Reviews of iPad/iPod/iPhone (iThing) apps

[glitterusagi]

I quote glitterusagi:
"I usually change countries just so I can read reviews and see what's popular elsewhere. I still have to come back and buy them in the U.S. store though. "
same here: I live in Spain and it won´t let me buy a certain app in German becasue it only exists in the "German itunes", the same app is offered to me but in Spanish. Well, I happen to live here but I teach my child German (mother tongue) and English. This restriction is so annoying and I think the same as Shen-Li commented in her blog recently "I have never understood country restrictions when it comes to digital products". Is there no way around it?

Thanks in advance
Isa

Hi, Isa! If the app is programmed to "localize language", you can usually just switch your iPad's language setting and it will switch over to that one for the app as well. Some will use your real location and not allow you to trick it, but that's not really common right now. If your iPad is already set to use English or German and it's still giving you the Spanish version of the app, you most likely have a version that is Spanish only no matter where you are.

Thanks for the karma, hypatia!! You can do a screen shot by clicking the power and sleep button at the same time, that would show your icons in an image that you could upload. Or, you could snag the icons off the iTunes store when viewing through a browser, not in the iTunes application. Those would be the two ways I'd do it!

[NadiaD]

Regularly $14.99, 123 Color HD Premium Edition is *FREE THIS WEEKEND ONLY*, in honor of The iTaalk Autism Foundation's "Using iPads with Individuals with Special Needs" conference.

Today 123 Color HD Premium Edition rocketed up to #1 in education, and joined the overall top 100 apps list, out of more than 500,000 apps in the App Store!

• Woman's Day names 123 Color the #1 app for kids during road trips.
• The New York Times says 123 Color HD is, "nice for introducing the sound of a new language."
• PadGadget.com says, with 123 Color HD, "Kids can let their inner Picasso shine."
• 123 Color was named #1 art app for kids by Babble.com.

--

123 Color teaches numbers, letters (upper and lower case), and colors, spoken in English, Spanish, German, French, Russian, and Hebrew with engaging artwork, voice-overs, music, sound effects, and animation.

At the request of parents and teachers who want all 35 coloring books (sold individually at $0.99/£0.59/€0.79 within the standard edition 123 Color HD), now there is 123 Color HD Premium Edition. A $35/£20/€28 value, all 35 coloring books are being sold together at a steep discount. 123 Color HD Premium Edition includes more than 350 cartoons, drawings, photos, world maps, and handwriting guides in all, to be painted by freestyle finger painting or touch-to-fill, along with voice-overs of letters, numbers, and colors in 6 languages, and much more!

123 Color HD is jam packed with features and teaches the following skills:
• Numbers, letters (upper and lower case), and colors, spoken in English, Spanish, German, French, Russian, and Hebrew.
• Spelling of numbers and colors in all six languages
• Basic shapes including squares, triangles, circles, ovals, parallelograms, and trapezoids,
• Compound shapes including cubes, pyramids, cones, wedges, concentric circles, and more
• World maps teach the shapes of our world
• Artistic expression, drawing and painting skills

For those interested in a lower initial purchase price, with additional coloring books available via in-app purchase, check out the standard edition of 123 Color HD in the app store. For those interested in having access to all coloring books right away, with a lower total price, 123 Color HD Premium Edition is for you.

Additional features include:
• Freestyle finger painting with Perfect Paint™, a patent-pending technology that makes it impossible for kids to paint outside the lines.
• 10 world maps include pins identifying the names of capital cities, states, territories, countries, continents, and oceans, and link to a satellite view of the Earth
• Embedded live Google Map with pinch and zoom is fully supported!
• Engaging and colorful drawings to paint that are more than more than 5 times larger than the iPhone version of 123 Color
• Select a 10 or 30 color pallet (10 for young children)
• English, Spanish, German, French, Russian, and Hebrew voice-overs and alphabets included
• American, Australian, and British English voice-overs also included
• Select up to two voice-overs to be spoken when numbers and colors are touched, and which you want spoken first
• Proper spelling of numbers and color names displayed in selected languages (for example, when 1 is touched, "One / Uno" is displayed when English and Spanish are selected)
• English phonetic spelling of Russian and Hebrew colors and numbers also included
• 23 sound effects
• 25 songs
• Individual (or all) songs and sound effects can be disabled
• Save, email, and print (AirPrint) artwork to share with friends and family without leaving 123 color

Songs include:
• London Bridges
• Wheels On The Bus
• Mary Had A Little Lamb
• Oh Susanna
• I've Been Working On The Railroad
• Minuet by Beethoven
• Ode To Joy
* plus 16 others

--

123 Color is also a powerful tool for introducing children to Spanish, German, French, Russian, Hebrew, or English as a foreign language.

Steve Glinberg Web Site123 Color HD: Premium Edition, Talking Coloring Book (English, Spanish, German, French, Hebrew and Russian Voices Included) Support

[2010BEBES]

Nadia,

Thank you for this valuable information. that app ceetainly looks very good. I sent a linnk to muy children and hope they can get ir for their kids.

One more week till i get my xoom (motorola android) and i hope i can get similar apps.
Karma to you.

[Nams]

I found the below web-site which provides top applications. You can sort them by category, states, free/paid etc...

http://www.appannie.com/top/ipad/united-states/education/

[hypatia]

Just to let everyone know about two great websites

www.appshopper.com

Gives you free apps and price drops. You can chose the app you like and you'll get an email when they are free.

www.appmoinscheres.com

This one offers mainly free French apps.

I visit those websites daily!

[Mandabplus3]

I have just started using isafeplay and think it's great. It is currently under review so you can only actually get the basic version which sadly has limitations. But it still gets 4 stars.
Anyway...it allows you to save utube videos to your iPad so your kids can watch them offline. We love it, my boy has about an hour a day in the car most days, now when he isn't keen to actively play apps he can watch an episode of whatever educational video I downloaded the night before. The added advantage is that he can ONLY watch the ones I have approved! the light version allows only 5 clips at a time but it only takes a minute to swap them for something new, and they can be sent (copied, emailed, blue toothed) to another storage device as needed. So you don't loose the favorites.
I emailed the developer and got an almost instant response, they will let me know when the upgrade is available again.

[bella]

hello friends
I have some pdf mazes files I found online very colorful . I was wondering to save on printing and  ink can I load them to ipad in ibook ,  but then what apps I can use so my little boy can trace the path with his finger or stylus , or draw on the pdf . there are so many apps there I couldn’t decide , I like to use one tried and approved by somebody I know so . I hope you can recommend something .
viv

[bella]

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gflashpro-flashcards-tests/id297332787?mt=8
and many more apps for free on APP Friday
viv

[bella]

http://www.facebook.com/AppFriday/app_115462065200508
here's the link to their facebook page
viv

[bella]

Ok you have an ipad , and you paid for some nice apps , you also grabbed so many apps when they come free for few days . Your ipad is loaded , cluttered . Do you let your kids choose their applications to play ?? or you decide for them ??
viv

[Skylark]

Bella, do you know that you can delete an application on the Ipad, but it still stays in your account on the Itunes, so you can re-load it again at any time later.

That what I was doing -- I do not want it to be cluttered, and I want to keep only current things on, so I delete the ones I do not use presently, and then later go to my Itunes account and grab them again. It helped me with being organized...

[Mandabplus3]

We have a couple of unbreakable rules. Watch the countries of the world before magic school bus and do your words before you play your games. In saying that there are actually no games on my iPad that I am not happy for my kids to spend an hour on. I just don't load anything onto it that doesn't have some benefit to them.
Skylark, I do like your thinking. Sometimes my kids get a bit obsessed with one game and forget what else they have available. It could just " disappear" for a few days until they find a new obsession.

[Kerileanne99]

I do that too! If one app seems to be WAY too obsessive to the exclusion of others, it is a nice fix

One other thing I do is to group them in folders by subject...this is nice for a bit of focus sometimes, and I have noticed it can be used to 'bury' an app a bit. That way it is still loaded, but if the icon is not Clearly visible, it gets overlooked a bit.
It also helps with organization and freeing up more space for apps!

[bella]

thanks a lot , i have to work on creating folders . Are we able to organize the application in folders also in Itunes ??

viv

[Korrale4kq]

Sometimes James gets fixated on apps so I bury them in folders. Recently he started to want to play the starfall app a lot. I hid it and he found it. So I just deleted it. He already knows all his letter sounds, so I wanted him to move onto more apps to help with blending.

He has apps that he knows and he has an entire page or 2 or apps in the iPad. He goes right to those pages and picks one. Oddly he has not even tried to open any of my apps. Netflix  is the one exception. In the morning I let him climb into bed with me. He has to do his daily readingbear and then he gets to watch Might Machines on netflix.

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