TeknoNot

Southampton, New York – i-Itch Inc today is pleased to introduce Let’s Bead Friends 1.0, their virtual friendship bracelet app for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. For the young and young at heart, the app allows the user to select a bead shape, paint it, decorate it, string it, and complete a bracelet which can be saved or edited. The final touch is adding a personally inscribed message tag to the bracelet and sending it as a greeting to a friend. Also an educational tool, it teaches pre-math skills like colors, shapes, and patterning.

Creating “Apps That Delight and Develop”, Let’s Bead Friends is the third app from the creative team of Jayne Clare and Anne Rachel, both life-long educators. Particularly well suited to young children ages 3 and up, the app works on several levels. It is an opportunity for the youngest family member to earn initiation into perhaps the highest rite of modern technological culture – the iPhone. By quickly gaining mastery over this “magical” tool, the user develops their creativity and communication skills while delighting family and friends. In addition, the young child discovers the pleasures of the virtual world, where finger paints, beads, kites, dolls, balls, and jump ropes are all a touchscreen away. Through play, the child learns – automatically, delightfully, profoundly. And lastly, the bead maker finds an expressive outlet for their emotions of love and caring, the ancient secret behind the tradition of friendship bracelets.

Let’s Bead Friends launches in landscape mode, and the splash screen offers the choice to continue working on a saved bracelet or starting a new one. Starting afresh, the construction window opens with an empty white string on a jeweler’s, blue velvet display cloth. Beneath are five small wooden boxes holding plain white beads of various shapes: flower, cylinder, oval, circle, and diamond. Touching any sample enlarges it five-fold, and places it beside the string. Touching the “+” sign, reduces the bead to normal size and threads it on to the first position of the string.

Alternatively, the artisan may apply color and/or design to the large sample bead shape chosen. Choices include: red, pink, orange, yellow, green, aqua, blue, purple, white, and black. Touching any color transforms the sample bead. Again, the colored bead can be added to the string, or the user can add a design over the chosen color. There are 10 colored designs ranging from wavy lines, to spirals, to polka dots. After selecting a design the jeweler may add the bead to the bracelet, modify it, or start over. Different sound effects accompany every action, providing re-assuring feedback.

Feature Highlights:
* Create a friendship bracelet using the iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad
* Especially created for young children 3 to 10, but fun for all ages
* Choose from beads of five different shapes, 10 colors, and 10 designs
* Complete your friendship bracelet with a personally engraved silver charm
* Young children are fascinated by the shapes, colors and touchscreen technology
* Finished bracelets can be saved and edited, or shared on Facebook or by email
* Give someone a gift symbolizing your friendship

As soon as the tenth and final bead is added, the user has the option of adding a personalized message on the silver tag/charm. There are four shapes of charms from which to choose, and selecting one activates the pop-up keyboard to inscribe initials, a name, or a short message. With the charm added the child may choose the “Finished” button, which displays the final bracelet full-screen, to the accompaniment of “bling” sound effects and animated points of light sparkling on each bead. Complete, the user may use the integrated email and Facebook connectivity to share their creation, save it to their in-app jewelry box, or go back and edit any feature.

“We’re primarily educators, not entrepreneurs,” stated Vice President Anne Rachel. “Our mission statement is ‘To Educate and Entertain Simultaneously,’ and with Let’s Bead Friends I think we’ve succeeded.”

Device Requirements:
* iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
* iOS 3.0 or later
* 8.9 MB

Pricing and Availability:
Let’s Bead Friends 1.0 is only $0.99 (USD) and available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Games category. Review copies are available upon request.

i-Itch
Let’s Bead Friends 1.0
Purchase and Download
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Located in Southampton, New York, I-Itch Inc was founded in 2009 by Jayne Clare and Anne Rachel. As life-long educators, Jayne and Anne began developing apps with a simple, yet strong, mission to reach as many young learners as possible. Their insistence that learning can and should be fun is witnessed in the scope and depth of their teaching apps, ABC Shakedown and ABC Shakedown Plus. Copyright (C) 2010 i-Itch Inc. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone, iPad, and iPod, are registered trademarks of Apple Computer in the U.S. and/or other countries.