| This fall Apple will be releasing a major enhancement to their operating system with the advent of iOS 9. There is major SIRI improvements that will monitor your lifestyle, for example if you always listen to music when you get up in the morning, it will automatically bring up your favorite music app. It can also look up content on your device based on specific dates. “Show me photos from my trip to Aspen in January" and you'll get exactly what you're looking for. For the e-reading fiend in all of us there is a new app called Apple News, which seeks to disrupt Flipboard as the dominant curated news experience. Additionally for those of you that have 16 GB devices the OS now takes up less room, giving you more freedom to download apps and content. Apple is beginning to take the iPad line of tablets more seriously. There are a number of new features that will take advantage of the larger screen. For the first time, you will be able to run more than one app at a time on the iPad’s display, letting you keep an eye on Twitter while writing email or reading an article. Apps can be split across the screen equally or in a 70-30 split, depending on your preference. Both apps are fully interactive at the same time, and you can drag and drop images and other content from one side to the other. Apple says this feature will be supported on the iPad Air 2 and whatever new tablet upgrade is on the horizon. What I really like about iOS 9 is picture in picture support. While using FaceTime or watching a video, press the Home button and your video screen scales down to a corner of your display. Tap to open a second app, and your video continues to play — even while you use the other app. So keep watching your favorite TV show while you reply to the email that just came in. Additionally most users will really like the fact that battery life has been extended. Thanks to ambient light and proximity sensors, your iPhone knows if it's facedown on the table and prevents the screen from turning on, even when you receive a notification. And the new Low Power mode lets you extend your battery life even further.
First Look at iOS 9 is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
First Look at iOS 9
China Blacklists 38 ‘Distasteful’ Anime and Mangas
| On Monday, China’s Ministry of Culture announced a ban on 38 Japanese anime and mangas that will no longer be allowed to be distributed in the country whether it be online or in print. The ministry said that 29 of China’s leading internet portals including Sohu, Tencent and Baidu have received various warnings and have been fined for providing content that showcases sex and violence to minors. Senior Ministry official Liu Qiang stated, "The list is the result of evaluations by investigators, reviews by the ministry and the opinions of experts. It aims to guide websites in the proper review and importation of comics and animations." As of April 1st, new Chinese regulations require video websites to seek approval to stream foreign media. At the time, the ministry had began blacklisting any title that, "include scenes of violence, pornography, terrorism and crimes against public morality." any website hosting shows with the following content were put under investigation. According to the Chinese ministry, out of the 29 Chinese websites that have been fined and given warnings to remove content, only 8 have been shut down for hosting without the proper license. But what does this mean for the avid Chinese fans? Many have vented their disappointment on the Weibo micro blog, saying that such bans will only highlight the gulf in China’s cultural diversity in relation to the outside world. Meanwhile another Chinese internet user agreed with the ministry, saying that he thought Attack on Titan was much too gory for his taste. Beneath are the following animes and mangas that have been banned, but the list will continue to expand: Terror in Resonance China Blacklists 38 ‘Distasteful’ Anime and Mangas is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Big Library Read is Live!
| From now until June 23rd users at participating libraries can borrow the eBook and audiobook of Kate White’s psychological thriller, Eyes on You without any wait lists of holds. Millions of users from thousands of libraries around the world have the opportunity to join this global book club by enjoying this title by a New York Times bestselling author and former editor in chief of Cosmopolitan magazine. You can learn more about Kate White, her book and the Big Library Read Program by checking out http://biglibraryread.com/. Also, be sure to follow Kate on Facebook and Twitter. You can also join our Big Library Read conversation on Twitter by following OverDrive and using the hashtag #BigLibraryRead. Don’t forget to join us on Twitter on June 17th at 1 pm for a chat with Kate White! If you’d like to add a collection of Big Library Read-alike titles we’ve created one here for your reference.
Meet the Author: Kate White, the former editor in chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, is the New York Times bestselling author of the stand-alone novels Hush, The Sixes, and Eyes on You, as well as the Bailey Weggins mystery series. She is editor of The Mystery Writers of America Cookbook. She is also the author of popular career books for women, including I Shouldn't Be Telling You This: How to Ask for the Money, Snag the Promotion, and Create the Career You Deserve. You can contact her or learn more about her at katewhite.com.  |
Why Are There Still Issues Facing Self-Published Authors?
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One of the first issues occurred in January of this year, and sadly, its intent was to level the playing field for small booksellers. After all, self-published authors are small booksellers, even though they only sell their own titles. But the changes to the EU’s VAT tax structure, which was intended to help mom-and-pop book shops in their woes with giants like Amazon, impacted authors as well. Whether your book are sold by Amazon overseas or if you choose to sell them on sites like Smashwords or even from your own website, authors now lose out based on where the customer buys the book, not where the seller lives. A great post explaining the process, how it affects authors, and what they can do about it can be found on the Smashwords blog. Another crucial issue is the book review dilemma, if the word “scandal” isn’t being too dramatic. What started with the authors behaving badly, reviewers behaving badly, and Goodreads community has filtered into other aspects of online trolling. Of course, the pay-for-review problem has yet to come to a good resolution, with legitimate companies that charge a reading fee for an honest review finding themselves lumped in with the companies that take authors’ money and promise hundreds of five-star reviews. Even in instances where the reviews may have been legitimate, if there’s any smack of impropriety about them (such as a sudden influx of reviews following an author’s giveaway), Amazon may remove them as being suspicious. A link to one business owner’s post on the matter is here, as well as the email address he uncovered to appeal the removal of reviews. But the biggest obstacle to self-published authors’ success is one that has been in place since day one; mind you, it’s also an obstacle to traditionally published authors, so don’t feel like your publishing route is at the heart of the problem. It’s book discovery, and it’s something that has lowly authors and Big Five publishers alike losing sleep at night. Short of hiring a publicity firm to stage a book campaign that can run well into the thousands and tens of thousands of dollars, authors who don’t find self-promotion at the top of their lists of hobbies can come up very short of their book sales goals. Social media is a great help, as is building a blog following, but the options for paid book promotion run the gamut from highly effective but costly to pointless wastes of money. While a handful of companies can demonstrate solid track records of book discovery, it’s also important to remember that getting your book in front of consumers and getting them to buy it are two completely different animals. Of course, if taxes and publicity are the only worries that authors must face in 2015, then it’s safe to say the self-publishing and digital revolutions have been resounding successes. While more work could be done to make the process even more lucrative–both in terms of money and career satisfaction–in a market that’s been reportedly glutted with content, these “struggles” aren’t all that bad.
Why Are There Still Issues Facing Self-Published Authors? is a post from: Good e-Reader |
List of Kindle Devices and Apps with Text-to-Speech
| Text-to-speech is one of the features that sets Kindle books apart from the likes of Kobo and Nook. But not all Kindle devices and apps support text-to-speech. In fact most don’t support TTS. Text-to-speech used to be a pretty big feature for Kindles, but Amazon doesn’t seem to be interested in evolving it much further […] |
Apple News e-Reading App to Debut this Fall
| Apple has developed a new online news reading app that will launch this fall, as part of the iOS 9 operating system upgrade. It will replace the Apple Newsstand as we know it and give readers the same type of experience that companies like Flipboard and Pulse Reader provide. Apple News will be a comprehensive solution to engage millions of users and will be able to give a solid mobile experience. It will display written content, videos, photos and infographics. The app will have several content partners at launch, including The New York Times, BuzzFeed, Quartz, ESPN, and WIRED parent company Condé Nast. Publishers who opt into being official partners for the Apple news app will have some rich financial benefits. Apple has verified that publishers will be able to sell their own display adds within the app and keep 100% of the revenue. Apple says it will also sell ads itself directly within the app with its advertising platform iAd, and partners who wish to benefit from Apple's salesmanship will keep 70% of the revenue. If you are interested in submitting your publication or website RSS feed to Apple News, there is a new application system that has just been developed. It will merely ask you to accept the lisencing agreement and some personal details about you and the RSS feed you want to include. Apple has verified that in the future they will develop a bunch of cool tools in order to assist people with typography, rich photo galleries, videos, and animations Apple has a tremendous amount of competition in the online news space and one has to wonder if it will ever replace Flipboard, Feedly, Newsify, Google News, Buzzfeed and Smart News. Facebook has also redoubled their efforts in the last year with positioning news within their social media experience on the PC. Apple News e-Reading App to Debut this Fall is a post from: Good e-Reader |
