
The company is backed by 500 Startups… → Read More
Kytephone, the mobile app that transforms Android smartphones into kid-safe devices, is officially making its public debut today. The startup had previously been in beta, following its reveal at this spring’s Y Combinator Demo Day, where founders Renat Gataullin and Martin Drashkov first detailed their company’s vision.
The idea behind Kytephone is simple. It addresses parents’ growing… → Read More
Sometimes you just gotta do your own thing. Such was the case with Boris Vaisman, who dropped out of Y Combinator’s winter batch (where he was on kid-safe phone lockdown tool, Kyte). Says Vaisman, it was just a matter of “having a different vision in terms of how to move forward.” So what has Vaisman, along with co-founder Ankush Agarwal, now launched instead? Play Safe, an app for Android that… → Read More
Do you want to get a slot as part of the next batch of Y Combinator startups? Are you curious about what the founders chosen for the program did to get there? If your answer is yes to either of those questions, then read on.
Today, FamilyLeaf — a kind of “Facebook for families — and one of the companies that presented earlier this week during the Demo Day, decided that they would make public… → Read More
Facebook is on its way to having a billion members, but it’s not always making friends everywhere it goes. Two young men, both aged 19 and in the most recent crop of Y Combinator startups, think they’ve found a gap in the market that has yet to be served that well by the social network: families.
FamilyLeaf was created by childhood friends Wesley Zhao and Ajay Mehta (last seen here spinning out… → Read More
Family safety startup Life360, which makes a freemium mobile security app by the same name, is today announcing it has secured $3.5 million in Series A funding. The round included investment from Fontinalis Partners, Kapor Capital, 500 Startups, Bessemer Venture Partners, Venture51, Bullpen Capital, Social Leverage and Eghosa Omoigui’s EchoVC Partners, as well as existing investors… → Read More
Panasonic not only announced two awesome 3D plasma TVs today, the company also introduced [JP] a new concept for 3D glasses. The three models are supposed to be the perfect fit for for every member in your family: size S is suitable for kids, M is for women and L is best for men (according to Panasonic). → Read More
A truly delightful tale about a parent playing against his six-year-old son in Street Fighter IV. A great father-son bonding moment, the father recoils in horror as he finds out, “Wait a minute, I’m losing to my six-year-old here. Oh, God, what have I done?” → Read More
It sure is great to live in the developed world. No having to worry about having enough to eat or finding clean drinking water or anything like that. Nope: we freak out when Twitter momentarily goes down, or when we can’t use certain software on our phones. Or, conversely, we complain about the undue influence certain technologies have over our lives. We’re all over the place. → Read More
Honk if you like spending time with your family! Not too many honks, eh? Maybe that’s because you spend all of your time online, on Twitter, on 4Chan, on PerezHilton, on YouTube! There’s a new report coming out of USC that says that Internet use has increased, and the amount of time spent with one’s family has decreased. Is there a direct correlation? Maybe not, but it’s worth exploring for a… → Read More
Outside of Thanksgiving, does this scene even remotely exist anymore? How much do you love your BlackBerry? Like, say, more than you love your spouse? As crazy as that sounds, it’s not too uncommon. A recently conducted study by Sheraton suggests that, if given the choice, some 35 percent of business travelers would rather pal around with their BlackBerry than their spouse. Just as… → Read More
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