As well as being able to choose books featuring a ton of Disney characters, the subscription based service also gives young readers a bunch of extra bells and whistles to play with. You can store a personal library of favorites, and share them with your friends, using the simple selection of pre-written messages to send along with your suggestion.

What I really like about the website and the reading experience, is that even though the core of the site is built around Flash animation, it really doesn’t go down the road of being overly animated and distracting. It could have been so easy to add countless little instances of characters winking, waving, and generally making a hubbub, but instead the focus is totally on the reading experience. That being said, the page turning animation of the book itself is very clever, and a large dictionary of words can be clicked on and listened to.

Of course we’re talking about books on a computer here. It’s hard to envision reading bedtime stories with it, even with a laptop. I’m sure many parents will be concerned about the physical and emotional experience of reading together with their child, but from a young users perspective, the content medium doesn’t matter.

You can already preview a bunch of books for free on the Disney Digital Books website, so take a look. The service just launched today, but I’m already certain it’s going to be something special.

My favorite quote…

“One of my bosses once said that just when you think nothing’s going to change, everything changes. And you reach a point where you’re not sure any opportunity is going to present itself, and the next day you come in and you’re — boom — smacked in the face with some huge new opportunity you didn’t even predict was going to occur.”

Nickelodeon have announced they are releasing a string of iPhone apps based on popular characters like SpongeBob SquarePants, Dora and iCarly. If you’re anything like me, I know what you’re thinking – how many kids own iPhones? Cue wavy dream sequence of an eight year old boy carrying a man bag, with white headphones dangling from the top of his designer T-shirt from Threadless… eek!

Wake up, it’s just a dream – for now. There may not be too many iPhone’s appearing in schoolyards yet, but many parents are certain to use these casual games to occupy their little ones on road trips and such like. Case in point, if you pull up behind any kind of car, van or tank with television screens in the back of it, nine times out of ten, SpongeBob is the cartoon that’s being watched. iPhone games are surely a natural progression of this trend.

Competition is set to be expectedly fierce. Disney Interactive have so far launched a couple of iPhone games, with mixed reviews, however there are some cool third party apps available that allow visitors to Disney parks to find their way around and get the most of their visit. As far as gaming is concerned, the iPhone has a lot of functional similarities with the Nintendo DS, so even though direct ports might not be possible, lessons could definitely be learned in terms of playability and user interaction. I’m looking forward to see what comes next.

I left my two cents in a comment.

There goes my hope of a Pete’s Dragon game being released anytime soon