As with Relish!, I originally tried Readeo through the Mamasource deals site, but it's now become a permanent part of my working mom bag of tricks.
Basically, Readeo allows you to read childrens' books on your computer. It provides a library of a bunch of books (I won't hazard an estimate, but suffice to say we've had the subscription for over three months now and are still discovering new books) and you can flip through them, pictures and text and all. Littles owns tons of real books and we check out books from the library, too, but since we discovered Readeo, she almost always bypasses the real books to ask for "books on the computer" for her nightly storytime.
That alone is probably worth the $9.99 monthly subscription fee. But what makes it great for traveling parents is that you have the ability to "BookChat" with someone on another computer. You can flip through the pages of the books together, and even bring in audio and video. (The video appears at the bottom of the screen with the book "pages" on it.)
So last week, while I was on a business trip, I was still able to do storytime with Littles. Littles loved it, I loved it, and it gave my husband a much-deserved break!
It's also great for distant grandparents and other family members. You can invite them to join the site and they can create their own guest accounts for free. Then, when they BookChat with you on your paid account, they will have access to the full Readeo library. (Guests not BookChatting with a paid subscriber have access to the book of the month, as well as a few other free books.)
Downsides? The audio/video quality is not as good as Skype or other dedicated video conferencing tools, but it's definitely serviceable, and the book-reading functionality more than makes up for it. Also, the site makes heavy use of Adobe Flash, so it's not usable from devices that don't support Flash, such as the iPad.
Readeo does offer a 14-day free trial, so sign up for it before your next business trip and give it a shot!
