Noisy Book - empowering young readers and storytellers

by Startacus Admin

The lowdown on Noisy Book, the app that will let you turn your children's books and imaginations into an immersive, magical experience...

Most parents understand the joy of reading a book with their children, whether they do all the voices or not. The gradual move from you reading to them, to them reading to you is an important part of both the child’s development and of your bonding with them. Well, you’ve probably already somewhat bonded with your child by the time they can read to you, but this is the kind of thing that can make those memories that never go away.

However reading now has to compete with the lure of technology and its interactivity. So why not use that technology to enhance those bedtime stories?

Hampshire-based startup Lumen Digital has created an app to do just that: Noisy Book.

Noisy Book is an iOS app that uses Apple’s proprietary technology to understand certain words that you say and the way that you say them, and then play a sound effect to go along with it.

So you could read a sentence about walking through a forest and meeting a lion, and the app would play some nice ambient forest sounds as you mention said forest, and then a lion’s roar as you encounter that misplaced feline, rather than berating you for thinking lions live in forests and shutting down until you educate yourself.

Parents worried about children spending too much time with their faces glued to screens and not wanting them to do so close to bedtime will like it too, because it doesn’t need books to be added to its library like an e-reader: it simply listens to what you are saying, in a manner less creepy than that sounds, and then plays those sound effects based on that. So it works with any normal paper books, Bible study pamphlets pushed through your door, shopping lists, arguments with your spouse if you forget to turn it off, spontaneously made up stories, etc.

As you read, the app will transcribe your words, so if you are the kind of parent who makes up stories, those can be stored and later used against you in a court of law, or read again. All of this is processed on your device, not uploaded to any clouds or servers, making it safe and secure.

We like the idea of giving our stories that extra spark and life, and we look forward to seeing what the product updates and partnerships are that Lumen Digital is currently working on.

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Published on: 17th November 2019