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Kids Software is Hard to Do, BlockChain on the Brain
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Kids Software is Hard to Do
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We look at 10 years of KAPi Winners to See How They've Fared. |
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We just took a look down memory lane at ten years of KAPi (Kids At Play Interactive) awards. We give them out at CES every year to honor the best in kids hardware and software.
But over the years, we discovered a surprising number fell off the charts. Why is making a lasting high-tech kids product so hard to do? Here are some of the conclusions we came to after studying the past winners:
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Discoverability: Some great children’s apps and toys simply don’t have the marketing budgets to climb above the noise. Magic Piano from Smule software is brilliant; and Disney Appmates was a first, but they’re both now gone.
Nosy Crow shut its digital studio. App building is brutal.
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No Good Showcases: Even when ToysRUs existed, the toys weren’t often displayed. Unboxing videos are popular for a reason; many parents can’t figure out what’s inside the box.
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Tech is Fleeting: Many of our winners required gaming machines like the now defunct Kinect system. Parents worry that what they buy today will be obsolete tomorrow.
- Tech is Expensive: Many of these products hover above the $100 range, making them a luxury buying decision, not a must have.
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Tech is Too Difficult: A Bluetooth connection and app to install makes some toys non-starters for parents.
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Parents Fret About Screen Time: Privacy, social media and a generation of screen-addicted kids have pushed parents to other types of toys.
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Too Little Playtime: Let’s face it, kids are overscheduled.
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In June we’ll be heading to CES Asia, where we’ll be presenting a new way for people to wrap their brains around the blockchain. The game show, What’s My Blockchain, will feature companies including Rivetz , Swarm and New Alchemy, and others, and they will explain their strategies. Audience members will be quizzed, spin the Wheel of Blockchain Fortune, and win a
prize for correct answers. Hope to see you there.
From our perch, the move of every business imaginable onto the blockchain platform will keep journalists, lawmakers, attorneys, investors and developers in business for a long time to come. Blockchain represents a profound change in how a business is organized, stressing a more secure, more decentralized and community-facing business. But to pick the blockchain
winners means looking at their entire ecosystem and examining your own passions as well. After spending the week at Consensus (a large gathering of 250 speakers and 4,000 companies), ReStartX, an intimate gathering of young voices
from the global blockchain community spearheaded by Brock Pierce, and TokenMatch, an invite-only event where new blockchain companies meet potential investors, we’ve been deluged with blockchain information. Here are a few of the new companies worth looking at:
Drone Employee matches those who want to own and operate drone fleets with businesses who will rely on them.
ImpactPPA - offers clean, affordable, renewable energy to developing countries by offering its energy using the Ethereum token. The portable stations can generate energy efficiently and you pay for use by the minute, hour or whatever you need.
GEM - an elegant wallet solution that houses all of your crypto investments
SONM - Based in Moscow, they are renting and selling computing power from computers all over the world
Metronome - A much talked about brand new cryptocurrency that will be available in small amounts over a series of auctions. It’s designed to eliminate many of the problems with existing cryptocurrency.
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We’ve seen this dance of exuberant dervishes before. The early days of the Internet had the same “we can change the world” earnestness.
We’ll be looking at companies moving to the blockchain in depth at the Digital Money Forum at CES 2019.
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About Us
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Living in Digital Times produces a diverse range of events, conferences and exhibits which bring together the most knowledgeable leaders and the latest innovations at the intersection of technology and ever-changing lifestyles.
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