I’m sure everybody out there has seen the classic A Charlie Brown Christmas at least once during their lifetime. The cartoon has become a holiday staple over the last several decades after originally debuting on prime-time television nearly 50 years ago.

Now you don’t have to wait for your favorite television network to air the Peanuts Christmas special, you can download it right to your iPad. Sort of.

If you journey over to the App Store you can locate A Charlie Brown Christmas, and download it for $4.99.

The app is more of an animated storybook than the actual film, but it does do a good job of telling the story. The voices of the characters sound just like the original film, but the app is pretty basic. For the price it’s not a great deal unless you’re a hardcore Peanuts fan.

Even though the app has bold graphics and looks great, it doesn’t do much more than simply tell the story. It isn’t very interactive or stimulating, and after going through it once you’ve pretty much seen everything it can do. This is a bit mundane for a five dollar app.

Regardless, if you’re a big fan of Charlie Brown and the Peanuts this might be an interesting app worth checking out during the holidays.

The folks over at CBS Interactive have released a new app that is actually remarkably intriguing. I noticed it first over on Mashable and decided to take a closer look.

The app is free and available in the App Store, and includes a large amount of information and video clips from the true-crime television series. For those of you like myself that enjoy the true-crime style television programs like 48 Hours Mystery this app is going to be remarkably entertaining.

It’s also been released that an in-app purchase will allow the user to download complete episodes of 48 Hours Mystery. For the price of just $4.99 per year the app turns into a way to watch complete episodes of the popular television series, as well as access to the shows official archives dating back to 2005.

The paid version also gives the user previews for upcoming episodes, bonus footage, photo galleries related to the crimes seen on the episodes, and access written transcripts for each episode of the show.

Obviously paying for apps is something that many people refuse to do, but for those 48 Hour Mystery enthusiasts that really dig the show, $4.99 each year seems more than reasonable.

You can download the app through the App Store.

Yesterday we discussed CastleVille taking over Facebook and how its popularity grew after the success of FarmVile. In fact, the success that FarmVille has had on the internet has caused other companies to try and emulate that success through other mediums.

One such medium has been XBOX Live. The popular online gaming community controlled by software giant Microsoft has millions of active users around the world. Through their online community Microsoft is regularly releasing new games that can be bought or downloaded to an individual XBOX hard drive.

After the online success of FarmVille, Microsoft created Farm Frenzy. It is a similar game to FarmVille but is played over the XBOX rather than through a social networking website like Facebook.

Farm Frenzy was relatively successful upon its release so Microsoft is trying again. Tomorrow, Nov. 23, Microsoft will be releasing Farm Frenzy 2 over XBOX Live. Players can download the new game after purchasing it online for $2.99

Many of the goals of the game are similar to the first version and involve keeping your farm fully functional. Watering your crops and feeding your animals are just two of the tasks you’ll have to perform to keep your virtual farm from going dry.

The concept may seem fairly recycled and not as exciting as a first-person shooter, but for three dollars it’s hard not to argue that you’re getting what you pay for. For a simple yet entertaining concept, Farm Frenzy 2 actually makes the grade.

I’m sure many of you are familiar with the Ville series that is playable through Facebook. After FarmVille became one of the most popular games on the internet, Zynga released several other versions as well.

Now there’s CastleVille, and it has certainly taken Facebook by storm. In just under a week, CastleVille has garnered 5 million daily active users — meaning it’s growing faster than any other Zynga game did at this stage.

“CastleVille crossed the 5 million active user threshold Sunday night, just six days after its release. By hitting that milestone, CastleVille‘s growth has outshined other recent introductions from the company, including FrontierVille, which got 2.6 million DAUs (daily active users) in its first six days and CityVille, which received 3.2 million.”*

While CastleVille is rapidly growing in popularity, it still has a long ways to go before catching up to CityVille, which is currently the most popular game on Facebook with over 100 million users.

*Mashable