Mouth off: fun for kids whose parents have an iPhone
In these busy times, most parents of young children spend at least some of the time wishing they could give their kid something that would keep them amused in those interstitial periods waiting to be seen at the doctor’s surgery, waiting for a train or in the car. Problem is, there’s guilt attached to the purchase of a Nintendo DS.
So I think there’s a soon-to-boom market for “interstitial parent-saving iphone apps” (though I have to think of a better name for the category.) In fact, in conjunction with an author, an illustrator and the talented team from Mogeneration I’m working on an iPhone app in this category. It’ll be in beta soon, stay tuned.
In the meantime, here’s another great example: Mouth Off from Us Two. It uses the microphone in the iPhone to animate one of a library of silly mouths. Hold the iPhone up to the lower half of your face, say anything that comes to mind, and anyone watching you will see the cartoon mouth move roughly in sync with what you’re saying.
Because you can’t use the app and see the effect at the same time, this takes two kids to play, but I’m betting it keeps them amused for 5-10 minutes, so for $1.19 that’s a bargain for any hassled parent.
Another interesting app I’m playing with at the moment is dB which uses the iPhone microphone to measure current and historical sound levels wherever you are. That sounds very dry and boring but like many iPhone apps, dB adds some great user interface design and social glue to make this a very interesting app. For instance, it saves the geolocation of the sound levels you’ve recorded and it will let you share that sound level with friends via Twitter or email and will let you include a photo like this:
