Ah, mid-November. The time of year when everyone starts buzzing about gift exchanges, menorahs, fat guys in red suits and all manner of “tidings.” Yessir, nothing like getting the holiday into full-swing before December. Suffice it to say, I’m personally not very thrilled with the practice of jumping the gun. But just because I’m morally opposed to shoving holiday cheer down the throats of the masses well over five weeks too early doesn’t mean I’m against general preparations. And what better way to prepare for the inevitable and lengthy trip to a distant relative’s house for a seasonal meal then to have an assortment of topical audiobooks on-hand?

Tales2Go is a fairly popular subscription-based (1,600+ books and counting) kids audiobook app in its own right, but Tales2Go – Happy Holidays is something a little different. This is a stand-alone app, with no subscription fee needed to access the 20 different stories contained within. These include The Night Before Christmas, A Christmas Carol, The Gift of the Magi (read by Jim Weiss), The Story of Hanukkah (read by Joel Ben Izzy) and many, many more.

Tales2Go – Happy Hoidays is already available, and all of these audiobooks can be had for a total of $0.99. That’s one dollar for 20 audiobooks. It might seem a tad too soon for this kind of stuff, but it couldn’t hurt to be ready once it’s time to jump in the car and drive 14 hours to grandma’s house.

$14.99

Tales2Go - Happy Holidays

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2011-11-17 :: Category: Education

Here’s the thing about audiobooks: they’re great, especially since you can’t always be holding or looking at a book, or eBook. But they take up a lot of space, and are often irritatingly expensive. Enter vBookz: a text-to-speech app for the iPad that takes the Project Gutenburg library of over 30,000 freely available titles (mostly classics) and makes them all available for your listening pleasure.

Text-to-speech is an imperfect process, too, but you can’t beat it for sheer convenience. Because vBookz reads the books aloud using text-to-speech, it doesn’t need to store massive audio files or convert the eBooks. Instead, it simply stores the eBooks and reads them aloud, providing a handy magnifying-glass cursor that tracks the current locations—leaving you free to just listen, or to read along. Mindex International, developer of vBookz, suggests that it’s especially useful for those learning a different language or for children learning to read.

The vBookz app currently costs $4.99 for the US English version, with other languages unlockable for an additional fee of $4.99 per language. The current library includes the classic suspects: Dracula, Huckleberry Finn, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and so on. Given vBookz’s text-to-speech capabilities, I am disappointed by the inability to import your own files, but Project Gutenburg’s archives are extensive enough. If you want to dive into some classic literature but want or need audio versions, vBookz is an interesting option. I mean, honestly—Steve Jobs’ “magical” tablet reading to us. Whatever will we have next?

The folks over at Mindex International say they’re working on iPhone and iPod Touch versions of vBookz, too, but for now vBookz is only for the iPad owners.

$4.99

vBookz Free Audiobooks 30,000 Classics aloud

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2010-05-11 :: Category: Books