App Review: Pitter-Pad measures little feet on your iPad

If you don't mind feet on your iPad's screen, this week's app is useful: Pitter-Pad lets you use your iPad to measure your little one's shoe size.

When I was a little girl, I liked when the Stride Rite salesman put my foot in the silver foot measurer. Pitter-Pad lets me do this with my 1 year-old son.

He has only one pair of shoes that he'll let me put on him; the rest, he takes off and throws like missiles. And he's about to outgrow that one acceptable pair of shoes, so I wanted to see how close he is to the next size. According to Pitter-Pad, he should fit in a size 5 quite well. I verified this by putting a size 5 shoe on my son, and it fit much better than the 4 he is outgrowing.

This app also helps if you'd like to order shoes from another country: Pitter-Pad lets you measure your child's shoe size in the foot metric systems of the U.S., England, Europe, Canada, Japan, and Korea.

I made the mistake of trying Pitter-Pad on myself before I tried it on my son. Stupid idea! My size-7 feet do not fit on the iPad, and then I had to wipe away my own footprint. Trying it on my son was not exactly easy--but at least his feet fit on the screen.

The app instructs you to make sure your child is seated with feet on the floor. You place the iPad on the floor and then align a foot with a line on the screen. Then, you move a horizontal line down to meet the top of the longest toe. You can also measure foot width, by moving a vertical line to fit.

When your lines are set, you click Finish. The app tells you the size you should be buying, in either Infant or Toddler sizes. It's as easy as that. Pitter-Pad doesn't do much more, thought it will change color schemes depending on whether you'd rather measure your child's feet with a pink or blue background.

I will admit, I didn't have an easy time getting my son to sit still for this fitting. He thinks that the iPad is for fingers, not toes. He kept trying to take his foot off of the screen and reach down with his hands. I succeeded in measuring his feet only by pinning him to the floor with my elbow. Gently, of course.

Pitter-Pad measures little feet all the way up to a kid's size 12, U.S. size. That's size 11 in England, 29 in Europe, 12 in Canada, 17.5 in Japan, and 185 in Korea.

You can get Pitter-Pad free for the Apple iPad. I imagine you can download it for an iPhone or iPod touch too, but you won't likely fit any feet on those screens. At least, not human feet.

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—Natali Morris