By Sam Cage DUBLIN (Reuters) – Snow was general all over Ireland, the noted Irish stage actor Barry McGovern intones while reading the famous line from James Joyces The Dead in a free app for iPads that seeks to bring the heart-rending story to life for the high-tech age. In some quarters technology is seen as the death-knell of literature, but the Joyce app developed by University College Dublin (UCD) is a runaway hit. It was downloaded 5,000 times in 48 hours – five times the sales of Irelands best-selling work of fiction that week, Donal Ryans The Spinning Heart. Hes our boy, he went to UCD, so weve always had this special relationship with the Joyce tradition, said Gerardine Meaney, leader of the project and director of the humanities institute at UCD.