Bobo the Robot is now so cool that he has his very own Facebook page. Check it out and learn all about where he came from, where he’s going, and what he’s up to this very moment! Have you ever seen Bobo’s year book picture? Log onto Facebook and take a peek right now.
As I was heading back to Seattle from WWDC, I was only traveling with a small backpack. I bundled the Apple Design Award into a t-shirt when I packed that morning, shoved it into my backpack, and forgot all about it when I got the airport. The backpack went through the x-ray machine and showed up as containing a perfect, black square.
The guy watching the screen from the x-ray machine called for another guy, and another guy, and pretty soon there was small crowd scrutinizing the image. The backpack came out, I sheepishly admitted to being the owner, and I was taken aside. When the TSA folks pulled the cube from my bag, it glowed.
Whispers passed over the crowd. After I explained that the cube is from Apple, the security folks reverently placed the futuristic artifact into its own plastic bin and ran it again through the x-ray machine. This time, the other passengers got a glimpse of what the commotion was about and, once again, it was the glow of the cube readily visible as it entered and exited the x-ray machine that sent a wave of whispers through the sizable gathering.
Eventually, the cube made its way back into my bag, but the curious gazes kept coming. I suspect I will be reading about “intercepted alien technology of unknown origin or purpose” on the blogosphere soon. What can I say? Apple knows how to design their products.
A little over a year ago, a picture of a robot was scribbled on a piece of brown craft paper. He was named “Bobo”. Last September, that same little robot made his debut exploring the science behind light and delighting children and adults around the globe.
At WWDC Apple recognized the mountain of work and polish that went into Bobo’s adventure with an Apple Design Award.
Bobo would never have become a reality without the incredible support of Apple’s platform and without the excitement and endorsement of the thousands of kids around the world.
I recently had a chance to connect with John Cook from GeekWire who asked me about Game Collage, Bobo, and the startup world in general. He just posted our conversation online – check it out at GeekWire’s Startup Spotlight.
Way back when, when I was still a wee-little iOS developer about yay high, I created my first interactive book of Hans-Christian’s Anderson’s fairy tales called “The Little Mermaid and Other Stories“. It came out only a few weeks after the iPad was released and I remember working round-the-clock on the project to get the book out. Because it was my first interactive book, I needed to spend a lot of energy developing the basic framework – general code structure, run-time page layout, dynamic loading and unloading of assets, etc. I was working alone on this project so, in addition to the coding, I spent well over half of my time creating illustrations, designing sound effects, editing the content, and, at the very end, creating a short video trailer – definitely not my forte. Nonetheless, I was happy with the results. I submitted the app to the App Store and, once it was approved, I watched it go live one sunny Friday morning.
And then I paced.
I was very tired from the effort of the previous six weeks; I squeezed every ounce of creative juice I had in me. I was excited, and very, very nervous. I don’t even know why. I do know, however, that I spent most of the afternoon pacing – I just couldn’t stand still.
Yet nothing happened.
The week just before the app went live, I sent dozens of emails to newspapers, review web sites, and popular bloggers announcing the upcoming launch, but every time I refreshed my inbox, I was greeted with a message telling me that I have “no new messages”. At that point, a wise man suggested I should step away from the computer and go for a walk. Before I did, I literally hit the refresh button one more time and was rewarded with the following message:
We love your apps. Thank you!
Zoe age 5,
William age 8
Since that time, I’ve heard from many more kids and parents and grandparents enjoying the apps and offering me their feedback and suggestions. I’m always thrilled. Each time I receive such an email, I’m excited to read it and respond as quickly as I can. For me, it’s one of the most rewarding reasons of why I do what I do. And both Zoe and William have a very special place in my heart, because they were the first to let me know that they cared.
Today, out of the blue, I sent an email to Zoe and William’s dad and let him know how much the original email from his kids meant to me. Soon, he replied:
Thank you so much for the email. William just turned 10 and Zoe is now 7. Each of them now has their own iPad with your app installed. They even take turns reading your app to their little brother Levi (2). Now you have three customers for life. I will make sure they check out your new app [Bobo Explores Light], and I will send you their review (in their own words).
I think you have also inspired William to start working on his own app. He is currently working on his artwork and game rules. I will let you know how he progresses.
Keep up the great work. You have provided hours of enjoyment to William, Zoe and now Levi through a mixture of technology, art and science.
After seeing the new iPad with over 3 million (!) pixels, I couldn’t help but take a break from what I was doing and dust off an old favorite – Doodle Blast! HD – to get it ready for the new device.
In theory the task was simple enough. I had saved most of the original images as vector files, so re-scaling them, while tedious, was fairly straight-forward. However, the poor codebase was very outdated and in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint. It took me over five days of round-the-clock work to rip out the old scoring system, add Game Center support, iOS5 Twitter support, replace Cocos 2D v0.7 with Cocos 2D v1.1, and implement selective retina image loading for high-res devices that supported them.
The results, however, speak for themselves. The pixels on the new iPad are so tiny, that this game more than any other literally looks like a sheet of graph paper that came to life.
Take a look at the following images for comparison. The first is a 100% scaled version of the tank from the original iPhone game. The second is that same tank, also scaled to 100%, as used by the new iPad:
Original:
Enhanced for new iPad:
The game is now available for only $0.99 (a far cry from all the $7 games for the new iPad) and as one of the DB gamers put it - ”Stills don’t do this game justice – you have to play it and control the awesome firepower to really appreciate it.” Click here to check it out at the App Store!
A friend forwarded me the following story that Ingrid Simone posted on Common Sense Media website entitled “My Kids’ First iPad”. I had to laugh and repost a part of it – Bobo was almost responsible for a minor disaster that was only narrowly averted. You can read the entire post here.
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Establish some ground rules. Introducing an iPad (or any tablet) in your home the first time will require setting some ground rules. Even if you have other electronic devices the kids use, you’ll want to think about the questions the iPad will raise. A few examples:
How does iPad time figure into overall screen time limits? In my house, we don’t have hard-and-fast screen time limits. But maybe you’re a one-hour-a-day max family.
Is iPad time now included in that hour? Is it OK to make in-app purchases? We have tips for how to approach this question.
Is it OK to use the iPad without asking first? For us, no. Always ask first.
Is it OK to use the iPad while also watching TV? I encourage my kids to do one screen at a time.
Is it OK to take the iPad into the bathroom? I didn’t think I needed to address this until my 6-year-old son took the iPad into the bathroom so he could continue with the Bobo Explores Light science book app while taking his bath. The iPad was resting on a bench outside the tub, and he reasoned “but my hands are dry.” It could’ve been a disaster, and I could’ve avoided the close call by establishing that rule up front — and of course by making better use of those eyes in the back of my head. (Side note: Clearly this is a thoroughly engaging app! A 5-star keeper!)
Today, the bright and sunny offices of Game Collage, LLC were full of administrative hustle and spreadsheet excitement. Numbers were being added, divided, and added up again, software and hardware calculators could barely keep up with the nimble fingers of their users, spreadsheets were spilling out of their rows… in short, I was working on state taxes.
In the middle of this mayhem, my mom calls. Because I’m already knee deep in numbers, I crank out a couple of pivot tables to amuse her with interesting statistics and, in the process, manage to surprise even myself.
Since Bobo’s launch, kids from around the world have looked at a cumulative 3.5 million pages in the book!
Wha?!? That’s.. uh… three… *sigh* I can’t even count that high! Additionally, kids spent almost 2.5 minutes on every page adding up to a total of well over 15 years! that Bobo has been entertaining the world with science. Without a shred of doubt, this is my greatest personal achievement to date.
Another interesting statistic that fell out was that people spend on average 20 minutes reading the book each time. That means folks don’t just pick the book up and put it away, but spend some meaningful time with it. I’m very excited that the months of work and late nights that went towards creating Bobo ended up being somehow useful to the world.
If you are among those people who have spent a portion of those 15 years with Bobo, thank you! I hope you enjoyed it and that you’ll spend a few more years with it yet.
I just returned from the Consumer Electronics Show hosted in Las Vegas this past week. What a crazy, crazy event. I thought I’ve seen “large” before, but this show put a whole new meaning to that word. The most succinct way I came up with describing it (and it worked for my mom, so chances are it will work for you too) is to imagine an IKEA store, in size and layout, then to put about 8 to 10 such stores next to each other, fill them with electronic gadgets, cars, and TV screens (thousands and thousands of TV screens) and you have yourself something similar to what amounts to the public mayhem at CES. Here is another way to put it: After having explored the conference for a full day, I met up with Dean MacAdam, the creative mind behind Bobo, and we wandered the place together. At one point we found ourselves among a few huge exhibitors and Dean asked me whether I knew where we were. All I could do was reply that this was the first time I’ve stepped foot anywhere within a 300 yard radius of our current location and that I was as lost as a baby.
One of the most impressive displays for me came from Samsung who was showing off their latest, greatest OLED TV. I’m not much of a gadget geek, but this thing blew me away. The images were so sharp, the colors so vibrant, and the blacks so black that you couldn’t tell an image from a vivid painting. The thing that just floored me, however, was the fact that this enormous TV (a good double-arms’ length span) was thiner than an iPhone. Even I had to admit that was cool.
The highlight of the entire event as well as the reason for my presence, however, were the Kids At Play Interactive Awards. Dean and I flew down to Vegas to meet, shake hands with, and receive a KAPi award from the folks at Children’s Technology Review and Living in Digital Times.
We were very honored to be among the eight other recipients of the award for 2012. It gave us a much appreciated pat on the back as well as validation for our work; not to mention we spent a delightful evening hanging out with extremely creative people who enjoy kids and, at times, acting like kids as much as we do.
The award was followed by a wearable technologies fashion show and we just couldn’t resist snapping a picture. Here is Dean surrounded by some of the lovely ladies from the show. What can I say… we had a great time!
Happy New Year everyone! We’re excited to usher in the first day of January with some great news – Bobo Explores Light was just selected among book app finalists for Cybils 2011 awards. Congrats to the other finalists as well! You can read the official announcement on the Cybils web site here.
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