Monster Costume, the Alki based touch screen software developer who last year had a major hit with children's title "Bartleby's Book of Buttons Vol. 1 : The Faraway Island" is on the verge of releasing the followup. But the new title, Bartleby's Book of Buttons Volume 2: The Button at the Bottom of the Sea has been delayed as the company works to deal with explosive growth and the development and release of their "book engine" a tool that will enable non programmers to create their own interactive titles.

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Kyle Kinkade is the barefooted brain (he seldom wears shoes) that heads the company that the West Seattle Herald reported previously was growing rapidly as they explored the possibilities for bringing new clients their brand of touch screen expertise.

The new edition was delayed because an infusion of new people in the company, and their own restless creativity kept coming up with new ideas for it. "When it comes to making our own titles we're like kids in the candy store," explained Kinkade. "We had a sequel in July, but this now, feels like another true step forward."

But more than that was the addition of a singular talent, Carmela D'Amico, successful West Seattle author of a series of children's books based on her character, Ella the Elegant Elephant and Suki - The very loud bunny. She's working with the Monster Costume programmers to add depth to characters and the storyline.

"We feel very honored that Carmela has had a chance to put her own spin into making the characters more likable. Carmela was able to take a look at Bartleby's, enjoy it, but she also brought really good suggestions on how to add more depth and make it feel truly like a story. Her involvement at this point is essential."

The company is working with D'Amico on a new property that they hope to release this year as well.

The interest in and meteoric sales of tablet computers including the iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab has driven everyone from publishers to government agencies to explore the possibilities for them in their organizations. But the demand for knowledgeable and experienced programmers has far outstripped the supply.

This means their need to hire capable programmers is extremely high." This is probably the hottest we've ever been," said Kinkade," so we're looking to hire. We're going to close to 35 people by the end of the year." That's up from about 18 now.

They need developers that are skilled in Android, mobile development and HTML5. The first is a platform for phones and tablet computers backed by Google, the second is a generalist area around tools, coding and languages used for mobile applications and the third is the latest version of the language that runs most web pages on the internet.

Monster Costume is also working quietly with certain local governmental agencies and other software firms to develop tools, and processes designed to bring them into the tablet age. No names were released but the company indicated that the impact would be wide and revolutionize how a range of current functions would be changed. Details on those relationships will be released later.

In the meantime Bartleby's next adventure is exploring other new territory, specifically taking advantage of a new capability that Apple has created called Airplay. That tool, coming in the next few weeks will enable the new title to use the iPad as a controller while sharing graphics, and animation on a television equipped with Apple TV. You can see a video demo of that technology in action here.

Speaking for Monster Costume, Kobie Hatcher said, "Our design philosophy takes inventory of the innovation of apple, and expands on it only when it makes sense. Call it aggressive conservation." Bartleby Volume 1 has been localized into 11 languages. Bartleby Volume 2 will be localized in the same languages later this year.

Kinkade is excited about what the book engine will mean for creative people who want to use the tablet platform for story telling.

"We have very clear goals of what the book engine should be doing. I'm happy to say we're on track to have something out this summer that uses the book engine, with a "beta" version of the editor by September and a public release by the end of the year (…) You can write a book without code in it, but the things you can do with code are still pretty incredible."

You can visit Monster Costume online at www.monstercost.me