If you follow publishing news, you’re probably aware of the recent controversy over Clean Reader, a reading app that scrubs ebooks clean of curse words and profanity.
Now, in a step toward the future of interactive digital media, bold start-up Inkadinkadu has partnered with a number of major ebook distributors to produce and distribute a new reading app, called Naughty-No-No!.
Starting where censorship app Clean Reader leaves off, Naughty-No-No! allows readers to make any ebook capable of being read and enjoyed by pre-schoolers down to the age of three. “If they can read, they can read with Naughty-No-No!,” said Inkadinkadu head honcho Jimmy Duranceville, “and, if they can’t read yet, the app will read the book to them in a voice modeled after the legendary stage and screen actress Shirley Temple Black during her famous child actor years.”
Not only does it substitute baby-language for those words that parents have rightfully banned from their children’s vocabulary, Naughty-No-No! simulates the simplified grammar that young children use before they’ve fully developed their language skills. References to bodily parts and functions in the text are altered to those words that every child learns to say first, such as pee-pee, poo-poo, hoo-hoo, fooey, and the rest. Any of the other words that children shouldn’t see or hear are replaced with “no-no!” When heard in the precocious voice of Shirley Temple, these passages are simply irresistible to a child of any age. Religion-based curse words are transformed into the inoffensive gol-darnit, krikey, gosh, h-e-double-hockey-sticks, and crimeny.
Inkadinkadu anticipates that if their product can be distributed widely, an entire generation of young readers will grow up to be untainted by corruption. Internet and real-world versions of the app are in the works, so stay tuned.
The app will be available as soon as authors stop whining about having their precious writing ruined.
I think my ISP uses this software already. After having resigned myself to having messages stored in their graymail even after they changed the headers, whenever I bought a Br*** Light Fixture with Gl*** Shades on eBay, today there was a new low when someone sent me an email whose header said it had Do***ents Attached.
Naughty No-No is not as funny or as far away as we would wish. Look what's going on across America now as the right-wing righteous attempt to drga us back into the Dark Ages.
Just to remove all doubt (since I got a few alarmed emails): this was April Fool.
Okay, that took me a minute. Jimmy Duranceville? Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.
Wendig had some fun with the clean reader the other day on his blog. Tom's witch whelped a litter of puppies.
As amusing as it would be to see
A Game of Thrones transformed by naughty-no-no, I'm seriously hoping naughty no no is an April Fools app…
I am wriggling all over in anticipation of a sample reading!
April Fool's?