Our Lists for Writers app is featured in this month’s Scholastic Parent & Child magazine: The Best Children’s Reading and Book Apps.
Great to turn to for inspiration for any part of the story you’re telling — character names, places, myths and magic, specific words, and more. Plus, choose from different kinds of plots, conflict types, and issues. For iOS and Android.
Just in time for some scary storytelling, Spooky Story Dice has been updated to fully support the iPhone 5 / iPod Touch 5th Generation and iOS 7.
Spooky Story Dice is a seasonal and more compact version of our app, Story Dice. It has over 70 pictures to generate spooky elements in your stories! From the “More” menu, users may change the settings to show 1-3 dice on each roll. Great for a middle school or high school language arts or English classroom Halloween activity.
We’ve updated our Spy Tools for Kids app to fully support the iPhone 5 and iPad. We have also improved the appearance of the UI and fake identification cards.
We removed the Facebook and email sharing options for picture from the disguise kit, identification kit, and night vision camera. This provides a more child-friendly experience and we’ve determined that most users saved pictures to the camera roll and shared them from there.
We’re happy to announce that our Lists for Writers app has been featured by Apple as part of their Kickstart Your School Year promotion!
Name Dice is now available for Windows Phone 7 and 8. This is our free writing app that helps writers create character names. Great for language arts students and adult fiction writers.
Right before the ACT Fly-In, we were able to attend BlackBerry Live 2013 in Orlando. Each attendee received a BlackBerry Z10 as part of the registration, compliments of Brightstar. Everyone spent some time setting up their devices and downloading the conference app to manage their schedules. This was a lot of fun, and it encouraged those of us who were unfamiliar with BlackBerry to jump right in and use it. Visiting the exhibitors and the Jam Space (developer hangout) got us inspired to hurry up and get our apps on the BlackBerry 10.
We are very happy to present our most popular educational apps now available in BlackBerry World! Check them out: Lists for Writers, Story Dice, and Name Dice.
Senator Marco Rubio and Ann Adair
Ann Adair from Tampa-based company Thinkamingo Inc traveled to Washington on Sunday to tell Capitol Hill lawmakers about the positive impact the technology industry is having in our community. Adair was in the nation’s capitol May 19-21 with 50 other small business tech executives to participate in the Association for Competitive Technology’s Congressional Fly-In.
Ann Adair is the President and Co-founder of Thinkamingo Inc that makes educational and family-friendly apps for the iPhone, iPad, iPod, Android, NOOK, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry. Their literacy-focused apps Lists for Writers and Story Dice have been featured in the media including National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, BoingBoing.net, and Cult of Mac. Thinkamingo was a featured company in a recent edition of the digital magazine The Educationist.
“I went to Washington to make sure that lawmakers and regulators heard the voices of small business tech companies,” said Ann Adair. “The pace of innovation right now is remarkable, but overreaching laws or regulation could bring industry growth to a screeching halt. I explained to my elected representatives the success our company is having in our hometown and what we need that will allow us to continue to grow and create more jobs. Specifically, Washington should:
“These are issues that the federal government is facing. I met with my elected officials and others in Washington to educate them about the technology industry so they can make the right decisions about our future. Hopefully, an informed Congress will help companies like mine continue to flourish in our community.”
“Specifically, I met with the offices of Senators Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson. Senior Advisors from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the Federal Trade Commission’s COPPA (Child Online Privacy and Protection Act) team. Through a series of productive meetings, I shared my experiences and concerns as a parent and tech executive. We want to continue making innovative products for kids and we want our kids to be safe. These are not mutually exclusive, so how do we make this work in the most effective and parent-friendly way?”
Thinkamingo Inc is a member of Moms With Apps, a family-friendly developer community of 1500+ members.
Links for additional information:
Our family has been involved in robotics competitions for several years now, with Elizabeth competing while Ann and Jon help coach and mentor. Elizabeth just finished her second season competing in FIRST Tech Challenge with her team, Brick Buddies, winning the Florida state championship. Just a few weeks later, her team was back together working on a project for the XPRIZE After Earth Challenge, a summer competition for students. They were asked to be an ambassador team and encourage students to participate.
As part of that, we travelled to Miami for an event at the Miami Science Museum with Will and Jaden Smith to promote the challenge as well as their new After Earth movie. It was quite an experience for the kids – walking the red carpet, talking to media, and getting on stage with Will and Jaden to talk about robotics and the XPRIZE After Earth Challenge.
If you can pull together a team of 1-4 students ages 13-17 plus an adult team captain, check out the challenge and give it a shot. The first phase of the challenge is to create a two-minute video. Brick Buddies posted a list of tips on creating the video. You can learn a lot and you never know where it might take you.
We owe a big thank you to all of our Thinkamingo customers and supporters for giving us the opportunity to take time to participate in things like this.
I’m headed to Washington on Sunday as part of the Association for Competitive Technology‘s Annual Fly-In. Our group of 50 tech CEOs and developers will be meeting with the DC representatives of many Silicon Valley companies to learn about the potential impact that pending government activity may have on our industry. We will also meet with our elected officials and agency staff to educate them about our businesses and how the ecosystem works.
One of the main messages I will bring to Capitol Hill lawmakers is that the [software/app] industry is having a tremendous impact on our local community. ACT did a great study on the revolutionary changes happening right now as America is increasingly becoming a mobile economy. Software companies are finding success in every part of the country and those that are most successful in the mobile space are overwhelmingly small companies and startups.
We need to make sure that lawmakers and regulators hear the voices of small business tech companies. Innovation is taking place at a remarkable pace, but overreaching laws or regulation could this industry growth to a screeching halt. I plan to explain to my elected representatives the success our company is having in Tampa and what we need that will allow us to continue to grow and create more jobs. Specifically, Washington should:
These are issues that the federal government is facing that will impact my business. I’m looking forward to meeting with my elected officials and others in Washington to educate them about the technology industry so they can make the right decisions about our future. Hopefully, an informed Congress will help companies like mine continue to flourish in our community.
Related Articles:
QI IQ – our app to learn two-letter words for word tile games like Scrabble, Words With Friends, and Bananagrams – has been updated. The Words With Friends dictionary has been updated to match the latest Words With Friends valid words. The app also takes up a bit less space on your device.
