|
Amazon has just released a new e-reader and it goes by many names. Some people are referring to it as the 7th generation Kindle, while Amazon has dubbed it the all new Kindle Paperwhite, while still others are calling it the Paperwhite 3. We currently have one of these bad boys and are running a contest where you can win it! The main selling point of the Kindle Paperwhite 3 is that it has the same e-ink screen and high resolution display as the Kindle Voyage. It also features the brand new font Amazon designed for e-readers, Bookerly. It is lightly used and only in our studio for the purpose of a review video. What do you have to do to win? You have to Subscribe to our YouTube Channel and leave a comment on the video that you have done so. Alternatively, if you have subscribed in the past you could follow us on our new Twitch Channel! We stream live every night playing League of Legends and various other games. |
Thursday, July 9, 2015
Free Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 3 Contest
Apple iOS 9 Available to the Public
|
Do you want to use Apple News or the expanded Siri improvements before any of your friends? For the first time ever Apple is seeding iOS 9 to the general public and you don’t need a developer account. Interested users can sign up to download the beta here and then load it onto an iPhone or iPad with iTunes. If you install this upgrade, I recommend only doing it on your tertiary device. If you encounter any bugs or things you would like to see refined you can send Apple feedback using the built-in Feedback Assistant app. Apple has posted an FAQ with more details about the program and how it works (including how to roll back to the backup of iOS 8 that you obviously created before you installed the beta). Apple News is likely the most interesting aspect for people who visit Good e-Reader. This is basically a competitor to Flipboard and Linkedin Pulse and is actually fairly awesome. Anyone can submit their blog or news website to the service following our detailed guide found HERE. Drop us a comment if you installed the update and let us know what you think. |
Find out More About this Book with Kindle for iOS
|
Amazon frequently updates its iPad and iPhone Kindle e-Reading app on a regular basis. Sadly, they do not really inform anyone on exactly what the new features bring to the table. Take the 4.10 update that was pushed out today, it says bug fixes, but there is some new features that people will want to check out. There are two enhancements that are not earth shattering.
About this Book has been a fixture on the Kindle line of e-readers for quite awhile. This is the first time it has crossed over to the mobile space and it gives information on how long the average person takes to read the book and also tells you about the premise and the author. |
The Avengers, Ant Man, X-men, Disney princesses and more have assembled in OverDrive’s collections
|
Summer is a great time to engage young readers with content they’re interested in. Keeping them reading during their time away from school is essential to preventing the dreaded summer slide. If there’s anything that young readers are interested in its superheroes and Disney characters. Thankfully we’ve got tons of both available for you to add to your collections. Check out our newest collections at overdrive.com to discover beautiful graphic novels and comic book stories and browser based audiobooks featuring Captain American, Ant Man and the rest of the Avengers. You’ll also find your favorite X-Men, Spiderman, The Guardians of the Galaxy and many more. If you have youngsters who can’t get enough Frozen in their lives be sure to add these read alikes and give parents a break from the sing along soundtrack for a bit.
|
Ernest Cline Teases Ready Player One Sequel
|
Ernest Cline has a new book coming out next week called Armada and he is starting the hype train to promote it anyway he can. In a recent interview with GoodReads the author teased that there are two sequels in the works for his other book you may have heard about, Ready Player One. In the interview he stated “I never intended there to be a sequel to Ready Player One. I left it open for one, but it took so long to do that, I was just trying to write one story and have it feel like it had a genuine ending. But in the course of going on book tours and readers asking me, I’ve had plenty of time to think about it, and since then I’ve fleshed out two solid ideas for Ready Player Two and Ready Player Three. I registered those domains way back when I registered Ready Player One, because as far back as that I knew those might be the titles, and it might be a trilogy. And now that Ready Player One is going to be a movie and I’ll probably be very immersed in that world again, I think that would be a good time to write the sequel.” |
Facebook iOS App Allows for Customizable News Feed
|
A new feature rolling out today that lets users select up to 30 friends or Pages to ensure they get those friends' latest posts at the top of their feed.The social network is debuting the features on its iOS app first and users can not only choose whose posts will appear at the top of their feed, but also edit and filter the things they don’t want to see at all. After updating the iOS app, users will find a new settings section called News Feed Preferences with the tools for customization. Choosing users or Pages to prioritize means their updates will always appear at the top of the News Feed, making sure their posts aren’t lost in the timeline. This new feature will also help you find new Pages to follow and connect with publishers, artists and businesses you might be interested in. Based on the types of Pages you've liked in the past, you can discover new Pages in order to get more of the stories you care about. Finally, if you are like me and follow a crap ton of pages you now have the ability to filter out their stories from cluttering your timeline.
|
Several Obscure eBook Readers Turn up on Amazon
| A new marketplace seller recently launched on Amazon called Topjoy. Among other items, they have an odd assortment of E Ink ebook readers for sale that are normally only available outside the United States, with brand names like Yarvik and Texet. They are all listed as “used” and in very good condition but without the […] |
OverDrive presents to packed crowds in San Francisco and Tokyo
|
Last week Team OverDrive traveled thousands of miles to present in front of library and business partners at the American Library Association Annual Conference as well as the Tokyo International Book Fair. At ALA, we gave standing room only crowds a sneak peek at the new OverDrive coming later this year as well as showed off the latest innovations including digital newspapers and magazines and browser-based audiobooks. We also met with a capacity crowd of librarians at our annual breakfast meeting where we took product and feature recommendations from some of our most valued partners.
|
Pi Wars – annual public robot Olympics
| Liz: This week’s all about community. Mike Horne and Tim Richardson are old, old friends of the Raspberry Pi project. They’ve been running the Cambridge Raspberry Jam for ages – it’s one of the Jams we use as an exemplar and a showcase for anybody wanting to start their own. They’re so good at organising this stuff that we asked them to help us set up, run and host the Raspberry Pi third birthday party earlier this year. It was an enormous success – 1300 of you came from all over the world, and we had an amazing weekend. (And about a ton of pizza.) Mike and Tim are REALLY GOOD at this stuff. So it’s with enormous looking-forwardness that I asked them to prepare a guest post for us on their next non-standard Pi event (a repeat of what was probably the best Pi event I attended last year – and I go to a lot of them): a second annual Pi Wars, to be held in Cambridge this December. (We wrote about it here last year.) Over to Mike and Tim. Preparation for this year's challenge-based robotics competition, Pi Wars, is now underway! We'd like to tell you about the competition, how to get involved – and also launch a pre-event competition! Following the success of last year's event, we have plans for a bigger and better competition this year. The 2015 competition will be held on Saturday 5th December at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory (where the Big Birthday Weekend was), off Madingley Road in Cambridge, UK. For those of you who don't know, Pi Wars is an event at which Raspberry Pi-powered robots compete against each other in various challenges to win prizes and to take the title of Best Robot. Last year, we had 20 teams competing, and around 200 spectators. This year, we have raised the maximum number of competing teams to around 30, and we hope to welcome over 300 spectators to see them battle it out in 2015’s larger space. Teams come from all walks of life, including schools, Code Clubs, hack spaces, families and individuals – we even had a few robots last year that had been made in lunch-hours at offices by teams of colleagues. So why not you? Pi Wars, unlike Robot Wars, does not go in for destructive combat: we want your robots to make it to the end of the day relatively unscathed! So, our challenges are based on skills tests. The main challenges this year are:
Other elements of the competition are will be:
There are also other 'side competitions', which will include the robots in the Show and Tell area (of which more in a moment). You can find out more about these side competitions and see details of all the challenges by visiting the List of Challenges page on our website. Show and Tell As mentioned above, there will also be a Show and Tell area featuring robot exhibits. This is a great way to get involved if you have a robotics project but don't have time to make it competition-ready; or if your robot is something "a bit different". Anything goes in Show and Tell as long as it is controlled by a Raspberry Pi and it moves! Applying to enter This year, there is an application process to follow for both the main competition and the Show and Tell area. Depending on the number of robots we have entering, it may be necessary to select from them the robots that will take part. We have a selection process – follow the link to learn more. If you would like to apply and get involved in Pi Wars, head over to the Pi Wars website and fill in: Sponsorship As you can imagine, putting on an event this size requires sponsorship of various forms. We are looking for companies to sponsor the event by donating prizes (add-on boards, t-shirts, magazine subscriptions and kits all made an appearance last year) for the various challenges and, if that's not appropriate, to donate financially so that we can make the courses and print the full-colour programme that every competitor and spectator receives. So far, we have received generous offers from Dexter Industries, Ryanteck, Dawn Robotics, 4tronix, RasPiO, PiBorg, The Pi Hut, MyPiFi and Energenie. So, if your company would like to be involved, please take a look at our sponsors page for what we can do for you in return. Pre-event competition – Design the programme cover! New for this year is our pre-event competition. This competition is open to anyone 16 years old or younger and involves creating some artwork. Our programme last year (pictured) featured our logo and a photograph of a robot (we aren’t graphic designers). This year, we want a different design, and that's where you come in. We would like you to design a new front cover. It will still have our banner logo at the top, and the date will be on there somewhere, but we need a new image for the middle of the page. So, get your thinking caps on and send us your design! You can find details of how to enter here. Entries must be received by noon on 1st October. The winner will be picked by members of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and will be notified around the 8th October. This should give us plenty of time to get the design integrated into the programme and get it printed! Any questions? We are open to any questions you might have. Either visit our website and contact us, or leave a comment on this blog post and we'll get back to you. We hope to see you at Pi Wars 2015 on 5th December! Michael Horne & Tim Richardson mike@recantha.co.uk/tim@potton.me.uk The post Pi Wars – annual public robot Olympics appeared first on Raspberry Pi. |
Amazon Kindle Voyage 2 to be Released November 2015
|
Amazon has driven most of the competition out of the e-reader market because the Settle company can afford to sell their hardware as cheap as possible, knowing they can make it up with e-book sales. You can purchase an entry level Kindle for $79 or the Paperwhite 3 for $139. Last year, Amazon released the Kindle Voyage, which is a premium e-reader and it carries a hefty price tag of $199. Customers bought the Voyage in such high numbers that this is prompting Amazon to develop a successor that will be released this November. The Amazon Kindle Voyage 2 will redefine what an e-reader is capable of in a myriad of ways. It will utilize the new Freescale I.MX 7 1 GHZ dual core processor which will dramatically increase the overall performance. This chipset has been optimized with e Ink Regal and the end product will be true refresh free page turns. Whenever you turn a page in an e-book you will notice a small, but discernible flicker. Every six pages it even becomes more pronounced and it breaks immersion. This will be a thing of the past with the advent of the Kindle Voyage 2. How does Amazon plan on doing it, where all others have failed? In the past, all e-readers handled everything on the software level, which limited them on the things they could do. Now things are quite different, the i.MX7 adds a Cortex-M4 microcontroller unit core for offloading processing. This will give Amazon the power to basically send all strenuous tasks directly to the processor and there will also be some added benefits. Have you ever wondered why the Kindle app for Android or iOS feels better than their e-reader? Whenever you flip a page you see a complex page turn animation that occurs. This animation technology will finally be coming to the Kindle Voyage 2, which will blur the lines between an e-reader and a tablet. There is no word yet if specific UI elements such as the battery symbol or the brightness setting will be animated too, but it does make sense that they would. Please keep in mind, all of these new elements will not drain the battery, actually I heard it will actually increase the life of a charge by 30%. Amazon has proved there is a segment of people willing to spend $200 dollars for a premium e-reader. If its well designed, offers high resolution and a great e-book experience, people will pay the money. The second generation model will ascetically look the same, including Page Press and the ambient light sensor. What I am most excited about is the increased performance in all aspects of the software. PDF files will load quicker, GoodReads discussions will be live, and the overall e-reading experience will be more fluid. |
