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Archive for the ‘Company Information’ Category

Zoodles is joining the HTC family

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

We started Zoodles in late 2008 with the ambitious mission of improving the lives of children across the world.  Since our launch in early 2009, the feedback from parents, teachers, and children has been incredibly positive and over 2 million children across the world have used Zoodles to safely and independently play and learn on phones, computers and tablets.

zoodles-htcToday we are excited to announce that we will be joining HTC with the goal of bringing Zoodles to the billion+ children in the world who haven’t yet played and learned with our product.  Like Zoodles, HTC puts users at the center of everything they do, and we have a shared passion for creating a safe and educational environment for children across their products.

We know that parents have many different types of devices from many different manufacturers, and we want to make sure that all those devices continue to have Kid Mode.  Therefore, we will continue with our strategy of making Zoodles available across different devices (smartphones, tablets, computers) and different platforms (Android, iOS, Mac OS X, Windows, etc.).  Simply stated, Zoodles will continue to be available on both HTC devices and non-HTC devices.

Having said that, we’re really excited about the unique and deeply integrated experiences we can create for kids using HTC devices.  On the HTC Flyer, for instance, we’ve been able to combine the innovative HTC Scribe technology with our Art Studio feature!

We have a lot of work ahead of us and so we have a simple favor to ask of you… if you know any great engineers, designers, product managers or business development professionals please encourage them to contact us at careers@zoodles.com since we will be hiring aggressively in the coming months!

Finally, we would like to thank all our users, team members, advisors, and investors (especially Michael Dearing from Harrison Metal Capital) who have helped us get to this point.  You helped us put smiles on the faces of millions of children and we intend to make millions more smile over the years!

Best,

Mark Williamson & Rich Humphrey (co-founders of Zoodles)

Most Popular Android Apps for Kids

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

A little over a month ago, we released an awesome new feature that lets parents add any of the apps on their phone to Kid Mode.  Before, your three year old had to leave Kid Mode to play their favorite matching app.  Now, you can simply add that matching app to Kid Mode and your child can play it, and everything else their little heart desires, all from one place!

In the days that have followed, we’ve collected some brand spanking new data on what the most popular Android apps for kids are!

Without further ado, here are the top 5 most-played apps inside of Kid Mode:

hi-512-3 Angry Birds -  This might not come as much of a surprise, but Angry Birds, Angry Birds Rio, Angry Birds Seasons, and every other addictive version of this app lead the pack in what’s being added and played inside Kid Mode.  If you’re one of the five people who haven’t done so already, give Angry Birds a whirl and start slinging some birds inside Kid Mode!

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Ant Smasher – Here’s an app you might not have expected… Introducing Ant Smasher, a game that is all about exactly what it sounds like…smashing ants.  If the concept strikes your fancy (or more likely, your child’s), make sure the mayhem of Ant Smasher goes on within the safety of our app.

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Kids Doodle - The third most played app in Kid Mode is Kids Doodle by Bejoy.  With Kids Doodle, even the youngest kids can have fun drawing!  As your child draws, the colors, textures and tools randomly change so their drawing is different every time.  If your child likes art and neon colors, hook them up with some Kids Doodle in Kid Mode!

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Kids Connect the Dots Lite - Published by educational app maker Intellijoy, Kids Connect the Dots is a simple game where young ones connect numbers and letters to make fun shapes and pictures come to life.  If you haven’t checked out Intellijoy’s apps already, definitely try Kids Connect the Dots Lite and include it in Kid Mode!

talking-tom-catTalking Tom Cat - Introducing Android’s favorite virtual pet, Talking Tom Cat!  Not much to say here except that kids love animals and boy, don’t we know it :-)  [Insert plug for the adorable puppy in our Zoodles computer app.]  If you’re interested in adopting a new messless pet, check out Talking Tom Cat and make your Kid Mode menagerie complete.

1 Million Kids Using Kid Mode!

Thursday, April 7th, 2011
Mark Williamson, CEO & Co-Founder of Zoodles

Mark Williamson, CEO & Co-Founder of Zoodles

Our mission at Zoodles is to create the best digital experiences for children across the world.  Children using a computer, phone or tablet should be treated as first class users and given the opportunity to leverage all the possibilities that these devices offer.  We believe our Kid Mode apps live up to this mission, and in the last few months we’ve seen a great response from families across the world.

Today is a proud moment for all of us here at Zoodles as we announce that 1 Million children are using our Kid Mode apps!  As the graph below shows, we’ve been experiencing tremendous growth recently, with more than 500,000 children joining just in the last few months:

Zoodles Growth

One of the things I love about the increased usage of our apps is that we can measure, in the aggregate, what children are learning.  Since launching Zoodles, over 3 Million hours of games and videos have been played, with over 1 Million of those hours spent in math and reading.  1 Million hours is more than 110 years of time!

This growth is directly related to the launch of our mobile offerings as well as the new family features that allow kids and relatives to stay in touch through digital storybooks and video mail.  There’s just nothing better than watching a child on Zoodles go from learning and playing one minute to connecting with family the next.

Reaching 1 million kids is huge for us, and when you combine that with crossing 10,000 fans on Facebook, our team has really been jumping for joy.  Stay tuned for more coverage on our celebration event!

Zoodles1MillionJump

We have a lot of work to do before we reach the 1.2 Billion children in the world who still don’t have Kid Mode.  But before we get back to work I want to personally thank all the parents and children using our apps.  We appreciate the trust you’ve placed in us.  I also want to thank the entire Zoodles team that has been building this product.  Rich, Michael, Jeff and Adrian (our engineering team) can build any concept that Dave (our designer) and Rachel (our product manager) can come up with.  Often the founders or the executive team get all the credit when it comes to the success of a start-up, but success in our case is due to the dedication of this team and the passion they have for changing the lives of kids.  So if you have a minute and love the product feel free to leave the team a note on our Zoodles Facebook page.

Best,

Mark
CEO & co-founder

Kid Mode now with Art and Storybooks

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011

Today we’re excited to share that two of our most popular features — the Zoodles Art Studio and Zoodles Storybooks — are now available on phones!  Now all of our budding artists and eager readers can do more with their phones (oops, we mean your phones)  no matter where they are.  Whether they’re riding in the backseat, fidgeting at dinner, or lying out in the grass, Zoodles is there in full force with Art and Storybooks!

Since phones do have smaller screens, we’ve adapted both features to work a little differently than usual.  Let’s take a look.

Zoodles Art Studio

ArtTab

Here are some pictures of the experience on your phone.  The first thing you’ll notice is that there are now more “tabs” at the top of the screen, and the tabs don’t have labels anymore!  Your child can use these tabs to navigate to the different areas of our experience, just like with our computer and tablet apps.  They might need a little guidance at first, but let us know how it goes!

To get into the Art experience, all your child needs to do is tap on the Art tab at the top and then select the first thumbnail.

ArtStudio-Drawing

The Art Studio has changed a bit, but not by much.  There are fewer colors and we’ve removed the ability to toggle brush strokes, but it is all in the name of giving your child the most drawing space possible!

Every new drawing your child creates will automatically be saved to their Gallery and synced to your account.  All your child’s drawings — whether they’re done on the computer, tablet, or phone — are visible at http://www.zoodles.com/parent.   Be sure to star your favorites!

Zoodles Storybooks

Our Storybooks feature is just as exciting.  For the first time ever, we’ve made it incredibly easy for little ones to “bring their relatives along” on the next vacation or car ride.  Family will never be forgotten again!

All you need to do is have relatives record a reading for your child and the reading will appear in your child’s Books tab.  As usual, the recordings that your relatives make are shared across all our devices, so you and your child can watch them no matter you are.  Now Grandma can be a lifesaver without even being there!

BooksTabOur Books interface on the phone is very similar to what it looks like on other devices.  We give every child an example recording of Mark and his kids reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and the rest of the books available are displayed alongside it.

BookViewerOnce a reading has been recorded, your child can tap on its book cover to have the story read to them.  Again, with such limited screen space, you’ll notice that the illustrations are slightly smaller and that in lieu of text, we decided to include the relative’s video instead.

All in all, we couldn’t be more proud of our team’s efforts to bring these features down to phones and make the Zoodles experience better and better across all devices.

We’d love to hear your feedback, so please do leave us a comment or shoot us an email at feedback@zoodles.com!

Create an educational kids video for Zoodles!

Monday, March 28th, 2011

Contributed by Debbie Heimowitz

Learn how the Zoodles Education team screens their video content. Then, create videos of your own for a chance to be featured in Zoodles!

Behind the Scenes

When we started our quest to find the best YouTube videos for kids, our first results were…well… questionable. Finding great content is our team’s central mission, and it is also one of our biggest challenges. For every hundred videos we evaluate, it can be tough to find even one that’s worth adding. So why does this happen? And what do we look for?

The first reason it’s a challenge to find high-quality video content is that the content itself is scarce, and it’s also hidden amongst a ton of other content that’s not always appropriate. We run across an unbelievable number of videos that are supposedly for kids, but are inappropriately named, have foul language dubbed over them, feature bizarre characters, or are even so misleading that they connect to shady spam or porn sites.

The high-quality content we look for is harder to find, because less of it exists to begin with.  Educational kids content can be expensive to produce and design. When companies do produce children’s content, it tends to be in formats that are unusable to Zoodles, like thirty-minute television shows. So, when we do find great content in short formats, we definitely try to promote it and find other content from the same filmmakers.

Here’s what we look for:

yoga-for-kidsEntertainment: First, the videos must entertain us. We know that if it’s not fun, your kids won’t want to watch it. Specifically, we look for bright colors, high concepts, and ideally a strong production value. In our team discussions, questions like “Was this only funny to me?” get tossed around as part of our evaluation process.

The ElementsEducational Value: Secondly, we want to know what your children will learn from watching the videos. Will the video help reinforce concepts about the alphabet? Will the video bring your kids to another planet? Does it tie into the national standards for education?

We love when videos focus on specific learning standards, but we also value concepts that aren’t as obviously educational.  We place just as much importance, for instance, on videos that encourage physical and emotional wellness like this yoga video for kids or this video about cyberbullying.

If a video is able to meet our educational and entertainment standards, we know we’ve found something for our Zoodles families!

Now create your own!

Are you interested in creating your own educational videos and being featured in Zoodles? Here are some ideas to think about as you start your process:

  1. Pre-design the show. What is the “learning problem or learning need” you are solving? For example, do you notice your child struggling with spelling concepts that you’d like to teach in the video?
  2. Set learning objectives. What do you hope the audience will gain from watching your video? How will you measure these results?
  3. Think about what techniques you would like to add. Filmmakers use several tools to help reinforce educational concepts including: relatable fictional characters, the use of repetition and rhyme, music, dance etc.
  4. How long do you want the video to be? We will accept any videos less than 3 minutes in length.
  5. Have fun!

If you’ve created a video that you believe meets our standards, send us the link at feedback@zoodles.com!


Debbie Heimowitz is on the Education team at Zoodles. She is the co-creator of the Internet safety DVD series Adina’s Deck. Check out www.adinasdeck.com for Internet Safety tips and more high quality educational videos!

Zoodles makes the Top 25 Android Apps for Moms list!

Thursday, March 10th, 2011

Babble's Top 25 Android App Badge

In an effort to kickstart this blog back to life, we thought we’d share some great news.  We’ve been recognized by Babble as one of the top 25 Android Apps for Moms!  Reaching over 6 million moms a month, Babble is a parenting site for “a new generation of parents.”  Their editorial crew sifted through tons of apps and highlighted our Kid Mode app as the #2 app for “Best Family Fun.”  Awesome!

kid-mode

Here’s what they said about us:

When that 10-minute restaurant wait turns into 20 and the coloring book that you brought along just isn’t up to the task, what’s a mom to do? Hand your kid your Android phone, of course. But before your toddler starts e-mailing your boss or updating your Facebook status, be sure to install the Kid Mode app that protects your phone by locking the Home button and then provides your kids (ages 2 through 8) with a selection of fun, educational games and videos geared specifically to each child’s age.  See the full article.

Check out the other winning apps at http://www.babble.com/products/mom-products/25-best-android-apps-for-moms/

Big thanks to Babble for highlighting our hard work and putting us in some great company!  To all of our Zoodles families, we just can’t say it enough.  Thank you for your ongoing support and encouragement – we would not be here without you!

Back from the Desert!

Monday, January 10th, 2011

Phew! We’re back from CES. (Alive!)  This year, Mark and Rachel served as Zoodles ambassadors and ventured bravely out into the tablet and 3D fray.

Of course, we were so busy working (and playing craps), we couldn’t document everything, but here’s the gist of our trip through pictures.

On our first night in Vegas, we attended a press party at the top of the Cosmopolitan. Check out the view!
Press Party

Early the next morning, we showed up at the Motorola booth, where we were slated to demo our Kid Mode app!
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Motorola had LOTS of foot traffic.
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Speaking of (sore) feet, isn’t Rachel doing a good job keeping a smile on her face?
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(It’s the awesome company polo.)
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Panasonic, like most of CES 2011, was very focused on TVs.
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3D TV’s in particular. (Whoa, a sand castle! With 3D glasses, it’ll look 3D!)
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In case you didn’t detect the sarcasm, here are Mark’s thoughts on 3D technology…
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“BUT IT’S THE FUTUUURE!”
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Later that night, we attended a Lenny Kravitz concert hosted by Motorola!
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At the concert, we were able to meet up with our good friends from Pulse, Akshay and Albert!
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The photojournalism ends there, but rest assured that the ambassadors of Zoodles had an amazing time at CES.  We couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity to demo all our team’s hard work, and it was great to be met with so much support.

Thanks to all our Zoodles families for keeping the dream alive!  Next year we’re hoping to bring the whole team, so look forward to the 2012 edition of Zoodles@CES, where more hilarious (and undocumented) stories will ensue!

Introducing Kid Mode for Google Chrome

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

We believe that every device a child interacts with should come with a Kid Mode… a simple, safe, fun way for kids to interact with age appropriate games and activities.  Today we are excited to announce that one of the most popular browsers on the web, Google Chrome, can now be put into Kid Mode!  So parents who use Google Chrome as their web browser can install our Kid Mode app from the Google Webstore.  Once installed there will be a simple icon that parents can click to put their browser into Kid Mode!

Here is a great video that highlights all the great features of our Chrome App:

We are looking forward to hearing about how we can improve this app so please be sure to send us feedback:  Support AT Zoodles.com

Best,

Mark
CEO & Co-founder of Zoodles

Connecting Kids and Family Members through Video Mail and Storybooks

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010
Mark Williamson, CEO & Co-Founder of Zoodles

Mark Williamson CEO & Co-Founder

One of the challenges that parents face is ensuring their kids build meaningful relationships with their aunts, uncles, grandparents and other family members.  This can be especially hard for families that are spread across the country like mine is.  While we live in California my daughters have aunts & uncles in Denver, Columbus OH, and Bethlehem PA while their grandparents are in Seattle and Columbus OH.  This means that they only get to see some of these family members once a year and with time zone differences it is close to impossible to Skype with them.

Since we build software that puts computers into Kid Mode, we thought we could improve the lives of families by enabling kids to connect with distant relatives.  Today we are announcing two new features that do exactly this:

Video Mail:

Finally, the most common activity online for adults – communications, is available to kids of all ages.  Zoodles Video Mail enables kids and family members to easily record and exchange video messages.  After a parent invites a family member to connect with their kids, that family member can record a message using a webcam, and that message is delivered directly to the child inside of the Zoodles computer app.  When a child clicks on their Mail tab, their new messages will immediately start to play as the picture below shows.

video_mail

A child can easily reply to any video message and it is so easy that my soon-to-be 3 year old daughter can do it too.

sam_vm

Storybooks:

This feature was inspired by a conversation with a grandma in Texas who recorded herself reading books on mini-cassettes and mailed them to her grandchildren in California.  She was looking for a way for her grandchildren to hear her voice before bed so they could stay connected.  With Zoodles Storybooks she can now select one of the Zoodles classic storybooks to record for her grandchildren and they will automatically receive the recording in the Books tab inside the Zoodles computer app.  As the picture below shows, the experience is really compelling for kids:

storybook

We hope that Zoodles can play a meaningful role in connecting families across the country, and we can’t wait to see how families use these new features.

Mark Williamson
CEO & co-founder

Introducing a new mode for Android phones – Kid Mode

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

Every smart phone today has an “Airplane Mode” which puts the phone in a state that is safe to use while flying on a plane.  Think about that, your phone has a simple mode that makes it safe to use on an airplane!  Why doesn’t your phone come with more “modes”?!?

Well today Zoodles is launching an entirely new mode for Android phones and we are calling it “Kid Mode”.  With our FREE Kid Mode app (available now in the Android Market) children 8 and under will have access to hundreds of age appropriate games and videos while parents will be able to relax knowing that their kids will no longer accidentally make calls, send emails or delete apps.  This is an app that the whole family will really love!

So here is how it works:
The Zoodles Kid Mode app is a really smart app that adapts to the child using it.  Games and videos are shown to a child based on their age and other optional information provided by parents (such as reading ability).  In addition to adjusting to the age and skills of the child, Kid Mode adjusts to the capabilities of the phone it is being run on.  For instance, on an Android device without Flash, the Zoodles app will detect the missing software and remove games from the system that require Flash.

Here is a sample 4 year old experience where Kid Mode is filled with letter recognition games, counting activities, and interactive storybooks:

4yroldAndroid

Here is a sample 7 year old experience where Kid Mode is filled with fun logic puzzles, language activities, and fraction games.

7yroldAndroid

Here is what a Flash game looks like in Kid Mode:

CaptainCarlos

Protecting your Android Phone:

The optional “Child Lock” feature of Kid Mode means you can hand your Android phone to your child without ever worrying about what they might accidentally do while on the phone (say good bye to random phone calls to the boss, erased emails and deleted apps).  To accomplish this we disable the built-in buttons on your phone, so your child can’t accidentally exit out while they’re playing.  While children can’t accidentally exit when our child lock is enabled parents will be able to exit easily by following on screen instructions that children can’t follow.

So head over to the Android Market on your phone and upgrade your phone with an entirely new mode – Kid Mode!

Finally, I want to say thanks to the team for working hard on this app and to all the kids who tested Kid Mode for us.

Best,

Mark Williamson
CEO & Co-founder of Zoodles
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