App Of The Week: Catch Notes

Catch Notes is a app for Android and iPhone smartphones and tablets that provides parents with the capabilities to capture their child's lifestream that includes moments, activities and ideas via text, images or audio. Each entry can be organized with a hashtag (#birthday, #xmaspresents, #playdate), which provides streams on individual topics. All entries can be shared with friends and family via email, Facebook or Twitter and can be accessed while on the go from a smartphone or tablet as well as and Internet connection via Catch.com.



Lifestreaming is not only a great way to capture moments in detail, but has been proven effective for productivity, learning and growth. In addition to looking back upon details from summer vacations or birthday parties over the years, Catch Notes can be used as a tool to provide teachers and healthcare professionals details that can help identify patterns and solutions. Catch Notes is a free app that can be found on the Apple App Store, the Android Market or the Amazon App Store. For more details visit www.catch.com

App of the Week: Green Trash Ninja

Did you know that the typical American family generates 4,320 pieces of trash during lunchtime? We are ECOlunchboxes, a small business specializing in waste-free lunchware. Our dream is to teach children about lunch waste in a fun way and empower them to green their lunchtime habits. How do we want to do this? By developing a smart phone game.

Imagine lunch trash flying in air. The object is to quickly swipe trash into one of 3 cans: recycling, compost & trash. If the trash goes into the correct bin, the bin lights up and blinks. If the trash misses the bin or goes into the wrong bin, it explodes and splats in a pile on the lunchroom floor. Each round has a timer and point threshold to beat.

Correctly sorted trash wins!

“Lunchtime waste is a mounting problem,” said Sandra Ann Harris, a Lafayette, Calif. mother of two who founded ECOlunchboxes specializing in no-waste and no-plastic lunchware in 2008. “But learning to reduce waste and recycle can be a fun challenge. If kids can play our game and win – they’ll know enough to green their habits at lunchtime in real life, too.”

The San Francisco Bay Area green business has developed a concept for a fun eco game for kids to sort flying lunch trash into recycling, compost and trash bins. Working against the clock with colorful lunchtime waste zipping across the screen, children will be entertained by the playful game and educated at the same time.

"Kids and adults love to play, and most of us also love to learn, connecting them produces the optimal neurological and emotional pleasure needed to reinforce the right behaviors," explained gamification expert Gabe Zichermann, who called the ECOlunchboxes game a "cool concept."

Development of the game will cost $8,700, so ECOlunchboxes has launched a fund-raising campaign on Indiegogo.com  a website platform specializing in crowd funding. Donors are rewarded with prizes and recognition.

ECOlunchboxes is asking people, organizations and schools who support no-waste lunches to donate as well as help spread the word about its fundraising campaign through digital media channels, such as email newsletters, Facebook and Twitter.

More information about donating to the Green Trash Ninja app project can be found at: http://www.indiegogo.com/Green-Trash-Ninja-Crowd-Fundraising-for-Eco-Game-App

“We welcome any kind of help we can get – whether it’s $5 or $500 or $5,000,” Harris said. "I'm really hoping that others will see the value of developing this eco app and help us make the game available to all for free."

App Of The Week - Rainy Days: A Stella and Sam Adventure

Rainy Days: A Stella and Sam Adventure


Play alongside Stella and Sam and their dog Fred as they go out on a playful adventure on a rainy day. Make paintings with Fred, dig through the leaves looking for treasures and race pinecones across Puddle Lake. The Stella and Sam iPad apps feature a unique format that combines a beautifully animated story with three elegant little games. Children love to play alongside Stella and Sam as they transform everyday events into imaginative adventures. The apps include English and French versions and are suitable for ages 3 to 5. The Stella and Sam Apps are based on the award-winning television series now airing on Playhouse Disney Canada. Learn more at http://www.stellaandsamapps.com

App Of The Week: Poynt

Being a mom isn’t easy, period. And things don’t get any easier when summer rolls around you’re left to coordinate family activities, run errands, host BBQ’s, and maybe even try to pencil in a date night.  Fortunately, Poynt – a local search application – can come to the rescue to take the stress out of what should be the most relaxing season of them all.

Poynt has a variety of features that aid with all aspects searching, planning, calling or cancelling. The movie feature let’s you search movie listings, watch trailers, read reviews and buy tickets all from within the application. Feel like doing something more active? Poynt provides a local event section to keep you up to date on fun happenings around town. If you are pinched for time use the gas feature to search for gas stations based on proximity or price, then find a local business or restaurant and get turn-by-turn directions. Lastly, the weather feature with Poynt can help you figure out what days are prime for hitting the pool.

The Poynt app runs on iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Windows Phone 7, Nokia smartphones and the Blackberry Playbook. To download the app for free head over to this link m.poynt.com/

APP Of The Week - Make Movies With Flixlab

Flixlab isthe fast and easy way to automatically create and share great moviesusing the video clips and pictures on your iPhone. Flixlab usesFacebook to instantly connect you to all of your friends, allowing youto post and TAG your Flixlab movies. Even better, Flixlab lets you andyour friends share footage so that you can create movies together.

Inonly a few taps, Flixlab will automatically help to transform your andyour friends' video clips and pictures into a polished movie usingmusic you love, Flixlab themes, and great looking text slides. You canpost your movie on Facebook or save it to your camera roll and share iton YouTube, Twitter, or over email!


What's really cool about Flixlab?


★ Make a great movie in just seconds--No editing required

★No more trading videos and pictures after the event: Flixlabautomatically detects that you and your Facebook friends are shootingfootage at the same time and place. Flixlab Events give you completecontrol to instantly share (or not share) with your Facebook friendsnearby (Note: Events end automatically and are confined to a set timeand space)

★ Tagging Flixlab movies works just like tagging onFacebook! Tag your friends and they'll automatically get notified aboutyour movies

★ Create movies from the clips and pictures from your iPhone, from Events you have joined, and from Facebook

★ Use Flixlab to shoot video

★ Reorder your clips, add themes, choose music from your library, and insert text slides

★ Share your movie on Facebook or save it to your camera roll

★ Remix your friends’ movies to put your own twist on what happened


Don'tjust share single clips, make STORIES -- amazing movies that turn thoseclips & pics into powerful experiences that you can then share withyour friends & family on Facebook!

APP Of The Week - Toca Boca

Toca Boca (www.tocaboca.com) creates digital toys that allow children to engage in fun, imaginative play on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.  Toca Boca Hair Salon (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/toca-hair-salon/id426382105?mt=8), is the latest toy available in the app store.  Toca Hair Salon ($2, version 1.0) is universally compatible with iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches and lets kids cut, color, and style the hair of four different characters—a brown-haired girl, a lion, a bear, and a red-headed boy – using their fingers to create an endless array of hair styles and laugh along as the characters make funny faces and sounds while you style their hair.

In addition to Toca Hair Salon, Toca Boca currently has four digital toys available in the Apple App Store, all of which enhance children’s eye-hand coordination, social interaction, cooperation, problem-solving, creativity and abstract thinking including Helicopter Taxi, Toca Tea Party, Toca Doctor, and Paint my Wings.

Click here to purchase Toca Boca

APP Of The Week - A+ Allowance

Teaching your child the value of a dollar and working toward a financial goal is a life long lesson that leads to strong money management skills. Allowance is a great learning tool, and can be used to create positive habits, break bad habits, and teach your child how to become a wise consumer. Creator of Prosperity4Kids, Lori Mackey, has made it her mission to design fun, engaging financial education products and resources for parents and children.

Prosperity4Kids just released a new free version of the  A+ Allowance App. Assign your kids with jobs, decide how much they will earn, and watch them mature in understanding the importance of saving their allowance. Designed based on the It’s Only a Dollar Until You Add to It! Allowance Chart, this new application allows you and your child to:
Pick your weekly chores and assign a weekly earning
Create an earning for each chore
Check off your daily completed tasks
Watch your earnings grow
At the end of each week, your income will be automatically calculated into the 10/10/10/70 concept. Which is 10% giving, 10% investing, 10% savings and the remaining 70% is for spending.

You can purchase the app at the itunes store: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/a-allowance/id417627996?mt=8. The app is compatible with the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad (requires i iOS 4.0 or later.).

APP Of The Week - Happy Family

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/happy-family/id413515234?mt=8

hAPPy family is a newly released app in Apple's ITune store. What do all children like to do? COLLECT. So what about an app that helps children collect positive behavior?   The idea for hAPPy family began last summer when my kids would collect various colored marbles in a jar for positive behaviors in turn for rewards. The marble jar was such a success in our family.  Within a week or two, I noticed a significant decrease in daily struggles and saw my kids being more accountable for their behavior.  My daughter was feeding the cat and eating apples without being nagged!  The only drawback was the marble jar was not exactly portable so voila, there was the idea for my app, hAPPy family.

hAPPy family is simply a portable marble jar although I took it a step further by introducing multiple collecting themes.  On-the-go or at home parents will have success with hAPPy family. How it works is simple: 
      *Children choose among five collecting themes - collecting images of marbles, bugs, ocean animals, candy or treasures.       
      *Parents assign positive behaviors to images the child is collecting and decides how many images are needed to earn a reward. 
      *Once behaviors and rewards have been chosen, the collecting fun begins!  Children collect images for positive behavior and with a finger's touch drag their images into a collecting jar.
     * Once the child has collected all the images needed to earn a reward, the images will disappear from the jar and the reward will appear on a screen where the child and parents can track rewards earned.


hAPPy family is fun for the whole family and can be completely personalized to work for any family.  And ALL members of the family.. I have my own jar and earn images for cooking dinner (reward is going out to dinner after I have earned 5). Our puppy even has her own jar! I am not sure she understands but it keeps us consistent in our training of her.   Please visit my website @ www.happyfamilyapp.com.  Available on Android phones this summer!

APP Of The Week - Savings Spree

Savings Spree, a new App developed by the financial literacy experts at Money Savvy Generation and educational App developer Carstens' Studios, is a fun App with a serious lesson for children ages 7 and up (younger children can play too with a little help from mom and dad or an older sibling).  It teaches kids how the choices they make each day can add up to big savings or big expenses, depending on how they decide to spend (or not spend) their money.



Presented in a game show format, Savings Spree leads players through six levels that test their financial knowledge and help them build money savvy skills. The host of the show is the Money Savvy Pig, the trusted, money-smart character central to the award-winning Money Savvy Kids curriculum, also available from Money Savvy Generation. Using games with a generous dose of humor and fun, Savings Spree introduces children to the concept of earning money for the work they perform, and then guides them through making choices about the money they earned during the game. Savings Spree is available for download from the App Store for use on iPad 2, iPad, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G, the original iPhone, and iPod touch.

APP of the Week: Arthur Reads

The globally beloved aardvark makes his digital app debut! Marc Brown Studios and ScrollMotion Kids bring you ARTHUR TURNS GREEN, narrated by Marc Brown, creator of Arthur. For a limited time, own it for only .99! Arthur celebrates his 35th publishing anniversary and 15th year on television with the release of the ARTHUR READS app series: 9 book apps lovingly crafted from his bestselling library. Each app is compatible with iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.

ARTHUR TURNS GREEN: When Arthur comes home from school acting suspicious and talking about a Big Green Machine, D.W. begins to worry. What is this machine? And why are Arthur’s hands turning green?

ARTHUR TURNS GREEN was published in 2011 and was an immediate New York Times bestseller.

Click here to get your Arthur Reads app now. http://bit.ly/arthurreads

App Of The Week: Baby's Home What Now?

The team of Parents and Experts, LLC is proud to introduce the -Baby's Home What Now? iPhone/iPad application, which instantly provides new parents with simple solutions and practical advice on how to have the best experience in the first months with their newborn baby.

The application contains all the resources to help new moms and dads find and trust their parental instincts, including:
* The entire 60-minute film, broken up into 8 chapters allowing viewers to pick and choose which topics to watch.
* Advice from experts on all the important topics and firsthand tips from parents.
* The Blog, which contains posts from our Mommy Bloggers. The entries cover a wide variety of pregnancy and newborn topics.

The Baby's Home What Now? application can be bought by clicking here

APP Of The Week - Three Apps To De-stress Mom

Today’s moms are busier than ever, and many of them are going digital to feel empowered, get organized and calm the chaos of family life. Today, 60% of moms are using smartphones; 53% of moms purchased a smartphone specifically because they are a MOM. This Mother’s Day, Cozi, Life360 and Classy Mommy are bundling together a trio of free apps to help mom stay connected and simplify her busy life. Available for Apple and Android, the free Mother’s Day App Bundle, available at www.mothersdayappbundle.com, includes Cozi Family Organizer to help Mom coordinate, communicate and manage busy family schedules and to-do lists, Life360 to let her check in on the kids’ locations and make sure they’re safe, and Classy Mommy’s Instant Playdates to make playdate scheduling a snap.

 

Links for moms to get these apps:
Cozi
Life360
Instant Playdates 

APP Of The Week - Poynt

You can find what you need quick and easy with Poynt - a free app that connects users to local businesses, restaurants, movies, as well as provides information on local weather, gas prices and local events. Poynt is utilized by over 6.4 million users in eight countries (US, UK, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Germany and Australia) on all the major smartphone platforms.

Poynt provides users with detailed information on a searched location with the ability to click (or motion) to call, check out a website or map directions. Poynt users can watch movie previews, read reviews and purchase tickets from within the app. Utilizing the restaurant feature Poynt users can check out user reviews and make reservations.

The Poynt app can also connect users with their contacts either within the address book or through Poynt's Share feature (which connects them to Facebook and Twitter).

If you are interested in checking out the app - you can download it for free by going to m.poynt.com from your phone.

APP Of The Week - Out Of Milk

No more forgotten shopping lists with eth Out Of Milk App.

Features:

• Take your Shopping Lists with you everywhere in an intuitive and easy-to-use package.
• Scan products directly into your Shopping Lists using the integration with Barcode Scanner.
• An auto-complete database makes adding grocery items a breeze. Shopping List History means that all previously stored items are saved for later use.
• The digital Spice Rack means you always know what spices are in your spice cabinet.
• The To-Do List lets you add and keep track of any other items on your daily list.
• Multiple Shopping Lists and To-Do Lists.
• Share your Shopping Lists and To-Do Lists by email or text message.

Click here to purchase your Out Of Milk App now

APP of the week - Coupons On Your Cell Phone From Rive Point

Coupons On Your Cell Phone from Rive Point.

INSTANTLY Redeem Coupons
Just show your cell phone with your RivePoint coupon and get your discount immediately at the cash register.

Location Aware
Using your current location, RivePoint will list coupons from all nearby businesses that are currently offering deals through the RivePoint service. iPhone users can also get distance and directions to each location listed.

Works on Most Cell Phones

RivePoint can be downloaded as an application for the iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia N-Series and Google Android phones. All other phones can use RivePoint via their mobile web browser.
Note: RivePoint only works on phones that can access the Internet.

• Can be used via mobile web.
• Can be downloaded as an application.
• Can be used via mobile web browser.

Click here to get your Rive Point Coupon App.

APP Of The Week- Santa Postcard APP

USAToday calls it a "Top Tech Gift of 2010 - order personalized postcards from the North Pole."

The Postcards from Santa app is a special way to share the excitement of Christmas with your kids. Try the app for free and it is only $1.99 to send a REAL letter from Santa to your child!

The app is free to install. Try it out, see our fun Santa photos, create a custom message from Santa. There is no cost until you decide you want to send the card.

Postcards from Santa cost $1.99 each which includes printing & postage anywhere in the world. Each postcard letter from Santa is printed on thick high quality cardstock with beautiful glossy images.

HOW IT WORKS
Select from a number of charming santa images, use our pre-written santa message or write your own, and enter the name and mailing address of the child you want to send the postcard to. We will print the customized postcard and drop it in the mail. Your child's postcard will arrive only a few days later in the mail.

Your children will love getting a real postcard from Santa Claus in the mail! You can even send more than one letter to your kids as Christmas approaches. The Santa Postcards are printed on high quality, thick paper and the images are high resolution with a beautiful glossy finish. You'll want to save these cards to show your children when they have children of their own.

Download the app now so you get your postcards sent out before Christmas day.

APP of the week - 5 Favorite Free Apps For Kids

To give parents a hand at keeping kids entertained this holiday season, Gabriel Schlumberger, senior app producer at Callaway Digital Arts, put together a list of his (and his kids’) favorite FREE iPad apps. These awesome apps make for happy kids when traveling, entertaining guests or curling up with cocoa while waiting for Santa and his reindeer to land on your rooftop.

1. Miss Spider’s Tea Party Lite – Watch, read, listen and play as this beloved, classic picture book magically comes to life. Miss Spider is hosting a tea party—but all the bugs are afraid to come! What’s an eight-legged lady to do? Find out in this heartwarming tale, told in rhyming verse. With multi-touch animation, painting, puzzles and games, the Miss Spider’s Tea Party Lite app reinvents the reading experience for the whole family (also available on the iPhone). Click here to download now.



2. Cut the Rope HD Lite – A mysterious package has arrived and the creature inside has only one request … candy! Try out 18 fun levels combining outstanding physics, devilishly tricky levels, and bright colorful visuals. Click here to download now.



3. Talking Roby the Robot for iPad – Roby is a talking, hip-hop dancing robot. He can speak the words you type on your keyboard. He also repeats anything you say with his robo voice. Click here to download now.




4. Virtuoso Piano Free 2 HD – Be the maestro with Virtuoso Piano Free. Learn and play the piano anytime and anywhere. A duet mode even lets two people play at once, for family concerts to remember! Click here to download now.





5. U Connect Lite – The goal is to connect all the points by dragging your finger from point to point without retracing your steps. Sound simple? It might just have you playing for hours! Click here to download this App now.

These great free apps are sure to make the holiday season brighter, and they’re also a great way to pre-load that iPad the family will be opening on Christmas morning. Let me know if I can connect you with a Callaway Digital Arts executive for more information on what’s in store for kids on the iPad.


About Callaway Digital Arts
Callaway Digital Arts (CDA) publishes premium lifestyle and children’s applications for Apple’s iPad, iPhone, and iPod family of products. CDA’s in-house studio brings talented storytellers and digital artists together to create high-quality applications that leave a lasting impression on people of all ages. Funded by the Kleiner Perkins Caufield& Byers iFund, CDA’s apps include Martha Stewart Makes Cookies, Miss Spider’s Tea Party, Miss Spider’s Bedtime Story, and(RED): The Lazarus Effect. For more information about CDA, visit www.callaway.com.

APP of the week - iFeast for Thanksgiving

If you agree that one of the trickiest parts of hosting Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner is keeping your sanity while making sure that everything is ready at the same time, then iFeast is for you.

While there are a range of apps that feature recipes, support party planning, and even create shopping lists, iFeast is the only one that allows you to keep track of your day — and preserve your sanity — by providing pre-programmed but fully customizable minute-by-minute prep and cook timings and instructions — with alerts — for preparing the perfect Holiday Feast.

Features include:

• Prep and cook times and instructions for every aspect of the meal – not only recipes, but also tasks such as setting the table and chilling the wine
• Notifications to alert you when each task begins and ends, even when the app is closed!
• Four pre-programmed menus: Novice, All at Once, Early Bird and Night Owl – choose these and amend as desired or create your own from scratch
• Shopping lists created from any of your pre-programmed or saved menus
• Over 20 classic Thanksgiving and Christmas recipes – use simply as a guide for timings or to create your own Feast
• The ability to select the time you plan to eat – iFeast will alter all times accordingly

Click here to purchase your iFeast app today

APP Of The Week - Epicurious Recipes & Shopping List

The Epi APP is from the award-winning food site Epicurious.com and includes over 28,000 delicious, professionally tested recipes from renowned magazines such as Bon Appétit and Gourmet, popular cookbooks, top chefs, and leading restaurants. The app works on both the iPhone and iPad, giving you an experience optimized for whichever device you're currently using.


ONE APP, TWO DEVICES, LOADS OF FEATURES:

—BROWSE our most popular recipe collections, from Weeknight Dinners to Cool Cocktails.

—SEARCH food or drink recipes by keyword, or swipe through icons to filter by what's in your fridge, what's healthy, what's in season, and more.

—ACCESS hundreds of thousands of recipe ratings and reviews from Epicurious members.

—SAVE recipes to your personal Favorites list.

—SHOP with interactive shopping lists that let you check off items as you find them at the store.

—E-MAIL any recipe or shopping list to yourself, family, or friends.

—COOK with help from your iPad or iPhone: Both devices offer kitchen-friendly views that make it easy to follow recipes step by step.


The iPad version of this integrated app has some special additional features, including:

—NEW INTERFACE designed for the larger iPad screen.

—FULL-SCREEN COOKBOOK VIEW displays ingredients, photos, and prep steps: You can even bookmark preparation steps as you cook.

—NUTRITION INFORMATION for thousands of recipes.

—ENHANCED SORTING lets you browse recipes by user ratings, alphabetical order, or what's new.

Click Here to get your FREE Epi app today.

Happy eating!

APP of the week - ZAPPOS

They did it! Zappos made an app. In this core shopping experience, you’ll be able to search, browse, read reviews, collect favorites AND buy really awesome products from an amazing brand selection. Their goal was to deliver a simple shopping experience on the coolest device on the street in eons, making use of iPad-specific features like gestures, portrait and landscape orientation, pinch and stretch finger action and more!

This app does its darndest to deliver that WOW service their customers have come to know and love, like free shipping and returns with no purchase minimum, a 365 day return policy and 24/7 customer support. Something else really cool… their app has a dedicated iPad customer support team! You’ll find the number inside.


To download the Zappos app for iPad, visit the Apple iTunes store.