internet cool?!

As you well know by now I way in to all kinds of innovation when it comes to kids education and entertainment. So I was pretty stoked to find KiwiCrate recently. For $19.95 a month (includes shipping), KiwiCrate will send you an age-appropriate craft project for your child complete with all the materials and detailed instructions. The crafts are developed by a panel of experts in child development, science, art, and education and tested by the ultimate experts: real kids.

I signed my boys up a few months back for this one and so far all three kits we’ve received have been a total hit.

So are the boxes that have arrived are themed (they may be centered around a season, holiday or subject; IE Space & Planets). There are plenty of materials provided, and it’s good quality stuff. I was happy to see two activities in most of our boxes as well as plenty of materials so both my boys can participate.

Really digging the creativity here. Can’t help but think the best is yet to come in the subscription service world. What do you think?

Funny little tidbit: When I first picked out the name KideoPlayer, I did a Google Search for it and there was just about 1,000 returns for names similiar. Just today I searched for “kideoplayer” on Google and found near 11,000,000 mentions! This is fantastic!

For those who don’t know what KideoPlayer is, click here. (It’s pretty self explainatory.  :)

To read my original posting on KideoPlayer, click here.

To run the Google search and see the KideoPlayer mentions, click here.

Thanks everyone (friends, new friends and family) for helping get the word out. I would also like to thank Douglas Rowell for the outstanding character development he did for the KideoPlayer mascots. They are adorable, and everyone loves them.

The mentions online and the traffic seem to be doubling every day. Please, if you love the site - give us some feedback. We’d love for it to keep growing.

Yay!

Is your kid more like more like Paul Teutul than Bob the Builder? Then peep this.

From Today and Tomorrow: The Japanese retail brand MUJI and LEGO teamed up to develop a set of 4 different boxes. Inside those boxes you’ll find the classic LEGO bricks but also a few sheets of paper. No big deal. But when you also have the right punch hole tool, you can combine both to create something new. I really like this concept. You can order a set here (when you speak sone Japanese).

Flippin’ sweet.

slap the spacebar for the next clip!

Today POKE and I are launching KideoPlayer. A fun and safe way to “channel surf” YouTube.

 

the backstory

As a creatively-focused web nerd and as a parent of two young boys under the age of 2, I try to keep my family engaged with what is happening online, including interacting with, sharing and viewing of safe content. Having sat down to try and find this safe content with my boys a couple of times now, I can tell you it is not easy to locate. If you search long enough for YouTube content that is appropriate, it always returns search results with wonderful gems to share, but, they are usually sitting right next to something questionable - if not - down right offensive.

I was amazed to see how little has been done to help curate they sea of online video content in a way that makes it easy, interesting, and fun for parents and kids to experience together. Online video and simple interactivity can be a great source of entertainment and learning for the whole family. Someone just needs to care enough to make it so.

 

how it works

I will spend my free time sourcing, identifying and curating the safest, most educational (and most FUN) YouTube videos I can find. This ongoing list of videos will be served up in a simple little interactive package that I can sit down and play with my boys. I call this package “KideoPlayer.” e.

And since I’m doing this online (and the web is as social as social can be) you get the benefit of all my hard work. Yay!

 

how KideoPlayer is interactive

KideoPlayer is based on POKE’s UPL8.TV framework (@neonarcade’s brainchild) It allows for easy video surfing by using your keyboard (spacebar) to “skip” forward to the next interesting thing. UPL8 is also cool because you can search YouTube using the URL field. For example, entering http://upl8.tv/hamster+dance basically rolls your own rediculous hamster dance mash up channel. Pure poetry.

Ok, back to kids…

KideoPlayer works the same way. Only different. :) It seems that YouTube’s G-Rated filter has some flaws. You see, KideoPlayer can’t reliably search only “Safe” areas of YouTube right from the URL bar as some questionable content still sneaks through. As such, we’ve built in a work-around.

Typing http://kideoplayer.com/babyeinstein still executes a search. The only difference is that it searches “locally” — only sifting through the library of videos that I am curating. Neat huh? Just by typing that you’ve rolled your very own “Baby Einstein” channel. From there, you can keep using it like the regular KideoPlayer features, and use the spacebar to get to the next Baby Einstein video (in this case). Bear with us! As I tag more video from behind the scenes, these search queries will get more and more robust.

As parents, it is up to us to be informed about what and how our children play and to make appropriate choices on their behalf. Fortunately, there are many tools and resources that we as parents can utilize to be better parents in the information age. Perhaps someday, this will be one of them.e.

In the meantime, enjoy! Oh, and remember parents - watch with your kids and slap the spacebar for the next clip! e.

Love,

Tom and your friends at POKE

Read more on UPL8.tv here.

Submit videos you’d like to see on KideoPlayer here.