The iPhone Mom

I’m finding irony in my review tonight. Dinner time at our house is fun. Tongue in cheek fun most days. Four kids, ranging in age from 10 to 9 months makes for a busy dinner table. Add to that the fact that I have a second grader and a five year old son and the conversation is questionable at times. The second grader is in a phase where gross out humor is hilarious. Her little brother is the age to fully appreciate big sister’s jokes. The combination can be a little much at times and last Sunday I ended up lecturing the family on having more “class”. It was one of those times where the words come out of your mouth and you’re thinking to yourself, who are you kidding? So the family got the lecture and now tonight I find myself reviewing Wacky Chatter, an app that finds humor in the words booger, underwear, snot and poop. The irony? The mother who asks for class absolutely loves this app.

Wacky Chatter is such a unique app I hope I explain it well and do it justice! Here goes. The app features twenty cartoony characters, each with their own unique voice. (A side note – ten of the voices are done by one of the app’s creators who is also a voice over actor.) On the main screen you have three wheels showing all the characters. Now above that you have three more wheels. One with a pronoun, one with a verb and the last one with a noun. Now for the fun. Spin the word wheels to mix up your pronouns, verbs and nouns. The nouns are all pretty darn silly (worms, bellybuttons, slugs, and several words fit for the bathroom) and you’re going to come up with some outrageous sentences. When you’ve created your sentence spin the character wheels until you’ve selected three, one from each wheel. Now tap the word “Chatter” on the screen and hear the sentence read aloud by those characters. It’s going to sound different depending on who you’ve chosen and you can experiment by spinning the character wheels again.  If you’re craving some random silliness you can either tap the word “Wacky” or shake your iPhone/iPod Touch. The wheels will spin on their own and the app is going to make a sentence and choose characters for you. Be prepared!

Two last details. There is a button titled “Who Says”. Tap this and you’ll see character biographies. These provide details about nicknames, age, occupation, favorite food, etc. Lastly, if you create a really terrific sentence you can email it out. The email sends an mp3 file so your friend will hear the sentence read aloud by the characters.

I love the way Wacky Chatter embraces it’s outrageousness and turns it into education. Sentence structure! Pronouns, verbs & nouns that are crazy and fun! Without a doubt this app is sure to appeal to kids.

**To all you fellow moms I feel it’s only fair to disclose the potty words found in this app. I wouldn’t want you to download it and find yourself caught unaware when your child turns the volume up and plays this one in the grocery store checkout.  So without further ado…boogers, pooh, underwear, farts and snot are all Wacky Chatter nouns. Enjoy!

Price when Reviewed: $.99

Seller: Sands of Time Ventures

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

Experimenter is a collection of fourteen science experiments. To give you a small idea of what’s on this app I’ll tell you that some of the experiments involve Pepsi & Mentos, dry ice, glowing water and fireproof balloons. The app gives you a list of the supplies needed to conduct each experiment and then a list of written instructions to follow. There’s information on safety and an explanation of how the experiment works. There’s also a video demonstration to watch. I found that the experiments made more sense to me  if I read the instructions, watched the video and then read the instructions again. The videos don’t come with narration, they’re just a visual demonstration set to music, so you’ll definitely need those instructions. Narration would be a nice addition I think. Finally, there is also a blooper reel that shows footage of experiments gone wrong. Nice to see the mistakes but the song they chose to accompany the footage has some questionable language in it. There I go being a prudish mom again. (Song changed in update)

I wouldn’t recommend that you let your kids use Experimenter unsupervised. This is an app that needs to be watched over or you might find your house filled with instant ice…or worse.  You must be 17 to download this app and I believe that’s probably due to some of the supplies needed.  Several experiments call for things that you probably don’t want your kids handling. For example, whiskey and the “balloon alternative” the app suggests for the fireproof balloons. And that’s all I’m going to say about that. 

So, if you’re looking for a few science experiments to try with your kids and you’d like to have the instructions and video right there on your phone then Experimenter appears to be a good source. I personally didn’t try out any of the actual experiments because there’s enough experimenting going on in my kitchen on a daily basis. It’s called dinner and it’s usually much scarier than anything else could be.

Price when Reviewed: $.99

Seller: Cramzy

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

Mobicip provides a “safe browser” alternative to Safari.  It’s a way to restrict what your children are allowed to access online using an iPhone or iPod Touch. I found it to be a fabulous product. There are two versions of Mobicip, standard and premium. I’ve tried both and will give you a quick run down.

Standard: This is available through the $4.99 app. The first time you use the app you’ll establish a user account with Mobicip. You’ll be asked to enter in your child’s first name and select a filtering level – elementary school, middle school or high school. Each filtering level blocks different types of sites. Elementary is the most restrictive in it’s blocking, high school the least. A summary of what types of sites are blocked can be found on the Mobicip website under “User Levels and Policy. There you can also read about the real time content filtering that the app employs. I’m impressed with what they’ve done and the resources they’re using to filter out all the icky stuff. Plus, they’ve done it in a way that doesn’t really slow down the internet access. When I was browsing and using Mobicip I didn’t find much of a noticeable delay in the internet speed.

The app comes with preset bookmarks and the kids can also add their own. They’ll be able to create and use bookmark folders just like you do in Safari. The Google search is also still present at the top of the screen, only when they use it in Mobicip it’s subject to their search restrictions.  I was surprised to find that it offers search suggestions. I tried a search for Hannah Montana and by the time I’d typed in Hannah it had pulled up a list of suggestions for what I might be searching for. Another really cool feature is the ability to use multiple tabs, just like in Safari. The iPhone’s copy/paste feature will also work.

Premium: This version is available with the $4.99 app and a $9.99 annual subscription. You receive quite a few additional features with the upgrade. You’re able to monitor multiple users from your one parental account. Each user can have a different level of filtering and a different device. You can customize the type of filtering that’s done. For example, you can add extra restrictions to a high school level account or remove some from the elementary school one.  You can create a blacklist – specific websites that you want blocked.  Or create a whitelist – websites you want to allow. This means that you can have social networking sites blocked but allow Facebook to come through. You’re able to receive reports detailing what your children have done online, which websites they visited and even better, which one’s they tried to visit but were blocked from. All this can be done online at www.mobicip.com. The user interface on the parental account is extremely straightforward and user friendly. Exactly what I needed. I haven’t the faintest idea how all the technical voodoo works to block/allow websites so I’m grateful they’ve kept the parental account features simple.

I was explaining how it all worked to my husband and he asked a valid question. He wanted to know why the kids wouldn’t just get around the restrictions by using Safari. So I told him what I’d do is hide Safari through the restrictions setting on the iPhone. That way the only way to access the internet would be through Mobicip. The icky possibilities of the internet are endless and if Santa manages to put an iPod Touch on his sleigh for my kids this will be one of the first apps that I install.

Price when Reviwed: $4.99

Seller: Mobicip,LLC

Rejoinder is wild! I would not recommend giving it to your child unless you completely trust their grip on your iPhone. This is another game that makes a case for an iPhone wrist strap. Duct tape and a rubber band might work too. The object of the game is to follow the commands on your screen. The faster you respond the more points you earn. Sounds easy enough but those commands have you interacting with one of four characters. You start with a rabbit. Rejoinder asks you to flip him so you flip your iPhone. It asks you to make him jump so you make your iPhone “jump”. It asks you to stretch him so you use your finger on the screen to stretch him out. Lastly it asks you to give him a tickle with your fingers. If you fail to respond, or respond too slowly the rabbit gets a bit cranky. With each level that you pass the commands increase and the amount of time you’re given to respond decreases. Yikes!

I enjoyed playing Rejoinder, it was a nice departure from the other games on my iPhone. But it’s definitely not an app I’d give my young kiddos. Unless I was looking for a quick way to justify an upgrade to a 3GS.  So moms, dads and trusted children have fun with this one!

Price when Reviewed: $.99

Seller: Digital Dandelion

There are some very funny jokes in the 18000 Cool Jokes app. But moms with kids that can read should be warned – there are some dirty jokes too. In fact there is a whole category of jokes called “dirty”. As I was using the app, and chuckling to myself, I was thinking it’s too bad it doesn’t come with a password. Or at least a password for the “questionable” jokes. Because there’s no way I can leave this one on my iPhone. My kids use it too much and I really don’t want to have to explain some of the humor.

The app itself is very easy to use and gives you the ability to save jokes and also email some to your friends. If you’re looking for a joke app to try this one seems like a good one. But if you’ve got kids who use your iPhone you’ll want to be careful.

Price when Reviewed: $.99

See the app at iTunes

 Seller: Cramzy