Neal Hoskins of Winged Chariot recently spoke at The Bookseller's Children's conference.  He talks us through his new app and how the use of a device's features can enhance the story: In the fast pace of the digital world, I often feel we are starting to overlook the central most important part of our work - The Story.

Apps, ebooks, code and web features are only as good as the stories that they hold inside them.

One of the ways digital publishing may progress is to see how stories can be linked with features of hardware devices themselves and thereby let new formats of storytelling emerge.

Here at Wingedchariot we have come across two that we are going to work on next year and in this post I want to show you one of them - layers of artwork and how they can interact with electronic devices.

When we came across this idea we laughed at its simplicity and how it was driven by publisher and artist input not by writing 500 lines of new code. What if you had a story that unlocked over time or on special days so a reader could see new layers of pictures ?

And so was born our new story app Scruffy Kitty - Our new digital cat character in a classical bedtime settings could now have a whole new layer of fun and treats just for the season of halloween.

The device - the iPad/Pod in this case - has a built in clock and calendar so can unlock content on specific times. This could see stories that changes over the time of day, time of the year,perhaps have specific day eg the story knows it's your birthday

We think the possibilities are endless - have a look here and decide for yourself - we are only just scratching the surface...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQxfHvxjMfE&hd=1