What is Hey Peanut? Hey Peanut is a photo app for toddlers available on iPhone and iPad. Parents add pictures to Hey Peanut and optionally record a message on each picture. Then your 1 to 3 year old can flip through the pictures, touching each one to hear the recorded message. Hey Peanut also includes colorful themes with fun sound effects to entertain your child.

Keep an eye on the @HeyPeanutApp and @WhitePeak Twitter feeds for free promo codes.

Previous releases of Hey Peanut used family-made sounds. What do I mean by “family-made” sounds? Well, the animal sounds were recordings of my wife and me attempting to mimic each of the farm animals. The sounds were silly but lacked a certain level of professionalism. Hey Peanut 1.3 will use all new sounds, and this time the animal sounds are the actual sounds from real animals, with one exception. A giraffe doesn’t really make a sound, so in Hey Peanut the giraffe sounds like a giggling kid. Of course, that kid giggling is my son, Rowan, so there is still a family touch in this new release.

Hey Peanut 1.3 should be available for download from the App Store very soon. Meanwhile, keep an eye on the White Peak Software Twitter account, @whitepeak, for promo codes to redeem a free copy of Hey Peanut (U.S. App Store only).

Haven’t bought Hey Peanut for your toddler? No worries. The price will remain $1.99 and will include both the iPhone and iPad versions. It’s like getting 2 apps for the price of 1.

Add photos of family and friends then have them record a voice message for your child. When you child touches the photo the voice recording will play. This is a great way for your child to see and hear love ones who might live or be out of town.

My son Rowan, at the age of 20 months, helped me design Hey Peanut. He played with Hey Peanut at every stage. He hated it in the beginning, always saying “No, no!” But once all the pieces were in place, the music, farm scenes, and sound effects, he loved it. He now plays with Hey Peanut often and especially enjoys seeing and hearing his mom when she is out of town working.

If you have love ones who live out of town, or a parent that travels often, then you toddler is going to love Hey Peanut.

A while back my wife took pictures of family members and put them into a small photo album. Our son doesn’t see his extended family as much as we would like so from time to time we sit with him and browse the family photo album. This gives him a chance to learn the faces of his grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. One day I was watching my wife and son browse the photo album and I thought, “There should be an app for that.” Thus the idea for Hey Peanut was born.

Hey Peanut is based on the family photo album but, as I said before, with a twist. The twist is the recorded voice message. Using an iPhone and Hey Peanut a parent takes a picture of a family member then records a voice message from the family member. For instance, I can use Hey Peanut to take a picture of my mother and record a personal message from her like, “Hi Rowan! It’s GranMom. I love you.” My son can then browse the pictures and listen to the messages at any time.

Hey Peanut is a bit more than just a photo browser. It includes colorful “photo mats” with various sounds effects to keep the toddle engaged. Originally I was thinking of making Hey Peanut more game-like but decided it was not necessary.

Development on Hey Peanut is nearing completion. A lot of time has been spent on making a photo browser slash library manager for the parents. This mimics the photo app to some degree. I had hope to use Three20′s photo viewer for this but I ran into problems so I had to write my own. Over the last few weeks I have taken my code and created a new open source photo browser project called KTPhotoBrowser. The latest code is available on GitHub. The open source project is still work in progress but it is useable. I plan to complete KTPhotoBrowser once Hey Peanut is released.

Meanwhile, if you are a parent with a little one between the ages of 1 and 3 and you think he or she would like to play with Hey Peanut then send me a message and join the beta testing team.