Filed under: Fun, Games, Kids, Windows, Microsoft, Freeware, Open Source
babysmash! lets you let your little one beat on your computer
by Jason Clarke Aug 5th 2008 at 4:00PM
Kids get computers. It seems like they take to them almost immediately, once they are big enough to be able to control a mouse. But what about kids that aren't yet big enough? I know both of my boys wanted to bang away on the keyboard from a very young age. Rather than opening a Word document and setting the font to a huge size, why not run a program that is specifically created for young children? Well, that's what Scot Hanselman must have thought when he decided to create Baby Smash.
Baby Smash is a simple Windows program that will lock out the special keys on the keyboard so that baby can't accidentally exit the program, and will then show colorful shapes with fun sound effects in response to baby's key presses, or more likely key mashes (and slams, and bangs, and mashes, etc.).
Scott is a well-known Windows development blogger who recently went to work for Microsoft. He's using the development of Baby Smash to teach Windows development concepts on his popular blog, ComputerZen.
I don't know if this is a labor of love or merely the brainchild of four very gifted games designers, but Level Up is a really weird mash-up of gaming elements that you have probably never seen in a Flash game before.
Let's start with the premise itself: Groundhog Day meets Memento. The game experience revolves around 'days': you explore the world and the clock slowly ticks towards the evening. You bounce around picking up gems and talking to the denizens of 'Level Upland'. Eventually you feel tired and head back to ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ian said 4:34PM on 8-05-2008
Sounds like a pretty clear rip off of the Open Source program AlphaBaby for Mac which has been out for years.
http://alphababy.sourceforge.net/
To be a troll for a second: I guess learning how to port Mac apps to Windows is a pretty standard development concept.
:-)
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Ian said 4:39PM on 8-05-2008
I have to untroll myself: Scot does acknowledge that BabySmash is a "copy/homage of the very fine and free AlphaBaby for the Macintosh"
kevjohn said 9:16AM on 8-12-2008
You can't untroll what's already been trolled.
Chris said 5:32PM on 8-05-2008
This is a pretty old application. It was covered before...by the same blog as well.
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DiRT said 6:01PM on 8-05-2008
Not to mention Keyboard Pounder or Baby Banger...
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Diddle said 6:57PM on 8-05-2008
This is way better than ToddlerTrap! :)
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Pete said 12:02PM on 8-06-2008
Do you *really* want to teach your toddler that it's okay to pound on your computer's keyboard?
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Scott Hanselman said 3:38AM on 8-08-2008
I'm the author...I'm introducing a feature that will detect if the baby is pressing more than x number of keys, so if you want to teach them to press 1 at a time, you can.
However, if you have kids, it really is fun to watch a 7 month old react to a game like this, and they don't "pound" that hard at all.
Jhongerkong said 6:53PM on 8-10-2008
This app fucking rocks! I can just smash my keyboard and things happen. Awesome!
Who cares if its for toddlers?
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