This app, the first of its kind, displays pictures that are geographically close to user’s friends. The geotagged images are pulled from Flickr based on the latitude and longitude of your friends which is provided by the Alcatel Lucent/ Open API Service system.

This app, although simple in design, provides users with a unique way of looking at the world. The essence of the cities are represented, not only by their satellite imagery, but also by photographs taken within that city. Furthermore, those photos are directly related to the habits of your social group ‚ your friends and you.

“My inspiration for developing this app is my hope that new and interesting social patterns will emerge,” said Tyler White. ‘”For example, if your friends are hungry friends, you might start seeing your map populated by pictures of food and restaurants. If your friends are world travelers that enjoy the outdoors and van trips, your map may have an emergent theme of barren deserts and roadside assistance. This level of synchronicity is yet to be determined.”

More than seventy developers registered for the contest with entries from Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, India, Indonesia, Italy, Jordan, Morocco, Nigeria, Philippines, Romania, Russia, United Kingdom, Ukraine and the United States.

“It’s very common to observe what we call the ‘pass-back’ effect, where the parent passes their own device to the child,” said Carly Schuler, a Fellow At the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Seame Workshop, in an interview. “And it makes sense – parents’ devices, like phones,  have always been amongst children’s favorite ‘toys,’ and as the devices become more functional for adults, they simultaneously get more fun for kids.”

Shortly after the iPhone came out, Shuler said she noticed children as young as 3 years old playing with the shiny devices.

“I saw it on the subway, at the grocery store — anywhere you’d see a parent and child interacting, really,” she said.

A recent report by CNN indicates that over half of the top-100 selling iPhone apps are for kids and over 3,400 education apps are available at the iTunes store. Almost all children in the U.S. have access to a mobile device, according to the Sesame Workshop. A 2007 study found that 93 percent of 6 to 9-year-olds had access to a cell phone in the home and more than 30 percent owned their own phone.

And they are encouraging learning. Schuler said. While some believe phones are just another distraction, the potential for learning far outweighs any disadvantages.

“First, these devices are mobile and allow the parent to encourage anywhere, anytime learning,” she said. “The second advantage is that, because of their relatively low cost and ubiquity, these devices allow educators to reach underserved children that are geographically or economically disadvantaged. The third is that these devices can encourage 21st century skills like communication and collaboration.”

See the complete review at iPhone Mom.

The Reading Game has a beautiful feel to it. The illustrations that are displayed in the background look like they’ve come straight out of a fairytale. It’s very simple to use the app.

The rewards are silly animations and sounds and there are oodles of them to earn. I thought they were crazy and borderline annoying but my kids felt the complete opposite way. Surprise!

I really like the concept behind The Reading Game and I am all for anything that keeps kids reading. I like the way it keeps tracks of the pages that you have read and how many you have left.

My only suggestion for this app is to add in a way to keep track of different reader profiles. Right now I see all of our books in one list and my kids share the unlocked rewards. It’d be nice to have separate profiles but that’s just a minor quibble. Overall I think this is a fantastic free resource for parents.

Games Challenge Players

The director of MIT’s Education Arcade told the Boston Globe that the very structure of video games makes them ideal tools for brain training.

“Video games are hard,’’ said Eric Klopfer. “People don’t like to play easy games, and games have figured out a way to encourage players to persist at solving challenging problems.’’

The games aren’t just hard – they’re adaptively hard. They tend to challenge people right at the edge of their abilities; as players get better and score more points, they move up to more demanding levels of play. This adaptive challenge is “stunningly powerful’’ for learning, said John Gabrieli, a neuroscientist at MIT.

Fast-paced, action-packed video games have been shown, in separate studies, to boost visual acuity, spatial perception, and the ability to pick out objects in a scene. Complex, strategy-based games can improve other cognitive skills, including working memory and reasoning.

European Parliament Endorses Games

A report from the European parliament concluded in 2009 that computer games are good for children and teach them essential life skills, reported The Guardian.

“Video games can stimulate learning of facts and skills such as strategic thinking, creativity, cooperation and innovative thinking, which are important skills in the information society,” said the report from the committee on the internal market and consumer protection.

The study called for schools across Europe to consider using games for educational purposes and urged parents to take a greater interest in them.

Games & Falling Crime Rates

The fact that crime has continued to fall one of the few happy surprises of this recession. The F.B.I. reported  May 24 that violent crimes fell 5.5 percent last year and property crimes declined 4.9 percent.

Lawrence Katz, a Harvard economist, has an intriguing idea of one of the potential causes: video games, , reported the New York Times. “Larry Katz  suspects that video games and Web sites may have kept the young and idle busy during this recession, thus explaining the surprising lack of an uptick in crime.”

iPhone Life magazine sends out a weekly newsletter every Wednesday to over 20,000 people. In it, we feature one app that we think is particularly noteworthy. This week, The Reading Game will be our featured app.

Congratulations on being selected. Your app joins a long list of other quality apps for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

A copy of the review may be found at: http://www.iphonelife.com/blog/2458/make-summer-reading-fun-reading-game-legendappscom

Impressions: The Reading Game

WilliamLeary on Thursday, June 3, 2010 2:44PM

Do you love unlocking Xbox achievements? How about trophies for Playstation 3? Well then you’re going to get a kick out of The Reading Game.

The Reading Game isn’t as much of a game, as an encouragement to read more frequently. The concept is quite simple, you insert the title and page count of the book you are currently reading into The Reading Game on your iPhone or iPod Touch and then input the amount of pages you’ve read during a given session.

For instance, if you were assigned to read Shakespeare’s Othello for school and needed some incentive (besides a good grade on the exam) to push through it until the end, The Reading Game can help. After you enter the title and number of pages into the App you begin keeping track of how many pages you read. Each page is worth 1 point and when you’ve read a certain percentage of pages a reward will unlock. The awards are nonsensical and childish. A dancing squirrel with googily eyes and an animated surfing graphic were among the awards I unlocked while tracking my reading progress of Brian James’ Zombie Blondes.

As a gamer, English major, and student in the midst of obtaining a teaching certificate I can not recommend this application more. It is a great tool for both struggling and avid readers alike. The page tracker is an excellent resource for visual learners who can really benefit from physically seeing their progress in percentage form and the rewards are a great way to motivate young readers to not only read school assigned texts, but to read outside of school as well. If The Reading Game catches on, in game reading awards could be the next Silly Bands.

The Reading Game is a good concept, but could benefit greatly from a few tweaks. For one thing, The Reading Game is for children, there is no denying that. The rewards only work as incentives for a very select group of readers. If a teen to adult version was released, paired with eReaders like the Kindle, and featured incentives like coupons to Borders and Barnes & Nobles a whole new market would open up for The Reading Game. The second and most tragic flaw The Reading Game suffers from is its platform. As I just mentioned, The Reading Game is for elementary and middle school children and I don’t know how many of them necessarily own a device to play The Reading Game on. If this game was somehow ported to a cheap plastic device that solely ran this App it might have a better chance at invading school classrooms and becoming a fad.

With all of that said, if you are a parent with grade school children and own an iPhone or iPod Touch, The Reading Game is one App that you should own. Reading skills are the most crucial aspect of learning and if The Reading Game gets children involved and excited about reading it is your duty to download this App.

In the future, when Elizabeth, Musashi, Stephanie, and Claude meet to do business, innovate, solve environmental problems, institute reforms, or simply chat in a cafe, inevitably they will discover shared experiences from their early years. They may speak different languages, but share a childhood passion for The Sims. Their different skin colors may be eclipsed by their identities as zombie smashers. Describing their adult challenges, they may default to the language of Crush the Castle.

Can this make the world a better place? Just possibly!

In iPhone Life Magazine, blogger/developer/dad Todd Bernhard wrote:

My oldest daughter loves to read but now she keeps the iPad at her side and updates the app when she completes each chapter!  And my youngest daughter, who needs more of a ‘push’ to read, is enjoying the rewards!

Jennifer Stuart, in her beautifully designed blog The Working Mom, instructed her readers to “Go Download It and Check It Out!” and printed a description and screen shots.

We’ve been written up in Stored Apps, Apptism, Framma’s Blog, Mobile Phone News, Gamespot, Cell Phones & PC’s, Slide to Play and other sites.

And users have said this about The Reading Game on iTunes:

Wonderful app for kids!

by Mr. Palomar

This is a wonderful app that will encourage kids to read. I highly recommend it!

It’s What We Need Today

by GardenerCl

The Reading Game is an excellent option for educating and molding intelligent kids. It’s a breath of fresh air.

Thanks, Legend apps, for your consciousness and ambition to help our children and parents create a more educated society.

The Magic of Books

by marcelinsantafe

It’s a pleasure to see such a beautiful app luring young readers back to books. Reading makes kids creative, imaginative, and intelligent.

We were looking for illustrations that would convey how books transport us magically to a different time and place. We were searching deviantart.com when we came across the work of Alvin Hew. His illustrations are full of adventure, mystery, secrets, new ideas and fantasy – just like books.

And so The Reading Game emerged from our imaginations.

Tweet. Work out. Check in. Change. Publish. Define. Inform. Locate. Entertain. Apps are the little magic wands of our everyday lives. We keep hoping they can do more for us and they keep exceeding our expectations

Infinitely reinventing itself, our iPhone or iPod is the Genie who reflects out moods, needs and longings.