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Amazon India is trying to draw attention to the Kindle Paperwhite by having authors Ashwin Sanghi and Amish Tripathi hyping the product. Each of the short films captures the respective author sharing his experiences of using the Amazon Kindle and describing the various features which he finds useful for his daily reading. Amazon is really trying to hype their digital bookstore and Kindle e-readers with the new social campaign #crazyforreading.
Amazon India Releases New Kindle Videos is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Friday, February 6, 2015
Amazon India Releases New Kindle Videos
Kobo H2O e-Reader Now Available in Australia and New Zealand
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The Kobo H2O e-reader is now available to purchase in Australia and New Zealand. Angus & Robertson, Bookworld, JB Hi-Fi, and Myer all have it in stock. The Kobo Aura H2O features a 6.8 inch e-ink Carta touchscreen display with a resolution of 1430×1080. Carta Imaging Film offers a 50% improvement in contrast ratio over previous generation of e-Paper displays. This allows for faster page turns and the ability to turn pages in a digital book, without the need of constant screen refreshes. One of the main benefits of the H2O e-Reader is the ability to enjoy eBooks, graphic novels or newspapers in lowlight conditions or complete darkness. Unlike a smartphone or tablet that has an LCD screen that emits light from behind a layer of film, the H2O has five LED lights on the bottom of the bezel. It shines upwards, insuring even light distribution and makes it easier to devour books without eye strain. Kobo has managed to attain the prestigious IP67 certification for their first waterproof device. It will basically allow users to have the e-Reader completely submerged in five meters of water for an thirty minutes, with the MicroUSB and MiscroSD ports closed. This makes the H2O the most complete, well-rounded device the market and eliminates the need to send off your reader to a third party and pay over $60 for them to waterproof it for you. During underwater tests I found that even completely submerged in water, you can still turn pages and access the core functionality. The Kobo H2O is likely the most complete e-reader the Canadian based company has ever released. It is available all over Australia and New Zealand for $229.
Kobo H2O e-Reader Now Available in Australia and New Zealand is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Business Traveler Gives Homeless Man a Kindle
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An unidentified man, who travels to Las Vegas often for business, gave a homeless man a Kindle e-reader so that he could read more books. On his most recent visit, the samaritan spoke with the homeless man, named Paul, about his book. Through this conversation, the man found out that Paul loved to read, but he only read the same book repeatedly. “I just asked him if he liked to read,” the man tells The Huffington Post. “He said he loved to but that he had been reading that one book over and over for a while now.” In order to share the love of reading the man dove into his bag and pulled out his trusty Kindle e-reader and gave it to Paul. The anonymous donor mentioned on Reddit that the Kindle has more than 200 books by William Falkner, Ernest Hemmingway, Cormac McCarthy and George R.R. Martin. What is the rational for giving a homeless man an e-reader full of books? In a Reddit post, the man using the username 'mjuad' said he had also been down on his luck in the past, “I make really good money and I have been at the bottom. I try to help out the homeless whenever I can with non-monetary means. Business Traveler Gives Homeless Man a Kindle is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Line Manga Hits 10 Million Downloads
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Line is a popular messaging app in Japan where users can enjoy games, fortune telling and even enjoy discount coupons! Since 2012, Line has accumulated over 120 million users! In 2013 Line Corporation added a brand new service to it’s list: Line Manga. Yes, the company entered the mobile e-book business for IOS and Android devices, being backed up by some of the biggest publishers such as Shueish, Shogakukan and Kodansha, to name a few. With already 30,000 manga readily available, Line users can buy manga using virtual coins that can be earned in a variety of different ways, the most common being to simply share the manga you are reading to your Time Line which can earn you up to 10 coins per share, once per day. The first ten pages could also be read for free for many of the manga on the app. As of February 6th, 2015, Line has just hit it’s 10 million manga downloads and have garnered sales of 4.9 billion yen or $41,186,852 US. The most popular genres are romantic comedies at 33%, action, 12% and Horror-mystery at 9% of popularity. In addition to commemorate the record breaking 10 million manga downloads, a list of manga such as "Saint Young Men", "Space Brothers" and "Chihayafuru" to name a few, has become free in the app store! Many people in the manga and e-comics industry are going to be surprised that Line has quietly become a juggernaut. The company rarely gets mentioned when the subject of digital distribution comes up, with most of the industries attention focused on Amazon and Kobo. Line Manga Hits 10 Million Downloads is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Great Expectations is Free Kindle eBook, Audiobook Combo for February
| Every month since last June when Amazon added audiobook support and syncing to Kindle apps, aka Whispersync for Voice, they’ve been giving away a free ebook and audiobook combination each month to help promote this exclusive feature. The free title for February is Charles Dickens’s classic Great Expectations. Make sure to check the box under […] |
Charlotte’s Web e-Book Finally Available March 7th
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Charlotte's Web is a seminal book in most peoples lives and so far has been unavailable as an e-book. This is poised to change March 7th 2015 when Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little and The Trumpet of the Swan will be available to purchase at all online bookstores. E.B White died in 1985, well before the e-book revolution swept the globe and disrupted traditional bookstores. His granddaughter Martha White has been overseeing his estate ever since. She told the Associated Press that family members had worried electronic sales would hurt business for their preferred format, paper. “After discussing this with our agent (Amanda Urban), it’s become apparent to us that e-books complement sales of paper books, instead of replacing sales,” White said. “The print books of ‘Stuart Little’ and ‘Charlotte’s Web’ have been selling strongly, and we felt like it was time to allow the books into the market in other formats.” Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo have been going crazy on social media the last few days promoting Charlotte's Web and the sequel to the Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill a Mockingbird that will be released as an e-book July 2015. Charlotte's Web e-Book Finally Available March 7th is a post from: Good e-Reader |
To Kill a Mockingbird Read-Alikes
| Here at OverDrive, we're fangirling hard over the announcement of a sequel to Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. We're guessing that you and your library patrons are, too. Seriously, who isn't?! Sadly, July 14th (the sequel's expected date) is still months away. To help tide you over until then, our staff librarians have curated a list of To Kill a Mockingbird read-alikes. Check out the highlights below and then view the entire list in Marketplace. A Time to Kill by John Grisham | Random House Jake Brigance, a young lawyer, struggles to save his client's life and his own when he defends a black man who killed the white men that brutally attacked his daughter. Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt When a fisherman in the Puget Sound area of Washington is found dead in his own nets, a Japanese WWII vet is accused of murder. Wolf Whistle by Lewis Nordan | Algonquin Books An ALA notable book based on the Emmett Till murder, one of the most notorious racial killings of our time.
Click here to view the full Marketplace list.
*Title availability may vary based on platform or region. Michelle Ross is a Collection Development Analyst at OverDrive. |
What Can Super Bowl Ads Tell Digital Magazine Publishers?
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But an article by Erik J Martin for EContentMag.com explains why this may not translate into the return that advertisers and businesses hope for, as well as offers a mathematical look at how digital advertising in magazines, newspapers, even websites can offer higher returns. First, the bad news: “Results of a recent consumer poll by Genesis Media reveal that 90% of respondents aren’t likely to buy something they saw in a Super Bowl ad, and 75% indicate they don’t recall many Super Bowl spots from last year. Some of this can be attributed to the fact that, currently, about 1 in 3 consumers are probably browsing the web via their tablet/smartphone during the big game, the survey shows. Thirty-five percent of those polled say they prefer online ads to TV commercials, and 32% are more likely to watch an online commercial if it’s relevant to them.” Those ads may be hilarious or heart-warming or even downright confusing, but data is showing that consumers aren’t responding to them, at least not in the immediate purchasing actions. There’s more brand recognition, especially as consumers take to social media outlets like Twitter to discuss, them, but that’s not really the goal. In an interesting note, this year’s highly-ridiculed Nationwide insurance Super Bowl ad became a meme on social media before the game had even ended. Which brings up another of Martin’s points: the high volume of internet use during the live game, indicating that consumers are surfing the web on their mobile devices rather than paying attention to the advertisements. That can be frustrating considering the $4.5 million price tag of a 30-second slot, over and above the typical $1.5 million companies spend to produce a single commercial for the Super Bowl. The article highlights the dollar-by-dollar math involved in opting for digital ad space over a one-time push like the Super Bowl, indicating that there are far better opportunities in things like digital magazines, which have a farther reach over time and can be tailored to a specific audience rather than just to the general population.
What Can Super Bowl Ads Tell Digital Magazine Publishers? is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Clippett News App Takes on Murdoch’s Empire
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So why should Murdoch be worried about a little digital news app? Because his grandson is the CEO. James MacLeod, whose mother Prudence is Murdoch’s daughter, co-founded the company with his business partner Grace Regan specifically because he had little attraction to the typical print news model. The elder Murdoch has been criticized for a number of practices within his corporation, specifically his belief in the purpose of subscription-only and paywall features surrounding the content of his major papers. While Murdoch supports for-pay access to information, MacLeod’s news app works much the same way that other platforms like Newsbeat do, with small bursts of audio advertising spaced periodically between news segments. One of the other key areas where Murdoch has been criticized but MacLeod seems to have surpassed him is in the ability to reach the newest generation of news consumers. While other Murdoch holdings haven’t yet garnered the ever-savvy millennial market (remember, this is the man who paid $580 million for MySpace, Clippet seems to be taking root and reaching listeners in much the same way that those who prefer visual news have taken to digital magazines and newspapers on their smartphones or tablets, even going so far as to subscribe to unlimited access to content through apps like PressReader. In an article for The Independent, Clippet editor-in-chief Regan commented on how the app stands to overturn what Murdoch’s empire is still struggling to provide: "We've spent a year developing how we produce editorial content. A lot of what we listened to on broadcast hadn't changed for 40 years. There's a set way of presenting news in audio and it's time for it to be updated. It's why our generation isn't connecting with the news."
Clippett News App Takes on Murdoch’s Empire is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Emulation on Raspberry Pi 2
| People have been emulating classic computers and games consoles on Raspberry Pi since we launched back in 2012. For those of us who bough our first hardware in the 1980s, this is a fun way to take a trip down memory lane, but our relatively modest CPU performance restricted us to third- and fourth-generation platforms. Anything with 3d graphics hardware was pretty much out of the question. Since we launched Raspberry Pi 2 at the start of the week, people have started posting videos of emulators for fifth-generation consoles running at full speed. Check these out: I know what I’ll be doing this weekend…
(This image is taken from the excellent MGC 2011 demo by retroactive) |
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