Friday, March 8, 2013

Apple iPad Mini vs. Google Nexus 7

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Welcome to another Good e-Reader Video Comparison! Today we take a look at two of the most popular tablets in the world, the Apple iPad Mini and Google Nexus 7. Currently, these two devices really shine with iOS and Android Jellybean, and you can think of them as the flagships of their respective brands.

Over the course of this video tutorial we put a heavy emphasis on the e-reading experience. We look at magazines, comic books, and ebooks to give you a sense on how they perform against each other in real world circumstances. In many cases, you are buying a tablet to get games, apps, video, and music. We take a look at their respective ecosystems with Google Play and iTunes. If you are torn between buying either of these two devices as an e-reader, look no further!


Apple iPad Mini vs. Google Nexus 7 is a post from: E-Reader News

Supercharge Your Gaming Experience This Weekend

Supercharge Your Gaming Experience This WeekendWith such versatile technology, your gaming systems can do more than play games and your other devices can double as fantastic gaming platforms. Take a few hours this weekend and supercharge your gaming experience.

Fine-Tune Your Gaming Hardware

Supercharge Your Gaming Experience This WeekendYour gaming rig may be relatively powerful, but that only goes so far if it isn't tuned for optimal performance. If you're new to tweaking your graphic settings, our guide can tech you the basics. If you want to take it a bit further, overclock your graphics card. The performance gains are often minimal, and it might not be worthwhile, but if you need to eke out a little extra performance you'll want to explore this option and see. Before you go crazy with tweaks, just make sure you separate the myths from the facts. Of course, sometimes it's just time to get a new graphics card. If you're not sure, we can help you figure it out.

Repurpose an Old Console or Get the Most Out of a New One

Supercharge Your Gaming Experience This WeekendYou can do a lot with old consoles, or even newer ones. Streaming media centers make for one of the most popular hacks, and our guide will show you how to handle the task on virtually any console. That's far from the only gaming hack, however. People love turning old NES systems and cartridges into newer hardware like DVD players, wireless routers, arcade game players, USB controllers, and more. We've posted a lot of fun and practical game DIY projects, so check out the full list for plenty of other ideas.

Upgrade Your Mobile's Gaming Experience

Supercharge Your Gaming Experience This WeekendWhile you've likely played a few games on your phone or tablet, it can do a lot more than you might find in the app store. For starters, turning it into a retro gaming console is one of the most fun and exciting options, especially when you integrate classic controllers (such as the iCade 8-bitty). (By the way, you can do this with your computer, too.) Some mobile gaming systems can be hacked to do even more, too. Hacking the Nintendo DS for homebrew adds a lot of features, and you can supercharge it to do even more. If you're not satisfied with what's out there, you can always roll your own mobile gaming system as well. You have so many great options when it comes to mobile gaming.

Have a great weekend and enjoy your games!

Remains of the Day: CCleaner, Our Favorite Windows Maintenance Tool, Is Coming to Android

Remains of the Day: CCleaner, Our Favorite Windows Maintenance Tool, Is Coming to AndroidCCleaner is coming to Android, Facebook moves beyond "Like," and Google will offer support to business via Hangouts.

  • CCleaner Android CCleaner, our favorite Windows maintenance tool, is now in development for Android. No word on when it will be released, but the developers have begun internal testing and are "very happy." [Piriform]
  • Improving Facebook for Books, Movies, TV and Fitness Facebook is beginning to introduce new options for lifestyle apps to use in conjunction with Facebook. Designed to provide something more specific than "Like" for Open Graph, the new actions include descriptors such as run, walk, read, rate and want to read/watch. [Facebook Developers]
  • Google Support Will Use Hangouts The new text used in the description of Google+ Hangouts' screensharing feature suggests that Google will start using the service to provide support to businesses that make use of Google+, AdWords, and Google Apps. [Google Operating System]

Photo by photastic (Shutterstock), a2bb5s (Shutterstock), and Feng Yu (Shutterstock).

Turn a Cardboard Box into a Photo Light Box

Turn a Cardboard Box into a Photo Light BoxLight boxes are the key to making magazine-like photos of objects. If you want to take beautiful photos that put your object front and center, all you need is a cardboard box and some craft supplies.

Craft blog Flax & Twine details the steps to make your own light box from these inexpensive materials. It's even easier to make than using 'K'nex sticks, a baby changing table, or other objects. A trip to the office supply or crafts store for a box, some tissue paper, and white poster board can set you up for making your own gorgeous, professional-quality photos of any object.

DIY Photo Light Box - A Finish Fifty Project | Flax & Twine

Lost Photos Finds Old Pictures You've Misplaced, Is Free This Weekend

Lost Photos Finds Old Pictures You've Misplaced, Is Free This WeekendWindows/Mac: You've probably received a ton of photos over email in the past few years, but never really added them to your photo library. Lost Photos is an app that scrubs your email for all those missing pictures, and it's free this weekend only.

We've talked about Lost Photos before, and it's a pretty handy little app. Lost Photos is always free on Windows, but Mac users usually have to pay $2.99. This weekend, it's on sale thanks to AppyFridays, so head over to the Mac App Store and check it out while you can.

Lost Photos (Free)

Lost Photos (Free) | Mac App Store via AppyFridays

Judging eBooks By Their Covers

We've all heard the adage "Don't judge a book by its cover." But when it comes to library eBooks, the visual appeal of cover images is more important than ever. OverDrive's Next Generation library websites prominently displays book jackets to provide users with a more visually engaging browsing experience. Eye-catching cover images can prompt users to sample and borrow titles that they would've otherwise missed.

 

Recently, a number of publications have compiled "Best-of" lists for book jackets. Do you agree with these picks?

 

The New York Times' "Favorite Book Cover Designs of 2012"

 

The Los Angeles Times' "18 Fantastic 2012 Book Covers"

 

The Atlantic Wire's "Most Wonderful Book Covers of the Year"

 

To order these and other eBooks and audiobooks with attention-grabbing covers, visit Content Reserve. (Title availability may vary by geographic region.)

 

Melissa Marin is a Marketing Specialist at OverDrive.

 

March 8, 1918: Killer Influenza

With World War I reaching its climax, the first case of Spanish influenza is reported. It quickly spreads, and the resulting worldwide epidemic — the worst in history — ends up killing more people than the war.

B&N Now Giving Away Paid Nook Apps for Free Every Friday

Barnes and Noble is launching a new promotion to help reinvigorate the Nook brand by taking a page from Amazon’s book and giving away a paid Nook app for free every Friday. While B&N isn’t giving away a free app every day like Amazon, hopefully the quality of the apps will be better. They are [...]

Hyundai T7 Budget Android ICS Tablet Launched

hyundai-t7

There is a new tablet in town, and it's not every day that we get to see a top notch car maker launch a tablet. This that makes the Hyundai T7 special. The specs are impressive as well, with a quad core Samsung Exynos 4412 processor, Mali 400 graphics, 1 GB RAM, and 8 GB of internal storage. Upfront lies a 7 inch display with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels.

The tablet also boasts of a few other niceties, such as an HDMI out port, a micro USB port, and a microSD card slot. The tablet runs Android 4.0 ICS instead of the latest Jelly Bean, which could have added to its appeal even more. The T7 has also been endowed with a pair of cameras, front 0.3 and rear 2 megapixels, while Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth round off the connectivity options the tablet has to offer.

However, while all the above makes the T7 pretty likeable on paper and the tablet impresses with its performance, the device lacks in quality. Also, as liliputing points out, there is still some work to be done with the tablet's software to ensure it provides a seamless working experience, something that the device seems to be lacking. While the T7 out performs the Nexus 7, as well as the recently launched Asus MeMo Pad ME301T (both of which feature a Tegra 3 quad core chip), the T7's rather disappointing experience on the software front as well as its build quality leave something to be desired. Hyundai has worked its way to the top in the world of automobiles and is already respected for its commitment towards quality and ease of use. That is, however, lacking with the T7.

The only consolation is that the T7 is priced around $166, while some retailers are ready to shave off a bit more to entice buyers. It remains to be seen if this can win it some big time buyers.

Hyundai T7 Budget Android ICS Tablet Launched is a post from: E-Reader News