Google smart speakers now let parents who can’t get home before their children go to sleep record themselves reading a bedtime story
- Parents can record themselves reading a story from anywhere in the world
- It is then made available on their home ‘Google Assistant’ for children to play
- It was inspired by a military family where the father pre-recorded stories
- My Storytime was developed by Instrument and Google as an ‘Assistant Action’
- This means it can be controlled by interacting with a Google Assistant device
A military father recording ‘Wind in the Willows’ for his children to listen to while he was in Afghanistan has inspired a new story time app for Google smart speakers.
MyStorytime lets a parent who might not be able to tuck their children in at night record a bedtime story for their little ones to play before they go to sleep.
It was inspired by the Oliver family who didn’t want to stop their tradition of dad reading a bedtime story to his daughters even though he was half a world away.
‘Nothing can replace Daddy being home, but hopefully My Storytime will make it just a little bit easier to get through the next deployment and that it brings some comfort to other families as well’, said mum Jennifer Oliver.
While deployed in Afghanistan dad would record short clips of a bedtime story, load it on to a shared Google Drive and mum Jennifer would then play it through a smart speaker using her phone.
She said this was a long winded and complicated process that didn’t always work as expected ‘we knew there had to be a better way’.
The family took to message boards to find a solution and eventually met with engineers from Google and military veteran-owned design agency ‘Instrument’ which led to the creation of MyStorytime.
Children are able to use a Google smart device to access recordings made by their parents by saying ‘Hey Google, talk to My Storytime’
The app they created is available on any Google Assistant enabled device including smart speakers and phones.
It allows mum or dad to say ‘Hey Google, talk to My Storytime’ then record anything from We’re Going on a Bear Hunt to The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.
‘Every night at our house, bedtime means storytime with Dad. A time when our daughters get to share an experience that’s just between them’, said Mrs Oliver.
‘But when my husband deploys, everything changes. And getting recordings of stories from Dad halfway around the world is technically tricky.’
‘Every night at our house, bedtime means storytime with Dad. A time when our daughters get to share an experience that’s just between them’, said Mrs Oliver
The family took to message boards to find a solution and eventually met with engineers from Google and military veteran-owned design agency ‘Instrument’ which led to the creation of MyStorytime
The Oliver family aren’t alone in struggling to make bedtime stories available when one parent is in the military or even on a late commute.
According to United Through Reading 40million bedtime stories go unread each year by 100,000 military parents serving overseas.
The recordings are saved on Google’s cloud servers and are only accessible to authorised Google accounts, according to Instrument.
Children under 13 wanting to access stories from their own account would need to have permission from the adult who manages their Google service.
It’s not just military families that could benefit from the app, says Mrs Oliver.
‘Grandparents who live states away, nurses and police officers who work the night shift, and anyone who travels for work can relate to the struggle of trying to make it home in time to read for bedtime.’
To use the app a parent or grandparent would record their stories into a phone, laptop or device and decide who to share the recordings with.
As soon as they are added people they have been shared with can listen and even contribute to the story from their own devices.
Children under 13 wanting to access stories from their own account would need to have permission from the adult who manages their Google service.
The recordings are saved on Google’s cloud servers and are only accessible to authorised Google accounts, according to Instrument
HOW IS GOOGLE ASSISTANT GETTING SMARTER?
At the search giant’s annual I/O developer conference, CEO Sundar Pichai unveiled a new technology called ‘Duplex’ that enables its Google Assistant to make phone calls in real-time with actual humans.
It can book a hair appointment and reserve a table for you at your favorite restaurant, among other things.
That’s on top of a slew of other tools that Google says can make it easier than ever for you to interact with your smart devices.
Duplex, which Pichai says the firm has been working on ‘for many years’, will be rolling out to a limited number of users for now.
Pichai showed off the new technology at the I/O conference, which kicked off on Tuesday in Mountain View, California and runs through Thursday.
In a demo, Google Assistant dials up a local hair salon to schedule an appointment.
First, a user asks Google Assistant to make them a hair appointment, which prompts Assistant to make the phone call.
It sounds like any other women talking, but one half of the conversation is being held by Google’s AI-infused digital assistant.
Google Assistant is able to work out a time and date for the appointment, even when the salon employee says there are no appointments available at the time the Assistant originally suggested.
Assistant then sends a notification to the user to let them know that an appointment has been scheduled.
