RSS'The cow goes moo,' 2008 edition
By Angela Gunn | Published December 10, 2008, 9:34 AM
Speakaboo this week rolled out its holiday edition, which simultaneously allows you to bond with the kid in your life, contribute to a worthy cause, and have Principal Skinner tell you a story. How's that for multitasking?
The Speakaboos site itself, if you are a quart low on primary-school computer users around your place, features celebrities reading and singing classic fairy tales, fables, and lullabies under storybook-style animations. It's all streamable (if you've got serious, non-dialup bandwidth), and favorites can be purchased for download at 99 cents a track.
There are around 30 offerings so far, and the cast list is pleasingly odd. Harry Shearer brings a whiff of Skinner and (yikes) Comic Book Guy to "The Emperor's New Clothes," while stars such as Kelly Ripa, Kevin Bacon, Kerry Washington, and Crispin Glover step up on other kiddie hits. The most popular offering, according to associate site publisher Noelle Millholt? Nick Cannon working it out "Old McDonald Had A Farm," which the four-year-old in your life can now play over and over and over and over and over...
...while learning to read it for her- or himself. The site, more or less alone among the kid-vid set, aims to combine fun and literacy; videos include subtitles, and though even the littlest ones can be left alone on the site without incident, some titles are clearly meant for reading time with grownups. (A couple, including a charming seasonal abridgment of "A Christmas Carol," are fairly rich vocabulary for smaller kids, and move quickly enough that a slow reader will get frustrated unless liberal use is made of the Pause button.)
The site's founders worked closely with focus groups of teachers to figure out the best balance between entertainment and pedagogy. And the collaboration paid off; the National Education Association has taken a keen interest in using the site in schools, and Speakaboo returns the appreciation by donating 15% of top-line revenues to NEA literacy programs and The Creative Coalition, the entertainment industry's nonprofit social-advocacy organization.
On the home-holiday front, offerings for the holidays include the Dickens classic and, interestingly, a slightly altered version of Hans Christian Andersen's grim "The Fir-Tree." The site adds about one new offering per week, not counting the new holiday-themed offerings, and in the near future expects to roll out its "Record Your Own" option for parents and grandparents wanting to karaoke-read a track over one of the site's pre-animated stories.
We enjoyed spending some quality time with Speakaboo's new offerings, but it's the non-celeb option to record a story for the kids that's a genuinely exciting idea -- and, perhaps, the one that would really capture the holiday spirit.
Angela, I hate to correct you, but...
Everyone knows that it is Bears that go "Moo." Cows go "Woof!"
Perhaps your "See N' Say" is broken?
Kids these days...
I have to admit though, the ""Record Your Own" option for parents and grandparents wanting to karaoke-read a track" feature would provide for some interesting "alternate" voice-overs. There's a college drinking game in there somewhere... ;)
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(bows) My errors entirely, PC_Tool. Oh, well, as long as we can agree that weasels go "Rzzzz!", as we learned from Mr. Zappa --
http://en.wikipedia.org/...Weasels_Ripped_My_Flesh
-- all shall be well. (Until the alternate book-voiceover karaoke starts, anyway; now that you mention it, the mind does boggle at the possibilities....)
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Weasels will do that. Just be careful opening those doughnut boxes...
http://www.azlyrics.com/...nkovic/albuquerque.html
"Hey...you've got weasels on your face."
Best "random" song...ever.
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Laughing. Won't be laughing so much 30 minutes from now when it's STILL STUCK IN MY HEAD, but you probably knew that from experience...
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Heh...
Try years. I have to admit a guilty pleasure in exposing others to it. I believe the Germans call it "Schadenfreude".
It's gotta be one of the longest songs about absolutely *nothing*....ever. I am surprised it was never used in Seinfeld...
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And this is bigger news that the UK net neutrality case which ended in the IWF relenting.
Nice.
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Key word in previous comment being "ended." (And the incorrectly used term being "Net neutrality," but there's a topic for another day.) Please feel free to comment if you have anything useful to add to the conversation on *this* story, but at the moment I'm starting to wonder if the next words off your keyboard will involve Air Jordan sneakers...
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It's ended now, yes. However you (BetaNews as a whole) had 3/4 days to write a story.
So I'm a spammer for suggesting this story is of less importance than the one affecting 95% of UK users' access to wikipedia.
Right.
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