Wildby is a Voice-Controlled Encyclopedia for Children

Kids tend to ask many different types of questions, sometimes too many for parents to be able to answer. One solution that can offer some help to parents is Wildby is a voice-controlled Android application specially catered for children. All the child needs to do is to verbally ask the question, and Wildby will answer. The app will return an answer, which mimics how an adult would answer a child. This is one of the startups which caught my attention from JFDI’s demo day which was held last friday.

Unlike Qwiki, Wildby is entirely focused on educating the younger generation. It is especially made for children, both in terms of UI/UX, as well as features. They recognise that children may have limited vocabulary, typing, and spelling abilities, and have adopted voice-search as the best strategy. The team at Wildby also assures that only kid-safe content is being place on the app itself.

As encouraging as it is to see your child learning everyday, posting on Facebook might get a little too spammy if your child is constantly posting onto your feed, drowning out other posts.

What I’m concerned about is the free version of Wildby that the Singaporean startup is offering. For the free version, there will be child-targeted advertisements that come along with the app. I think this app is great, but I disagree with the idea of having advertisements targeted at children, especially when many kids don’t have the ability to discern and analyze what’ss right and wrong. Yes, we’re already exposed to many different types of advertisements everyday, but I wouldn’t want my child to be exposed to advertisements during their course of learning. I’d rather choose to pay for the app, making sure that they are entirely focused on learning, and not be distracted by the mobile advertisements that comes with it.

The application is currently available in android, and the team is also looking to expand to other tablet platforms such as iPad. If you’d like to see Wildby’s pitch, check out the video below.