| For us at OverDrive, we're excited that the weather is finally warming up. It has been a very chilly winter and to get us through the last of those cooler days, we've got this great list of hot new releases for adults in March. NYPD Red 3 by James Patterson is the latest novel in the series about what happens behind the closed doors of New York's high society.
Debbie Macomber's newest book, Last One Home, follows Cassie as she struggles to reconnect with her two sisters after many years apart. Newly divorced and back on her own feet, Cassie sees an opening to reconcile with her family and finds hope at a fresh start in life. Fans of Gillian Flynn and Tana French will love The Daughter by Jane Shemilt. Jenny's life is picture perfect with a career, three wonderful teenagers, and a neurosurgeon husband. But when her daughter, Naomi doesn't make it home one day, Jenny finds her life crumbling around her. As Jenny searches for her daughter, she realizes Naomi might not the girl she thought she raised. For more exciting titles, check out the catalog in its entirety here! (link: http://partners.overdrive.com/files/catalogs/2015/Adult-eHighlights-March.pdf) Stay tuned for eHighlights for Kids & Teens coming soon.
Emma Kanagaki is a Collection Analyst with OverDrive |
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
The March Adult eHighlights Catalog is here!
PressReader Adds 30 New Publications to Its Unlimited Reading Lineup
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One of the world's leading digital subscription platforms, PressReader, announced this week the addition of as many as thirty new titles in its catalog of all-you-can-read publications. These titles include Lonely Planet Traveller, BBC Music, Top Gear, and many more. “Immediate are renowned for producing compelling content that enhances the way people engage with what they love,” said Kevin Curtis, head of mobile apps and partnerships, in a press release. “Our digital revenues are accelerating and our world-class content is driving this forward across new platforms. PressReader will be an important vehicle to help continue this growth.” PressReader has been on the forefront of publishing innovation for the past decade, pioneering the all-you-can-read model and offering over 4,000 magazines and newspapers on its platform, with 540 publications from the UK alone. This addition brings the available number of titles in both magazines and newspapers to well over four thousand, a fact that has gained a lot of interest from hotels who seek to entice guests, libraries who are working within the constraints of ever-shrinking budgets, and other organizations with similar cost-effectiveness and engagement needs. PressReader also operates its own hotspots to reach consumers in a variety of public venues.
PressReader Adds 30 New Publications to Its Unlimited Reading Lineup is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Observing a solar eclipse with high-altitude Pis
| Helen: We’re pleased to welcome back to the blog a regular guest, high-altitude balloonist Dave Akerman. You’ll have gathered that a noteworthy astronomical event is to take place across northern Europe on Friday, and as you’d expect, Dave has plans. We’ll let him tell you all about them. As you have probably heard by now, there will be a total solar eclipse this Friday morning, with the path of totality passing north of the UK and directly over the Faroe Islands.
In the UK we should see about 90% of the sun eclipsed by the moon, with the north of Scotland getting the best view assuming no clouds get in the way. By now you are probably wondering what all this has to do with the Raspberry Pi, and the answer is that I will be flying two Model A+ Pis on a balloon from (no, not the Faroes) Leicester racecourse. Additionally, there will be several more Pi boards decoding the transmissions, and a V2 Pi B+ showing the results on a large monitor. The launch will be at about 8am so that the balloon is nicely high during the peak of the eclipse at about 9:30am.  An earlier launch of a Raspberry Pi with a weather balloon Some of you may have followed some of my previous flights using the online map and live image page. This time though, there’s an extra special option for your viewing pleasure. Live TV. The launch will be recorded by the BBC and some of the footage will be transmitted on an extra BBC Stargazing show on BBC1 that morning (9am to 10am). Also, there will be a couple of very brief live segments where, hopefully, I get to show some pretty live images and say “Raspberry Pi” as often as possible. Assuming we get to recover the flight, then some of the recorded video should end up on the main Stargazing show in the evening (9pm-10pm, BBC2). The plan looked a tad uncertain earlier in the week because weather predictions gave me a choice of landing at Heathrow or Gatwick. I spent a lot of time speaking to the BBC trying to come up with a plan that lets us launch but without getting onto the national news for all the wrong reasons! One rejected plan was to launch from Jodrell Bank (from where the main Stargazing show is broadcast), but for some reason they don’t allow mobile phones or 3G there. Another plan was to underfill the balloon and get it to land near Dieppe in France. As of Wednesday morning, though, predictions are continuing to improve and I’m now confident of getting this flight to land somewhere safe in England, instead of having to trek to France to recover the payload. The reason for launching from Leicester is that the BBC are running a “spectacular live event” from the racecourse, open to the public from 9am to 3pm and then 6pm to 9pm. Entry is free to please do come along if you can. They have a real astronaut and plenty else of interest – see this information page. Also, Leicester is home to the National Space Centre, so there’s plenty to see if you do decide to visit. Helen: If you want to complement the coverage from Dave and the BBC with your own observations, the Royal Astronomical Society and the Society for Popular Astronomy have produced an excellent pdf guide to this Friday’s eclipse, explaining how to view it safely and what you’ll see if cloud cover doesn’t spoil the fun. Remember that cameras, including the Raspberry Pi camera module, are liable to be damaged if you point them directly at the Sun; don’t try direct eclipse photography unless you have the proper filters, but do bear in mind that you can achieve some very pleasing results without any specialist equipment by photographing a pinhole projection of the eclipse. |
Facebook Messenger App Joins Mobile Payments Trend
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Once upon a time, you would hand your friends paper and coins anytime they needed cash. These days, it is more difficult –if your friends are anything like mine, they lack a functioning debit machine attached to their bodies somehow; this means we need to be more modern about the way we send and receive money. Many apps and services have stepped up to make this an easy task, not the least of which is Facebook. In the coming months (at least for those of you in the USA), Facebook Messenger will roll out the ability to transfer funds using your debit card to the people you are chatting with. Oh… it’s also going to be free! Facebook describes how simple it will be to use this new feature:
The transfer is completed instantly (though there may be delays depending on your bank). It may seem like an unusual service for Facebook to provide, but the social media giant is actually no stranger to processing payments (having done so for gamers and advertisers since 2007).
Facebook Messenger App Joins Mobile Payments Trend is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Nintendo is (FINALLY) Creating Mobile Gaming Apps
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So apparently pigs have wings. And I may have to eat my hat. And Nintendo has announced their intention to team up with major Japanese mobile gaming development firm DeNA to create smartphone games starring your favourite Nintendo characters. It’s been a long time coming. There have been flirtations with mobile gaming in the past, but overwhelmingly Nintendo has demonstrated an aversion to mobile gaming. By refusing to license their beloved characters for mobile use, Nintendo has been motivated by a fear that doing so would lessen the value of their console-based titles. Since taking this stand, sales of game consoles and hand-held devices have done nothing but decline… so much so that it is expected mobile gaming will all but replace them in 2015. Have no fear, Nintendo hasn’t completely abandoned their antiquated way of thinking; president Satoru Iwata has assured us that they have not given up on dedicated games systems. Though few details are known, the next Nintendo-branded console (which has been codenamed ‘NX’) promises to be a brand-new concept (which is a good thing following the poor performance of their last system). So how do they successfully do both? Instead of creating direct ports of existing games, Nintendo and DeNA plan to develop all-net, unique applications filled with familiar characters. Using this strategy, mobile gamers will have the chance to fall in love with Nintendo stylings such that they may feel persuaded to also embrace a console. To support their development initiatives, Nintendo and DeNA are also developing a new membership service and game distribution platform that promises to be entirely cross-platform. This secondary project is expected to launch in the fall of this year, which we hope means their first mobile gaming titles will drop around that time too. Not much else is known just yet but given their love of the bottom line, it’s unlikely these new Nintendo-branded games will be free to play –especially when they have spoken out so loudly against in-app purchases as a means to generating revenue. That may not be such a bad thing though when young people are included among your target demographics.
Nintendo is (FINALLY) Creating Mobile Gaming Apps is a post from: Good e-Reader |
