Internet Entrepreneur Turns Nursery Rhyme Into iPad App

An internet entrepreneur has turned an original nursery rhyme set in Llangollen into an interactive children’s storybook app – 27 years after his dad wrote and read it to him for the first time.

…and Little Ones too!, created by Aled Brown, is a traditional bedtime tale, which follows the story of an invisible family’s adventures in the Welsh countryside.

Aled’s father Mike Brown wrote the 34-verse tale for Aled and his brother when they were young and it quickly became – and remained – one of their favourite bedtime stories.

Realising his father’s dream to one day have the story published, Aled, a computing graduate from Glyndŵr University, has used his skills as an app developer to bring the story to life.

Adults or children can read the story aloud at their own pace or have it read to them by its author, Mike. Each verse has been illustrated by North Wales-based designer Stephen Heaton, and the app also features music composed by Owain Llwyd, an award winning composer based in Bangor.

Aled said: “I finally had the app approved last week and can’t wait to see it released now. I’ve designed and released apps before but with so many elements to it – the voiceover, graphics and making it so interactive – it’s been the most challenging by far.

“It’s been tested by a family in Australia over the last few months which led to making a few improvements to it and I’m looking forward to seeing how it’s received on the App Store.”

…and Little Ones too! is the sixth app created by Aled and released through his company, A5 Multimedia. Four of the apps are games – Sum Maths, Girl Boy Fruit Flower, Words Inside and OOOG – Odd One Out game.

The other, a Dee Valley Tourist Guide app which provides users with information about Llangollen, Chirk, Corwen, Bala and the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, completes his collection.

First class graduate Aled progressed into app design 10 years after leaving Glyndŵr University, using many of the programming skills he gained when studying for his degree in Multimedia Computing.

Professor Vic Grout, Head of Computing at Glyndŵr University, said: “Aled was an exceptional student and we’re delighted and proud with what he has gone on to achieve since leaving us.

“The university prides itself on delivering industry-relevant courses and clearly Aled has taken many of the transferable programming skills that he learned here and applied them to create these apps.

“They are obviously now becoming highly relevant and in demand pieces of software, which also requires a good amount of business sense of course – something else that we take very seriously.”

…and Little Ones too! is being released as an iPad only app through Apple’s App Store on Thursday 25 July 2013.