Spot­ted on Spring­wise: Readeo; an online com­mu­ni­ca­tion tool to allow chil­dren and their fam­i­lies to read together in real time over the Inter­net. It com­bines a video chat with online vir­tual children’s books to cre­ate an inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence that the team behind Readeo calls BookChatTM. If you sub­scribe to the ser­vice ($9,95 per month) and both you and your kid have access to a com­puter and a web­cam, you can share a bed­time story even if you hap­pen to be at the other side of the world.

I must admit that I’m not a big fan of expe­ri­enc­ing a book through a dig­i­tal read­ing device. I have no urge what­so­ever to jump on the iPad train and will never — ever — exchange my wall of books I have dragged around for a mem­ory stick hold­ing 5,000 vol­umes. I pre­fer a good ol’ book, prefer­ably a heavy one, rest­ing on my lap. Also when read­ing to my daughter.

But — my mother also refused for years to instal a microwave oven in our kitchen in the early 80’s.… Turns out she was only a slow adopter, because now she could not imag­ine a kitchen with­out it. And I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree after all — so who knows, per­haps I’ll be read­ing sto­ries from a screen soon enough.

And for some­thing like Readeo, I would be will­ing to give it a go. I really see the use  in  pro­vid­ing an oppor­tu­nity for fam­i­lies who are apart to simul­ta­ne­ously share a story moment together. That read­ing moment is in our fam­ily — as I believe also in so many oth­ers — one of the cosiest parts of the day.  An oppor­tu­nity for inter­ac­tion, for teach­ing, lis­ten­ing to each other. And re-living those child­hood mem­o­ries through pass­ing on the sto­ries we our­selves loved when we were kids.

When I travel, this is one of the moments I miss the most. And I dare to bet my daugh­ter feels the same way.

And it was pre­cisely the need to con­nect and share, and the lack of a good solu­tion for meet­ing that need, that lead to the cre­ation of Readeo, which is devel­oped and launched by a Chicago-based startup com­pany. Founder and inven­tor Coby wanted to facil­i­tate the inter­ac­tion between his son and the grand­par­ents, who lived live 1500 miles away.

In other words — another exam­ple of some­thing inven­tive, by par­ents for par­ents, solv­ing a real and hands-on chal­lenge we face in our daily lives. Way to go!

Readeo is cur­rently only avail­able to users in the US, but per­haps some­one will pick up a license for Europe soon enough?? Who­ever gets going: drop me a line, so I can pro­mote my favourite titles for the vir­tual library selection ;-)!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you sub­scribe to my RSS feed!