Can i get an old person version of this with big type and no distractions? My gran still has issues just making calls on a mobile phone and as much as i'd like her to be able to send and receive text messages, all attempts have failed.
I believe the Big Launcher might be of interest to you. I installed it on my old phone, which I gave to my dad. Now he can gamble from the bathroom; he's very happy indeed.
That's an interesting idea and one of our friends actually used it to give it to her grandpa, despite the kids interface. We'll definitely have to look into this.
Is there any way for a developer to make a new UI for it? That seems like it would be the perfect answer. Make a UI for kids, a UI for the elderly, a UI for people with visual disabilities (high contrast and audio announcements when you drag over each button). Can I use siri with it? i.e. can you launch siri from inside kyte and then have the call use the kyte UI?
There's still a huge untapped market for apps and hardware for the elderly.
Last year I did a marketing project, and got some fairly nice insights. For example, most people between 60 and 75 in developed countries don't consider themselves "old" and are mostly self-reliant
“Seniors do not think about their age in general. Unless extremely tired or depressed, older people do not think of themselves as old. Advertising that talks to the silver citizen’s active lifestyle rather than to or about his age are preferred” (www.brandchannel.com).
People in that age range now desire several of the same products as younger people, like iPads or iPhones and Kindles.
Our specific product failed in the customer validation stage, but there's a huge untapped market out there. Heck, I've almost talked myself into trying again :)
You'll probably be interested in Threedom Phone, which is about to launch their beta. It's an App / extra layer for Android. Unfortunately Ribot, the team behind it, seem to have removed the information about it from their website, but from what I've seen of very early versions, it'll be a good match for what you want. There's a few details about some of the places they've demoed it for older people on their Twitter stream:
I know there aren't many details on there, but Ribot are a very interesting company who have made a lot of very good apps for a variety of mobile platforms, and it's well worth keeping an eye on this project.
I can see the reasoning for this but I cannot see the reasoning for giving older people (who have trouble with technology) smart phones.
The best option I could possibly think of for an old person that can't grasp the concept is something like Siri for sending/receiving text messages (though I haven't used it so I have no idea what the learning curve is). Otherwise just give them a phone that acts like a phone.
I had a similar idea except it was for old smartphones without data service. There are millions of them floating around out there that would make perfect household mini-tablets for kids.
As the father of two kids who beg to play on my phone all day I think this is a great idea! I have an old Android phone which I would love to let them play games and take pictures on. Maybe there are even some specific kid friendly wifi apps they could use. (Send pictures to grandparents?)
This looks like an excellent implementation of a great idea. It's actually somewhat similar to what we do at Famigo (see http://www.famigo.com/sandbox/), though we're much more about content management and recommendations than GPS and telephony features.
With respect to the location feature, AT&T actually offers a somewhat similar service called AT&T Family Map for a monthly fee of $10-15. I believe that's a white-labeled version of an existing app (it might be Life360, not sure) with some integration into their back office APIs. I really encourage the Kyte folks to do some investigation here; other carriers might be looking to solve similar problems with respect to family location. That is, after all, the carriers' most lucrative market segment.
I love the idea and would be interested in encouraging people I know to try this out, but I need to know who the customer is for this product... the privacy of children is something that seems extra important to protect rather than sell to advertisers or whoever is paying the bills for this product.
This is definitely something we need to address on the site, and we'll update it in the next few days.
We think showing ads to kids or selling their personal information is completely unacceptable and will never do that. The way we plan to make money is though the classic fremium model - the basic features (including the ones we have right now) will be free, but we'll ask parents to pay for premium features.
Right now, carriers charge $10/month for GPS and $5 for call limits. We want to give these away for free and provide parents with real value they feel good about paying.
Yeah, I wish they mentioned their business model somewhere. Without an explicit mention we need to worry that they are selling kids info, possibly including GPS location since that is obviously sent to their website.
Right now, we've only tested the app on 2.2 and 2.3, which we thought was a good compromise between getting it out there and covering a decently large chunk of the market.
We're definitely going to get it working with Honeycomb and ICS though!
My wife and I were actually just talking about something like this a couple days ago. Great idea, and looks like a great implementation! Great to have a way to limit what the kids can do and with whom, so the phone remains a tool and doesn't become a distraction and/or addiction for the kids. Maybe I should put this on my own phone! :)
Kyte is currently aimed at young kids, around the ages of 7-10. At that age, no parent feels comfortable giving a full smartphone, so kids either end up with no phone or at best a dumbphone, if they really need to stay connected.
Our intent is not to censor or limit kids, but the exact opposite - we want to make a product that gives parents peace of mind so they'll be able to get their kids the smartphone they want.
Actually, as a parent, with a small child, who has experimented with giving him my phone to play with, I feel sorry for any young kid who doesn't use it.
The default android environment, provides all sorts of complexities that land up just frustrating kids. For example some games display adds to install other apps. Because young children's motor skills are not as good as adults, they occasionally land up clicking them, which takes them to the app store. They then click around randomly until they eventually get frustrated and give the phone back to me to 'fix'.
Under Kyte, it seems they wont have access to the app store, so this particular annoyance will be stopped.
Fundamentally though, Android just isn't designed for small children, with limited reading skills and poorer motor skills and it shows up in a whole number of places.
I was actually looking for something like this recently - this look great! I'll definitely try it out with my son when he gets a little older.
One feature I would love to see is the ability to set time limits on gaming - like you can have 1 hour of playing games per day, or 5 hours per week. I've tried looking around for apps which would do that and there is nothing good.
While I think that the general idea is great, I'm a bit torn about the monitoring. Not so much about the location, more about what they did with the phone. To stay within the realm of flying devices, it does sound a bit helicopter-y to me. Is it really healthy for either party to go through usage logs to find out how long they played Angry Birds etc.?
It's all about how old the kids are. To me, this is clearly not appropriate for teenagers, but entirely okay for younger kids. I don't think it's targeted at teenagers either -- restricting the numbers called is something they wouldn't go for.
I assume this installs itself as a replacement launcher. In which case it'd be the first thing that come up every time the phone boots. I'm pretty sure the "login" step they show is just on initial install.
As others have mentioned, Kyte replaces the default home screen, so whether kids turn off the phone, pull the battery or the app crashes, it'll just restart. The only way to exit is for the parent to put in their password.
It's a standard replacement launcher with a GPS reporter and some remote tools built in. It's a very simple thing to do, but this is very well done at the same time. In short, yes, all standard Android fare, should work fine on a tablet.
[+] [-] TamDenholm|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petepete|14 years ago|reply
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=name.kunes.and...
[+] [-] martythemaniak|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pilom|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GFischer|14 years ago|reply
Last year I did a marketing project, and got some fairly nice insights. For example, most people between 60 and 75 in developed countries don't consider themselves "old" and are mostly self-reliant
“Seniors do not think about their age in general. Unless extremely tired or depressed, older people do not think of themselves as old. Advertising that talks to the silver citizen’s active lifestyle rather than to or about his age are preferred” (www.brandchannel.com).
People in that age range now desire several of the same products as younger people, like iPads or iPhones and Kindles.
Our specific product failed in the customer validation stage, but there's a huge untapped market out there. Heck, I've almost talked myself into trying again :)
[+] [-] paulsilver|14 years ago|reply
http://threedomphone.com/
https://twitter.com/#!/ThreedomPhone
I know there aren't many details on there, but Ribot are a very interesting company who have made a lot of very good apps for a variety of mobile platforms, and it's well worth keeping an eye on this project.
[+] [-] ohgodthecat|14 years ago|reply
The best option I could possibly think of for an old person that can't grasp the concept is something like Siri for sending/receiving text messages (though I haven't used it so I have no idea what the learning curve is). Otherwise just give them a phone that acts like a phone.
[+] [-] ryandvm|14 years ago|reply
I had a similar idea except it was for old smartphones without data service. There are millions of them floating around out there that would make perfect household mini-tablets for kids.
[+] [-] vyrotek|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Raphael|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codypo|14 years ago|reply
With respect to the location feature, AT&T actually offers a somewhat similar service called AT&T Family Map for a monthly fee of $10-15. I believe that's a white-labeled version of an existing app (it might be Life360, not sure) with some integration into their back office APIs. I really encourage the Kyte folks to do some investigation here; other carriers might be looking to solve similar problems with respect to family location. That is, after all, the carriers' most lucrative market segment.
[+] [-] j_s|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martythemaniak|14 years ago|reply
We think showing ads to kids or selling their personal information is completely unacceptable and will never do that. The way we plan to make money is though the classic fremium model - the basic features (including the ones we have right now) will be free, but we'll ask parents to pay for premium features.
Right now, carriers charge $10/month for GPS and $5 for call limits. We want to give these away for free and provide parents with real value they feel good about paying.
[+] [-] bostonvaulter2|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vessenes|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martythemaniak|14 years ago|reply
We're definitely going to get it working with Honeycomb and ICS though!
[+] [-] Zikes|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bearwithclaws|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] K_O_G_I|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DavidSJ|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martythemaniak|14 years ago|reply
Our intent is not to censor or limit kids, but the exact opposite - we want to make a product that gives parents peace of mind so they'll be able to get their kids the smartphone they want.
[+] [-] luke_s|14 years ago|reply
The default android environment, provides all sorts of complexities that land up just frustrating kids. For example some games display adds to install other apps. Because young children's motor skills are not as good as adults, they occasionally land up clicking them, which takes them to the app store. They then click around randomly until they eventually get frustrated and give the phone back to me to 'fix'.
Under Kyte, it seems they wont have access to the app store, so this particular annoyance will be stopped.
Fundamentally though, Android just isn't designed for small children, with limited reading skills and poorer motor skills and it shows up in a whole number of places.
[+] [-] DanBC|14 years ago|reply
(http://www.matobmobile.co.uk/index.php?id=doro_handleplus_ph...)
[+] [-] pithon|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] luke_s|14 years ago|reply
One feature I would love to see is the ability to set time limits on gaming - like you can have 1 hour of playing games per day, or 5 hours per week. I've tried looking around for apps which would do that and there is nothing good.
[+] [-] mhd|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevinpet|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] estel|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martythemaniak|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pkamb|14 years ago|reply
The name of the person who's setting this up? Or the kid's name?
[+] [-] martythemaniak|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prezjordan|14 years ago|reply
Looks great! Plans for monetizing it?
[+] [-] derekeder|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theBobMcCormick|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martythemaniak|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevinpet|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ConnorWGarvey|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] webwanderings|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martythemaniak|14 years ago|reply
We've heard from parents that they hate it when their kids mess around with their tablets, so I think it'll work well on tablets.
[+] [-] drivebyacct2|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prezjordan|14 years ago|reply
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