BabySmash Receives Coveted ‘Da’ Award
Comments(4) Actually, it was more like a 5 Da’s punctuated by a steady stream of drool.
That was the resounding praise that came from Sofia, my little 9 month old hacker princess. She was reviewing BabySmash, Scott Hanselman’s Windows adaptation of the Mac game AlphaBaby.
In case you haven’t seen it, it is a game for toddlers that produces an array of smiling shapes, colorful letters, and silly laughter as your little one indiscriminately bangs upon the keyboard.
Don’t worry, it makes use of the window’s kiosk mode and various keyboard hooks so that there is no accidental formatting of the hard-drive by little fingers that accidentally stumble upon some deadly, archaic hotkey combination.
Here Sofia is brutalizing the keyboard on my home office computer and gleefully watching the results on my modest dual monitor setup (the third monitor is on indefinite hold as lobbyists make feverish pleas to the powerful Spousal Unit Committee of Ways And Means).
She particularly likes it when she inadvertently hits a key that triggers the Scooby-Doo laugh.
Best of all, after the little one goes to bed, Papa developers can head over to codeplex and download the source code for the app.
It’s one of those new-fangled WPF apps, which means that if you’re like me you will be totally lost when you first start looking at it.
Luckily, Scott has written a several posts on the various technical aspects of the app. I skipped them the first time around because I had no prospects of using WPF at work or home anytime soon, but now I’m making my way through them out of curiosity about this application.
I’m hoping that WPF includes an ‘OnDrool’ event because I think my daughter would really appreciate it if I could enhance the application in this way.
Thanks to this Jeff Atwood post, I was even inspired to make my first paypal donation ever for free software. The donation button is set up for a very modest $8.00, so it appealed both to my innate cheapness and my new-found desire to directly reward developers who create cool things.
Thanks Scott!
In summary, if you have a (pre)toddler in your life who can’t wait to get their drooly little hands on your keyboard, then go check out BabySmash.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Yay! Thanks! I have a lot of new ideas for BabySmash in the new year so it should have more longevity for growing minds soon.
I wonder if this has the making of the Caffeinated BABY awards!
@Rob – Baby is about the only word that I’d prefer to not combine the word caffeine with. She’s finally sleeping through the night and I’d like to keep it that way…:-)
@Scott – Good to hear! It’s already pretty nice that you have the audio options of either a voice repeating the letter or else laughter. She hits too many keys at once right now to use the first option, but it will be a nice way to help her learn the alphabet once she gets a little older.