| Gorilla Glass is found on many tablets and smartphones, which helps in the survivability of your tech from everyday life. The company has announced today new technology that will see them enter the wearable tech space, mainly with smart watches. The 3D glass will allow it to conform to your wrist and allow manufacturing to product watches that have screens bending around your wrist. Traditional smart watches like the Toq, or Pebble have simple, non-bendable screens. Its newly available technique conforms to unusual designs without adding bulk or losing strength. Corning said in a statement that “Corning's 3D-forming technology can achieve precise tolerances and high throughput on a platform that is more economical than alternative two-mold forming methods. This technology uses Gorilla Glass of uniform thickness, assisting designers to introduce thinner and lighter devices and leverage the emergence of conformable displays for mobile and wearable applications.” Gorilla Glass is the primary company Apple deals with for their gadgets and many other companies rely on them for their durable screen technology. 3D Gorilla Glass Announced by Corning for Wearable Tech is a post from: E-Reader News |
Friday, January 3, 2014
3D Gorilla Glass Announced by Corning for Wearable Tech
Breaking: Disney to Move Star Wars Comics to Marvel
| Marvel and Dark Horse announced today that Disney is taking back the license for the Star Wars comics and will move it over to Marvel in 2015. Dark Horse has had the franchise for over 20 years, during which they not only spun out a series of prequels and sequels that added to the Star Wars universe but also, in the past year, launched two new series: Star Wars, which was set in the world of the first movie, and The Star Wars, a comic based on George Lucas’s first draft of the screenplay. There has been speculation that Disney would make this move ever since it acquired Lucasfilm in December 2012. Last year, they announced that they will make a new Star Wars trilogy, with the first movie scheduled for a summer 2015 release date—making 2015 the year that Star Wars comics turn into big money. Since Disney also owns Marvel, this is an obvious next step, but it’s one that many fans of Dark Horse’s Star Wars comics were hoping wouldn’t happen. I asked Dark Horse spokesman Aub Driver what would happen to Star Wars comics that were purchased digitally via the Dark Horse app and he said “All purchased titles residing in your account on Dark Horse Digital will remain in your account’s ‘Cloud’ forever. So, while the Star Wars titles may no longer be purchasable from the storefront after December 2014 – they will certainly remain viewable and readable in your account.” As for what will be the fate of the 20 years’ worth of comics produced by Dark Horse, Driver said, “Per our original contract with LucasFilm, reprints/usage of Dark Horse published material would require Disney to purchase the original files directly from Dark Horse.” Here’s what Dark Horse president Mike Richardson had to say, in a letter sent out today. “For those who are new to the industry, Dark Horse revolutionized the treatment of comics based on films. After a history of movie properties being poorly handled with little regard for execution and continuity, Dark Horse took a new approach, carefully choosing licenses and approaching them with excitement and creative energy.” He elaborated “Our goal was to create sequels and prequels to the films we loved, paying careful attention to quality and detail, essentially treating those films as though they were our own. Star Wars has been the crown jewel of this approach. We began chasing the title as far back as 1989, and with the launch of Tom Veitch and Cam Kennedy's Dark Empire, a new era in comics was born. I'm not ashamed to admit that we were Star Wars geeks, and we have been determined to spare neither effort nor expense in the pursuit of excellence.” He also notes that Dark Horse has been preparing for this for some time and has added a number of new projects to its schedule for the next two years, and he concludes with this – “In the meantime, 2014 may be our last year at the helm of the Star Wars comics franchise, but we plan to make it a memorable one. We know that fans of the franchise will expect no less. The Force is with us still.” Breaking: Disney to Move Star Wars Comics to Marvel is a post from: E-Reader News |
Personal Shopping at Hoover High School
| Editor’s Note: This blog post was written by Nikki Robertson, school librarian at Hoover High School in Hoover, Ala., to showcase a unique way of engaging students and personalize the reading experience. Do you have a story you’d like to share on the OverDrive blog about how to engage readers with your digital collection? Email blogs@overdrive.com with your story.
School libraries are a hub of activity, offering an endless variety of services. At The Library@HHS, we like to refer to the library as the "One Stop Shop.” If we can't meet your needs, we can always connect you with someone who can. One service that gives us a great deal of joy is Personal Shopping for students. Personal shoppers help others shop by giving advice and making suggestions to customers usually found in department stores or specialty boutiques. We have taken the Personal Shopper concept and revamped it for the school library. Typically when we take on the role of a personal shopper, it is at the request of a teacher for the students in their classes. The students are asked to write down the following:
Occasionally, the teacher will write the student's lexile level on the back of the Personal Shopping Card and ask us to find book matches within the indicated reading level. Matching students to their perfect book is a meticulous process. On average, for a class of 25 students, it can take two to three days to find at least three book matches for each student. Here is a basic breakdown of the Personal Shopping process: The teacher collects the personal shopping detail cards from their students and gives them to the librarians. We take one card at a time, review the information provided and then begin searching our Destiny library management system and our OverDrive account for books that best match each student’s interests. This is just the beginning of the Personal Shopping process. Because we want to provide students with quality books, we spend a great deal of time reading book reviews, checking book award lists, and checking sites like Goodreads and Shelfari for ratings. Students at Hoover High School have a voracious appetite for books, which throws a kink in our personal shopping process as it is often a challenge to actually find the books we have chosen on the shelves available for check out, virtually or physically. This is a good yet challenging "problem" when serving as a personal shopper. Once all students have been matched to at least three book choices, we schedule the class to come to the library for the big "unveiling" of the books.
It is always fun watching students get excited about the books we have chosen for them. One girl exclaimed, "All of these books are perfect for me!"
Nikki Robertson is a school librarian at Hoover High School.
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New Digital Site and Conference from Founders of AllThingsD
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While the duo have decades of industry experience between them, the new venture will focus on digital technology news and reviews; the building of Re/Code will be to exert complete control over their brand. This included reaching new investors, including Windsor Media and NBCUniversal and its properties, CNBC, NBC News and MSNBC. This will mean expanded content collaboration between Re/Code and other involved news outlets. For its part, the Wall Street Journal has already announced its intentions for its replacement for AllThingsD, which will include long-form pieces on the industry and its own global technology conference, which isn’t surprising given the popularity and the attendance of the long-time AllThingsD conferences.
New Digital Site and Conference from Founders of AllThingsD is a post from: E-Reader News |
Digital First Media Announcement Finalized
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"This is an important moment for our Company and positions us to accelerate our growth under a single and innovative brand," said John Paton, Chief Executive Officer of Digital First Media, in a press release on the partnership. More than 67 million readers in the US consume Digital First Media’s 800 multi-platform offerings, making Digital First Media the second largest newspaper group in the US. One of the keys to success for newspapers going into the digital age is retaining subscribers in a time when news is available for free throughout the web. Another obstacle has been keeping advertisers happy and helping them see how much time is spent by their audiences interacting with digital ads. Companies like Aquafadas and solutions like Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite have stepped in to help companies with long histories of print media ease into a new comfort zone as digital content providers.
Digital First Media Announcement Finalized is a post from: E-Reader News |
News from Carrie Anne Philbin
| Carrie Anne’s end-of-year edition of Geek Gurl Diaries had some news in it that might interest you. The whole of the video (especially the book competition) is likely to be something you’ll find interesting – but the REALLY interesting bit is the announcement that Carrie Anne makes at around the 3:49 mark. Congratulations Carrie Anne – we’re really looking forward to seeing you on Monday morning! |
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Is Ultimate Spider-Man Coming to an End?
| Spider-Man has several incarnations, and one of the ones that got a lot of attention is Miles Morales, the black/Latino teenager who took over the Spidey-Suit in Brian Michael Bendis’s Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man, after the death of Peter Parker. Now Bendis is hinting that the series has run its course. In response to a question from a reader on his Tumblr about whether he would have another Marvel book, he replied,
But did he mean it? it’s true that at the Ultimate Marvel Panel in San Diego, nobody said attempted to dispel rumors that the Ultimates line was drawing to a close, and in fact the big announcement at that panel was of the event titled Cataclysm: The Ultimates Last Stand. Some folks think that the Ultimates comics will wind up with the Survive event next spring. The Ultimates comics are in a separate universe than the regular Marvel characters, and it is possible that even if Ultimate Comics Spider-Man comes to an end, Miles Morales will live on in the regular continuity. Is Ultimate Spider-Man Coming to an End? is a post from: E-Reader News |
Smart Watches to Make a Big Splash at CES 2014
| CES is occuring next week and Good e-Reader will be live on the scene covering all of the latest news, previews and industry wide coverage. Wearable tech is poised to be one of the biggest aspect of the show. Intel, Samsung, LG, Freescale and others will all be showing off various tech for this hot new segment. According to Juniper Research, retail revenue from smart wearable devices will reach $19 billion by 2018 compared with $1.4 billion in 2013. The firm also projects that sales of smart wearable devices will approach 130 million units by 2018, which is 10 times higher than estimated to sell in 2013. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said he is launching a full scale assault on wearable tech with their new Quark chip. Krzanich said he has been accelerating Intel’s shift toward ultra-mobile processors, the hardware unveiled at CES won’t ship until April at the earliest. Freescale is working on the The WaRP platform that is engineered to unleash design creativity for multiple vertical segments in the wearables market such as sports monitors, smart glasses, activity trackers, smart watches and healthcare/medical applications. Archos is showing off a new smartwatch that will have a lean and thin design similar to products from Pebble, and will be compatible with Apple's iOS and Google's Android OS devices, Archos said in a statement. It is set to cost only $83 US. ZTE is going to introduce their first smartwatch, called BlueWatch, which has a built-in pedometer and tethers to a smartphone via Bluetooth, enabling you to control calls, photography, and social media from your wrist. Sony according to a FCC filing seems to indicate we should expect another smartwatch very soon. It's supposed to be equipped with NFC and Bluetooth, and has been described as a "Bluetooth Wrist Notifier." The Sony CEO will be doing a keynote on the first day of CES, and we will let you know if they unveil it or not. Smart Watches to Make a Big Splash at CES 2014 is a post from: E-Reader News |
Books to Movies, a look back at 2013
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Either way, I'm enjoying the heck out of it. Sure, some of them are horrible (we won’t mention names), but others are truly great on the big screen. 2013 saw a whole lot of movies based on books—too many, in fact, for me to list here. So, instead, I've picked several that I was (and am still) pleased with the cinematic outcome. I'll follow up this post with another that lists some upcoming movies for 2014 that I'm excited about, so stay tuned.
What was your favorite book-to-movie in 2013? Did we miss any on the list? Let us know on the comments section below.
Quinton Lawman is a Technical Writer at OverDrive.
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How to use the Nook HD or HD+ Outside the USA
| The Barnes and Noble Nook HD and HD+ have been fairly successful due to their e-reader first approach and low entry price point. You can only buy these in the USA or the UK. If you live outside of those two countries you will have a fairly difficult time getting yourself up and running. Today, we look at what you need to do to use the Nook HD and HD+ outside the USA or overseas. Barnes and Noble requires that you use a USA billing/shipping address for any digital content that you buy on their ecosystem. This is fairly easy to circumvent because the company never sends anything to your mailing or billing address. All purchase confirmations are sent via email, so it is imperative that you use a working one. In order to setup an account you need a valid postal code. I recommend looking at public buildings, such as art galleries or libraries on Google and using those details. Once you have your billing address entered into the system you need to enter a credit card. In most cases you can use your own credit card and you can purchase apps, books, magazines and other digital content. The only thing that is geographically restricted is Nook Video. No matter what you do, you won’t be able to watch television or movies directly from B&N. Most Nationally issued credit cards still will not work with Barnes and noble, despite the fact they are totally valid. In this case, I recommend a USA billing and USA Giftcard combo from Shop e-Readers. This company gives you a proper and valid address and also the ability to load in the exact dollar amount you want to purchase. This will allow you to buy eBooks and everything else very easily. Setting up your billing and credit card information is necessary when you are booting and setting your device up for the first time. Making sure you use a USA address is imperative to get past the setup screen and start playing around with your new device. Barnes and Noble integrated Google Play into their tablet and if you want to bypass buying anything from the bookseller directly, all you need is a Google account. You can download Netflix or any other video on demand service and purchase eBooks from Kobo, Amazon, or a myriad of other companies. How to use the Nook HD or HD+ Outside the USA is a post from: E-Reader News |
Infographic – A Look at the GoodReads Social Community
| GoodReaders has had a big year in 2013 and the company released a new infographic that chronicles all of their achievements. Infographic – A Look at the GoodReads Social Community is a post from: E-Reader News |
Top 5 Tech Gadgets of 2013
| When it comes to consumer tech we review hundreds of devices each year and travel all over the world to different tradeshows and conventions. With so many devices on the market, it can quickly get overwhelming when you have to decide what gadget is right for you. Today, Michael and Peter from Good e-Reader give you their top 5 list on devices they use on a daily basis. Top 5 Tech Gadgets of 2013 is a post from: E-Reader News |
Mathematica and the Wolfram Language on Raspberry Pi: a guest post from Wolfram Research
| Have you been staring at the Mathematica and Wolfram Language icons on your Raspbian install, and wondering where to get started? We’ll be featuring several guest posts from Wolfram Research in the coming weeks, so you can start to get to work with them. This first, introductory post is from Arnoud Buzing. Arnoud and the Wolfram team would welcome your feedback in the comments below; so would we. Let us know what you’d like to do with Mathematica and the Wolfram Language – it’ll help shape future posts from Wolfram. A few weeks ago, on November 21st, we released the Wolfram Language and Mathematica for the Raspberry Pi. Just this past week, it’s become even easier to get the software since The Raspberry Pi Foundation began bundling Mathematica and the Wolfram Language directly with their standard NOOBS package and Raspbian operating system. The responses to this pilot release have been overwhelmingly positive. It has been great to read tweets from educators, scientists, hobbyists and students all around the world, who are excited about using the Wolfram Language to explore the computational universe on their devices. Today, Wolfram Research is perhaps most widely known for its computational knowledge engine called Wolfram|Alpha: for many students a website which makes short order of complicated homework problems by providing step-by- step solutions. But to create this website a great many problems had to be solved in a very general and systematic way. It only made sense then to build Wolfram|Alpha in the Wolfram Language. This language differs from other computer languages in that it is very high level with built-in support for solving a very wide variety of computational problems. For over 25 years this language has grown from being able to compute with simple symbolic expressions to the computational knowledge engine it is today. And this feature of making knowledge computable, as well as its powerful ability to create complex programs with very little code, makes it a great language to run on a Raspberry Pi. It also interfaces extremely well with the ‘outside world’ thanks to its large array of supported data collecting sensors and its GPIO. A few great user examples have already been shared on the Wolfram Community website and I would like to share them here with you. A recent post from Diego shows how to cook your steak using your Raspberry Pi. In this post he writes a small mathlink wrapper to read thermocouple measurements, which he calibrated by using a LinearModelFit on three data points. All this is then hooked up to a controller which turns a crockpot on or off using DeviceWrite["GPIO",17->1] or DeviceWrite["GPIO",17->0]. Another post from Diego shows how you can connect a Wii Nunchuck via an Arduino Uno to Mathematica over a serial connection. First he opens a serial connection using serial=DeviceOpen["Serial", {"/dev/ttyACM0", "BaudRate"->57600}] and then he interfaces with the sketch running on his Arduino by sending a ping over that serial link and reading back the current Wii Nunchuck state using DeviceReadBuffer[serial]. Bob posted a cool example showing how you can write a simple stepper motor controller using the Wolfram Language. He defines a stepMotor function which takes three arguments: the number of steps, the direction and the step time delay. There are several other simple examples that are worth checking out if you’re just getting started:
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Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions with Excel!
Need a little extra help keeping your New Year's resolutions? Use Excel to track your goals! |
Battle Not Over for Google’s Digitization Project
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Only a matter of weeks ago, US Circuit Judge Denny Chin ruled that Google’s massive digitization project fell within the reasonable bounds of copyright and fair use, throwing out the copyright lawsuit brought about by Authors Guild. The group promised at the time to appeal Judge Chin’s ruling and is now moving forward with that appeal, having completed the necessary filings in the district court. In Chin’s November decision, he not only dismissed the Authors Guild’s lawsuit, but praised Google for its efforts to preserve rare books and make privately held library collections available to worldwide readers through search. This praise did not come with any measure of bias, as Chin was the same judge who rejected the 2011 settlement terms between Google and a number of publishers, stating that the settlement would be “rewarding [Google] for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission, while releasing claims well beyond those presented in the case.” Another case brought about by the Authors Guild against several of the scanning groups working on Google’s project has already been determined by a different judge to be well within the bounds of fair use. The judge in that case, Harold Baer, not only stated that the scanning of entire books is necessary for indexing purposes in allowing ease of searchability, but also had strong words for the benefits that programs of this kind can have for readers as a whole, especially print disabled readers. Baer went on to state that this was new territory for copyright law, but that the project fell within the scope of fair use. For its part, the Authors Guild has not explained its position other than to argue that the massive undertaking goes way beyond the limits of fair use. No explanation was provided in the filing, only the notice of intent to appeal.
Battle Not Over for Google’s Digitization Project is a post from: E-Reader News |
Newest Technology to Hit Books: 3D Printing
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Now, author and designer Carla Diana has taken her passion for technology and put it to use in a children’s storybook that also offers up instructions and applications in the world of 3D printing. By following the story of a robot who is capable of making plastic objects based on its owner’s drawings–along with additional robots that can make metal and printed designs–young readers are exposed to some of the technological applications of 3D printing. Even better, the book features plans and instructions to help the readers make their own 3D versions of some of the objects found in the story, assuming the child has access to a home 3D printer or an account with MakerBot. Diana is no stranger to trying to spread the word about the capabilities of technology. As a university professor and as the creative head behind the Simon humanoid robot, her passion has long been our robotics future. With this book, she brings the possibilities of 3D printing to an audience who is more likely to take advantage of that technology as they age. Within the book, she also actively encourages readers to “hack” her designs, even giving them prompts along the way to help launch their ability to adapt her objects for their own purposes. In an interesting twist, this children’s storybook is currently sitting on several top ten rankings on Amazon, but none of those rankings are for children’s books, storytelling, or young readers. It seems that Diana’s intended audience may be reading, but it is the older crowd who are still in awe of 3D printing capabilities who are looking to build their own models.
Newest Technology to Hit Books: 3D Printing is a post from: E-Reader News |
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Search tips to find titles for young readers
| My good friend got a new tablet for Christmas. It took her three year old son only a few minutes to become an expert! He's not alone. Kids all over the world received tablets this holiday season, which means that they are prepped to start checking out the latest, greatest eBooks and Audiobooks from your digital library. Over the last few months, we've made some updates to Marketplace to make it easier than ever for you to home in on titles for your young readers. Search/Filter by Audience You can now search for titles using the Audience field, which breaks the collection into categories like Young Adult Fiction or Juvenile Nonfiction. When combined with other terms in your Advanced Search, you can get much more targeted results. For example: A search for the title "Dragon" will turn up hundreds of results, but filtering by or adding "Juvenile Fiction" to the Audience category reduces your results to a more pertinent selection.
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The Audience search is also a great way to search for school-appropriate titles in nonfiction subject areas. (Subject: "Careers" + Audience: "Young Adult Nonfiction" = great resources for college-bound high school students.) Top 200 Searches If you haven't seen them yet, the new preset searches along the left side of the Marketplace homepage is one of my favorite new features. You can quickly see the most circulated Juvenile and Young Adult content across OverDrive's vast network of schools and libraries. The search is filtered so you only see results that you don't own!  Don't forget, you can also use ATOS book levels, Interest levels, and Lexile Measures® to help find what you want. If you still need help finding the best titles for young readers, don't forget you have a Collection Development Specialist. Just email collectionteam@overdrive.com for personalized recommendations.
Bailey Hotujac is a Collection Development Specialist with OverDrive.
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Amazon Starts Collecting Sales Tax in Indiana, Nevada, and Tennessee
| Amazon is now officially collecting sales tax on all online orders placed and shipped to Indiana, Nevada, and Tennessee. Online orders will now cost an extra 7% in sales tax in addition to the cost of the item and shipping. Currently, Amazon collects sales tax in 19 out of the 50 states. The Seattle based company is trying their very best to fight in the courts and via lobbyists. One of the tactics Amazon uses to get out of taxes is promising local government a distribution center to create hundreds of local jobs. In some states, they retaliated against the sales tax by dropping affiliate commissions, in the hopes a grass roots effort by local merchants might create some noise. Amazon Starts Collecting Sales Tax in Indiana, Nevada, and Tennessee is a post from: E-Reader News |
Video Review: Pebble SmartWatch
| Pebble had one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns of all time and raised over ten million dollars to finance an e-paper smartwatch. The essence of this device is to pair to your iPhone, or Android device. It will give you notifications from Skype, eBay, Whatsapp, and basically any app that gives you notifications. The Pebble is basically a watch that has Bluetooth capabilities. You can think of it as a dumb terminal for the functionality that exists on your phone or tablet. The only interactive elements it has is being able to activate your default music app, by playing, pausing or scrolling between tracks. More apps are starting to build functionality into the Pebble, but they are few and far between. It seems iOS 7 devices have the best end-user experience by upgrading firmware and downloading new watch skins. Android has problems with default notifications and custom software must be downloaded. The build quality on the Pebble is lacking severely. It is a plastic design and it keeps the costs between $80 and $150, depending on what market you’re in. This is basically designed by Silicon Valley geeks, for Silicon Valley geeks. I wish more devices hit the market that actually had higher build quality and had an emphasis on design. The real benefit on the Pebble is the e-Paper display, that lasts almost a month. It charges via a proprietary cable that ships with it.
Video Review: Pebble SmartWatch is a post from: E-Reader News |
New Digital Comics to Kick Off the New Year
| Two dead schoolboys wander out of Sandman and into their own series, Aquaman starts a new story arc among geological disturbances, and giants roam the earth in this week’s selection of new digital comics. The Dead Boy Detectives #1: This is a new series featuring two characters who have been around for a while: The Dead Boy Detectives first showed up in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and wandered through various other Vertigo comics over the years; now they are returning to their school, St. Hilarion’s, to investigate their own deaths. According to Vertigo, “DEAD BOY DETECTIVES is a fast-paced adventure series that takes us from the bustling streets of contemporary London to Japanese-inspired video games and dangerous worlds perched somewhere between the now and nevermore.” The creative team includes Mark Buckingham, of Fables fame, who gets both writing and art credits on this series, which should clinch the deal. Aquaman #26: This issue kicks off a new story arc, “Sea of Storms,” by a new writer, Jeff Parker, whose other works include the first issue of the digital-first Adventures of Superman. Here’s DC’s description:
Reviewer Jesse Scheeden says this issue is a good pick for longtime fans as well as newcomers, who will find it an easy jumping-on point. Here’s a preview. Superior Foes of Spider-Man #7: It’s a quiet week for Marvel, but this series is a lot of fun. It’s a lighter take on the superhero genre, featuring the Sinister Six (of whom there are only five at the moment) bungling their way through the underworld of New York City. If you’re new to this series, check out Brian Truitt’s article from last summer in which he interviews the creators and explains how it fits in with the main Superior Spider-Man series. Legenderry #1: Bill Willingham does for pulp characters in Legenderry what he did with fairy tale characters in Fables: Mixes and matches them into a new story. The first issue kicks off with a mysterious woman in scarlet dashing into a bar, chased by assassins, and the first two characters to appear are Vampirella and Green Hornet. This seven-issue steampunk comic will ultimately bring together a number of other heroes, including The Phantom and Red Sonja, who have just one thing in common—all are licensed by publisher Dynamite Entertainment. If the idea tickles your fancy, check out this interview with Willingham. Attack on Titan, vol. 10: This manga series is a monster hit in every sense of the word: It’s about a group of teenagers fighting people-eating giants. Propelled by the popularity of the anime on Crunchyroll, it is one of the top selling print manga, and you can get each volume on Kindle, Nook, and iBooks. You can also read the most recent chapters on Crunchyroll’s manga service—and the newest one is free. New Digital Comics to Kick Off the New Year is a post from: E-Reader News |
