| Tesco is one of Britain’s largest supermarket chains and they have just opened up a brand new digital bookstore. Blinkbox Books is primarily aimed at existing customers who buy groceries, as they earn Tesco Club Cards with every eBook purchase they make. Blinkbox has hundreds of thousands of titles available from most major publishers. There seems to be a 30% deal going on from authors such as James Patterson, David Baldacci, Danielle Steel, and Jeffery Archer. How exactly do you buy and read books with this new platform? Basically you have to download Blinkbox Books app for iOS and Android. You can register a free account and buy and read books directly in the app. If you shop at the grocery store you can tie in your loyalty card to earn rewards. Tesco Unveils Blinkbox Books is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Tesco Unveils Blinkbox Books
Barnes and Noble Announces eBook Refunds
| Barnes and Noble has sent out an email to customers who have purchased eBooks from April 1, 2010 and May 21, 2012. The Nations largest bookseller has said that credits will be available in customers accounts within the next few days. Anyone who has purchased an eBook from Hachette, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster will have $3.17 for New York Times Bestsellers and $0.73 for a normal eBook. The credits can be used to purchase any eBook you want for B&N and the credits will be adjusted to the total purchase price. You might not want to wait too long to use the credits, as they expire next April. The B&N email will outline exactly how much you can expect to receive. For a list of your book purchases that qualified for a credit, please visit our Title Lookup Page. The eBook Settlement is the result of an antitrust lawsuit filed by the State Attorneys General and Class Plaintiffs about the price of electronic books (“eBooks”). Settlements were reached with publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Penguin in 2013. Barnes and Noble Announces eBook Refunds is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Kindle Credits Now Available from eBook Settlement
| Amazon has dispatched eBook refunds to millions of readers living in the USA. Anyone who has purchased a digital book from Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Penguin or Macmillan between April 1, 2010 and May 21, 2012 gets a credit of $3.17 if that book was a New York Times bestseller and a credit of $0.73 if the book was never a NYT bestseller. Amazon is the first company to begin offering credits to customers. The Seattle based e-commence giant has begun to send out emails today, informing customers that they have refunds are available. Customers don’t need to do anything special to get the credits, they are automatically available in your account. Under the terms of the agreements, you have until March 25 2015 to use the credits to buy content. Canadian customers that purchased eBooks from Amazon, before they opened their dedicated .ca store, now have credits available. The credits are only available if you basically bought eBooks from the main .com address between April 1, 2010 and May 21, 2012. Why is there credits available between these particular dates? This is primarily due to “Agency” pricing, which had published collude with Apple to have a fixed price. This model was best for competition, because Amazon lost the ability to undercut the competition into oblivion. Last year all major publishers agreed to settle with the Justice Department, instead of fighting it out in court. Sadly, when agency was abolished, Kobo and Sony abandoned the US market and B&N saw record loses. Kindle Credits Now Available from eBook Settlement is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Ray Ban and Oakley to Launch Google Glass Compatible Frames
| Google Glass hasn’t proven to be as successful as its makers may have expected it to be. To make matters worse, wearable tech users are even open to charges of invasion of privacy. Nevertheless, Google has hit upon new ways to make its wearable tech more appealing to the masses, such as its recent deal with Luxottica, owners of the immensely popular eyeglass brands Ray Ban and Oakley. This will hopefully push wearables into mainstream fashion rather than being seen as a niche product. “We believe that a strategic partnership with a leading player like Google is the ideal platform for developing a new way forward in our industry and answering the evolving needs of consumers on a global scale,” said Luxottica Chief Executive Officer Andrea Guerra. According to the new agreement, a special team of experts from Google and Luxottica will be tasked with designing a new range of frames that will be compatible with Google Glass. This will help ensure mass availability of the internet connected eye wear, which so far has been restricted to the US. The price is expected to drop a bit, which is extremely important in order for smart glasses to grow. Google will also have the advantage of Luxottica's extensive market presence in its efforts to make its smart glasses more alluring to buyers. As of now, only the Ray Ban and Oakley brands are included in the Google Glass plan, though it's not known when the first frames are expected to hit the streets. In any case, these will supplement Google's own line of frames that launched earlier this year. However, some key aspects pertaining to Google Glass still need to be resolved, including battery issues.
Ray Ban and Oakley to Launch Google Glass Compatible Frames is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Apple iTunes Now Includes NPR’s 24 Hour News Channel
| Apple's iTunes online radio service had it all, except a daily news feature. Now, the addition of NPR will bring 24 hour live news to listeners, including shows like Morning Edition and All Things Considered. The Washington, DC-based non-profit media organization hasn’t stated what the business aspect of the deal will be like or in what ways it could generate revenue for NPR. Typically, Apple offers licensing fees to the artist or record companies whose music is streamed online via iTunes. "The public radio audience is very digital savvy, but there are certainly some of the millennials and other folks who are looking for their listening experience exclusively on digital,” said Zach Brand, NPR’s VP of digital media while speaking to Recode. “So we want to reach them wherever they are.”
Apple iTunes Now Includes NPR’s 24 Hour News Channel is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Glock around the clockenspiel
| Are you a primary or secondary teacher in the UK? Do you want some free CPD? Apply to join our free Raspberry Picademy here at Pi Towers in Cambridge with our amazing education team: closing date for applications is March 28. Ivan Roulson from RPi Kitchen (really worth some of your time this afternoon if you fancy browsing your way around some rather excellent Pi projects) was at the local recycling centre earlier this year, when he came upon an abandoned glockenspiel. There are so many places this story could go from here, but you’ve probably already guessed what happened next. Ivan took that sad glockenspiel home and gave it a Pi for brains. He designed and built some hammers, and hooked up a motor mechanism and some rubber bands to make the hammers snap back up once they’d made contact. Ivan then proceeded to make the whole apparatus dingle-dongle its way through some sweet, sweet music using Python. The motors are hooked up to the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO pins using two ULN2803 Darlington driver ICs – Ivan’s plan is to build a dedicated PCB to do the job. This is not the first glockenspiel project we’ve seen (Mike Cook produced one a couple of years ago, with instructions you can follow to reproduce the project at home), but we very much liked the mechanism Ivan built to make his setup work. We’re dying to see a project where someone adapts Sonic Pi to interface with GPIO: seeing some of you replace the |
Amazon Issuing Credits for eBooks Antitrust Settlement
| Amazon has started sending out emails this morning notifying customers of credits being issued as part of the eBooks Antitrust Settlement. According to the eBooks Settlement website, other ebook retailers are also going to start issuing credits and sending out checks (Sony and Google) to customers who bought ebooks from the big 5 publishers during […] |
Marketplace updates: Moving titles between carts
| If you've logged into Marketplace recently, you may notice that things have changed a bit. On March 12, we released Marketplace v2.5, an update chock-full of new features that addresses some of the most common requests from our library partners. One of the most asked for features: moving and copying titles between carts. With the update, you can now easily move or copy one title or a bulk of titles from one cart to another from the Carts details page. This will help those libraries and schools with multiple content selectors or those that rely on our Select Express tools such as Holds Manager and RTL for title recommendations. If you are working on an order and would like to transfer a title from one cart to another, please follow the steps below: Copying titles
Moving titles
Check back soon for information on other new enhancements to Marketplace. If you have any questions, please contact your Collection Development Specialist, or email collectionteam@overdrive.com.
Rob Mooney is a Collection Development Specialist at OverDrive.
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Amazon Offered Shares in UK Delivery Firm Yodel
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According to an article on the deal for The Guardian, Amazon was offered the shares at an eyebrow-raising discount, but that news isn’t all that alarming considering that Yodel has been voted the worst delivery service in the country for two years in a row. Even independent bookshops have reported horror stories of trying to work with the company, including late deliveries, damaged shipments, and outright failure to deliver products. Its status as one of the worst shipping options is sad, considering it’s the number two shipping company in the UK in terms of volume. Amazon has come under fire in the US for acquiring companies but still remaining distanced and silent when it comes to consumer demand for improvements. A growing number of authors held out hope that Amazon would intervene on the author bullying issue after Amazon acquired book review and discovery site Goodreads, but that hasn’t come to pass. One thing that Amazon is passionate about, though, is customer service and experience. If this deal translates into using Yodel to maintain its high standards of delivery–especially in light of charging consumers for a Prime membership and offering stellar delivery options as part of that membership–it’s not likely that Amazon will let Yodel remain this low in the public perception for long.
Amazon Offered Shares in UK Delivery Firm Yodel is a post from: Good e-Reader |
The Big Five Settled Out of Court and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt
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In the almost $300 million settlement that five of the then-Big Six had to pay, why is my sixth-of-a-latte settlement so small? The lion’s share of the damages in a class action suit go to the attorneys involved in the settlement, and around thirty-five states’ attorneys general were involved in the investigation and allegations of price fixing. There were also a handful of class action suits brought about by independent law firms on behalf of consumers. I bet all those guys each got to have their own lattes. More importantly, though, the distribution of the remaining portion of the settlement–the part that actually trickled down to consumers–was actually based on spending activity. The more ebooks you bought from these publishers, the more reimbursement for overpaying you received. Big Foot porn wasn’t a real genre back then, so I hadn’t bought that many ebooks when this all went down. According to the message from Amazon, “The credit results from legal settlements reached with publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Penguin in antitrust lawsuits filed by State Attorneys General and Class Plaintiffs about the price of eBooks. “You don’t have to do anything to claim your credit, we have already added your credit to your Amazon account. We will automatically apply your available credit to your next purchase of a Kindle book or print book sold by Amazon.com, regardless of publisher. The credit applied to your purchase will appear in your order summary. If your account does not reflect this credit, please contact Amazon’s customer service.”
The Big Five Settled Out of Court and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt is a post from: Good e-Reader |
New York Public Library Implements New eBook Discovery Engine
| If you are a regular visitor to the New York Public library to browse their selection of eBooks, you are in for a treat. There is a new discovery engine added to search that will offer algorithmic book recommendations. The new search engine is a product of the libraries new relationship with Zola Books. Zola, is using technology from Bookish, which is a company they recently acquired. Bookish failed to get any traction in the industry, but was a pet project launched by Hachette, Simon & Schuster and Penguin. Publishers recognize there is a problem with eBook discovery and this Bookish program was thought to have solved it. How exactly does the eBook discovery platform work? Bookish Recommends uses an algorithm that identifies recommended books based on similar characteristics. Unlike recommendations that are derived from what other readers are checking out, the Bookish engine matches users to books based on dozens of attributes and filters out irrelevant titles. Users visiting the Library's online catalog can find recommended books by clicking on a selected title to see a set of related titles that might be of interest. When you visit the New York Public Library site and search for a book title, there will be recommendations now on the right hand side. Not all books in the system have the expanded search feature yet, but most do. New York Public Library Implements New eBook Discovery Engine is a post from: Good e-Reader |
