| Thousands of scientific research and reports are issued every year and citation is a very big deal. The more a specific report is validated through other peoples research and more profound impact it can have. These days, articles that are ten years or younger tend to show up in Google searches and are very easy to find. What about the reports written in the early 20th century? The impact of older articles has grown substantially over 1990-2013. In 2013, 36% of citations were to articles that are at least 10 years old; this fraction has grown 28% since 1990. Scholarly research organizations have been digitizing their old reports at an accelerated rate the last five years. Now that finding and reading relevant older articles is about as easy as finding and reading recently published articles, significant advances aren’t getting lost on the shelves and are influencing work worldwide for years after. Never has it been so easy to look up a circuit diagram, learn about gene therapy or read the latest papers about black holes. Old Scientific Papers get a New Lease on Life is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Saturday, November 15, 2014
Old Scientific Papers get a New Lease on Life
How to get a Kindle e-Reader or Fire Tablet for Free
| Black Friday is two weeks away and the holiday season is quickly approaching. Amazon is bringing back a program that will allow you to try a Kindle e-Reader or Fire Tablet for free for one month. At the end of the 30 days if you do not return it, they will bill your credit card for the full purchase price, send it back before the month is over and no worries. The latest generation Kindle Voyage and Kindle Basic Touch are not apart of this promotion. Instead, they are letting customers try the second generation Kindle Paperwhite and two tablets they released last year. Likely, this promotion is a gambit to try and get rid of older stock because the newer devices are proving to be popular. This promotion is only valid for select Prime members in the US, international customers need not apply. You need a valid credit card as your 1 Click Purchase and you have to make sure it does not expire beyond the 30 days. How to get a Kindle e-Reader or Fire Tablet for Free is a post from: Good e-Reader |
E Ink Q3 2014 Financials Are a Breath of Fresh Air
| When it comes to e-reader technology, no company has played a more pivotal role than e Ink. The Taiwanese e-paper giant has been responsible for all of the screen technology found on the Kindle, Kobo and Nooks of the world. E Ink has had a robust Q3 2014, with revenue soaring to $132.95 million US. Orders for the company’s EPD technology remained steady during the quarter. E Ink Carta, which is over a year old is primary used on the Amazon Kindle Voyage and Tolino Vision 2. Meanwhile, orders for Kobo Aura H2O remained steady and there has been increased demand for the YotaPhone 2 and Sony’s SmartBand Talk. E Ink also reported that its earnings after tax were up over 17% sequentially in the quarter and that total revenues for the first three quarters of 2014 amounted to $353 million US. E Ink Q3 2014 Financials Are a Breath of Fresh Air is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Should Libraries Be Making their own e-Reader Apps?
| Libraries all over North America have been embracing digital and over 90% have some sort of eBook collection. Not only do they have eBooks but audiobooks, digital magazines and newspapers. Many libraries deal with more than one company for their digital content, which makes the lives of patrons a little more difficult because they have to install many different apps on their smartphones and tablets to get the job done. What if things were simpler? The Queens Library system in New York has developed their own proprietary app for Android and iOS. It offers library patrons seamless search and access to audiobooks from Acoustik, magazines from Zinio, and eBooks from OverDrive and Baker & Taylor's Axis 360 platform. Other features include location, mapping, and contact information for each branch, a catalog search, an ISBN barcode scanning function that enables users to scan books in retail environments to see if titles are available at their library, an events schedule that enables registration, an "ask a librarian" live chat service, a contact information form, and even a text-to-donate option. Since the apps launch in July they had 5,400 installations on iOS and more than 3,300 on Android. This has prompted Queens to consider developing apps for other libraries, leveraging their 50 person IT team to make digital content more accessible. Queens is doing an amazing thing. Instead of forcing their patrons to install the Overdrive Media Console, Zinio, Acoustic and the Axis360 app, they have one app to rule them all. This dramatically simplifies the browsing and consuming of digital content, which is tremendously intuitive. It remains to be seen if Queens can market this to other libraries, but the core concept is sound. All they are doing is simply using the public API tools these vendors make available and presenting it in a neat little package. I am sure major libraries all over North America could make something like this if they had the time and inclination. Should Libraries Be Making their own e-Reader Apps? is a post from: Good e-Reader |
