iPhone Applications for Kids

Top iPhone and iPod Touch Applications for Children

What are your favorite iPhone or iPod Touch Apps for your kids?

Even though I've had an iPhone for a couple of years, I'm just starting to get into the apps. We try to be careful with the amount of time our kids spend on the computer/iPhone, but once in a while they get to play with our apps. Unfortunately, I have found that it is difficult to find good applications for kids. Whenever I'm with a group of moms or dads that have an iPhone, which tends to be more and more these days, the topic of good, kid-friendly iPhone apps seems to come up. I thought I'd create this hub for us parents to share our favorites. We have three girls (six, three, and one), so our favorites tend to be in this age range. Below are some of our favorites, and I hope that we can start a good list in the comments capsule to discover new apps for kids.

Top iPhone Apps for Kids under Two

I know it sounds crazy for a kid under two to use an iPhone application, but our one year old loves to look at the animals and hear animal sounds. I haven't found very many applications that are appropriate, but here are our favorites:

1. Animal Fun: It has pictures of animals, says their name, and makes their sound. (FREE)
   
2. Finger Piano: Play the piano randomly or follow the directions for older kids. (LITE VERSION IS FREE)
3. Simple Draw: Draw with the touch of a finger (FREE)
4. Zoo for Baby: The Freestyle mode shows pictures of animals and when you tap on them they make a sound. (FREE)
5. Zoo Sounds: The free version has only 4 animals and sounds, the paid version (.99) has 12 animals.

If you have any other favorite applications for kids under 2, please start a list in the comments capsule!

Our Favorite iPhone and iPod Touch Applications

Top iPhone Applications for Toddlers Ages 2-4

Here are the best iPhone applications for our 3 year old that we have found. This age is really a sweet spot for applications. Please leave your favorites in the comments capsule!

1. Shape Bulilder: The lite (free) version is great. It's a puzzle game where you put the correct shapes in the correct spots. (FREE)
   
2. Jirbo Match: The girls really like the matching games; it's like memory. I'm sure there are others that are good too. (FREE)
3. The Wheels on the Bus: Every toddler loves this song. This application sings the song and lets you interact with the characters. (.99 cents)
4. Pocket Phonics: The lite version of this application only has 6 letters. It's worth getting the paid version on this application because it gives you many more options for sound blends, etc. I highly recommend this application for kids learning their letters and sounds.
5. iWrite Words: Follow a little crab to write letters. Our three year old likes this letter making app too. (LITE version is FREE)
   
6. First Words Sampler: You drag and drop letters to make a word. The lite version is great. (FREE)
7. I Hear Ewe: animal sounds in a cute user interface. (FREE)
   

The Best iPhone Applications for Kids over the age of 4

The iPhone Applications for older kids can be very interesting. Our oldest daughter loves the following applications:

1. Google Earth: This is a great application for kids and adults. (FREE)
   
2. National Georgraphic Games: Jigsaw or Spot It! (FREE)
   
3. Simon: Like the old school game where the four sections light up and you try to copy the pattern. (FREE)
   
4. Scramble: making words from jumbled letters (FREE)
   
5. Doodle Buddy: This is another drawing application for all ages (FREE)
6. Tangram Puzzle Pro: This is a more advanced version of Shape Builder (.99 cents)
7. The Fuzzy Fierce Peach: This a cute app that is more like a book than a game. ($1.99)

Track A Stolen Laptop Using Open Source

You might not realize it, but losing a laptop is a very common problem. In fact, according to a story in July of this year, a study by the Ponemon Institute shows that up to 12,000 laptops are lost at airport security checkpoints EVERY WEEK. How do you say “holy S**tballs” in geek?

But, there are solutions and, among them, is a free, open source option.

The solution is Adeona and I had the opportunity to watch a short presentation by these guys at Gnomedex only a short while ago. The project is coming out of the University of Washington. Here is how it is described:

Adeona is the first Open Source system for tracking the location of your lost or stolen laptop that does not rely on a proprietary, central service. This means that you can install Adeona on your laptop and go — there’s no need to rely on a single third party. What’s more, Adeona addresses a critical privacy goal different from existing commercial offerings. It is privacy-preserving. This means that no one besides the owner (or an agent of the owner’s choosing) can use Adeona to track a laptop. Unlike other systems, users of Adeona can rest assured that no one can abuse the system in order to track where they use their laptop.

How it works is pretty simple. You download the free client software to your laptop and install it. That client software will then begin sending encrypted information to servers on the Internet on the geographic location of your laptop. If the laptop every goes missing, you as the owner can log in with your username and password and view the information on where your laptop is. The software is free and it is using the free storage service OpenDHT to store the data.

As an added benefit, if you’re using a Mac, the software will use isightcapture to take a quick snapshot using the built-in Isight webcam and therefore send a picture of whoever is using your MacBook.

You might be wondering how it knows where the laptop is. The answer is: it doesn’t. Your laptop most likely does not have any built in GPS technology. Instead, the system logs the IP addresses used to connect to the Internet as well as any data on nearby routers. And as most geeks know, it isn’t usually hard to geo-locate an IP address. At the very least, you can report the information to authorities and track down the thief.

This is free and open source and, for that reason, lacks many of the features of the commercial services such as Lojack for Laptops or PC PhoneHome. But, the creators of Adeona were trying to solve the privacy problem. The concern with commercial services is that they could be used to track even the legitimate owner of the laptop. The overriding goal of Adeona was to make sure only the actual owner of the laptop could see the data.

Since Adeona is open source, we’re likely to see new features built on top of it. Anyone can take the source code and improve upon it. Perhaps we might even see Adeona adapted to the Iphone. That would make a very cool app seeing as the Iphone 3G has integrated GPS technology. The downloads page of the Adeona site says they are exploring the possibility of Iphone and Windows Mobile versions.

Adeona is available for Windows, Mac and Linux and is free to try.