| Plastic Logic is a company in flux, they have yet to secure a meaningful contract to utilize their e-paper and are stuck in an endless loop of research and development. In order to better position themselves for the future, the company has split itself into two autonomous companies. Plastic Logic will remain as an EPD developer and producer and will mainly their factories in Dresden, Germany. Their United Kingdom arm will be now known as FlexEnable and will primarily focus their efforts on licensing out their technology to display makers. Indro Mukerjee Chairman of Plastic Logic said “I believe that the full potential of plastic electronics is now emerging as transformational developments in flexible transistor performance and bold, new concepts drive more and more applications. This, combined with the proven manufacturability and scalability of our transistor technology platform, makes this a defining moment for the industry. I look forward to working with our many partners and colleagues to fulfill the tremendous promise of plastic electronics in this exciting new era.” Recently the e-paper and display industry has been collapsing, which is indicative to tech companies being risk adverse. Pixel QI recently announced bankruptcy and their IP is currently in flux. GT Advanced Technologies went bankrupt after Apple pulled out of the deal that would have seen sapphire displays being employed on their next generation of phones and tablets. Liquavista which Amazon purchased from Samsung has never had a single commercially viable product and Mirasol color e-paper has been a massive disappointment. Plastic Logic Splits Into Two Different Companies is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Plastic Logic Splits Into Two Different Companies
Fall in love with February’s romance sale
| Just in time for the month of love, OverDrive is offering 30-50% off over 2,000 titles from our Romance collection. The sale, on now, continues through February 28, 2015.
The latest from Robyn Carr's popular Thunder Point series, The Homecoming follows Seth Sileski, a former town athlete and scholar. It's been a long time since Seth was the high school star everyone knows him to be, but he has to try to convince the people he cares about, including former flame Iris McKinley, that he's changed for the better. For Fifty Shades of Grey fans, pick up the first book of the Alpha series, Alpha by Jasinda Wilder. The heroine of this story is struggling to pay the bills and make ends meet when suddenly, a check for $10,000 shows up in the mail from an unknown sender. The next month, another check comes and another, for a year. But when a limo arrives at her home with a man claiming it's time to "pay your debt," she realizes that nothing is free.
Don't miss out on this amazing opportunity to expand your digital collection with popular titles from Sourcebooks, Baker Publishing Group, Random House, Hachette, Harlequin, Dreamspinner, NLA Digital, HarperCollins and more! See more content on sale at http://partners.overdrive.com/content-sales. *Some titles in lists may have limited regional or platform availability. Emma Kanagaki is a Collection Development Analyst with OverDrive. |
Kobo Set to Inherit 100,000 Blinkbox Books Customer Accounts
| Once again Kobo is going to be the beneficiary of another failed ebook business like they were last year when Sony decided to close their ebook stores in North America, Europe, and Australia. Tesco’s blinkbox Books will be closing for good on February 28th, 2015. This comes after an anticipated agreement with Waterstones to purchase […] |
Benchmarking Raspberry Pi 2
| If you follow us on Twitter, you’ll notice that I put a call out earlier today for people who’d benchmarked their Raspberry Pi 2 – I wanted to be able to share some benchmarking results with you this afternoon.
(Get well soon, Martin!) Our old friend Dave Hunt (click on that link – it’ll take you to some of Dave’s projects, which are among the most beautiful we’ve seen made with a Raspberry Pi) has done some thorough benchmarking against a range of other devices. Click on the table to learn more and to see some very illuminating graphs. The good folks at Adafruit have also been busy benchmarking, this time against the B+, and they also found themselves coming up with some really impressive results (a 7x improvement in some cases); click on the image to learn more. Finally, here’s a really nice side-by-side comparison of the browser experience of the old B+ and a shiny new Pi 2. I recognise that second website Marco Barisione visits. |
Magazine Media in the Digital Publishing Era
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One particular panel at the conference included executives from Rodale, Conde Nast, Time, Meredith, and Hearst Publishing, and the question was posed to those industry leaders. "You don't define yourself by your distribution vehicle and the magazine industry did that for too long,” answered Joe Ripp, CEO of Time, Inc. Caysey Welton, in an article on the conference for FolioMag.com, made a poignant observation on Ripp’s response: “He makes a compelling point, but it doesn't really answer the question. It's true that most magazine brands are doing a lot more than producing a print or digital magazine. But, at the end of the day, magazines are still the core product for most brands. What's more, how does adding the word ‘media’ redefine the industry? By definition magazines are media; so adding the word is redundant and doesn't actually speak to what's happening, which is that brands and companies have more competition for eyeballs than ever before so they are building audiences across multiple platforms and extending themselves beyond content. In turn, that is disrupting the tried and true business model that magazines operated within for roughly a century.” The observation is especially interesting given the rise in popularity of digital magazines and their subscription apps. Zinio, for example, announced a new library partnership this morning that will bring nearly 300 magazine titles to library patrons with free access; leading all-you-can eat and library subscription app PressReader has upped that number to over 1,000 titles. With such a selection of content to choose from, is the magazine publishing sector keeping up, or is this a situation such as affects the book publishing space, in which a handful of major publishers control the content and therefore don’t feel the pressure to adapt and keep up? According to Welton, the answer is yes. “There seems to be an implicit need to stay connected to the core product that built these five major publishing companies, and the industry—magazines. That's where things get a little dicey. Magazines, while still the bread and butter for most, will continue to decline in terms of where they fit into the revenue pie. Ripp admitted that, but said, ‘We need to invest in new things that will offset that [decline].'”
Magazine Media in the Digital Publishing Era is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Backlash Against Mockingbird Sequel as Concerns for Author’s Status Come Out
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Reports from various news sources have noted the coincidental timing in the death of the author’s long-time attorney and older sister, Alice Lee, who by many accounts was the instrumental force behind guarding the author’s privacy and career. Alice Lee retired at the age of 100 and passed away only a few months ago, leaving another attorney in her practice to serve her place as the safeguard of Harper Lee’s interests and career. Now, attorney Tonja Carter reportedly advocates on behalf of the author, but that relationship has come under fire for a number of recent events, including one in which the author accidentally signed away her rights to her original work while the attorney was looking on. One Gawker article outlined in great detail some suspicious activity involving the author’s copyrights, lawsuits and letters that intended to represent the author but did not in fact represent her true feelings, and even visitation privileges from the author’s oldest friends being formally denied in writing. The article takes pains to point out a very strange relationship, as this attorney is a cousin of Truman Capote, Lee’s one-time best friend before the two became very publicly estranged. Essentially, critics of the pending release aren’t at issue with its content or its quality, but of the fact that they do not believe the author herself would ever have allowed its publication if she were in better health and had better care watching over her interests. Lee is reportedly nearly blind and deaf and has lived in a care facility since a stroke in 2007, and some people close to her have reported she suffers from dementia. Critics have argued that this book never would have become public if Alice were still alive to protect her sister, her status as the author’s former attorney notwithstanding. Despite official-looking statements that supposedly give the author’s blessing and cooperation on the publication, there are some differences this time around, one of the most noted being the instant access to formats that this title will offer. Lee was notoriously against an ebook edition of To Kill a Mockingbird, and only acquiesced to a digital publication last year–again, after her sister Alice retired from practicing law and Tonja Carter took over Lee’s affairs. There are already a number of conflicting reports surrounding the publication of this book, the author’s state of mind and health, and other aspects of this would-be controversy. Go Set a Watchmen is already available for pre-order in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook, and is currently the number one bestselling title on Amazon.
Backlash Against Mockingbird Sequel as Concerns for Author’s Status Come Out is a post from: Good e-Reader |
