Wyvern Digital, a relatively new name in the world of enhanced ebooks (Apps) for the iPad have come up with a rather enchanting enhanced ebook for us to enjoy entitled Penelope.   Published under the aegis of their publishing arm, Addison’s Tales this is a action packed tale of a long journey, featuring Gnomes and other creatures.  I shan’t discuss the actual story, as I don’t want to spoil it for you, but will just say that it is great fun.

However, here is how Wyvern themselves describe this story, gives a fair idea I think without giving too much away:

What would you do if you were a gnome and the fallen stars that normally light your Underworld were all dying? You wouldn’t send for a curious cat, a terrified and portly squirrel, or a sketchy gnome that you’d already banished from your homeland … would you?

No, probably not. Unfortunately for the gnomes of Epsilon Falls, that’s exactly who comes down from the Overlands claiming to hold the key to save all the Underworld from darkness. Can the unlikely heroes be trusted? Or should they be thrown to the subterranean river that’s forever swarming with pirates and monsters?

Read full story »

Oceanhouse Media, who have long produced kids ebook Apps for  Android devices have just launched their first Dr. Seuss Apps for Win 8.

With the launch of the first four in their very extensive series of reading Apps for kids, they have finally covered the range.. well, almost.  You can’t use your dedicated ereader (Sony, Nook or whatever) for reading these Dr.Seuss Apps, but perhaps one day?

They have chosen to release The Cat in the Hat, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, The Lorax and One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish as the first in this series – All well loved standards in the world of Dr.Seuss.

In passing I would comment how extraordinary it is that kids still love Dr. Seuss’s stories, they are ancient after all, and in no way reflect “modern”modes of life…  But however it may be, kids definitely do love those insane characters he invented, and actually learn as they read them.. so a win-win situation really. Read full story »

I have noticed a sort of change in the terms used for ebooks lately.   As recently as a year ago, in all the various publicity that I get regularly from publishers of ebooks, they always used the term ebook to describe their literary efforts, but this is no longer always the case.

Literary apartheid?

A sort of separation between straightforward ebooks (novels and similar) and what we used to call “enhanced” ebooks seems to be happening, which can be confusing.  Now, when a publisher or writer sends me details of their latest highly enhanced ebook, they refer to it as an App, especially those who are aiming their work at iPad owners.

In one sense I suppose they are correct in using the term App instead of enhanced ebook, well perhaps two senses, as App is much shorter than enhanced ebook, and in this age of sound bites, abbreviations, Twitting and so on, brevity is a highly valued survival attribute – sadly in my view.

Read full story »

The Paragon Software Group have just sent me a Press release about their new range of ebook dictionaries intended for the entire Kindle range of ereaders.

These dictionaries come in just about any language you can imagine (see list below) and will integrate seamlessly with your Kindle ereader, and make looking up the meaning of any word or words you stumble over as you read a real cinch.

The basic versions offer the following:-

Easy: Foreign literature readers can enjoy the most comfortable in-app translation from any electronic book by simply pointing the cursor over the word in question.

Read full story »

LingvoSoft – an Ectaco company – have produced a whole series of translating apps for your iPhone or iPod Touch which will help you communicate with people anywhere in the world.

These apps, which you can purchase from the Apple iTunes App Store in the Education category for a mere $19.99 (I hate that sort of pricing trick…. Do they really think we are so stupid as to think that $19.99 is $19 when it is obviously $20 in reality).

Ectaco who make an enormous range of translating tools, as well as one of the better ereaders – the Ectaco Jet – have created a sort of very user friendly dictionary with Text to Speech capability here in just about any language you can think of.

These apps come with about 1 million entries, or as they put it in their press release:

This instant bilingual bidirectional translation software solution features advanced functionality and up to 1,000,000 entries. LingvoSoft Talking Dictionary for iPhone and iPod Touch is an instant bilingual bidirectional translation solution. It incorporates the most complete databases and dependable accuracy.

Read full story »

The New Zealand company Kiwa Media have come up with a whole range of what appear to be excellent ebook Apps for kids who are lucky enough to have access to an iPad – Which appears to be a surprisingly large group of kids I gather.   Not sure I would leave such an expensive gadget in the hands of a 4 to 6 year old, but others have different ideas obviously.

Anyhow, that aside, what we have here are a series of rather splendid highly interactive ebook Apps aimed at the age group 4 to 6, with all the interactive aspects one would expect now in such applications.  And I have to say that from those I have looked at, they have done a very good job with these ebooks, they are funny, well illustrated, the narrator’s voices are good and they work well too.

What is an ebook app?

Read full story »