The Network Garden - Mark Sigal's Blog

Picture Puzzles is the next app in the 'Play and Learn with Wallace' Series

Picture Puzzles is the latest app in the 'Play and Learn with Wallace' early learning series of apps. It joins existing apps, Counting Fun, My First App and First Spelling.

It features six different puzzle games that help develop a child's creative skills, test their visual sense and build spatial awareness. 

The games in Picture Puzzles are:

• Follow the Lines: Ten different mini-games where a child must navigate a series of dots to complete the game
• Noisy Zoo: Match the picture to the animal sound (eight different variations)
• Puzzle Pieces: Touch the puzzle piece that completes the puzzle (four different puzzles)
• Shadow Shapes: Find the shadowed object that matches the picture (15 different variations)
• Spot the Dot: Identify the falling dot that matches the requested color (eight different variations)
• Matching Twins: Find the matching twins hidden behind the cards (20 different variations)

Like all games in Play and Learn with Wallace, Picture Puzzles integrates with our Personalized Profile and Rewards Chart system, so kids can feel great about their progress.

Also, the content in the apps loads in randomly so kids don't get bored.

When you purchase two or more apps, the apps can be Super Shuffled together, giving kids the benefit of a blended learning experience. Learning professionals will tell you that blended learning is one of the best ways for kids to learn rapidly and retain more deeply.

As always, the full-featured trial is FREE.

To find our more about the system, watch the above video, read my original post on the topic, or better yet, download the software on your iPad.

To celebrate the launch, Picture Puzzles is 99 cents for a limited time only (it's usually $3.99).

Picture Puzzles Screen Shots

Introducing Play and Learn with Wallace

This short video is a superb encapsulation of what I have been working on for the past year with the good folks at Macmillan Children's Publishing, and their much beloved imprint, Priddy Books.

If you don't know them by name, Priddy is the maker of over 500 books, including First Words, ranked by Scholastic as one of the 100 Greatest Books for Kids. They have sold over 100M titles over the past decade so they really understand the early learning segment.

Working around a model known as co-creation, we called upon our own learnings from building dozens of ebooks, apps and games at Unicorn Labs, combined those learnings with the ethos and IP of Priddy, and a built that into a series of early learning apps.

These apps are delightfully fun for kids, to be sure, but in the process of play, kids develop cognitive, creative, spelling, math and drawing skills.

What's unique about the approach is that while each app can be used separately, the apps can also be "super-shuffled," or mixed together dynamically, to provide what is known as blended learning, a proven methodology that helps children learn more rapidly and more deeply.

I will write more about the system that underlies 'Play and Learn,' but in the interim, I would encourage you to watch the video, and download the app, which is free.

New titles in the series will be rolling out monthly. In fact, here's a teaser about our next title, Picture Puzzles, which launches at the end of the month.

Related:

1. Rebooting the Book (One iPad at a Time)
2. Kirkus Reviews gives Spot the Dot a Kirkus Star as a Book of Remarkable Merit

Comic-Con, Convergence and the Rise of Integrated Media

"Here’s my prediction: Almost every dotcom idea from 10 years ago that failed will succeed." - Marc Andreessen

When I got into tech back in 1994, convergence was was the holy grail.

It was borne of the idea that one day the then-immovable boundaries between the following industries would collapse, enabling a new kind of integrated value chain to emerge:

• Television
• Motion Pictures
• Music
• Consumer Electronics
• Internet
• Telephony
• Print Media
• Advertising
• Videogames
• Computing

The promise of this concept led Sony, the inventor of the Walkman, to acquire Columbia Pictures. It led regional phone service provider, Bell Atlantic, seeking to re-factor the communications and entertainment landscape, to pursue a merger with cable TV giant, TCI.

In fact, over the next decade, the 'promised land' of convergence drove a flurry of mergers and acquisitions, reaching its apex when Time Warner merged with AOL.

That many of these deals failed disastrously (in the case of AOL Time Warner) or were never consummated (in the case of Bell Atlantic-TCI) is besides the point.

Poor execution aside, the pursuers of convergence were simply ahead of their time, a truth bounded by the way that:

1. Apple has reshaped so many of these industries by vertically integrating them across media, mobile and tablet device form-factors from distribution channel to software platform, apps and media marketplace.
2. Comcast has leveraged physical connectivity to so many homes (and a commensurate billing relationship) into owning NBCUniversal, extensive cable channel holdings and a growing telephony business.
3. Amazon has emerged as Walmart, Cloud Computing platform and Kindle/tablet maker, rolled into one.

Put another way, as a VC friend of mine once said, "It's as lethal to be too early, as it is to be wrong."

It's this truth that gives folks like Marc Andreesseen the confidence to predict that many of the lamest ideas of the dotcom period will yet be vindicated (I think that he's right on this one), and it's this same truth that was on display at Comic-Con 2011 aka San Diego Comic-Con International.

A Snapshot of how 'Integrated' Media has Become

For me, the AHA moment in planning my Comic-Con experience was attempting to digest a priori an event guide that was almost 200 pages, and it was full of...actual events!

Consider, a four-day long event that literally envelops the city and county of San Diego, bringing in over 130,000 fans of comic books, horror, animation, manga, games and fantasy, making it the single largest convention in America.

If you want to see how integrated media has become (and can become), ponder an event that provides a unified sandbox for:

1. Content Producers to showcase, screen and publicize their new Comic Books, Movie Releases, Cable TV shows, Videogames and Toys;
2. Fans to meet cast members, industry luminaries and their favorite artists, and get their autographs; see their latest projects and hear them talk about them; and, oh yeah, dress up as their favorite characters;
3. Vendors to sell Books, T-Shirts, Posters, Toys, Artwork, Comics and other industry paraphanelia;
4. Artists to present their portoflios for review and potential hire by content producers.

Btw, if you're familiar with the integrated media unit known as a "home page takeover" on a web site, consider what Syfy channel did in taking over an actual, physical restaurant (Maryjane's Coffee Shop in Hard Rock Hotel), and rebranding it for the event as Syfy's CafeDiem, down to the signage, tabletops and menus.

One can only wonder if the boring, staid Oscars and Emmy Awards events were reinvisioned as a like-type festival for producers, fans, vendors and artists alike if, maybe, just maybe, the industry would foment a deeper bond between their audience and their slate of programs/movie releases, not to mention the publicity and promotion food chain.

The Moral of the Story

When I think of the enormous success of Comic-Con (especially relative to the general lameness of the trade show industry in general), and I ponder the recent blowout earnings of both Amazon and Apple, I think about how often conventional wisdom gets things wrong specifically by creating false 'Either/OR' dichotomies.

In the tech business, for the longest time it was not only conventional wisdom, but it was the gospel and hardline religion, that you had to be horizontally organized, and focused on one thing, one discrete line of business, or you were destined to the scrap heap of history.

The truth of the matter is that a lot has to go right, both tactically and culturally, for convergence and integration to work.

But seeing how much of a win (for all types of users) such integrated platforms are across Post-PC (Apple), Commerce (Amazon) and Media (Comic-Con), I think that it's just a matter of time before the next wave - Convergence 2.0 - is born.

After all, where visionary leaders show the way, smart students will follow.

Related Posts:

1. Ruminations on MacWorld 2011 and the Future of Trade Shows
2. The Programmable Fan Site: A New Media/Ad Unit Model
3. Apple's Segmentation Strategy (and the Folly of Conventional Wisdom)
4. Thoughts on Book Expo America trade show: Rebooting the Book - Part Two