Post Update: By the end of App Friday, March 18th, our link exchange at the bottom of this post, which was correlated to a donation to the Red Cross for Japan, reached our highest total ever of 138 links. Thanks to the dollar-per-link donations from Editor Lorraine Akemann, Lorraine’s husband (Mike), Lynette Mattke of PicPocket Books, and Krishna Narayan of NSC Partners (Kids Math Fun, Clean Energy Hawaii STEM) – we reached a total donation of $552 for the Red Cross. This effort was inspired by Scott Weiner of Family Matters, who ever since the launch of his app has chosen opportunities to pitch in during times of crisis. App developers can be a pretty cool crowd. Thanks for joining us this App Friday.
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Welcome to App Friday, our weekly link exchange of family-friendly apps. Spring Break will be here soon, and summer vacation isn’t far to follow. Jill Seman, creator of Mom Maps and family-travel expert, coordinated our fellow travel app developers to participate in a spring travel promotion. This App Friday, we are highlighting apps that have the tools, tips and resources to bring out the best in your littlest travelers.
Mom Maps Mom Maps, helps parents find and share their favorite kid-friendly locations from parks to playgrounds, indoor play places, museums and restaurants (more than 27,000 kid spots in 29 metro areas and counting). We have a wide community parents and family travel experts entering in ratings and reviews every day and sharing them – via email or Facebook – with their friends, making it easy to find great places on the go.
GoKids – Save Paris Save Paris, is the first in a series of travel game apps that teaches kids about France via fun interactive game play. It is the only app that combines education, travel and game – the best type of edutainment for kids ages 7 and up. Kids who are planning a trip to France, learning French or looking to learn more about Paris and France, to take part in a top secret mission: Save Paris! If you accept the mission, you will discover a new app, a unique travel app for kids that teaches about France via fun interactive game play with 10 different secret agent missions, a mini travel guide featuring pictures and information about Paris and a multiplayer setting for up to 4 players. Each mission includes a “dossier” of facts that must be memorized before players can defeat the Gloopy alien army and save Paris through a series of challenging memory matching games and arcade-style games. Missions include: Paris sightseeing and famous landmarks, eating and dining vocabulary, French customs and traditions, colors, numbers and basic sayings and well known French individuals.
A Family Matters PLEASE NOTE for this App Friday, all proceeds from A Family Matters will be donated to the Red Cross fund for Japan. If you would like to donate more see the Red Cross site here: http://bit.ly/gyPkh7. “A Family Matters” may be the only App you want your children playing at the dinner table! It was built as a way to help the developer’s family find interesting topics to talk about during long road trips, or waiting at a restaurant, or the doctors office, or waiting in lines at Disney, etc. The Weiner’s children ages 7,10 and 12 helped develop the content. There are now over 1,000 activities and questions and they keep adding more. By request they will soon be adding a Toddler module for those younger participants. The idea of the app is simple but the results are sometimes very surprising. The questions and activities that range from simple games to deep value questions – all designed to promote communication when you are are trying to kill some time and don’t want your kids just burying their head in a video game or getting “antsy”. There are many ways to use this application. Grandparents have told us it helped them reconnect with grand kids they haven’t seen in months, and we find it fun to play with our children when their friends come over. It’s amazing how much they get into it. The Weiners hope your family enjoys it as much as they do. For more information and video demos, see the website here: http://www.weinerfamilystudios.com.
iKidNY The iKidNY (www.ikidny.com) iPhone application is the ultimate travel tool for parents and caretakers living and visiting NYC with kids. iKidNY provides instant information about and directions to the closest playgrounds, parks, indoor playspaces, kid-friendly restaurants, changing tables, subway stations with elevators and more, all with the touch of a button. Search iKidNY’s extensive database for locations closest to you or use the interactive map to search by neighborhood to help find the most important kids stuff while on-the-go. iKidNY is available for iPhone and iTouch and can be purchased on iTunes or at www.ikidny.com
Sunday Drive Scenic routes for iPhone. Tours nationwide with history, art, family venues, restaurants, hidden gems and secret spots. Discover roads and byways you never knew existed. Preview drives nearby via photos, text and video. Build your own route & share with friends over Facebook and Twitter.
Madison Loves Kids | Milwaukee Loves Kids People live in and visit Wisconsin for many different reasons. A friendly, affordable place to live and play, the Madison Loves Kids and Milwaukee Loves Kids iPhone apps offer options for family friendly fun in Wisconsin’s two largest cities. With urban, rural, and seasonal suggestions from tots to teens, the apps are written by cheesehead Julie Henning. With three kids and nearly combined eight years living in Wisconsin, the travel apps offer both popular choices and lesser-known kid venues. Complimenting other travel and print guides, no other regional travel apps offer as many options for families in the sister cities.
Trip Boss Travel Manager – Expense & Budget Edition Trip Boss travel manager’s inspiration was our family’s travel logbook, where we kept track of our itinerary, entered our daily mileage and expenses, tracked fuel economy, and kept a journal. Not only did we record cherished memories, but we had a wonderful reference for planning future trips. With Trip Boss travel manager for iPhone, we are trying to capture the essence of this paper logbook,
through the design of feature-rich travel modules that can share each other’s data, each sold separately through in-app purchase. Start with the currently released starter-module, Expense & Budget edition. With this module, set budgets (vacation and business projects), record expenses, convert currencies, and calculate tips. Track fuel economy as you enter your fuel expenses. Export the expenses for expense reports (dual business and family use). Features include all the latest mobile goodies— get location, real-time currency rates, and photo receipts. We designed it to cover the globe—with multiple currencies, time zones, fuel and distance units. The app is topped off with a beautifully designed interface with custom backgrounds and graphics.
Trip Doc TripDoc helps you organize all the places you want to go when you travel. Create one map on your phone that shows everything you want to do with your kids on your summer vacation, and get driving or walking directions from wherever you are to where you want to go next. You choose the hotel, playgrounds, restaurants and activities you want to visit. Keep notes about each place, including confirmation numbers, recommendations, what you loved and more, and then share it all with your friends via email.
What’s in it for me, this App Friday March 18th?
- Mom Maps – always FREE
- GoKids – Save Paris – introductory launch price of $1.99
- A Family Matters – $3.99, with proceeds donated to Red Cross
- iKidNY -$.99 (from $1.99)
- Sunday Drive – always FREE
- Madison Loves Kids – $.99 (from $1.99)
- Milwaulkee Loves Kids – $.99 (from $1.99)
- Trip Boss Travel Manager – $2.99 (from $4.99)
- Trip Doc – $1.99 (from $4.99)
Note: Apps revert back to regular pricing by 8pm US Pacific Standard Time Friday the 18th on the iTunes App Store.
App Friday Link Exchange Our goal at Moms With Apps is to spread the word about family-friendly apps. This week, we would like to invite all of those who make or enjoy apps to submit an app into our link exchange. Our Editor will match the number of entries with a correlating donation to the Red Cross for Japan. So for example, if we get 100 entries this week, we will submit a Red Cross donation for $100. (Update, make that $4 per link, as Editor’s husband, and fellow developer Krishna from @NSCPARTNERS, and fellow developer Lynette from @PICPOCKETBOOKS, just matched her donation). To participate, include the app name in the Link Title, your email, and a URL to the app. Thank you.
Wow, where to begin? I’m just downloading Mom Maps – my area isn’t covered (Ottawa), but I’m intrigued. Are you crowd-sourcing for more coverage?
Also decided to take a closer look at Trip Boss and Trip Doc – I could see these being useful for our periodic road trips to visit family. I was already thinking about this when I saw the earlier review of Trip Boss (and love the story of how it got it’s name ;), glad I waited until today!