Maily Maily is a fun way for kids of 4 and up to stay in touch with their relatives by email. It's a free iPad app that allows parents to set up a list of email recipients, in the form of headshots. Your kid can create images by mixing photos, freehand drawing, and drag-and-drop skip art onto the screen, then send it to a recipient by tapping their headshot.

Paranoid parents can use a setting that shunts their kid's incoming email into their own inbox, so they can make sure grandma didn't send an off-color joke before forwarding it to junior.

The design and ease-of-use are excellent. I wish Gmail was more like this!

Read more in Family at Boing Boing

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

TAGS: family

Read these next

Skittles sorting machine, version 3

David LaFerriere's sandwich bag art

nosehat

“And to reply, they just have to log into their Maily dashboard online. It’s that simple.”

Perhaps it would be simpler to let them reply from their email client?
- BannedinDC
  
  I had the same reaction. “Nice job, devs. Oh, I can’t just reply from my email client? Nevermind.”
- http://twitter.com/redfood Eitan Mendelowitz
  
  That was my reaction too. It look like the ‘dashboard’ lets you create “Replies are especially designed to appeal to kids, in a visual and colourful manner.” (according to their website)
http://twitter.com/angela_la_la Miss Angela

Anyone have suggestions for similar Android apps? I bought a Nexus 7 for my niece and am looking for a basic kids email app like this.
Ramone

Nevermind the app–I want that kid’s castle! Where can I get it?!!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

If the camera angle was angled just a little bit to the right, and the sailboat was placed on top of that blue bin, then this scene would be right out of a Wes Anderson movie.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002304720365 David Howard

Looks like the Fisher-Price castle from the early 00′s. Don’t know if they make it any more.
Clevername

I assumed kids were just born with Gmail accounts these days.
http://billmcgonigle.com bill_mcgonigle

Not dumbed down? Cripes, I gave my daughter a netbook with Thunderbird when she was six. It wasn’t a problem.

Maily: an email app for kids that isn't dumbed down

Read more in Family at Boing Boing

Read these next