Friends Aloud reads your Facebook news feed aloud so that you can stay connected with your friends anytime, anywhere. It is part of VoiZapp's Aloud series of reading aloud apps that also includes Messages Aloud, Tweets Aloud, Read It Aloud, and (soon) Emails Aloud.
 

What's new with Friends Aloud 3.1?
Friends Aloud 3.1 adds speech recognition from Nuance to all iOS devices (not only iPhone 4S with Siri), so that you can not only hear your friends' news, but you can talk back to them by dictating posts, comments, and "likes". Just tap the little microphone icon on the right-hand side of its iPod controls, say anything, and let it transcribe and auto-send what you said to your Facebook wall. If you start with "Comment" or "Like", it will automatically comment on, or like, the post that it is reading aloud. You can cancel auto-sending during its 5-second countdown (or turn it off altogether in the Speech Recognition settings screen), and edit its transcription with the built-in keyboard. Or tap the microphone icon in the speech-to-text box to say more. As with regular Nuance-based dictation, you may speak punctuation marks -- for example, to post "I think, therefore I am!" you would say, "I think comma therefore I am exclamation point." With Friends Aloud 3.1, you'll never need to touch a keyboard again on Facebook!

How does the Lite (Free) version work?
Friends Aloud Lite is designed to be a free introduction to VoiZapp's reading aloud technology. After logging into your Facebook account, you may choose to mute any of your friends and/or select the number of comments to be read after each post (latest 5 comments initially, from None up to a maximum of 50 comments). When you tap "Read Aloud Now," the latest 10 posts from your News Feed are retrieved and read aloud to you. Reading aloud is controlled by iPod-like controls at the bottom of the screen. At any time, and as often as you wish, you may tap the refresh button in the upper right-hand corner to retrieve & read the latest 10 posts. You may also tap on any displayed post to jump there, and flick the screen up/down to view other posts, even as others are being read aloud. A banner ad may be displayed just above the iPod controls, and after the latest 10 posts have been read aloud, an alert will pop up asking you to purchase Friends Aloud Pro.

What do I get if I pay for the Pro version?
The Pro version extends the Lite version as follows:

• Friends Aloud 3.0 now gives you speech recognition (like Siri on the new iPhone 4S) so that you can post to your wall, make comments, and like your friends' posts, all using just your voice.
• It also has a built-in keyboard for typing in and editing dictated wall posts and comments.
• It imports and reads aloud an initial 20 posts and their associated comments (typically 10-15 minutes of reading time).
• Additional groups of 20 posts may be queued to be read aloud by tapping the "Older Posts" button at the end of the posts display, so that you can go as far back in time as you wish.
• After all displayed posts have been read, or whenever you tap the refresh button, it will automatically start reading aloud only new incoming posts as they arrive for as long as you wish. To return to reading down all posts displayed in sequence, tap on any specific post.
  
• It will continue reading in the background while you use your iOS device for other tasks.
• It does not display advertisements or pop up an alert box and bell at the end of the latest 10 posts.

What's different about the HD version?
Friends Aloud HD is optimized for the iPad. Instead of having to use the "2x" magnification key and see larger but blurry text, or suffer through the tiny iPhone-sized mid-screen display, Friends Aloud HD covers the entire iPad screen with posts and comments. Otherwise, it duplicates the capabilities of the iPhone-optimized Pro version.

Where can I see how the app works in action?
You can watch a short preview of how speech recognition works in Friends Aloud 3.0 here. You can see all the great features of Friends Aloud Pro in more detail by checking out this video.

How do I switch between reading only new posts and reading all posts displayed in the Pro and HD versions?
To read new posts only, tap the refresh button in the upper righthand corner of the Posts screen. To read all posts, tap on any displayed post to start reading aloud there.

How long will the Pro and HD versions keep reading posts aloud?
If the app is kept in the foreground, it will read posts aloud as they arrive in your news feed for as long as your battery lasts. If sent to the background, it will continue reading all displayed posts aloud, but because of a limitation of Apple's iOS multitasking, it cannot automatically retrieve new posts from there. So if you want to check for and continue reading posts, you must tap its icon to bring it to the foreground and refresh its list of posts to be read from time to time. You can always send it to the background once again and it will continue reading aloud.

Why doesn't it display everything I can see on my wall?
Some wall data, such as who just "friended" who or automatically-generated updates from Facebook apps such as games, are skipped because we assume you don't want to waste time listening to such "noise." Also, posts from Facebookers who have not responded to your friends request might be shown on your wall but are also skipped by this app. All posts actually written by your friends will be displayed and read aloud.

Why did Friends Aloud 3.0 stop recognizing my dictation?
Nuance limits you to 20 "speech events" per day, with each dictation counting as one event. They don't return any error code if you go over this limit; their servers simply stop responding to your device until the counter is automatically reset at midnight. Most Facebook users will not notice this limitation, since we typically listen to many more posts and/or comments than we ever make ourselves.

Please report any problems or make suggestions by emailing support@voizapp.com. Your feedback will make Friends Aloud even better!