| This week Dropbox updated their main app and released a new photo and email client. Family Guy unveiled their Simpsons Tapped Out competitor and many other great new games were released. Iron Force – Take part in epic, explosive multiplayer tank battles in Iron Force. Join forces with your friends in team-based battles, or have a free-for-all. The Walking Dead: Season One – Play as Lee Everett, a convicted criminal, who has been given a second chance at life in a world devastated by the undead. With corpses returning to life and survivors stopping at nothing to maintain their own safety, protecting an orphaned girl named Clementine may offer him redemption in a world gone to hell. Experience events, meet people and visit locations that foreshadow the story of Deputy Sheriff Rick Grimes. A tailored game experience – actions, choices and decisions you make will affect how your story plays out across the entire series. Police Parking 3D Extended – This 3D cop parking game is for all the heroes. This cop car simulator games simulates the police car as in the real world. After another duty shift while police cars parking in the park, you need to get the criminal to the police station and away from the crime scene. The police car is ready for another day of chasing down the most wanted outlaws. This cop car simulator will bring you the joy you need today. Make the streets of the city safer in this 3D cop parking game in this real 3d city with realistic 3D graphics during different parking situations. Goat Rampage – The most ridiculous animal simulator available for the Android. Use your Goat to smash as many objects as possible to gain the highest score. Make it crash everything around in the fastest possible way. This is a free version with one limited level. Amazon Fresh – Not quite a new app, but with the release of Amazons new Dash scanning tool, Fresh has been updated to take advantage of this system! Order groceries online. Distiller – Distiller is your companion, guide, and collection as you grow the whiskey side of your life. Get a personalized whiskey recommendation for any situation, whether you're at a bar with your friends, growing your personal collection, discovering a new flavor, or giving a gift. We go beyond the label to offer suggestions based on your tastes matched with the unique characteristics of each bottle. Family Guy The Quest for Stuff – After another epic battle with the giant chicken, Peter Griffin has accidentally destroyed Quahog! Play for FREE and rally your favorite FG characters (even Meg) to save the city in a hilarious new adventure from the writers of Family Guy. Or don't, and regret it forever! Heartbleed Detector – The Lookout Heartbleed Detector can be used to determine whether or not your Android device is vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug in OpenSSL. This app works by determining what version of OpenSSL your device is using. If your device is using one of the affected versions of OpenSSL, we then check to see if the specific vulnerable feature called heartbeats is enabled. Carousel by Dropbox – Carousel is the new gallery from Dropbox for your life's memories. Mailbox by Dropbox – Mailbox is a completely redesigned inbox that makes email light, fast, and mobile-friendly. Quickly swipe messages to your archive or trash. Scan an entire conversation at once with chat-like organization. Snooze emails until later with the tap of a button — they'll return to your inbox automatically so you can focus on what's important now. Top New Android Apps of the Week – April 13th 2014 is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Sunday, April 13, 2014
Top New Android Apps of the Week – April 13th 2014
eBook Review: A Million Ways to Die in the West by Seth MacFarlane
|
Seth MacFarlane is a true Renaissance man. As the creator of the animated series Family Guy and co-creator of American Dad, not to mention the voice talent of many of those shows’ characters, he achieved a measure of notoriety for the genre of stupid and mildly offensive humor. But MacFarlane is also a Grammy-nominated singer, director and producer of one of the top-grossing movies of all time for its rating, and of course, bestselling author of a first novel that has already been adapted for the upcoming film of the same name. A Million Ways to Die in the West is not for everyone. As a very loose rendition of historical fiction, it requires an ability to enjoy the suspension of belief in order to appreciate the humor, as well as an ability to look past the few offensive remarks to that are both poignant stabs at the time period as well as timely interpretations of the fact that prejudice and racism are far from dead. Albert Stark is a sheep farmer in the town of Old Stump, a miserable place that makes the show Deadwood look like the Vegas strip. The title of the book comes from the very real understanding in Albert’s world that every single day is an exercise in not letting something random kill him. Snake bites, cholera water, gunslingers, wild animal attacks, and all out nastiness are just a handful of the myriad ways that one could end up dead in that time and place; of course, if the actual disease, crime, or accident doesn’t kill you, the doctor’s attempts to save you will certainly finish the job. Interestingly, MacFarlane’s take on history and humor is actually a beautiful love story, with the lives of several intertwined characters playing out on the page. He gives the same attention to the backstories of side characters that he gives to Stark, all without dragging down the pacing in any way. My favorites must be Edward and Ruth, a mild-mannered cobbler and his fiancee of six years (the town brothel’s employee of the year) who have yet to have relations because it would be ungodly, what with them being Christians and all. In some ways, the best aspect of the book is the fact that the author’s ingrained sense of humor shines through, but it is ultimately far more intelligent than what plays out each week on his television shows. While somehow meeting at the crossroads of asinine and genius, the book is a fantastic, in-one-sitting delight.
eBook Review: A Million Ways to Die in the West by Seth MacFarlane is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Spanish Language eBook Market Comes Into Its Own
|
But the foreign-language category of ebooks is making tremendous headway. Readers have been delighted by both companies that make foreign translations of English language books available, as well as companies like Le French Book that operate in reverse, taking modern-day bestselling French titles and making them available in English to US and UK audiences via ebook. But recent growth in the foreign language ebook catalogs of many major retailers has demonstrated an increased interest on the part of consumers who want the portability, instant download access, and typically lower cost of digital editions. Where the Amazon Kindle en Espanol catalog launched in 2012 with a minor smattering of titles compared to its offering in English, that number of ebooks has now doubled. Publishers are also coming on board with Spanish ebooks, working to release their backlist titles that never saw translation. One area that still remains a problem for translated ebooks is indie publishing, encompassing both small press publishers and self-published authors. A translation of a full-length novel can easily run as much as $10,000 or more, per language, and without the backing of a major publishing house to foot the bill, it falls to the indie publisher or the author to find a translator and negotiate the fee. Authors like Judith Glynn who took the risk on an investment of that size are still struggling to put their books in front of Spanish-speaking readers, largely because less than half of the reported Spanish speaking population in the US reads books in Spanish, according to a post by Publisher’s Weekly.
Spanish Language eBook Market Comes Into Its Own is a post from: Good e-Reader |
UK eBook Lending Program a Success for Libraries, Publishers
 Photo courtesy of stuff.co.nz A recent program for UK libraries to lend ebooks has been considered not only a success for institutions and patrons, but also for publishers given the number of click through sales that resulted from borrows. The report, given at a panel at the London Book Fair this week, was from the Society of Chief Librarians (SCL) president Janene Cox. The program, launched on March 3rd, 2014, in four areas of the country, gave visitors to the physical libraries access to content that wasn’t available elsewhere, including new releases. While visitors still had to come into their libraries to access the list of titles, they were gaining this access to content that wasn’t readily available for device lending elsewhere. The results of the pilot have already been enlightening and positive, and interestingly have also been in line with patron behavior in various pilots and studies conducted by different companies in different countries. Sourcebooks and OverDrive teamed up last year to study the effects of unlimited checkouts and free simultaneous access to one title in particular, coupled with publisher branding of the book. Several years ago, Kobo released the results from its online marketplace that looked at user behavior when ebooks were available for free or at nearly no cost, which is the correlating cost for library patrons. In almost every aspect, these studies have shown that publishers benefit when their books are readily available for borrowing. The click through rate in library lending is fairly high, with many of the patrons purchasing titles before even finishing the book. As in the Sourcebooks experiment, sales of that author’s other titles–not related in a series to the title that was made available–also increased, as did his social media following as readers sought him out online. eBook lending has been a struggle for the industry, with different publishers experimenting with different lending parameters and limitations in an effort to protect the interests of their companies and their authors. Libraries have now been shown to be a source of revenue for publishers, not a source of contention.
UK eBook Lending Program a Success for Libraries, Publishers is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Tim Waterstone Predicts eBook Decline in the UK
| You would be very hard pressed to go a single week without hearing about digital books. Companies are absorbing other companies, new startups launch a compelling discovery site or even get involved in a eBook subscription service. For the first eight months of 2013, eBook sale were worth $800 million in the US, down 5% on the same period the previous year, according to the Association of American Publishers. The founder of Waterstones Books in the UK says that eBooks are just a flash in the pan and will fizzle out in short order. During a recent interview with the Daily Telegraph, Tim Waterstone proclaimed “eBooks have developed a share of the market, of course they have,” he said. ”But every indication – certainly from America – shows the share is already in decline. The indications are that it will do exactly the same in the UK.” He went on mention “I think you read and hear more garbage about the strength of the eBook revolution than anything else I’ve known,” Waterstone added that predictions of the demise of books were grossly exaggerated, saying: "The product is so strong, the interest in reading is so deeply rooted in the culture and human soul of this country that it is immovable. The traditional, physical book is hanging on. I'm absolutely sure we will be here in 40 years' time.” In the UK, 3.3 million e-books were sold in April 2013, according to Nielsen research – down 0.1% on the same month the previous year. Meanwhile, hardback book sales rose 11.5%. in the first eight months of 2013. Tim Waterstone Predicts eBook Decline in the UK is a post from: Good e-Reader |
