Friends Aloud is a fun, different, and engaging way to interact with more than 500 million Facebook users, but there are real market needs that inspired us to create this app. There are many existing and potential Facebook users who simply cannot see well enough to follow their friends using their eyes alone. Friends Aloud is a godsend for them.

My 87-year old mother is a case in point. Back in the '90s, I bought her a $99 iOpener monochrome internet device that she used for over a decade to send and receive emails. When it bit the dust a few years ago, we tried to replace it with a laptop, but her shaky fingers and failing eyesight due to cataracts made using the conventional keyboard and trackpad difficult. We then tried a desktop with large monitor, one of those big multi-colored childrens' keyboards, and trackball, but even there she just got tired after a few minutes of fighting all those "new fangled" interfaces and gave up. She begged her sons and daughter, her grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to "just call me on the telephone," and we all tried, but life moves pretty fast these days and, sadly and guiltily, we never call often enough. Then she got Friends Aloud, and now she can listen to all of our Facebook updates whenever she likes and not depend on us remembering to call.

Cataracts affect more than 20.5 million Americans, and WHO estimates that there are more than 161 million visually-impaired people in the world.  The Facebook experience is about emotional connection with your loved ones, and you want to be part of your loved ones’ lives.  Many of these folks may have friends online and would love to share what’s happening in their lives.  Our priceless gift to these 180 million people: Friends Aloud.

Bob Wesson, CEO

It was a big day here at VoiZapp. We finally chased down the last of the bugs (that we know about) and submitted Friends Aloud (both Pro and Lite versions) to Apple's App Store for review. We now anxiously await their reviewers' approval. Even though we have been in the software development business for decades, this is our first app submission and the excitement around here is palpable. Rest assured, though, it won't be our last -- we have another half dozen apps in our development pipeline, all of which should become available for sale in the App Store within the next 60-90 days.

Please be on the look-out for Friends Aloud in the App Store. It will, of course, be announced here, posted on our Friends Aloud Facebook page, and tweeted. And if you'd like a your own personal notification, just send an email to bobwesson@gmail.com.

Thanks everyone for your continuing interest in VoiZapp!

Our very first iOS app -- Friends Aloud -- is emerging this week from the formal beta testing process and headed to the App Store for approval by Apple. Thanks to all of our beta testers, we have our fingers crossed that it will sail through their approval process and show up for sale within the next week or two. Not a single beta-tester has reported a crash, and it seems to work just fine on all devices runnin iOS 3.1.3 and up.

For the beta testing process, we discovered and productively used a free web service called Test Flight App that enabled us to broadcast updates as needed over the air to all of our beta testers. We highly recommend this service to any and all iOS developers, and will be using it for all of our pre-sale distributions of our subsequent app products.

Speaking of which, please check back for announcements of those upcoming products now in our development pipeline: 

• Messages Aloud -- reads your Facebook messages aloud in a natural, intuitive way)
  
• Tweets Aloud -- reads your Twitter feed aloud
• Emails Aloud -- reads your Emails aloud. It interfaces with all of the usual cloud-based as well as server-based email services.

If you would like to be considered as a beta test candidate for any/all of these new products, please email us at bobwesson@gmail.com. Thanks in advance for your interest in VoiZapp's line of reading-aloud iOS apps.