| There is no denying that the Apple line of tablets is the most successful. A new report surveyed 7,500 teens and asked them about what phones and tablets they have or plan to buy. 61% of teens now own an iPhone, compared to 55% from a survey conducted in October 2013 and 40% in the fall of 2012. When it comes to tablets, 60% of teens own one, up from 56% in the fall. When it comes to iPad tablet ownership group 66% of teens have one, 55% full-sized, 11% iPad mini. 18% percent of teens who don’t own a tablet expect to buy one in the next sixth months and of those prospective buyers, 66% plan to choose an iPad. Last summer Samsung ran a campaign of advertisements that portrayed Apple users as being uncool. The plan seems to have backfired as iPads and iPhones are still the most popular out there. 60% of Teens Own an iPad is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
60% of Teens Own an iPad
Walking Dead Season 1 for Android Hits the Good e-Reader App Store
| TellTales masterpiece the Walking Dead Season 1 has finally hit Android 2.3 devices and is available for free at the Good e-Reader App Store. The first episode is free and each one costs a few dollars to play, this pack includes 400 days. The Walking Dead is an epic series that follows Lee Everett who meets and becomes the protector of orphaned Clementine. Many prominent game review companies have proclaimed this series as the best game of 2013. The essence of the game is making decisions in a mortality play. In most cases you choose dialog options and in others you have to swipe the screen to duck, run and dodge walkers. It has been available on iOS, Xbox and a myriad of other game systems for quite sometime and many people have been clamoring for an Android release.The day is finally here and you can play it on your phone, tablet or Nvidia Shield. Download it today from the Good e-Reader App Store. Walking Dead Season 1 for Android Hits the Good e-Reader App Store is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Easy as Pi Piano
| I’m on the fence about whether or not this is an effective way to learn how to play the piano: but it’s definitely an effective way to learn about electronics, Python, servo motors, and why lasers are cool. Shane Snipe and his dad took about 50 hours to put this project together – astonishingly, neither of them had ever written any Python before they started the project. Over at YouTube, Shane says:
Thanks Shane, and thanks Dad! |
Office 2013 classes are now available!
All of our online classes for Microsoft Office 2013 are now available! |
Podcast: New and featured content for April
 Calling all Marketplace shoppers! Our April collection highlights podcast is now available on OverDrive's Learning Center. In it, we give you the inside scoop on some of the highly-anticipated new additions to OverDrive Marketplace, including hit movies from Starz Digital Media and popular textbooks from Pearson. We also highlight the latest crop of publishers and streaming video suppliers to partner with OverDrive, whose content you can expect to see in Marketplace soon. As always, we wrap up our podcast with our personal picks for the month, news about sales, and additional tips about placing orders in Marketplace—all in under 15 minutes. You can access our Collection Highlights: April podcast now through the end of the month on OverDrive's Learning Center (find it in the "Collection Development" section). We hope to see you there!
Carrie Smith is a Technical Writer at OverDrive.
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Just touched down in London Town
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We will also be giving a presentation titled, "Connect with Readers Around the World" that will cover our HTML5 reading platform, OverDrive Read. You can check this out both Wednesday, April 9 at 1:30pm-1:50pm, and Thursday, April 10 at 3:00pm-3:20pm in the Technology Theatre to learn how OverDrive Read has simplified the eBook reading experience, making borrowing titles on the go easier and more engaging than ever. Visit us at stand #V500 Tuesday through Thursday, and if you weren't able to make it to the London Book Fair this year, be sure to follow us on Twitter and check out the hashtag #LBF14 for all the latest from the conference!
Adam Sockel is a Marketing Communications Specialist at OverDrive.  |
OverDrive eReading Rooms Engage Libraries’ Youngest Patrons
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But one area where digital adoption has traditionally been slow to take root is in children’s and teens’ books, a fact that digital content provider OverDrive is helping to erase with the opportunity for its member libraries to offer digital eReading Rooms. These virtual spaces work much the same as a physical location that caters to young library patrons, but still keeps the need for digital adoption in mind. A recent blog post from OverDrive outlined how one library in San Antonio is making headway with the incorporation of two eReading Rooms, one for younger readers and one focused specifically for teens. “The San Antonio Public Library (SAPL) is committed to providing the best possible customer service to our patrons, and kids and teens represent large segments of our patron population. The ability to customize the collections within the eReading Rooms allows us to tailor the content to align with library initiatives like the Summer Reading Program and Teen Tech Week and yearly themed content such as National Poetry Month and Women's History Month. Also, developmentally appropriate material is now more easily accessible to teachers and parents since content can be searched by reading and interest level. These eReading Rooms bring attention to the great richness of SAPL's collections, while helping us to accommodate the evolving interest that our patrons have for accessing content digitally,” explained Caitlin Cowart, Community and Public Relations Manager, in the post. While Cowart went on to explain that a project like this is not a catch-all solution for encouraging reading and library participation, it is a valuable tool for reaching patrons where they are and for making the library an important part of the community for all citizens, not just the few who come to the physical location for content, education, and technology needs. “The library understands that the digital marketplace is maturing. Remote, online access to library content and resources that is personalized and user-friendly drives the virtual user and positions SAPL as a responsive, innovative resource for a new, technology-conscious generation of library patrons.”
OverDrive eReading Rooms Engage Libraries’ Youngest Patrons is a post from: Good e-Reader |
E-reading Leading to Alarming “Digital Brain” Phenomenon
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In some ways, the widespread adoption of digital reading has lead to an illusion that more consumers than ever before are reading, even if that doesn’t necessarily translate into book consumption or publishing sales. Whether it’s Facebook status updates, text messages, or War and Peace, people are reading. But is this a case of quantity over quality? An article by Michael S. Rosenwald in the Washington Post has highlighted the dangers of having so much content available literally at our fingertips, leading to a phenomenon researchers are calling “digital brain.” Essentially, there is so much to read now that consumers are merely skimming the content, looking for the highlights and a few keywords before moving on to the next activity. Besides training our brains to enjoy an attentive-deficit-disorder approach to reading, scientists fear we may lose the capacity to read for in-depth understanding, knowledge enhancement, and pure enjoyment. According to the interview, "I worry that the superficial way we read during the day is affecting us when we have to read with more in-depth processing," said Maryanne Wolf, a Tufts University cognitive neuroscientist and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. Wolf’s fear seems to be a valid one, considering the development of the human brain over time to reach the capacity we now have for the written word. But what may be even more alarming than our continued ability to read and enjoy the written word is the devaluation that this skimming behavior brings to literature and news. As our online world takes precedence and we train ourselves to look for the shorter sentences that permeate digital text, will our ability to read and enjoy the classics suffer? Researchers like Wolf say yes. But while some are alarmed by this apparently unnatural evolution towards a different mode of reading, we have to remember that we no longer speak like Shakespeare’s audience members or write like Chaucer’s early fans. The evolution of written content isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as long as the capacity to find interested reading remains intact.
E-reading Leading to Alarming “Digital Brain” Phenomenon is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Apple Requests Stay in Proceedings
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The trial and subsequent proceedings have not gone well for the tech giant, with Apple’s attorneys openly stating that this amounts to nothing more than a witch hunt and that the judge presiding over the suits has agenda against Apple. While the publishers involved in the case settled out of court but maintain that there was no wrongdoing–citing that the settlement terms were ultimately less expensive than the legal fees to fight the lawsuit–Apple was not offered that opportunity yet has remained smugly confident that it will come out on top. In this recent motion, Apple’s attorneys state their confidence in winning the pending appeals is the deciding factor. In their minds, if and not when they win, the proceedings would be undermined if they were allowed to move forward at this time. Apple has had its share of pain in this process, with an outsider moderator appointed to oversee the company’s dealings in order to avoid future antitrust violations. The company was accused of not playing nicely with its court appointed moderator, leading to new appearances in court to be reminded that they will comply with the ruling and turn over crucial documents in a timely way to this moderator. Apple is awaiting the May court date to determine the damages they will pay for attempting to oust Amazon in the e-reading market by colluding with publishers to artificially raise ebook prices. Although the early figures on the damages seem staggering on the surface, the 200-plus million dollars can actually be tripled under punitive damages regulations; that resulting $800 million–give or take a few million–would be approximately .5% of Apple’s cash on hand.
Apple Requests Stay in Proceedings is a post from: Good e-Reader |
