I think some people are missing the point: this is a service designed for parents/grandparents/etc. that for one reason or another are unable to be physically PRESENT for bedtime. Everyone knows being there with a book in hand is far superior.
Yes. You got it exactly. And for the folks who were confused by the opening sentence on our site, we've updated it in an attempt to reduce confusion. Check it out now and see what you think. :) (clear your cache when you reload the page to make sure you get the latest ;)
Now that that's out of the way, some comments about your site itself (these are unordered, but I hope they're useful):
(disclaimer: I don't have kids, so mentions of my kids are hypothetical)
- The DESIGN! It's beautiful, charming, and makes me want to snuggle a teddy bear. Your load screen ("loading book") has such lovely colors that I giggled - and THAT is rare praise.
- I like the bookshelf idea, with some exceptions: the popups that occur when hovering over a book are a bit jarring, because they don't fit in with your otherwise beautiful design. I'd like them to gently fade in, with pastel background, rather than whacking me with great blotches of white.
- On the popups, you have prices. I HATE the overlined "regular price whatever", it takes the site from feeling like an exclusive storyland boutique to Walmart. Get rid of that. In fact, don't put the prices on popups - those should just be a short blurb about the book. Make one price, and stick it somewhere on the page.
- Which brings me to the next problem - it's unclear what the price is for. Is it for one video? Just for reading the book? For recording as many videos as I want of that book? Make it clear what the prices actually refer to.
- I personally like the bookshelf, but I understand why others disagree. My only problem is that when sorting by ages, I'm required to scroll way down before I find 3-6 or 6-9, etc. You should find a way to make those "tabs" or something on the top (it's OK to violate the physics of your metaphor, as long as its pretty). The search box is also too white - like the designer was lazy to finish.
- The book reader is lovely. The books are crisp and beautiful, in full elegant color. What I'd love is a fullscreen version with blacked-out background, the way I can watch full-screen YouTube videos. BUT: How can I get rid of the annoying "record the book" panel? I don't want to record it right now, I want to READ it with my kids, because these books look lovely and I don't have them all.
- Which brings me to the only really substantive point of this post. I think the true gem of your site isn't really the whole "video" aspect - it's delivering a truly beautiful user experience of lovely children's books which parents can read to their kids, together, even if they don't own the book. My MacBook has a gorgeous, luminous screen, and I'd love to sit and read these with someone. The "recording videos" bit feels tacked on the end.
- So I guess my only real recommendation is to split the site, or drop the videos entirely. But IMHO your clear route to success is to deliver a gorgeous, lush user experience of excellent children's books to parents who want to read to their kids, but don't know what to read, aren't near a library, don't have time to buy books, don't want to buy books that'll only get read once, etc.
- If you want to make a second site that allows one to record readings of these books and send them around, that might work too. Another option is to make children's books the first in a large number of online books that deliver a really excellent online book-reading experience, with bookmarks, notes, crisper-than-crisp fonts, and a soul-soothing design. I haven't really seen a books site that looks like this, with such a nice reader - if I could subscribe a-la Netflix to ebooks on your web-based reader, and you kept track of my bookmarks, made me recommendations, and let me date girls who like the books I like, I'd definitely pay you every month.
Those are some rambling thoughts, but I hope you find something useful in there.
I think this is some of the best advice I've read on this site.
You really have an awesome implementation and a real market. I agree with caffeine in that you might want to simply sell access to the children's books for parents to read with their kids, on their laptop or phone, in full screen.
The presentation of this is infinitely better than any ebook reader or a Kindle and would be worth a lot of money to a lot of parents. I think some sort of subscription model would work wonders here.
Also "let me date girls who like the books I like" -- haha I missed this the first time I read your post. Careful Chris Hansen doesn't mess around.
Yikes :( I guess the post wasn't clear enough, I'll edit it. I meant that I eventually want "Kindle in my web browser", with regular (not just children's) books .. followed up with some kind of social reading that doesn't suck (which has not been invented yet). I like their book reader and attention to detail, I think they could make a really luxury "coffee house" feel to a book-reading website.
That said - maybe you're right, and there's room for social features on the kids' level. Organizing play dates between our kids if they both liked such & such a book?
(edit: apparently I can't edit my previous post. weird.)
First off, "Use your brains" is so condescending that it shuts down any useful dialog.
Most importantly, the people who are responding with "i don't get it" (like myself), are not missing the point of what they're trying to deliver. In fact, we might be potential customers. What the site is failing to do is impress upon me why this is a useful service. The bedtime ritual is about so much more then just reading a story, as stated here over and over, by gasp real parents. When I'm away, I could just call and tell my kid a story over the phone, and frankly, they'd prefer that to having a pre-recorded book (I just asked them).
With all due respect to the developers, (and I do wish them the greatest success, it's a well-intentioned product), but honestly, this feels like a solution in search of a problem rather then the other way around.
@butterfi I apologize for how that sounded. I can see how I would be able to use their service and make it a fun activity for the kids in my life. Perhaps I should have asked why it isn't clear this is a useful service?
I think it's great telling a story over the phone makes your kids happy. Maybe their site can give you something different every now and then?
I spoke with my 8 year-old about this and he ultimately found it compelling if it could take place in real-time, at which point my 10 year-old jumped in with an "oh yeah!" And I guess thats the missing piece for me. It's the real-time element. I can see having a story kept as an artifact, but for repeated use, the personal interaction is a key ingredient.
If I were a high priced PR firm I'd charge you $30,000 for the following piece of advice: if you give this away to folks with a .mil email address you will be featured in national publications for it.
edited to add: And since you apparently already thought of that, here's another one:
Currently, you sell books for $7. You should probably also offer some deal like 3 for $20 or 5 for $30, because this will greatly increase your average customer value. (Your median number of books purchased is going to be 1, otherwise. Trust me -- nature of the beast.) After you've convinced folks $7 is the price for a book (too low, but we'll roll with it), and they've committed to spending $7, it is very easy to convince them to spend another $13 to save a buck.
Another reason you'll like this: cash flow. You see, many people are going to buy 3/5 book credits and record 1 (or 0) books. This means that you're sitting on their money in the interim. Depending on your local accounting rules, that can probably be booked as revenue (and can almost certainly be spent on expenses) today. Also, since they haven't picked a book off the shelf yet, I'm guessing you don't owe any royalties on the $13 which pays for books that haven't been recorded. (Check your contracts/legal advisors.)
(Some folks might be discomfitted by this advice since you may think the business is getting money for nothing. That isn't correct: they're just getting money in advance of doing something of value for the customer, in consideration of giving the customer a break on the ultimate price.
This is similar to how a shareware business sells you a license today which includes technical support six months down the road, rather than selling you a cheaper license today and charging a high per-incident fee later. We don't think the shareware vendor is being dishonest because the support hasn't been delivered yet, or because it may never be delivered.)
For my kid, the actual story is not such an important part of the bed time routine. The fact that I am in her room, comforting her while she winds down and spending some time before she sleeps, is key. Swapping me with an iPhone will probably not help.
Good point though the site is really not meant to replace mom/dad but rather give an option to connect to important kids in their lives if they can't be there in person. Ex., soldiers stationed overseas, grandparents who live far away, etc..
Agreed. I am a pretty creative person and have been making up stories to tell my daughter since she was old enough to understand what I was saying. I found that when I tried harder to make the stories cohesive and storybook-like she just got bored and demanded a different plot line or character. She seems to enjoy them much more when I throw in random things like race cars made out of fruit or old men jumping over houses to get to their breakfast. Little kids are funny sometimes.
Yeah, I've been telling a series of stories to my daughter for 5+ years now....there are only so many funny situations you can make up with an elephant, 4 squirrls, 1 monkey, a klutsy rabbit, a spider, an ant, 2 cats, a dragon ...
I totally hear you there. Herbert the Friendly Dragon can only get into so many sticky situations that require the children of the village to help him out before I start repeating myself :-)
This is VERY well designed. Many congrats on that regard.
Rather than critiquing it for not being a suitable replacement for parental story time, why not someone suggest it be used in libraries? Let the librarian record the stories and give the children access to them on the library's computers. For children who can't read, they still get a fun experience and it's more intimate than some tape recording.
This also has educational implications, in teaching children to read and maybe using the interface as a 2-way communication device for some sort of tutoring service where children learn to read by practicing with a teacher listening and watching them as they try. What about allowing them to do have real-time drawing capabilities, like you see on NFL games, circling words the child makes a mistake on, or underlining a sentence the teacher wants to emphasize for whatever purpose.
These iterations of this service are what make it a beautiful thing. I don't reckon it would be too difficult to add either of them as well. Would also provide it a more viable business model.
The intro text "Chose a story... whenever they want." threw me. How do they play back a story? Then there's some text about recording a book. Huh? The picture of some goofy old guy on what looks like a stamp didn't help. I click a book and that doesn't clear up the confusion either.
Of course with a little effort I was able to figure out what this does, but I'd change the wording to "Record yourself reading a book of your choice to...." so it's immediately apparent.
Looks nice. Here's the part I don't get: I read to my 4 year old son. I do so while he is in bed as part of the purpose is to settle him down. I set the lights low, just enough so I can read and he can see the book. I don't see how a web site allows me to do this.
So you sit on bed with your kids showing them the iphone?
IMHO it's best to be active and there while putting them to bed, and so you may as well read the story yourself. If you do it well, they'll ask questions, interact, and learn things, laugh, etc. I can't see this being replaced by technology any time soon, and I don't know why anyone would want it to be.
More like... your spouse/partner is on a business trip. Your child misses them and wants a story read by them. But they're not there to do it. You sit on the bed and show the child a video of the absent parent reading a story to the child.
I don't think we ever positioned the site as a replacement for a parent or grandparent who is there. That said, my three year old requests stories to be read to her "on the computer" where we record them together and then she watches them back sitting on my lap.
Hrm... maybe. There's still something kind of sad about it though. My two cents is that maybe this idea is not it, you're also close to doing something very cool - I think there is room to do some interesting things with kids and technology that help parents out and add to the fun and learning.
Or maybe this is it, and you need to add something happier about it? It makes me think of my daughters' grandparents who are quite far away, which is a bit depressing. The positive side of things, of course, is that 20 years ago they would have only got brief phone calls, and now they can do stuff like this even if it's obviously not as good as being there. So maybe some kind of positive spin on it? Target it more at grandparents? Just thinking out loud...
Why an iPhone? I see this as most useful for an absent parent (e.g. on a business trip / separated). What then is the chance of their being an unused iPhone in the house?
Why not a standard PC built into a teddy-bear, simplified and locked down for just this application? Sell it as a $500 dedicated device to the business (wo)man who's away from their kids on a business trip.
[EDIT] p.s. - wouldn't the iPhone screen make the text too small for the child to read along with the parent? Is reading along an important part of the experience?
Think a little longer term. The iPod touch has a great chance to displace the Gameboy as the portable gameplayer of choice. You get way more processing power per dollar (and not much more expensive), a massive catalog of games, and services like this demonstrate other uses nicely. I would do the iPod touch version stat!
It's not a matter of 'longer term', it's a matter of suitability of the HW for the task at hand. The iPod touch / iPhone has small screen, which would not allow the book to be displayed in full glory along side the video, so no reading along for the child :(. Plus it doesn't support Flash, it would need to be a native app, hence taxable by Apple.
I'm not saying iPhone wont work at all, I'm saying there's probably an additional opportunity (maybe better) for a bigger device, designed specifically for the task, and sold at a healthy margin (people who go on lots of business trips normally have above average income).
I have to ask whether or not you actually have kids?
There is a significant difference in the development of a child's verbal ability when they are read to by a caretaker vs. watching the exact same thing on a screen. One is an active process, one is passive, and it engages them differently.
You can even tell by listening to a child talk whether they watch a lot of TV or not. There is a specific accent that they pick up, which basically amounts to a lack of enunciation.
Now, all that being said. I think your idea would make money. I thank many parents would love it.
But I think if you are not prepared to be abhorred by child development professionals, you should think again.
Do you really think anyone who cares enough to want to use a service like this simultaneously doesn't care enough to want to be there in person if they could? If the options are nothing/regular tv or this, which is better?
If the site owners have kids, they will understand all the vast differences in parental philosophy and choices. And they can predict some of the positive and negative reactions to their product.
I personally have a negative reaction. I also clearly stated that I thought others would have a positive reaction.
The point isn't the specific reaction of any given parent. It is the full spectrum of reactions that the general population will have. If they have children, this is a topic they probably already know. If they don't have children, they could be in for surprises.
So it is a valid question -- "Do you know your market?"
As a soldier, I would have loved this while I was deployed. This looks to be a great service - I'm spreading the word to all my Army buddies. Such a great idea!
How do you plan to market it? How do you plan to reach this niche you are talking about: Split families. Might be helpful for other folks who want to get the word out to a niche.
As a father of four (and a web developer), who has read to his children every night for... 16 years now... (OMG), I have to ask:
"Why would I want this?"
My kids never really liked those books that came with a tape, and this just seems like a more convenient way of producing something they didn't want anyway. I'm not trying to be mean, you folks have clearly worked hard on this, and I wish you every success, but honestly I don't see the appeal. Bedtime is so much more then just a story.
IMHO, the best start-up service for parents (with regards to bedtime) is your local library.
This is great concept! I think you have a winner as far as user desirability goes! Incredible artwork and the layout and workings of the site are top notch.
As far as profiting from this site in addition to trying to get grandparents to pay for the online reading of the books it seems like a natural to allow parents to access the books in total to read to the kids themselves for a small 6 month membership fee. Then you expand your target market and your potential income.
This is an incredibly well done site. If this were my site, initially I would not try to market it myself, instead I would focus on licensing its use to other sites that already have a large presence in the kids/parents market such as Disney and Barbie. I would focus on selling the larger company as to your sites potential of being a marketing feature for the larger site and I would seek to bill the licensee company for the traffic vs. billing the grandparent or parent directly. You would simply become a feature on their existing site.
What a great holiday gift for a child this site would be. I would also come up with a marketing angle to sell access to the site’s books in full in large bookstores like Borders and in Wal-Mart alongside the physical books. I would use some sort of physical packaging that could go in the bookracks alongside the hardcopy books with a little teddy bear attached to grab the buyers attention.
I agree with markbao above, but I thought you might like some more constructive feedback than "holy shit".
People aren't afraid of scrolling, so you can use your vertical space better. You could put the description/call to action closer to the top/center of the page and make them bigger. I would slide the thumbnail images for the books below that. As long as people can tell that there are books there, they'll scroll through them to find one that works.
The set of 50 books on the bookshelf is an overwhelming wall of visual noise. You may want to curate/redact to get fewer books up there (those aren't all what I would consider great kids literature), get rid of the bookshelf metaphor (or at least tone down the contrast). Also, as all of the books are different aspect ratios, there's a lot of extra visual noise in what could otherwise be a tidy grid. Consider cropping them all to square.
Are any of the books available for free? It might help to have one or two free books to get people interested in the concept and to get more feedback/usage data from real humans.
Don't get disheartened. It's a cool concept. I started doing a similar thing for my kid with a digital camera, a mic, and real books but my kid learned how to read before I finished the audio editing.
I think it works pretty well with the copy on the right side. The bookshelf makes a bit more of an impact with how much space it takes on the page. Furthermore, if you move the text copy to the top, the bookshelf will extend to the entire page's width, which may just create even more noise on the page when skimming.
Though there's only one way to be sure: A/B test it!
Though there's only one way to be sure: A/B test it!
I couldn't agree more, and yet so many ignore this step. Plenty of "great" designs, clearly better than "meh" designs even to the practiced eye, get clobbered by "meh" in A/B testing. Find good metrics, and then trust the data.
I actually really like the look of the site, the bookshelf works well imho. I can see where it might get unwieldy as the site expands, but as a main page I think it works really well. Of course this is just my personal opinion and I think the best way to validate what design works best would be to do some A\B Testing on the page.
I like the idea of having some books available for free though!
Nice work though the site looks really good and it's certainly the type of product I could see my self purchasing.
Well said Mark. The design is impressive and seems to be generating a lot of comments. Design is underused in many startups and this site shows how a little can go a long way in getting people interested in your product. I set up a poll here: (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=917688)
Does your startup have a designer on the founding team?
Seems that it's jackson fish market 'experience' http://www.jacksonfish.com/astorybeforebed and quite frankly everything these guys have done has been excellent. Tip my hat to these guys.
This is one of the best startup ideas I've seen all year.
You guys are going to rock!
The market is even bigger than you think. I hate to be morbid, but imagine: grandpa gets sick with cancer and has one year to live. Quickly he spends a couple hundred bucks and leaves all the grandkids with special stories they can cherish the rest of their lives.
I think there is real generational network potential here as well, what with families spread out all over the place.
I prefer the model where my kids can get stories read to them by anyone.
Also I think you could have a hit with moms if you do an autoplay feature. Moms need 30 mins of time to get something done. Moms dont like it when their kids watch TV. Your app should allow a Mom to click play and then deliver 30 mins of books to the child, uninterrupted. IMHO if it's a high quality experience moms would pay for this.
I was thinking Jackanory style "programs" where authors read their own book or a voice actor reads. Indeed you could probably by rights for audio from the BBC, etc., or from Barefoot Books, say, and match up with the book. Very easy to establish a large catalogue of books then.
Another extension might be to offer a copy of the book with an audio-CD/mp3 of the person reading bundled with it.
I think there are so many variations possible (particularly in education sector) and that this idea will be in demand from children's publishers (licensing?) that you should do well with it.
To concur with the masses... great site! I like the idea and I think its more intuitive than some of the comments would suggest.
This reminds me of these interactive CD-ROM books that my little sister used growing up (shes 18 now). One thing that I liked at the time was how interactive the books were. Users could click on background imagery to engage little animations, etc.
Do you have any plans to make the site more interactive? Something very simple like highlighting the word as its being read (think of Karaoke) would add a lot of educational value and help, at least marginally with reading.
I see this service as not only replacing the parent when they're away, but also as a standalone educational platform for kids. You can even incorporate ages to scale the complexity of the interaction. So for younger kids, clicking a carton bunny may just show a bubble with the word "rabbit" while older kids get something more advanced.
Are armed services the target group? Have you seen interest from users who aren't away on such extended leaves?
I wonder how useful this service is for parents who only make 1-3 day business trips.
Great service, I checked the demo and it worked well.
My question is this, what is your intended market?
The only reason I see myself using this is if I where to die soon, and wanted kids to still have stories read by me, but I don't know if I would do it then. Maybe if I commuted a lot.
I'd be very interested to understand who the user is.
Thanks. We think this is appropriate for parents who are on business trips, grandparents who live far away, split family situations, parents stationed in the military, etc. We also have gotten reports that people are interested in using it to record kids reading books to show off to their remote grandparents.
+1 on this comment -- I'm the market for this site (kids, 3 and 5 yrs) didn't understand how the site helped me on first view. That paragraph would've made a difference.
Yeah, I was skeptical until I noticed the 'special offer for armed forces' on the front page and lightbulb went on over my head. another vote for the chorus of tweaking your presentation to bring out the absent parent aspect - the first impression I had was that it was for lazy yuppies, when in fact you are doing something much nicer and more worthy.
Apparently, a common problem with before-bed-stories if you have more than one children is who gets to sit in the lap during the story. Normally, it is alternating every night, however, you have to remember carefully who got to sit in the lap the previous night, as children aren't quite the most reliable source of information in this case (they tell you anything to sit in the lap) and if you make a mistake, the one who didn't get to sit in the lap will be offended for weeks. This is very hard to keep in mind. So you could add a "who got to sit in the lap" history to help parents. I'm sure many of them would really appreciate it!
I really like the awesome bookshelf interface. It is really a brilliant design. I think that your service would make a nice bookstore for children, but I wonder how many parents will actually use it for storytime.
It is interesting to see how popular this idea is for a couple reasons:
1. Focus on Design - The software is solid, but the aesthetics are what seem to make the service. It just looks like a professional project even though it is a three person team, working on it part time based on all the other projects they have on their site.
2. Kid as Customer - With so many social media/real time projects in the works it is energizing to see bits and pixels used in the service of different customer groups.
How many people commenting have invested a lot in the design of their site or are targeting an atypical customer base?
Liked the design a lot, browsed through the books, opened one and got confused about what "recording" was supposed to mean. Flipped through the end of the book, and went to the FAQ, got even more confused by the webcam requirement.
Then went back to the homepage and noticed the video. Played it and finally understood what the site is for.
Your "welcome" message should be changed to clearly state that you here to do a video recording of a bedtime story for a child when you're away.
There's a note on "you can record and preview before paying", but I wouldn't want to go through the trouble of recording and figure out at the last minute that the thing is way beyond my budget.
[edit: found the pricing on rollover, it's slow enough that it didn't show up the first time I clicked around. I would include it also on the book page]
beside that, I think it's a great idea. I read to my 4 year old son every night at bedtime, and I will definitely give astorybeforebed.com a try next time I'm on a business trip.
@cedsav - we're glad to hear you'll give it a spin. Good feedback on pricing. If you hover over the books on the bookshelf, you get more info on the book. Currently, all books recordings are $6.99 and you can watch it/share it as many times as you like.
Awesome design, but I don't like the concept :/ You can't substitute real quality time spent with kids, and that's what this seems to do. Maybe I'm missing the concept, but I don't see why parents or children would rather watch a video than have proper 1on1 storytime.
I guess I don't see what problem it solves, and IMHO it could promote lazy parenting. But I'm not convinced a kid would really be willing to use it to listen to a story. I don't think it'd be effective putting kids to bed.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of families that are divided (divorced/separated/traveling/etc) and this would give the children a way to be connected with the distant parent.
As a side note, I think it would be nice to have a karaoke style presentation of the words available so that it's also educational at the same time. Kind of like running your finger along below the words as you read them.
@axod: You're right. This isn't a replacement for 1:1 storytime. But sometimes that's not possible. Like when a parent is on a business trip, or stationed abroad in the military, or with remote grandparents, or in a split family situation.
FWIW, I was in a split family situation with my son since he was 18months. He's 10 now. I really don't think this would have been a good idea. I did think about getting a webcam setup at the time, but you need some boundaries, and things worked out great in the end.
Phone is good, and obviously making every effort when you are together, etc.
Having too much webcam/phone/etc can just make everyone miss everyone even more, and make things worse rather than better.
I'm sorry to be 'down' on the service, but it just makes me kinda sad :/
I guess for parents who work far away, or abroad, it could be useful. Or it could just make the kids miss them more...
Would a kid rather watch a video of an absent parent telling a story, or have the parent who is present read them a story in person? I'd expect usually the 2nd option.
Is there any 'bed friendly' hardware that could run this? Ie a cuddly toy with an Internet connected PC built in? And by 'bed friendly' I mean not just safe to have in bed, but also one that isn't so frustrating to use that it causes a mini-stress just before bedtime. I'm guessing a parent who is away from their kids on a business trip might well shell out $500 guilt dollars for such a device.
Two things I noticed while watching someone use this:
When reaching the end of the story, the person wanted to turn back one page, but this is impossible - you can only go back to the start.
The hover popup never activated - the person would click on the story, and never see the popup. I would have a click bring up the popup, and make a button from the popup that goes to the record page.
The massive signup overlay on storysomething.com is pretty sucky though -- the OP's site wins hands down on usability and delayed registration.
I love sites that let me use functionality to play around and create, and then allow me to register when it comes to saving work or ordering. Wish more sites did this.
It may already be a feature in the product, but I'd want the ability to export the story either to youtube and/or be able to download it to my disk.
I can see myself using it having my kids read a story as a saved memory. I also can imagine my mother in law going nuts over this thing because she lives so far away from us.
Looks great, very professional. The only problem I'm seeing is (in Chrome/WinXP) some white letters on the top left hand corner. Debugging messages maybe? Something like "Mem 38.66MB/ ... count: 0" on top of the "Story before bed" logo.
This must be one of the few websites where the "starry sky" background image makes sense, BTW.
You must have a debug version of Flash installed. I'll probably turn that wacky display off for the next build. Or if you install regular Flash it will go away and the animation will be smoother, too. :)
This would work much better as a desktop application. That way you could have the whole app fade out after a story is done and then shut the computer off 10min after a few stories have been read.
Also, if it were a desktop app, it would be much more like the book from that Neal Stephenson novel The Diamond Age ;)
It's never the "story" that's important. It's the various voices, the acting, the spending some quality time before the day is over that's more important, which can't be replaced by an iPhone obviously.
Nice service for something like a 16th birthday gift though... "remember the times..." something like that.
Using the Justin.tv API you could actually give an option to have the parent talk to his/her kid live as well.
Imagine a mom who just went on a business trip to Tokyo. Maybe she could tell the story to her kid live, while they and even flip the pages for the kid.
Very well done. At first, I thought, "Oh, this is going to be a web site with some storybooks to read? Why not just use a real book!?" Then, I clicked the link and was presently surprised with this well thought out implementation.
This is very impressive. I can understand people's first-thoughts of "the lazy parent", but I would have loved to have this when I was traveling a lot when my kids were younger.
This is a great idea! My kids have a set of grandparents in Korea, and they can't see each other more than once a year. I'm going to forward the site to them today.
lovely interface. I'd love it if you could post us an update some way along the line mentioning how your experience of using a bookshelf UI has worked out.
There was another startup (totally forget who they were) that posted to HN some time ago with something vaguely similar (though not as nice looking). I think they were just providing an alternative UI to buying books on amazon though. I've always wondered what happened to them.
Yesn I agree. Great way for parents to tell stories to children on airplanes and other public places, where pre-recorded works better (I.e. Amtrack trains, DVD players even in cars for long road trips, although not public place). This way you don't disturb your fellow passengers and you can watch your own movie.
Use your brains, please.