I wanted to take some time away from Aeir Talk today to talk to you all about following after that one big project you are always thinking of. 

I am proud to be a speaker this weekend (April 27-29) at Start Norfolk an event where business people, designers, software engineers and the like get together to build businesses over a weekend. People get in front of judges, pitch their idea, and about 10 groups are chosen to build great products over the course of the weekend. Winner gets $15K if their product wins over the judges at the end of the weekend. 

It is a rush! Having taken part in the last Start Norfolk, I can honestly say it is a life altering experience, and a great teaching experience as well. You’ll learn more about how to build a lean business, how to pitch it hopefully, and connect with a lot of like minded people who want to build their dreams as well. You can make friends, or even meet future business partners. I am very excited to be a part of it. 

I want to put this out there because we all think about building something great. A lot of us never will, because there are mitigating factors, or it just seems to0 hard. If you are in the Norfolk, VA area, you can make those dreams of building something great a reality. I have sat where you have sat, being unsure of my business idea, but I put myself out there time and time again and eventually it paid off, because I kept trying at it. If you keep trying at it, especially talking to people about your product,  you will eventually do great things; and that doesn’t always mean making a lot of money, but rather helping a lot of people. 

So if you are reading this, and want to do something great over the course of a weekend, come to Start Norfolk, and do something great. You never know what might happen.

Joe Hill, Founder

If you were a child of the eighties, like I was, you probably had a Speak and Spell. It was made by Texas Instruments, was freakishly heavy (D Cell batteries man) and it only had one version, 1.0. That’s freaking amazing, but it was such a perfect learning toy it didn’t need another one (well later on they had Speak and Math but it was lame).

I loved my Speak and Spell. I would play on that thing till the batteries went dead on it. I learned a lot, and would have learned more, until I saw what E.T. did with one (he took it apart to contact his family) and I decided to get my dad’s tools, take my Speak and Spell apart, and contact E.T. Sadly, this experiment did not go as planned, and my Speak and Spell met an untimely demise. 

I was thinking about Speak and Spell the other day because in reality, Aeir Talk can be very similar to it. I loved when that toy would talk to me, and when I pressed a letter, it would tell me exactly what I pressed and spell it out for me after I was done.

That feeling of joy that I got with the Speak and Spell is the same feeling kids get when they play with Aeir Talk. They have a toy that talks to them, but not only that, it talks to them with their parents or teachers voice. It has pictures to go along with that, so they can learn what a Giraffe looks like or a Polar Bear, or what a hug looks like. So much stuff can be learned and played with. 

I’ve been saying all along that Aeir Talk is for everyone, but I guess I didn’t really realize how much it could bring to every child until the other day when I was reminiscing about my old toy. Life’s kind of funny that way. So if you know of a child learning to spell, or learning vocabulary, or just needs something fun to play with that doesn’t cost and arm and a leg, recommend or buy Aeir Talk. It’s something that will not only be fun for the child, but it can also teach them so much!

Have a great day.

Joe Hill | Founder

So I was listening to the most recent episode of Build and Analyze, which by the way is probably the best podcast for the web development world out there and I am loving it having recently discovered it. Their most recent episode (titled “The Lottery Mindset”) revolved around the premise that there is an “overnight success” mentality in the app world and it really hit home for me. 

My friend Brennan Dunn, just yesterday wrote an awesome post about his most recent product, Projector. In the post he talked about in his first month how many comments he has gotten about his product (2943), how many sign ups (590), and his revenue ($119.50). People might be shocked by that, especially since Projector is a fantastic product, but both Brennan and Build and Analyze reveal that products, just like Projector, and even Draw Something are not overnight successes, and should not be. 

Draw Something’s parent company was just bought for $120 million dollars by Zynga, after the app had been on the app store for under a month I think. People see that and think, “Man, if I just had an app idea like that, I could be a millionaire and retire.” But what they don’t realize is that Draw Something’s company has been in operation for almost six years, and that they originally started as a dating site, and moved on to casual gaming and eventually to Draw Something. A lot of hard work went into this idea, and it changed several times I am sure during development. 

If any of you are thinking of building an app, please do it! Find a way to make it happen (there are plenty of places you can go like Start Norfolk and Hatch) and get it built, but be patient. Nothing happens overnight, and that’s ok! With time your app can get better, and so can you personally and professionally. I think that you’ll find that a slow and steady approach wins out every time. 

Joe Hill | Founder

If you are like me, you love your kids, and you also love to shop. What you hate is when your child (who you love) throws a temper tantrum and throws that thing you just bought (and loved to shop for) into the air and expect to hear the resounding *Crunch* sound as it hits your tile floor in your kitchen. Then they look at you and say “Uh oh” because they are trying to be sweet and say “I’m sorry I just did that, but I wanted your attention.” 

Sigh. So it happens, especially to parents of children with special needs. You know, just KNOW that new iPad is going to get hurled through the air once you buy it and it will break. Trust me, I know the feeling. If you are holding back purchasing an iPad (and Aeir Talk along with it) I wanted to give you some pointers, soothing comments, and some suggestions for when that ill fated temper tantrum hits, and the first thing your child reaches for is their iPad to fling it at you or near you to get your attention.

(*Disclaimer at bottom of page)

First, if you can, get a protection plan on the iPad. Yes, I know it is extra money, but something like Apple’s “Apple Care” (which incidentally covers breakage for iPads now) or Best Buy’s “Geek Squad Protection” is worth its weight in gold. I have not had to use either of these services yet (full disclosure I do work for Best Buy for my day job, and I do have their protection plan on my iPad), but either one will protect you from any damage that might accrue due to a “flinging”

Second, if you don’t want to spend the extra money on a protection plan, you can always get a good case to go along with your iPad purchase. Here are a few that I really like. 

Lifeproof

Dude, this case rocks. Water proof, military spec rated (drop from 6 feet or below and it is still protected) and its very thin. I love the look of it and it protects your iPad from just about anything. Downside, price still has yet to be announced, and it is probably going to be one of the most expensive cases on the market. 

Choice #2 Otterbox

This case is a good case for just about any situation. Its water resistant, is ruggedized for those unexpected throws, military specifications for drop protection, and it is about $80 (used is about $50 on ebay). Yes it is extra, but the protection it provides on your, *ahem* child’s new toy is worth it.

Choice #3 (my favorite) Incase

For the person who doesn’t want to spend a fortune on a case (this one is $50), Incase is my favorite. Whenever I buy and Apple product I get something made by Incase to go with it. I currently have an Incase Backpack, the product above for my iPad, an iPhone case, and two Incase sleeves for my Macbook (Red and Blue, depending on my mood). Yes I love Incase, and let me tell you why, it simply works. My son Deacon has thrown his iPad more than a few times, and this leather portfolio has protected it time and time again. This is my favorite choice, and if you are going to buy an iPad, another $50 is not going to kill you in the long run (come back and get it if you have to!). 

So anyway, for those of you who are confused about what to get to protect your iPad, these are a few tips for you. We hope it helps. We like to shop around here, and its fun to do research on all of these various items (and more) to see which one will work best for you to get further protection on your investment. Remember, have fun with the iPad and don’t forget to download Aeir Talk as well!

Joe Hill | Founder, Aeir Talk

*Disclaimer: Aeir Talk, Aeir Biologic, or Joe Hill will not be held responsible if any of the previous suggestions fail. These are tips for clarification only, and we are happy to extend our years of experience and research to give you the best information that we have available to help you in protecting your future investment. But as we are not the manufacturers of the preceding suggestions, we can’t be held liable for their product or potential product failures that may or may not occur.

“What is he talking about?” This was a common phrase in my home a couple of years ago when my oldest son, Deacon, would sit down next to me and just jabber away, but in his own language. He would talk and talk, and every once in a while sigh deeply and say “Abba dabba dabba youuuu, deabbe,” like he was waxing eloquent about politics or something and concluding “What are you gonna do, you know?” Then he would get up off the couch, and go to his room to play. 

He still does this on occasion, and it is fun to watch and be a part of, but a small part of me wants to have those long conversations with my now 4.5 year old. As I read on many different message boards regarding Autism, I see the same frustration and longing for conversations with our children. 

When Deacon and Gunnar (my youngest son) started sitting down with me with Aeir Talk, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But now, with a steady diet of Aeir Talk and speech therapy, Deacon will happily explain “Thank you momma!” Immediately followed by “You’re welcome” in expectation of Sandy’s response of “You’re Welcome.” Gunnar will point at objects on the screen and say them before he touches them. It’s great to hear his little voice say “Sea Lion” or “Potty!” We are taking baby steps. But as many parents know, even the smallest step forward is the best feeling in the world.

Some may be concerned with Echolalia, but to be honest I am not that concerned. Why? With Aeir Talk it is not just words they are repeating. They are seeing images associated with those words, and are hearing a familiar voice say the word as well. All of these factors with repetition begin to make positive reinforcement with the child, and you begin to see progress.

So am I having long conversations? Not quite. But am I really enjoying the short sentences Deacon and Gunnar are saying to me? Oh yeah you bet! If you want to see how Aeir Talk is making a difference in peoples lives, why not take a few minutes and check it out?

We’ve recently been asked by several individuals across the pond (namely Europe and in Australia) whether our app is medically certified. 

The short answer is not yet.

The long answer is that we are meeting with individuals interested in helping us put Aeir Talk through a series of A/B tests with other apps and see how effective it is in assisting communication. 

This of course, takes quite a bit of time. We will be working in the future to keep all of you updated on the progress of this lengthy process, but do know that we are working on it, and look forward to the positive results it will yield. 

We hope you are all well, and keep on creating. 

Joe Hill | Founder

The 3rd Gen iPad comes out today. Yay! I’m sure it will look beautiful and it will have an awesome battery and awesome screen and just be awesome. 

I am genuinely excited, believe me. But what is on my mind is that while the rest of the world is enjoying new waves of education breakthroughs, the special needs community is still making these.

What you see is a PECS System. it is a notebook that parents of children with special needs have to tote around with them to communicate with their kids. It was cool back in the day. But some of them could weigh upwards of twenty pounds, and you would have several of them in your home for various situations. 

This is a post where you could learn how to make one yourself. Some of the steps include:

Print off your selected images and cut them into individual squares 

 Invest in a cheap laminator and laminate your pics

Find double-sided Velcro and colored cardboard

Stick Velcro onto the back of the laminated pics and wherever you want the images to sit on your picture board 

Create your removable sentence card

This process, while effective, is enormously time consuming. To take pictures, print them out, laminating a picture, assemble a board, put velcro on the pictures, arrange the pictures, you’re out a weekend. So when the tablet PC came around in the late 90’s, there were innovators who came up programs that looked like this.

The only problem with this is that it is so easy to become overwhelmed looking at it. It is tough to focus, and while the illustrations are good, they don’t have the same feeling that you get when you see a hat or drink cup that you recognize. 

With Aeir Talk, you take pictures, record your voice, type a caption, and…you’re done. No laminating, no velcro board, no having to rearrange the pictures each day. It’s just that easy. 

Simple, clean, inexpensive, and easy to use. Oh, and it saves you a ton of time and contains pictures of your child’s environment. That’s progress you can believe in, and I think that Aeir Talk is the tip of the spear when it comes to innovation in educational tech that is about to be unveiled in the next few years.

I am really happy to meet people who are using the app that are benefiting from Aeir Talk, and I hope that the app will be a big help to their family. It’s cool that Aeir Talk is saving people time and money all over the world. 

So today I’m happy that the tech world is advancing forward with the iPad 3 launch, but I’m also happy that parents don’t have to spend $50+ to communicate with their kids anymore. We will keep spreading the word, and I hope you will too. 

Thanks for your time.

Joe Hill, Founder

Recently I was emailed an article about “A Dad’s Plea to Developers of iPad apps for Children.”  If you haven’t seen it or read it, visit it and come back to us. We’ll wait…..seriously….go!……..

…….And welcome back. 

I loved reading this, mostly because it is a sincere plea from a parent to app developers to do good work. Which in a lot of cases is lacking in both education and special needs applications. 

Simplicity in app design (especially for kids) is not just a good thing to have, it is a necessity. Easy banner ads which run up $1000 credit card bills are not good things to have in a children’s app. This goes for easy “Setup” buttons as well.

We purposefully have made it difficult for children to get into the “Setup” of Aeir Talk. If a child can get into the features of Aeir Talk, they can also inadvertently delete or change a lot of the settings in the app. This is a big deal, so we made a special “lock” that would allow parents to get into the set up easily, but not the children using it. 

In hind sight, we probably could have done a better job of explaining this, but thats ok. We’re working on a small tutorial for new users. You can also check out the video which explains the setup as well.

Simplicity is hard to accomplish, and some may see it as limiting within an app. But to the contrary, the easier an app is for people to “get” out of the box, the better the user experience. They shouldn’t have to think about “How does this work?” The more programmers can simplify their programs, the more fun their users can have using their products, and this creates raving fans. 

Anyway, we really enjoyed making Aeir Talk, and for the most part are excited to see that it lined up well with what this author wanted out of an app. We’ll keep forging ahead to make our app better for you in the future. 

Thanks for your time, and keep on creating. 

So I was in the bank the other day, naturally thinking about money. I was thinking about how I read Techcrunch or Pando Daily, and how so many people talk about this company acquiring this company  and it can get to be overwhelming. 

So I began to think, “Hey, if I were an investor, what type of things would I invest in?”  Silly perhaps because I am an entrepreneur, and my default is being dead broke all the time. :) But I thought it would be interesting to at least explore what I would want to see more of in the app store, and its these three things. 1) Special Needs applications, 2) Special Needs Applications, 3) Special Needs applications.

A lot of people would say that is nuts. “Why do you want special needs more on the iTunes store? The market is saturated!” But this is a wrong way of looking at it. 

The market is saturated because there is a) high demand and b) you can’t stop people from being creative. In the game market if people would have stopped developing games after Angry Birds and just said, “Well screw it, there is no way we can compete with 200 million downloads,” we would have never seen great games like “Temple Run”, or “Cut the Rope” or “Feed the Monster.”

If I had said, “Forget building Aeir Talk, there’s no way we can compete with all the speech pathology/education apps out there,” where would my company/Aeir Talk’s users be? The more we see new special needs focused apps coming out, the better. We will continue to make Aeir Talk better, and at the price it is at now, it’s accessible to anyone. 

I want to see Special Needs apps blow peoples minds. Aeir Talk is already doing that around the globe because of its simplicity and creative approach to speech pathology, but even we can do better and we will.

These apps can go into realms like augmented reality, and even head and eye movement controlled applications for the iPad. Imagine a world where your iPad could be controlled by just a flick of the eye? Where individuals with limited mobility could enjoy the iPad, or even games like Angry Birds? I think we can get there some day, and I hope we do. There would be so many people helped because of it. 

We’ll get there, if we just keep pressing. I’m looking forward to it. Here’s to the crazy ones out there already coming up with great ideas for the future.

Joe Hill

Founder | Aeir Talk 

So of all of the comments that I have read about Aeir Talk, one of my favorites was that it had an “Very Unusual display of ‘Nouns’ and ‘Verbs with intro phrases.” 

“Why is this one of your favorites?”, you may ask. Because it proves that Aeir Talk is unexpected. That people initially don’t know what to do with it, but it so intriguing that they have to try it. It is the type of app that people have on the cusp of their mind to create themselves yet never seem to make it fully form into a complete thought. Who would think that making sentences out of nouns and verbs would be considered “Very Unusual?” 

Yet it is. Alas, this is the hill that we here at Aeir Talk have to climb every day. The journey of telling parents and professionals that teaching children how to talk doesn’t have to be hard. That it can be fun. That children learning through familiar sights and sounds is only the beginning. And we’re having a blast doing it. :) 

Sometimes we get blank stares when we show off the app. I think it is because people don’t live in a world where their children can’t speak to them. Of course they are going to say, Ok, that’s kind of cool I guess. 

But when we show Aeir Talk to a parent who has a child who can’t speak, they smile. They laugh. One person had to sit down. It was a simple approach that they always wanted and that is what creating apps should be about. Solving problems, whether they are dealing with a child’s speech delay, or just simple boredom. 

Anyway, our “Very Unusual Display” is growing, and we hope that it will continue to be shared by people like you. Thanks for reading! Keep on creating, and enjoy your day.

Joe Hill, Founder