| Microsoft has released a new app that will introduce its Office suite to Android. The app can be downloaded free from the Google Play Store though the catch lies elsewhere. The app can only be accesses by those who have subscribed to Microsoft’s Office 365 Home Premium and ProPlus service. Also, the app will only be of relevance to smartphones users as the same is yet to be launched for tablet devices though it is the latter community that could have benefitted the most given the larger screen area. Further, the app will only work on devices running Android 4.0 and higher. Also, the Office for Android app will not allow all the operations that one is used to doing with the Office suite in a PC. Rather, the app can be seen to play only a supporting role where users can carry on with their work on Office documents such as editing Word, Excel and PowerPoint files that won't alter the formatting or the data. Also, users won't have to be connected to the internet to carry on with the editing and the files will be saved once the user is online. Another cool feature of the app is that it will allow the user to create new Word and Excel files on the smartphones. Users will be able to save the changes at SkyDrive or send it via email. Subscribing to Office 365 demands an annual fee of $100 and will allow the users to install the Office app on up to 5 devices which includes PCs, smartphones and even Macs. Microsoft's move to introduce an Office app to Android comes soon after its iOS version was launched a few weeks ago. You can download it today from the Good e-Reader Android App Store!
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Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Microsoft Launches Office App For Android
Borders Bookstore to Launch Once More in Singapore
| Borders bookstore is re-launching in Singapore and will open its doors during the holiday season. Local book retailer Popular Holdings has purchased the rights to Borders and will be launching a single store in Jurong. The last of Borders stores closed down in 2011 and many local readers are really excited about their return. Vincent Ng commented "To me, Borders advocated reading as a way of life. Unlike other places, they allowed customers to browse through the books instead of sealing them up, which helped me discover many new authors. Also, I hope Popular will not turn Borders into an assessment-books bookstore.” Amid rising costs and the growing popularity of internet book retailers in Singapore, a number of stores have closed. Page One shuttered its Vivocity outlet last year. The hope is bringing back an iconic bookstore chain will draw more readers into the stores and hopefully act as a staging ground to consolidate the local physical book industry. |
The Sun Launches Innovative Digital Paywall
| The Sun is currently Britain’s largest newspaper and has the highest dedicated readership base. The company is launching a new digital subscription package today that turns their online website into a Paywall, where you have to take out a membership to read their articles. What is very exciting, is how the Sun is taking a departure from the standard way news companies make money online and doing some fairly innovative things. The Sun is not focusing exclusively on digital, although it does offer a low monthly rate to subscribe to their website. Instead, they want to promote the fact that they don’t want to sell less newspapers to get some quick digital sales. Instead, every issue of the newspaper will have a code that can be redeemed to get a free digital edition of the paper or read the news within their official mobile apps. If you redeem 20 codes in any given month, you are being given the next month for free. Derek Brown, digital editor at the Sun, told us: "We're not becoming digital first, we realize that we still sell a lot of newspapers every day – we don't want print readers to feel that they are missing out on something." Subscribing to the digital newspaper, is seemingly going far beyond just getting news on the website. Readers will also get access to the Sun+ Goals app. It will show highlights from all 380 English Premier matches all season, making them available at 5.15pm on Saturday, five hours earlier than the BBC’s Match of the Day. FA Cup rights will be added in 2014. The other major component is called Sun+ Perks. It promises at least £200 of savings and giveaways each month such as music and eBook downloads. The Sun is doing some fairly excellent things when it comes to launching their new digital subscription packages. The average news agency is just selling access to the internet websites and not giving free access to their news apps. The Sun, instead of doing what everyone else is doing, is blazing their own trail and taking the “companion” approach to mobile. |
Harlequin eBook Sales Account for 24.5% of Total Revenue
| Harlequin is seeing strong growth selling digital books with 24.5% of their global revenue in Q2 2013. This is some fairly solid growth with their entire line of digital products accounting for 20% of revenue in Q2 2012. Overall, revenue declined 7% and they made $99.5 million. One of the reasons why Harlequin is doing so well in the digital arena is because of their expanded selection of non-fiction titles. They are really trying to broaden their approach from authors like Robyn Carr and Susan Mallery. Instead, they are getting lots of sales with second quarter darlings The Virgin Diet and The Beauty Detox Foods. Harlequin saves money on their digital only eBooks for their various splinter companies, like Karina Press. Instead of giving them an advance, they give some fairly high royalty rates. This gives authors an easier time with getting a book onto the market, and more eBooks can be generated in a shorter period of time, compared to print. Digital is also on the upward trend with more readers buying disposable books on their Kindle, instead of cluttering their bookshelves with more trashy novels. |
Nokia Tablet Powered By Snapdragon 800 Chip Makes an Appearance
| Nokia perhaps is among the last of the well-known brands to not have ventured into the tablet space though behind the scene rumblings of the same continues unabated. The latest to have stoked the Nokia tablet fire once more is the unexpected appearance of the same in a GFXBench website. However, before anyone gets too excited about the prospects of a tablet appearing from the Nokia camp, let's not forget the test results can be tampered with by just about anyone. Anyway, what the test results have thrown up is a device codenamed RX-114 that is powered by the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chip coupled to an Adreno 330 graphics processor, a combination that no doubt will make for a superior performance credential. However, it is the number of pixels mentioned, 1371 x 771 that has led to some confusion. This since the above number of pixels along the longitude and latitude of the device points to something that is a lot similar to the Surface tablet that sports a pixel count of 1366 x 768. Also, with that many pixels spread across a 10.6 inch display of the Surface, what seems likely is that the Nokia tablet too sports a 10 inch display. Or maybe Nokia has just been working on a bigger smartphone or a 7 inch tablet with a longish profile packing in a higher number of pixels to make for a scintillating display. Of course all of the above are mere speculation at the moment and it's not known for sure if the tablet exists in real at all or it has just been a prototype device that Nokia had developed for testing purposes. Any which way it is, a tablet from the Finnish company has been long due. Let's hope we get to hear something concrete on this anytime soon which will be a nice break from the series of rumors we have been treated with so far. Meanwhile, in what can be considered an interesting coincidence, the Snapdragon 800 chip found mention for another high profile tablet, the new Amazon Kindle Fire range today.
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Camera board documentation
| James Hughes, last seen at the helm of a VW Camper Van heading for Dorset, has been sweating over comprehensive documentation for the Raspberry Pi camera board for some weeks now. You can download the pdf here. It’s worth printing it off; there’s a lot of meat in there. We’ll be linking to this and other useful Pi documentation in a sticky post at the top of each board in the forums in the near future.  Clive and I (plus lots of coffee, a salad from the cafe across the road and a USB analyser) compete for Most Keanu-y rotoscopiness, using the camera’s built-in Sketch effect. Click to for the documentation to find out how to produce something like this yourself. You’ll find examples, troubleshooting tips, full lists of available options, effects and modes, and much more in the pdf.  We got a bit effects-happy this afternoon. This is, in fact, me, and not someone in the mask from Scream, taken using the camera’s onboard gpen effect (we should probably have worked on adjusting the exposure a bit too, but we were in a hurry). Click to download the camera documentation. We’ll be updating the documentation with more information as the software evolves. Look out for James’ piece in August’s MagPi (which should be released later in the week) to find out more about advanced use of the camera. A spot of housekeeping: I’m off on my summer holidays tomorrow. Clive will be babysitting the blog. Please be nice to him. Toodlepip! |
A Closer Look at Sony’s First Lighted eBook Reader
| Sony is expected to announce a new ebook reader in August, the Sony PRS-T3. We already know that it has a 6″ screen and has a slightly different design than last year’s PRS-T2 based on the few photos that turned up in the FCC paperwork. One thing the photos and paperwork don’t reveal, however, is [...] |
B&N and Amazon offering Bestselling eBooks in the UK for .99p
| Barnes and Noble announced a new promotion in the UK yesterday that gives some solid eBook deals. The company is offering a copious amount of bestselling eBooks for only .99p until Thursday. Amazon, not to be outdone, is price matching every title and readers are winning with some low-prices. The list of discounted titles is headlined by And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini. It currently dominates the top position of most international bestseller list and is rising in the charts, thanks to these deals. Other solid buys include One Hundred Names by Cecelia Ahern, Revenge Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger, The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes and the Game of Thrones by George R R Martin. Most of the titles available are all being sold by major publishers and do not include the normal public domain books that normally populate sales like this. How can these digital companies offer the eBook for .99p, when the normal hardcover edition is being sold for over $20.00? You can thank the European Commission and the US Justice Department for striking down the agency pricing model. Readers win, bookstores, maybe not so much. B&N and Amazon offering Bestselling eBooks in the UK for .99p is a post from: E-Reader News |
Harlequin eBook Sales Account for 24.5% of Total Revenue
| Harlequin is seeing strong growth selling digital books with 24.5% of their global revenue in Q2 2013. This is some fairly solid growth with their entire line of digital products accounting for 20% of revenue in Q2 2012. Overall, revenue declined 7% and they made $99.5 million. One of the reasons why Harlequin is doing so well in the digital arena is because of their expanded selection of non-fiction titles. They are really trying to broaden their approach from authors like Robyn Carr and Susan Mallery. Instead, they are getting lots of sales with second quarter darlings The Virgin Diet and The Beauty Detox Foods. Harlequin saves money on their digital only eBooks for their various splinter companies, like Karina Press. Instead of giving them an advance, they give some fairly high royalty rates. This gives authors an easier time with getting a book onto the market, and more eBooks can be generated in a shorter period of time, compared to print. Digital is also on the upward trend with more readers buying disposable books on their Kindle, instead of cluttering their bookshelves with more trashy novels. Harlequin eBook Sales Account for 24.5% of Total Revenue is a post from: E-Reader News |
Instagram for Blackberry 10 is Not Accepting Picture Uploads
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Instagram has changed their developer API tools to not accept uploaded images outside of their official tools. This spells bad news for users that have loaded in the Android version of the app on their Z10 or Q10 smartphones. This means if you take a picture and upload it, it seems to disappear into the ether. An Instagram spokesman recently confirmed that "We recently made an update to the systems that we use to fight spam to help prevent future attacks and increase security." The change will affect any apps accessing Instagram outside of the official API no matter if they are using Android, iOS, Windows Phone 8 or otherwise. It remains to be seen if Instagram is only testing new security changes in their API or whether it is apart of a new long-term strategy to secure their service to facilitate further growth. In the meantime, the only Blackberry users who are able to get this to work, are the ones who installed the leaked Jellybean 10.2 firmware update. Instagram for Blackberry 10 is Not Accepting Picture Uploads is a post from: E-Reader News |
Instagram for Blackberry 10 is Not Accepting Picture Uploads
| Instagram has changed their developer API tools to not accept uploaded images outside of their official tools. This spells bad news for users that have loaded in the Android version of the app on their Z10 or Q10 smartphones. This means if you take a picture and upload it, it seems to disappear into the ether. An Instagram spokesman recently confirmed that “We recently made an update to the systems that we use to fight spam to help prevent future attacks and increase security.” The change will affect any apps accessing Instagram outside of the official API no matter if they are using Android, iOS, Windows Phone 8 or otherwise. It remains to be seen if Instagram is only testing new security changes in their API or whether it is apart of a new long-term strategy to secure their service to facilitate further growth. In the meantime, the only Blackberry users who are able to get this to work, are the ones who installed the leaked Jellybean 10.2 firmware update. |
B&N and Amazon Battling for Summer Readers in the UK
| Barnes and Noble announced a new promotion in the UK yesterday that gives some solid eBook deals. The company is offering a copious amount of bestselling eBooks for only .99p until Thursday. Amazon, not to be outdone, is price matching every title and readers are winning with some low-prices. The list of discounted titles is headlined by And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini. It currently dominates the top position of most international bestseller list and is rising in the charts, thanks to these deals. Other solid buys include One Hundred Names by Cecelia Ahern, Revenge Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger, The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes and the Game of Thrones by George R R Martin. Most of the titles available are all being sold by major publishers and do not include the normal public domain books that normally populate sales like this. How can these digital companies offer the eBook for .99p, when the normal hardcover edition is being sold for over $20.00? You can thank the European Commission and the US Justice Department for striking down the agency pricing model. Readers win, bookstores, maybe not so much. |
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Four Ways to Read a Digital Comic: Checking out Mark Waid’s Thrillbent Store
| For years (well, three years anyway), a vocal legion of comics readers has been saying that they want to own their files, and they want them DRM-free, not locked into a single app like comiXology (or Kindle, for that matter). A few weeks ago, Image Comics gave them what they wanted; now Mark Waid is doing the same with the web store on his Thrillbent digital comics site. When Waid introduced Thrillbent last year, it was hard to see where he was going. At the beginning, it sort of looked like he had discovered webcomics—ten years after the rest of us. But while he does publish comics on the web, it’s true, Waid has turned Thrillbent into a sort of digital comics lab. In addition to running his comics on the site, he beats the pirates to the punch by offering free downloads, and he also sells them via comiXology. He keeps a blog where he discusses what worked and what didn’t, and he has already changed his mind publicly about several things. The flagship comic on the site is Waid’s own Insufferable, a superhero story with a twist—the superhero and his sidekick have gone their separate ways, and the sidekick is a real jerk. Since Waid offers the story so many different ways, I thought I would kick the tires on all of them reading the comic in all the different formats on my iPad. Reading the story on the web is surprisingly satisfying, because Waid has really worked to get the format right. His comic is horizontal, so it fits into a computer screen without scrolling, and the panels, images, and word balloons are large relative to the page, making it easy to read on a computer without putting your nose to the screen. He also has a nice comics reader that is easy to use—just “previous” and “next” arrows and a few other simple navigation tools. And the comic doesn’t scroll; instead, when you click the arrow the next page simply appears on the screen. This allows Waid and his artist, Peter Krause, to use some digital-comics tricks like dropping in panels or other pictorial elements one at a time or changing the focus of a single panel while keeping the rest of the scene static. The free downloadable PDF is perfectly serviceable, but you scroll from page to page. That means you lose the nifty digital effects: The scene where four panels and a word balloon appear one at a time in the web version becomes five pages in the PDF, with a new panel appearing on each page. When you scroll, you definitely lose the sense of elapsed time that you get when the panels simply appear on the page. Still, it’s free, and the comic is still a good read. Sadly, that is also the case with the PDF of the same chapter that I purchased from the Thrillbent store (Waid has a pay-what-you-like model for his comics; I plunked down $1.99). The image quality looks a bit better (maybe because I paid for it), and the comic is about three times longer than the free PDF, but the digital effects are still missing. It’s just a comic that scrolls. The Thrillbent store is also a bit more of a hassle than I would like. It takes credit cards only, no PayPal, and in order to buy a comic I had to create an account and enter my credit card information. I understand they need my address to verify the credit card, but I resent being forced to hand over my phone number in order to buy a comic. The payoff for this is that once you have an account, you can download your file from the Thrillbent site to any device, which saves you the trouble of moving it via Dropbox or some physical means. However, it would be nice if they had a PayPal option. Finally, I took a look at that same chapter of Insufferable on comiXology. This time, it was formatted like a true digital comic, with the digital effects fully in play. The panels dropped in one by one, the focus changed, and it didn’t scroll. The experience was very similar to the web browser, except now I had the comic on my iPad and could carry it around. There was a lot of talk about DRM’ed versus DRM-free comics at the Digital and Print Comics panel at Comic-Con International in San Diego. With the downloadable PDF, you get full ownership of the file, but the comics experience is incomplete because you are simply scrolling through a set of pages—it’s like reading a print comic that has been scanned in, only a little clumsier because the digital effects require extra pages. With comiXology, you don’t own the file—just a license to read it—but the reading experience is richer. Both are valid choices; it’s really a matter of priorities. |
Amazon Introduces Samples in Kindle for iOS
| Amazon has introduced a new feature in their seminal reading app for the iPad and iPhone. It allows readers to browse their entire database of eBooks that have samples attached to them. Often, these samples have a few chapters of the digital book and when you are done reading it, it will prompt you to enter your email address to have the link sent over. Why is this story big news? Apple mandated awhile ago that all in-app purchases be done through their own system and they gained 30% of each transaction. Overnight, every single major eBook store removed the ability to buy books, including Amazon. This new sample based system is a way to bypass this restriction and still have the ability to browse books and make impulse purchases. In order to look for Samples you have to click the little magnifying glass in the top right hand corner of the app. You can browse by the author or book name, and it will give you a list of all the books. You can click on the download button and it will deliver the book directly to your iPad or iPhone. When you are done reading a sample book, it will give you a “Before You Go” and allow you to check out other books by the same author or just email yourself the book you want. You can then open up the Safari internet browser and buy the book. It will then be synced automatically to your Amazon account and you can than read said book in the Kindle app for iOS. |
Peru Lags Behind Latin America in eBook Adoption
| As digital book distributors make their global expansion a priority, readers have responded with a zeal for ebooks. And despite the smaller-than-average growth in some of these international markets, consumers in most countries have demonstrated their affinity for reading on their devices. Some readers, however are more reluctant to e-reader, but there may be a chicken-or-egg dynamic at play. Are publishers not releasing as many titles in digital format because readers aren’t quick to snap them up? Or are consumers slow to adapt to the digital publishing revolution because there hasn’t been a lot of support it from the publishers? One country whose numbers seem very telling in this situation is Peru, which lags behind the rest of the Latin American reading market in terms of ebook purchasing. An article for the website Peru This Week by Nancy Portugal Prado for Gestión (translated by Alix Farr), demonstrates just how far behind the Peruvian ebook market really is in terms of annual releases from publishers. "’Chile publishes 1,000; Colombia, 1,800; Argentina has launched more than 2,000 and Mexico, more than 5,000,’ Núñez said. However, Peru is far below this average. “According to David Edery, a coordinator of services exports for PromPeru, ‘of the 5,000 titles registered in the last year with the National Library of Peru (BNP), digital books didn't even reach 5 percent (250 books).’ “In the region, the production of this type of book grows at a rate of about 1 percent per year.” Of the books that are distributed as ebooks in Peru, the overwhelming majority of the titles appear to be academic, showing that at least the consumers who are utilizing textbooks and journals have taken to digital reading. In order for publishers to release more ebooks, however, they have to be able to take a calculated risk, something they cannot do–despite the vastly lesser cost of producing an ebook over a print edition–unless they believe that readers will come through and buy ebooks.
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Rumors: Samsung Developing Two Hi-Res Android Tablets
| With the New Nexus 7 launched, the consumer focus has shifted to what the next generation Nexus 10 will be like. While everything is hush-hush at the moment, there are some insights available–along with some more, as well–thanks to the efforts of the leak-tastic @evleaks. First, there is the SM-P600, which is going to be a 10-inch device with a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels. That’s the same number of pixels the current gen Nexus 10 offers, and continues to be the best on any 10-inch tablet ever to be launched. Providing the processing punch will be a quad-core Snapdragon 800 chip that is expected to be clocked at 2.3 Ghz. However, some sources also pointed out it could be a dual core 1.7 GHz A15 chip or the dual core Exynos 5 Octa chip that could be seen doing the processing job (Samsung launched the Exynos 5 Octa CPU just a few weeks ago). Other rumored specs for the Nexus 10 successor include a 2 GB RAM and a 5 megapixel rear facing camera. Meanwhile, @evleaks also claims a second tablet device that Samsung is reported to be developing. Codenamed SM-P900, the tablet will feature a bigger 12.2-inch display and S Pen stylus support (Wacom powered), which means it could well be the newest and biggest member of the Galaxy Note series of tablet devices. However, the P900 will have the same 2560 x 1600 number of pixels to light up the bigger 12.2-inch display which means a slightly lower pixel density for the bigger tablet. As for its processor, the rumor source mentioned it could be the recently released Exynos 5 Octa chip. Both tablet devices are likely to run the latest Android 4.3 Jelly Bean and could be unveiled during the upcoming IFA event to be held in Berlin in September. Meanwhile, there are also reports that Kobo is developing a 10-inch tablet that will also offer a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels. However, while that many pixels might make for a stunning display, the real deal maker (or breaker) could the backup time the device is capable of delivering. The original Nexus 10 failed on that, as consumers seemed to have no qualms in trading few extra pixels in favor of gaining a few more hours of run time.
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Nicholas, some breadboard and a passcode
| Nicholas Harris is 11 years old, and he’s been learning to code with a Raspberry Pi. He’s set up a website to share his progress, and yesterday I was pointed at a project video he’d made. Kids like Nicholas are the whole reason we started the Raspberry Pi project: seeing videos like this makes our day, and makes our job feel so worthwhile. Nicholas started with Codecadamy and a desire to control more of the world in Minecraft: Pi Edition (he’s a big fan of Martin O’Hanlon’s Stuff About Code, particularly the Minecraft bits, and Martin has been giving him pointers in his Minecraft work), and he’s now building bigger and bigger projects, learning Python, Ruby and some PHP. Learning to program as a kid comes with its own set of difficulties. Nicholas’ baby sister threw the entire contents of his hardware kit (which I think was this Adafruit one – let me know if I’ve got that right, Nicholas) into the family LEGO box, and while he was able to retrieve most of the pieces, the light-sensitive photocell never turned up. But Nicholas is a resourceful sort, and found a project in which he could use all the other bits. So here is Nicholas’ passcode reader. It’s great to see him SSH’ing into the Pi, writing Python, and learning electronics and binary, all in one project. Next stop: soldering! Thanks Nicholas: and let us know if you do write up a tutorial like you mentioned! Are you a kid who is learning about computing with the Pi at home? Do you have any projects you’d like to show us? You can get in touch with us via the contact page. |
Amazon Introduces Samples in Kindle for iOS
| Amazon has introduced a new feature in their seminal reading app for the iPad and iPhone. It allows readers to browse their entire database of eBooks that have samples attached to them. Often, these samples have a few chapters of the digital book and when you are done reading it, it will prompt you to enter your email address to have the link sent over. Why is this story big news? Apple mandated awhile ago that all in-app purchases be done through their own system and they gained 30% of each transaction. Overnight, every single major eBook store removed the ability to buy books, including Amazon. This new sample based system is a way to bypass this restriction and still have the ability to browse books and make impulse purchases. In order to look for Samples you have to click the little magnifying glass in the top right hand corner of the app. You can browse by the author or book name, and it will give you a list of all the books. You can click on the download button and it will deliver the book directly to your iPad or iPhone. When you are done reading a sample book, it will give you a "Before You Go" and allow you to check out other books by the same author or just email yourself the book you want. You can then open up the Safari internet browser and buy the book. It will then be synced automatically to your Amazon account and you can than read said book in the Kindle app for iOS. Amazon Introduces Samples in Kindle for iOS is a post from: E-Reader News |
Q2 Tablet Shipment Figures has Android Beating iOS
| Consumer preference for tablet devices continue to rise unabated with the latest research by Strategy Analytics revealing a rise of 43 percent in tablet pc shipments in Q2 2013 compared to the same period last year. Put another way, shipment of tablet devices reached 51.7 million in the said period, though the more interesting facts lies within it. The research also revealed the growing popularity of the Android platform, which has recorded a healthy rise to 67 percent in the world's connected devices segment. Of course, that came at the expense of Apple, whose share of the market fell to 28 percent. Peter King, Director of Tablets at Strategy Analytics, said, "Global Branded Tablet shipments reached 36.2 million units in Q2 2013, up 47 percent from 24.6 million in Q2 2012. The Branded Tablet market had a rest period as very few new products came to market during the quarter. When we add in White-Box Tablets, shipments reached 51.7 million units, up 43 percent from 36.1 million in Q2 2012. Android is now making steady progress due to hardware partners like Samsung, Amazon, Google and White-Box tablets which, despite the fact that branded OEMs are lowering price-points and putting pressure on the White-Box manufacturers, are still performing well." King further added: "Apple iOS shipments were 14.6 million iPads in Q2 2013 which declined 14 percent annually. In the same quarter a year ago the first Retina display iPads were launched which could partly explain the decline as there were no new models in this quarter. However, to compensate that, iPad Mini which was not available a year ago, now freely available was expected to take the figure higher than 14.6 million." Microsoft's Windows, which is a new entrant in the field, has managed to secure a 4.5 percent of the market share. The low figure isn't surprising considering the low uptake of Windows based tablet devices, including the Surface tablet range, which have fared miserably in the market. In fact, many have already started to question if the Windows platform is at all suited to the tablet realm which could see far more acceptance in the laptop or ultrabook segment. However, the meteoric rise of Android with support from hardware makers such as Samsung, Amazon and such could come under stress once Apple launches its new generation devices such as the iPhone and the iPad 5 this fall. With better specs and the thoroughly revamped iOS 7 platform, along with a refreshed design that analysts claim is more akin to the iPad Mini, Apple is likely to have another multi-million sales run in the market in the run up to the holiday season and beyond. Meanwhile, the rumor world is agog with conflicting stories about whether there is a new iPad Mini is slated for launch this fall and if it is going to feature a retina display. Overall, while Android made some healthy gains in Q2 213, Apple could well be seen making a comeback of sorts in the next quarter. Q2 Tablet Shipment Figures has Android Beating iOS is a post from: E-Reader News |
Apple iPad Update Screen Showing Up Blank for Most Users
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The Apple iPad is experiencing a blank update screen for many users. You may see app updates available via the notification flag, but when you visit the update section in the App store, there is no data. This is applicable to all iPad models, although the iPod and iPhone are unaffected by this issue. The iOS 6 AppStore is a web browser with some local HTML (header and tabs) and content loaded with AJAX, so it might be unresponsive because of Javascript and other assets failing to load. Restores are fruitless and many users have reported that running a factory default does little to solve the problem. Currently the only way to circumvent this issue is to hit the purchased tab and search for updates there. Apple iPad Update Screen Showing Up Blank for Most Users is a post from: E-Reader News |
Monday, July 29, 2013
Q2 Tablet Shipment Figures has Android Beating iOS
| Consumer preference for tablet devices continue to rise unabated with the latest research by Strategy Analytics revealing a rise of 43 percent in tablet pc shipments in Q2 2013 compared to the same period last year. Put in another way, shipment of tablet devices reached 51.7 million in the said period though the more interesting facts lies within it. The research also revealed the growing popularity of the Android platform which has recorded a healthy rise to 67 percent in the world connected devices segment. Of course, that came at the expense of Apple who share of the market fell to 28 percent. Peter King, Director of Tablets at Strategy Analytics, said, “Global Branded Tablet shipments reached 36.2 million units in Q2 2013, up 47 percent from 24.6 million in Q2 2012. The Branded Tablet market had a rest period as very few new products came to market during the quarter. When we add in White-Box Tablets, shipments reached 51.7 million units, up 43 percent from 36.1 million in Q2 2012. Android is now making steady progress due to hardware partners like Samsung, Amazon, Google and White-Box tablets which, despite the fact that branded OEMs are lowering price-points and putting pressure on the White-Box manufacturers, are still performing well.” King further added: “Apple iOS shipments were 14.6 million iPads in Q2 2013 which declined 14 percent annually. In the same quarter a year ago the first Retina display iPads were launched which could partly explain the decline as there were no new models in this quarter. However, to compensate that, iPad Mini which was not available a year ago, now freely available was expected to take the figure higher than 14.6 million.” Microsoft's Windows which is a new entrant in the field has managed to secure a 4.5 percent of the market share. The low figure isn't surprising considering the low uptake of Windows based tablet devices including the Surface tablet range which have fared miserably in the market. In fact, many have already started to question if the Windows platform is at all suited to the tablet realm which could see far more acceptance in the laptop or ultrabook segment. However, the meteoric rise of Android with support from hardware makers such as Samsung, Amazon and such could come under stress once Apple launches its new generation devices such as the iPhone and the iPad 5 this fall. With better specs and the thoroughly revamped iOS 7 platform along with a refreshed design that analysts claim is more akin to the iPad Mini, Apple is likely to have another multi-million sales run in the market in the run up to the holiday season and beyond. Meanwhile, the rumor world is agog with conflicting stories whether there is a new iPad Mini is slated for launch this fall or if it is going to feature a retina display. Overall, while Android made some healthy gains in Q2 213, Apple could well be seen making a comeback of sorts in the next quarter.
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Apple iPad Update Screen Showing as Blank for Most Users
| The Apple iPad is experiencing a blank update screen for many users. You may see app updates available via the notification flag, but when you visit the update section in the APP store, there is no data. This is applicable to all iPad models, the iPod and iPhone are unaffected by this issue. The iOS 6 AppStore is a web browser with some local HTML (header and tabs) and content loaded with AJAX. So it might be unresponsive because of Javascript and other assets failing to load. Restores are fruitless and many users have reported that running a Factory default does little to solve the problem. Currently the only way to circumvent this issue is to hit the purchased tab and search for updates there. |
Official Android Jellybean Runtime to Hit Blackberry Soon
| Blackberry has been fervently working on a massive upgrade to their Android emulator which takes it from 2.3 to Jellybean. This will allow major apps like Candy Crush Saga and Viber to finally work on the entire line of Blackberry Smartphones. There is currently a leaked OS that is fairly polished, which is an indication that Blackberry will release it in the next month. The Blackberry Z10, Q10, A10, Q5 and Playbook all have a built in Android emulator which allows users to load in their own Android apps. This helps offset the lack of quality content in the Blackberry App Store and put power in the users hands to convert and install their own apps. Most apps these days are not being written for really old versions of Android, so this Jellybean update to the emulator is huge news and a boon to worldwide customers. If you want to install the Jellybean update right now, you can visit this tutorial that outlines the entire process. Installing Android apps is not as cut and dry as just loading in an APK file to your device, instead you have to convert the APK to a BAR file. We have an automatic converter that does this for you, you can check it out HERE. You can also watch a few video tutorials, if you are totally unfamiliar with loading in your own apps. |
Top Picks for Fall Book Titles
| Good e-Reader referenced an article earlier about the concept of seasons as it pertains to book releases from the traditional publishing industry. Publishers, like other areas of entertainment, have catalogs of titles that they will release based on a number of metrics and factors, with these releases being organized into seasons. For its part, the booksellers generally highlight upcoming titles by season and offer highly valuable promotional support to these thematic catalogs. Today, Amazon announced not only its own top picks for the most highly anticipated books of the upcoming fall season, but also the lists of books in both print and digital that are already topping the charts for pre-orders. According to a press release from Amazon, the most pre-ordered books in print publishing this fall are: The most pre-ordered books on Kindle publishing this fall are: In addition to this list which was generated simply by consumer sales of these titles, Amazon’s editors also created a list of their favorite picks which seem to not be getting the same level of attention as some other mainstream titles. These books, which they’ve referred to as “under the radar” titles, include: My Notorious Life by Kate Manning, The Maid's Version by Daniel Woodrell, The Mushroom Hunters, The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane, Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste by Luke Barr, Johnny Cash: The Life by Robert Hilburn, Parasite by Mira Grant, Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, and Mister Max: The Book of Lost Things by Cynthia Voigt. All of the titles on these Amazon lists are available now for purchase or pre-order.
Top Picks for Fall Book Titles is a post from: E-Reader News |
Amazon and Overstock: The Race to Offer the Best Price on Books
| When Amazon was first given its nickname as the “evil empire” by some in the traditional publishing and bookselling industries, one question kept coming back up: “Who will be big enough to take down Amazon?” Critics lamented the fact that other retail outlets can’t compete with a company that can afford to take a loss on books and make up for it with sales of coffee makers and blue jeans. Retailers like Target and Walmart seemed poised to compete, but their physical store overhead and limited shelf space for books kept them from offering the volume of the world’s largest online retailer. But according to an article today for The Bookseller, there is a retailer giving Amazon a run for its money in book pricing: Overstock.com. And just like Amazon, it too can afford to lose a few dollars on the price of print books and make up for it when its customers decide to purchase a household item at the same time in order to capitalize on reduced shipping costs. “Shelf Awareness has reported that in response to the direct competition, which is across the 466,000 books that Overstock supplies, Amazon.com has begun discounting the price of hardback books much higher than before. Dan Brown's Inferno is selling for $29.95 but is available on Amazon for $11.65, a 61% discount; And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini, listed for $28.95, is being sold at $12.04, a 58% discount; Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, is listed at $24.95, and selling for $9.09, a 64% discount; while The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, listed at $17.99, is available for $6.55, 64% off.” One thing that Overstock cannot match Amazon with is volume, at least not at this time. It would be interesting to know if Overstock is actually doing as the name implies and gathering up leftover merchandise–in this case, books from publishing houses–or simply brokering the books directly from the publishers like any other retail outlet. It would also be interesting to know if publishers are trying to build up relationships with Overstock in order to direct more customers to that retailer over Amazon. But be warned, a move like that would stand to simply create two retail giants who have the power to tell publishers how much their books will be sold for.
Amazon and Overstock: The Race to Offer the Best Price on Books is a post from: E-Reader News |
1190: Time
| On Friday, xkcd #1190—Time—came to an end. It was a huge project, but since it was all concealed within a single comic panel, I thought I’d end with this short post to explain what was going on. If you want to see the story yourself before I spoil anything, you can use one of the many excellent third-party Time explorers, like the Geekwagon viewer, or one of the others listed here. When the comic first went up, it just showed two people sitting on a beach. Every half hour (and later every hour), a new version of the comic appeared, showing the figures in different positions. Eventually, the pair started building a sand castle. There was a flurry of attention early on, as people caught on to the gimmick. Readers watched for a while, and then, when nothing seemed to be happening, many wandered away—perhaps confused, or perhaps satisfied that they’d found a nice easter-egg story about castles. But Time kept going, and hints started appearing that there was more to the story than just sand castles. A few dedicated readers obsessively cataloged every detail, watching every frame for clues and every changing pixel for new information. The xkcd forum thread on Time grew terrifyingly fast, developing a subculture with its own vocabulary, songs, inside jokes, and even a religion or two. And as Time unfolded, readers gradually figured out that it was a story, set far in the future, about one of the strangest phenomena in our world: The Mediterranean Sea sometimes evaporates, leaving dry land miles below the old sea level … and then fills back up in a single massive flood.
Time was a bigger project than I planned. All told, I drew 3,099 panels. I animated a starfield, pored over maps and research papers, talked with biologists and botanists, and created a plausible future language for readers to try to decode. I wrote the whole story before I drew the first frame, and had almost a thousand panels already drawn before I posted the first one. But as the story progressed, the later panels took longer to draw than I expected, and Time began—ironically—eating more and more of my time. Frames that went up every hour were sometimes taking more than an hour to make, and I spent the final months doing practically nothing but drawing. To the intrepid, clever, sometimes crazy readers who followed it the whole way through, watching every pixel change and catching every detail: Thank you. This was for you. It’s been quite a journey; I hope you enjoyed the ride as much as I did! P.S. A lot of people have asked if I can sell some kind of Time print collection (or a series of 3,099 t-shirts, where you run to the bathroom and change into a new one every hour). I’m afraid I don’t have anything like that in the works right now. I just made this because I thought it would be neat, and now that it’s done, my only plan is to spend the next eleven thousand years catching up on sleep. If you liked the project, you’re always welcome to donate via PayPal (xkcd@xkcd.com) or buy something from the xkcd store. Thank you. |
Narrative Nonfiction in any Classroom
| I use to wonder what my teachers and school librarians did while we were away from school. I imagined them rollerblading down the hallways, eating the elusive cafeteria cookies that always seemed to run out before my miserable Slot C lunch, and generally just having a blast while we were out of their hair. While the latter may have been a little true, I was foolish to think that teachers and librarians ever stopped working.
I'm sure most of you are thinking about your curriculum for next term. You are thinking what will engage my students? What will interest them? It's really really difficult to answer that question because every learner is different. One thing we have learned, however, is that everyone enjoys a good story from time to time which is why OverDrive is proud to offer Narrative Nonfiction as one of its most versatile genres. This genre, also known as Literary Nonfiction, lends itself to many different classrooms. It brings nonfiction to the English/Language Arts selections and succeeds because the stories are compelling much like their fiction counterparts. Even better? It works for other areas of the core curriculum like Science, History and Math just to name a few. For example, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot , would be an excellent addition to a Biology class. It details how one woman's cells lead to advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping, yet her family never saw a dime of the multimillion-dollar profit the cells generated. Your students learn of the importance of their genealogy, the power of their cells, while also getting a lesson in ethics.
Skloot's powerhouse is just one of hundreds that OverDrive has to offer! Consider these for your next class set! Here are a few of my favorites:
If you are interested in our Narrative Nonfiction selections, contact your Collection Specialist today!
Christina Bernecker is a School Account Specialist at OverDrive.
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The Bite of the Mango by Mariatu Kamara and Susan McClelland10 Covers and Cases for the Google Nexus 7 II (2nd Gen)
| A list of 10 covers and cases for the new Google Nexus 7 II (2nd Generation model 2013). Includes pictures of each cover. |
eBooks Change the Season Concept in Publishing
| Much like other areas of the entertainment industries, books fall into the concept of seasons. Television shows are filmed and aired in seasons–while other times of the year re-runs are broadcast–and the movie industry has long aligned itself with seasons in which to release blockbuster films, such as action movies in the summer and family-oriented films around the holidays. An article today for Publisher’s Weekly explains some of the thought processes and historical origins of the seasonal concept in traditional print publishing, and unlike other areas of entertainment, some of the reasons these seasons first began actually stem from the physical shipping of printed books to bookstores around the world, often by barge. But if ebooks don’t arrive by massive boats, why are they still being lumped into seasons for new releases? Certainly, physical books still have to be shipped to various retailers, but even that is a much faster and more cost effective process than it was in the early days of large-scale publishing. Is it possible that this is another case of “doing it the way it’s always been done?” Amazon Publishing, the book retailer’s traditional publishing house, was one of the first to make dramatic recent changes to how publishing works when it announced that it would begin paying its authors monthly royalties instead of quarterly, like the rest of the traditional industry, citing the monthly payments that self-published authors receive as the reason. Why punish a traditionally published author by only paying him four times a year, when he would be paid each month if he had self-published? However, digital is having an impact on this, to some extent. In the PW piece, publishers cited various reasons for sticking to a seasonal release concept, but insist that “sticking to the old ways” isn’t part of that decision making process: “Despite blurred seasons, most publishers have stuck to seasonal catalogues, although many are now digital. ‘It isn't just for nostalgic reasons that we still feel so strongly about the seasonal catalogue,’ said Norton president Drake McFeely. ‘Presenting our list whole and allowing recipients to see how the pieces fit together is still enormously important to us. Our catalogue is in many important ways our identity, and I know our affiliates feel the same way.’"
eBooks Change the Season Concept in Publishing is a post from: E-Reader News |
The Pi Pong clock
| First of all, thank you to everybody who sponsored us on yesterday’s London to Cambridge bike ride in support of Breakthrough Breast Cancer. We got to the end unscathed, Eben “won” by sprinting away from the rest of the pack about five miles out at Duxford, and many cereal bars and bananas were consumed. If you’d still like to sponsor us, you can do so at JustGiving.  Eben (can’t sing in tune, makes a mean risotto), James Adams (director of hardware, brews beer in his garage, welds things) and Emma (office manager, PhD in entomology, knows more about ladybirds than anyone else alive, good at punching). Click to sponsor. Back to the matter at hand. We found a Pong clock on YouTube, powered (of course) by a Raspberry Pi. It made us laugh. One side wins once an hour, the other once a minute: the result is a clock that’s weirdly compelling to watch. Don Clark, the Mind Behind, has made the code available at his Bitbucket account: it’s written in Python, and you’ll need PyGame to run it; Don was using Raspbian as his OS. Let us know if you incorporate a Pi into your home decoration scheme. We thought this was a super-cute way to tell the time.
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Sunday, July 28, 2013
Kobo has a 10 inch Tablet in Production – Codenamed Macallan
| Canadian based Kobo has started to release a number of new e-Readers every year, and a growing tablet line. The Kobo Arc was released at the tail end of last year and saw modest success in Canada. This makes two different tablet computers they have released and they are trying new things with a 10 inch tablet that will be released in September. The new Kobo tablet is currently codenamed Macallan and features a 10 inch full color touchscreen with a resolution of 2560×1600. The resolution is fairly amazing and blows the Nook HD, Kindle Fire HD 8.9 and the 10 inch Samsung Galaxy Tab out of the water. This will make magazines, games and movies look superb, although it will lose the portability factor a seven inch device brings to the table. Resolution of course, isn’t everything. This is why there is a quad-core 1.8 GHZ processor underneath the hood and 2 GB of RAM. All other specs are unknown, as the name and hardware were unearthed in a public benchmarking website, that has since been taken down. Still, you can assume it will still give you a solid audio experience with Kobo’s partnership with True Vision Audio and maintain the Tapestries technology that was incorporated in the ARC tablet. Tapestries, basically is Kobo’s UI that gives you unique directory and social media management. It also puts an emphasis on reading with the ability to buy eBooks. Kobo currently has a new six inch e-Reader at the FCC and likely this device should be ready for evaluation in the next few weeks. The company trend has been to announce a new product line at the same time.
Kobo has a 10 inch Tablet in Production – Codenamed Macallan is a post from: E-Reader News |
Good e-Reader News App Updated
| The Good e-Reader News app for Android has received a big update today! We have sped up the loading time when you first fire the app up for the first time and pull our featured news items very quickly. We have also alphabetized our topic section, which makes browsing our various news categories, easier than ever! Finally, we have really enhanced the app in many different ways and squashed some annoying bugs. Good e-Reader has been chronicling the rise of the entire modern era digital publishing industry and has been reviewing e-readers since they first started getting manufactured. We provide a free online news service that is written by some of the best people in the publishing industry and give you a play by play of all major events and trends. The Good e-Reader News HD app for Android is available via Google Play and our own Good e-Reader App Store! It is only available for tablets right now and will not work on your smartphone. Good e-Reader News App Updated is a post from: E-Reader News |
Digital Comics Best-Sellers for July 28 – Oh, the Injustice!
| Here’s my roundup of digital comics best-sellers from the leading platforms. 1. Injustice: Gods Among Us #28 The list begins and ends with digital-first comics, and the fact that the previous issue of Injustice: Gods Among Us doesn’t show up until number 15 suggests that readers are snapping up fresh copies of these weekly comics as they come out. 1. Scott Pilgrim: Precious Little Life, color edition, vol. 1 Everything on here except Superman #1 is a graphic novel or collected edition. It’s interesting to see Scott Pilgrim, which was released almost a year ago, in the number 1 spot; what on earth could have caused a surge that would bring it to the top of the Amazon charts? The Wolverine and Deadpool books doubtless got a bounce from both the Wolverine movie and the sale Amazon is having on Wolvering and Deadpool books. Amazon has a separate chart for single-issue comics; nine of the ten slots are taken by Injustice: Gods Among Us, with the most recent issue in the top spot. The one other comic is Superman #1, which Amazon was giving away for free for a while; this may have boosted the numbers. 1. Injustice: Gods Among Us #23 I stripped out the free books from Barnes and Noble’s list to make it compatible with the other lists. Bleach is still up there, and it’s interesting to note that the latest volume of Naruto is in the number 11 slot, just missing the top ten. So for some group of people, the Nook is a significant manga reading platform. iBooks 1. Injustice: Gods Among Us #27 So, Injustice: Gods Among Us continues to be the digital comics phenomenon. And here’s an interesting statistic from DC co-publisher Jim Lee: 30% of Injustice readers are new to comics. That’s not too surprising because although stars Superman and Batman, Injustice is based on a game, and the gaming audience is much bigger than the comics world. I checked the New York Times print graphic novel best-seller lists (hardcover and paperback) to see if there were any larger trends that would be affecting these digital charts—a surge in print sales of Scott Pilgrim, for instance—but there is literally no overlap between the lists, aside from the popularity of The Walking Dead. It’s as if they were in two different universes—which, indeed, they are. Digital Comics Best-Sellers for July 28 – Oh, the Injustice! is a post from: E-Reader News |
