reading

It's a good time to be a Dr. Seuss fan--and an iPhone or iPod Touch owner. Hot on the heels of last year's criminally overlooked "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and thoroughly entertaining Dr. Seuss Camera, Grinch Edition, Oceanhouse Media just dropped three new Seuss apps, starting with a spectacular e-book edition of "The Cat in the Hat."

Like "Grinch" before it, this book is animated, narrated, and interactive. Children can choose either "Read to Me" or "Read It Myself" mode, both of which produce the original book's artwork and text--but with a little panning and zooming to lend an animated feel.

"The Cat in the Hat" is not only a great diversion for bored children (and their harried parents), but also a learning tool. In "Read to Me" mode, each word gets highlighted as it's read. When the narration finishes, readers can tap different areas of the accompanying picture to hear the corresponding word spoken and see it "zoom up."… Read more

Thanks to the success of Amazon's Kindle and the frenetic anticipation surrounding Apple's forthcoming iPad tablet, electronic book readers are front and center in the gadget world. Fans laud the convenience and portability factors--and as a result, one of the demographics that they say has benefited the most from devices like the Kindle is the urban commuter.

But a new project from non-profit biannual magazine Slice, based in Brooklyn, tries to show us that something is lost on a Kindle commute. Meet CoverSpy, a Twitter feed run by Slice, which peeks at the books that people are reading … Read more

One of the most noted downsides of the Kindle and other E-ink based e-readers is that they don't have a backlight for reading in darkened environments. Sure, you can just turn on a light, but things get problematic when you want to read in bed while a significant--or not so significant--other sleeps.

We got our hands on an earlier sample of Octovo's new $29.99 Kindle light, which is sleeker than most book lights we've encountered and also offers nice uniform illumination for your Kindle. Compared to M-Edge's popular e-Luminator2 ($25), which slips into a variety … Read more

Unless you've been living under a rock this week, you probably already know that the iPad, Apple's new tablet, is on its way in less than 60 days. With some time before the release, it will give app developers the new challenge of optimizing their offerings for the new and bigger touch screen. But even more exciting will be what app developers come up with for the iPad exclusively; with the added processing power, superior graphics, and added screen real estate, I think this is where we will come to fully realize the power of Apple's latest … Read more

Digital-magazine publisher Zinio just released an eponymous app for the iPhone and iPod Touch (iTunes link), meaning you can now read electronic editions of Automobile, PC Magazine, Popular Science, and other pubs on the go.

Very interesting timing, no? It can't be a coincidence that the app arrives mere weeks before the iTablet, iSlate, iPad, or whatever Apple calls the product it's announcing later this month.

After all, many magazine publishers are looking to tablets as their savior, a way to keep their voice and content alive while eliminating the traditional costs of publishing. Look no further than this Sports Illustrated proof-of-concept video that made the rounds last month.

Zinio, for its part, has been around for years, but until now your only decent option for reading its e-content was a PC screen--not a comfortable or convenient experience. Indeed, I let my PC Magazine subscription lapse (the magazine went all-digital last year) simply because I didn't like reading it on my monitor.

But on my iPhone? That's where I do most of my leisure reading these days anyway. (Kindle app, I love you. You too, Regator.)

The Zinio app does exactly what a magazine reader should: reproduces each page of the print edition (which you can zoom and scroll through, much like you would a PDF), but also provides an iPhone-friendly reading mode that reflows the text to fit the confines of the screen.… Read more

Here's an iPhone tip for anyone who can't read the device's screen without the aid of reading glasses or other vision correction: turn on a feature Apple calls Zoom. (The iPhone 3GS and third-generation iPod Touch 32GB and 64GB models all support this feature.)

Once activated, Zoom lets you "zoom" in and out on parts of the screen using a combination of three fingers and a double-tap. Here's how to access the feature:

Activate Zoom on your Apple mobile device

1. Tap Settings app 2. Tap General 3. Tap Accessibility 4. Tap Zoom 5. … Read more

Great news for fans of short fiction: The Colossal Short Stories Collection just landed in the App Store packing a whopping 2,222 public-domain works.

There are, of course, other story collections available for the iPhone and iPod Touch, but this is by far the largest one.

You'll find authors ranging from H.G. Wells and Mark Twain to Leo Tolstoy and Ring Lardner. All the greats are here, along with plenty of authors known mostly in scholarly circles.

The app lists them alphabetically by last name. Unfortunately, that's the only way to peruse the collection: you can'… Read more

Wheels on the Bus is an interactive storybook for preschoolers based on the much-beloved song of the same name (similar to the app Old MacDonald, also from developer Duck Duck Moose). As with Old MacDonald, kids can navigate through eight scenes from the song with forward and back buttons--everything from the wheels on the bus to the driver, baker, and even bubbles on the bus--and each scene provides at least one opportunity for a touch-screen slide or "poke" interaction, whether you're "swishing" the wipers or opening and shutting the doors.

The song plays the appropriate … Read more

It's funny. We've seen so many awful and completely useless programs from Mystic Board that when we come across one that actually does something, even if it only sort-of works, we're impressed. MB Free Tarot Reader And Dictionary is one such program. By any normal standards, it's awful. By Mystic Board standards, it's above average.

The program's interface, like that of all Mystic Board programs, is cluttered with advertising. On the first screen, users select whether they want a tarot reading or to view the tarot dictionary. The tarot reading option asks for the … Read more