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babysmash! lets you let your little one beat on your computer
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.
Comments
9
Subscribe to commentsIanAug 5th 2008 4:34PM
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.
:-)
IanAug 5th 2008 4:39PM
I have to untroll myself: Scot does acknowledge that BabySmash is a "copy/homage of the very fine and free AlphaBaby for the Macintosh"
kevjohnAug 12th 2008 9:16AM
You can't untroll what's already been trolled.
ChrisAug 5th 2008 5:32PM
This is a pretty old application. It was covered before...by the same blog as well.
DiRTAug 5th 2008 6:01PM
Not to mention Keyboard Pounder or Baby Banger...
DiddleAug 5th 2008 6:57PM
This is way better than ToddlerTrap! :)
PeteAug 6th 2008 12:02PM
Do you *really* want to teach your toddler that it's okay to pound on your computer's keyboard?
Scott HanselmanAug 8th 2008 3:38AM
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.
JhongerkongAug 10th 2008 6:53PM
This app fucking rocks! I can just smash my keyboard and things happen. Awesome!
Who cares if its for toddlers?