| 2014 to feature enhanced eBooks and new technology to further drive digital reader engagement 2013 was a banner year for libraries and schools with record numbers in digital engagement driving eBook sales and revenue for OverDrive publishers and authors. Available eBook and audiobook titles, website visitors, eBook discovery and digital checkouts all increased substantially over 2012. A surge in mobile device usage highlights the demand for on-the-go access, with more than half of all digital checkouts coming from mobile platforms. The trend in digital reading continues to grow rapidly. Readers borrowed more than 102 million digital titles across the OverDrive network in 2013, up 44% over 2012. For comparison, it took 10 years to reach the first 100 million digital checkouts from 2003-2012, and the next 100 million was surpassed within one year. Other major milestones in 2013 include:
"This past year was a breakthrough year for OverDrive," said Shannon Lichty, Director of Partner Services at OverDrive. "Through innovation and exemplary partner performance, digital reading is now more accessible and more prolific than ever. We are looking forward to additional enhancements in 2014 to create the ultimate streamlined experience and enhanced interactivity for users." Technology and support for enhanced eBooks will roll out in 2014, including features such as synched audio and text, fixed layouts, interactivity and multimedia. Demonstrations of these innovations will take place at the OverDrive booth at Digital Book World this week in New York City, as well as at ALA Midwinter in Philadelphia January 24-28. OverDrive released several new products, services and features to help libraries and schools increase digital circulation in 2013. The launches of OverDrive Media Station, Circulation APIs and multilingual website support helps to introduce readers to the digital catalog and easily navigate the library's website. In addition, children can now safely explore libraries' digital catalogs through the new eReading Room, a dedicated segment of a library's website free of mature content. Also in 2013, OverDrive announced the availability of its new Netflix-like Streaming Video service with widespread compatibility and instant viewing of thousands of digital video titles. Further enhancing the user experience, OverDrive increased its catalog to 1.8 million digital titles from more than 5,000 publishers, including all of the major publishers such as Penguin, Random House, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, McGraw-Hill, Macmillan and many more. Libraries and schools can now purchase licenses for eBooks and audiobooks from an additional 250 publishers added in 2013. Titles come in a multitude of formats compatible with any major device, including iPhone®, iPad®, Nook®, Android™ phones and tablets, and Kindle® (U.S. only). Based on various statistics including downloads, sales, holds, samples, ratings and page views, top titles in OverDrive's collection for 2013 included Inferno by Dan Brown, The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling), The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin, Fast Forward by Juliet Madison, Allegiant by Veronica Roth, and The House of Hades (audiobook) by Rick Riordan. OverDrive has been named to the EContent 100 list as a company that matters most in the digital content industry for 2013, its fifth year in a row to earn that honor. OverDrive Media Console was named one of PC Magazine's 100 Best Android Apps of 2013, and one of TechRadar's Best Free Android Apps of 2014. Now partnering with more than 28,000 libraries and schools in 42 countries, including 90 percent of the U.S. public libraries, OverDrive is the largest distributor of eBooks and audiobooks for lending platforms worldwide.
Heather Tunstall is Public Relations Specialist at OverDrive.
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Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Library successes in 2013 help drive record eBook sales
A visual approach to online learning
After a successful 2013, which saw not only an incredible amount of content produced but also an expansion of our staff to accommodate growth, we figured we'd illustrate via an infographic just how impactful our online programming can be. For instance, in 2013 alone we added 179 new lessons, 109 screencasts, 142 interactives and 11... Read More › |
Poster competition update #1
| We’re moving offices at the moment (a long and agonising process which is taking us a few weeks), and we’ll be using the posters you sent us to decorate our new meeting room. We made this video of the hundreds of posters we received through the post. It’s worth viewing this in full-screen mode while hovering over the pause button so you can have a closer look at some of them: the imagination and the bonkers spellings of “Raspberry” on display really made us smile. (Posters which were emailed to us will appear in a separate post later this week. There were lots.) You’ll remember that we launched a poster competition before Christmas, along with a schools giveaway. We’d put together 2000 Raspberry Pi kits with our friends from Google for the occasion, and we thought that would be enough for everybody. Then the entries started coming in. 2000 definitely wasn’t enough. So we’ve upped the allocation of Pis to more than 5000 – if you’re a teacher who asked for kits for the classroom, we’ll be in touch later in the month to explain what we’ll be sending you and how we’re dividing the schools allocation up. We got so many individual poster entries from kids that we’re having to hire someone to come in for a couple of days to administer all the entry forms and help us sort out the logistics of getting Pis to people. Everybody who sent us a poster will be getting a Pi in return (nearly everybody: about five entries were from kids who just scribbled RASBERYPIE in pencil in the middle of a piece of paper, or who sent us a screenshot of our own website – given the quality of the other posters we felt we couldn’t reward those entries, and we have not displayed them). And I’m really sorry, but we’ve also had to disqualify posters which were put in the mail after the deadline. We thought some of the posters in the video above were so good that we wanted to send an extra reward to the kids who made them. We’ll be giving you a closer look at the ones we’ve picked out next week. We liked some of the ideas you sent in so much that we’re going to be turning them into real projects and making learning resources around them, which you’ll be able to use at home or in lessons at school later in the year. We’ll be showing you the posters we received by email in a separate post later on. Thank you to everybody who entered! (And yes, we know that one of the ceiling tiles needs replacing.) |
The CEOs Speak: Growth in Digital Books
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Reidy’s discussion involved the expansion of books into a global market, announcing that S&S sold a book in over 200 countries last year, including–to the laughter of those present–a copy of The Sun Also Rises to a consumer in Antarctica. “There’s a potentially bigger market in English if you did some marketing to engage with the English-language books,” explained Reidy of the process wby which booksellers are realizing their readership doesn’t only buy books in the local language; she went on to explain that there are bigger considerations involved in global sales, including how to price books in other markets. Raccah explained some of the basis for the news this morning that Sourcebooks had a tremendous year in 2013: “We grew a lot of physical book sales last year, which was a surprise to us, and a lot of that came from our kids’ books. We expect that to grow this year. Part of that is the implications of Put Me in the Story. It provides us a lot of great content. Some of that is going through that site, and some of it is growing through our…reference products that we are translating into digital products.” Tim O’Reilly: “Probably the most exciting things we’re doing is taking the lead from Amazon. We’re building a digital distribution business that lets us put out ebooks in multiple formats, which contributed to our international growth. We’re selling ebooks as a bundle that lets you pick your format…it all comes from one source file, with a push-button solution. We’re expanding the idea of what a book is, and we’re very excited about the way that video and books come together in our products. We’re also looking at our primary goal, which is teaching people, or helping people learn. We have a lot of different ways that we can make information available.” “I think we keep hearing that the rate of change is slowing down, but that’s not the experience for me,” said Raccah. “Books are competing with an array of information, people have the expectation that with the app they’re using, the update just appears on their phones. Books are timeless works, but we are being up-to-date with the latest is a real challenge. We’re constantly building a set of tools to keep our products up-to-date,” answered O”Reilly. “The loss of shelf space, and the discovery mechanism that keeps consumers going to books, and the explosion of digital has always been a challenge, but now it’s an easier challenge. The biggest need is to strengthen where books are. Bookstores could decide they don’t want to carry books any more, but the other outlets can decide they don’t want to carry books anymore. The biggest challenge is making sure your organization is organized to meet the challenge,” explained Reidy. “With shrinking shelf space, we need new discovery mechanisms, but it is the authors who are showing the publishers the way to explore the possibility space,” O’Reilly. “You have to take what one author learns and transfers that to another.”
The CEOs Speak: Growth in Digital Books is a post from: E-Reader News |
OverDrive Announces Banner Year for School, Library eBook Lending
| As digital library lending continues to take root in public and school libraries, digital content solutions provider OverDrive has seen tremendous forward growth in the number of patron checkouts through libraries. Whereas it took the platform ten years to reach 100 million total checkouts, that number grew to 102 million checkouts in 2013 alone. This represents a 44% increase over last year alone. OverDrive provided some key findings from data compiled over 2013:
2014 will see OverDrive bring on support for enhanced ebook checkouts and other new features. "This past year was a breakthrough year for OverDrive," said Shannon Lichty, Director of Partner Services at OverDrive. "Through innovation and exemplary partner performance, digital reading is now more accessible and more prolific than ever. We are looking forward to additional enhancements in 2014 to create the ultimate streamlined experience and enhanced interactivity for users."
OverDrive Announces Banner Year for School, Library eBook Lending is a post from: E-Reader News |
B&N the Next Book Retailer Facing Class Action Lawsuit
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According to a filing by one of the numerous firms to file, Ryan & Manisaks, LLP, ” The complaint alleges that during the Class Period, Barnes & Noble issued materially false and misleading statements regarding the Company’s financial performance and future business prospects. Specifically, the complaint alleges that defendants misrepresented or failed to disclose: (1) Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-book reader sales had dramatically declined; (2) the Company would shutter its Nook manufacturing operations altogether; (3) the carrying value of the Nook assets were impaired by millions of dollars; (4) the carrying value of the Nook inventory was overstated by $133 million; (5) the Company was expecting fiscal 2014 retail losses in the high single digits; (6) Barnes & Noble had over-accrued certain accounts receivables; (7) Barnes & Noble was unable to provide timely audited financial results for fiscal 2013; and (8) the Company might be forced to restate its previously reported financial results. “The complaint further alleges that following the July 8, 2013 resignation of Barnes & Noble’s Chief Executive Officer and a July 29, 2013 earnings restatement, on August 20, 2013, Barnes & Noble disclosed much worse company-wide financial results for its first quarter 2014 than the market had been led to expect, including lower sales and losses that more than doubled from the first quarter of 2013. Barnes & Noble also disclosed that the Company’s Chairman had placed on hold his previous bid to take the Company’s bookstore business private. On this news, the Company’s stock price fell more than $2 per share, or approximately 12%.” Unlike suits brought about on behalf of consumers–such as the lawsuit brought against Apple and five of the then-Big Six publishers for artificially overcharging customers for ebooks–this one is focused on the people who bought stock in Barnes and Noble based on information that the SEC now feels might have been false.
B&N the Next Book Retailer Facing Class Action Lawsuit is a post from: E-Reader News |
Sourcebooks Publishers Thriving in Difficult Publishing Climate
| In an industry-wide climate in which booksellers are struggling to keep their doors open and publishers are announcing cuts to submissions and marketing budgets for new titles, Sourcebooks has managed to not only maintain its solid position in the industry, but also to post double digit sales increases over last year. All of its categories showed an increase of at least 22% or more, while 60% growth in three of its imprints: romance, calendars, and children’s and teens. The biggest factor for their success was actually not the highest growth listed, as its mass market titles showed a 58% increase over last year; this is a very difficult market to record this level of progress. So what makes Sourcebooks so special? Why is this publisher basking in record-level growth when the rest of the industry makes predictions about just barely hanging on? Much of this kind of success may have a lot to do with Sourcebooks’ pioneering spirit, an attitude which has seen the publisher participate in a number of experimental and mildly controversial initiatives to put ebooks in the hands of readers, put titles in public libraries, and put children’s books in the hands of shoppers. For better or for worse, if there’s an idea or innovation to be tried, Sourcebooks is going to do it. And while this may not have always resulted in resounding change for the publisher, it has kept Sourcebooks at the top of the publishing ladder by keeping themselves prepared to adopt–or create–new opportunities for authors and readers.
Sourcebooks Publishers Thriving in Difficult Publishing Climate is a post from: E-Reader News |
Spanish Book Sales Explode in the US Due to e-Readers
| Spanish books are not the easiest thing to find in your average US city or town. Booksellers got jaded after botched attempts to translate English-language bestsellers produced error-ridden Spanish versions that sold poorly. When Spanish books are available, they often cost double or triple what the English translated edition fetch. Times are changing, and Spanish eBooks and Audiobook sales have been dramatically increasing, due to the rise of e-readers and reading apps on tablets. In the last few years the availability of Spanish eBooks sales have tripled. This is primarily due to the increased number of them available. In 2010 only 10,000 Spanish-language print titles were in stock at online booksellers in the U.S. out of a total of about 650,000 Spanish titles worldwide. Today Barnes & Noble’s over 65,000 Nook eBooks available in Spanish. Amazon’s Spanish-language page — EBooks Kindle en Español — now boasts more than 70,000 titles. That’s more than double the number offered when the site debuted in April 2012. Amazon said they expect to see foreign eBooks grow around 40% in 2013, once the final sales are tallied. Amazon owned Audible has stated that last year Spanish books accounted for an 25% increase in sales. Despite the growth of Spanish-language book sales, they are still fairly small compared with those in English, accounting for less than 5% of the United States entire publishing sector, which brings in $7.1 billion in annual sales. What are the driving factors of Spanish eBook sales? This can be attributed to Latinos adopting tablet computers and e-readers at an accelerated rate. According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. In 2011, about 1 in 20 Hispanics owned such a device, the group found; in 2012, the number had jumped to nearly 1 in 5. Spanish Book Sales Explode in the US Due to e-Readers is a post from: E-Reader News |
Monday, January 13, 2014
Test Tim’s NuScratch alpha
| Over the last year, we’ve seen big improvements in Scratch performance on the Pi. To date these have resulted from tweaks to the Scratch codebase and the addition of ARMv6-optimized blitting routines to the Squeak Smalltalk VM on which it runs. To give us the next uplift in performance, Tim Rowledge has been busy porting Scratch to a much newer version of Squeak, and he has a very early alpha (i.e. in-progress and therefore buggy) version for you to play with. Please check out his forum post here and share your feedback. WARNING! THIS IS A DEVELOPER RELEASE, AND NOT FOR BEGINNERS! |
‘Reach For the Stars’: The First eBook For The Visually Impaired
| Astronomer Elena Sabbi of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland wants to convince blind children that they too can be seen pushing the barriers of science and technology; and what better way to do that than by coming up with the world’s first ebook meant for the visually disabled. Also, perhaps no other title could have been more appropriate: ‘Reach for the Stars: Touch, Look, Listen, Learn’ which itself draws its inspiration from the images beamed back by the Hubble telescope of ’30 Doradus Nebula’, a vast stretch in outer space where new stars are formed. The ebook which is currently being developed in collaboration with the North Carolina based company SAS will be made available at iBooks for free. SAS is chipping in with their expertise in ‘analytics software to help people analyze and visualize data’ though SAS officials have been quick to point out the ebook will be suited not just for the visually impaired but to all. Among the special features the ebook will incorporate include reading the texts aloud to benefit those who are blind to high contrast display to aid those with partial vision. There will also be the VoiceOver’ screen reader that those with visual impairments can fall back upon to comprehend the book. Also, with lot's of colorful images included in the book, SAS is making use of pitch of let those who can't see to have an idea of how bright a particular region is. For instance, for the star that is extremely bright, touching it will emit a sound of higher pitch than those with slightly lesser brightness. The ebook will also include closed captioning feature to help those with hearing aids. In any case, many of the images will be interactive, which means those will be marked with circles, and touching them will launch a small caption detailing the star and so on. There will be videos, animations and graphics included in every chapter to make it interesting to the readers. The book will run through 90 pages divided into 6 chapters. Also, to stoke interest even further, each page of the book will begin with a question followed by the answer.
‘Reach For the Stars’: The First eBook For The Visually Impaired is a post from: E-Reader News |
Acer Launches a Cheap $100 Tablet – Tab 7
| Acer has gone to new lows so far pricing of its tablet is concerned. The company has just come out with the Tab 7 that costs just $100. This makes it even lower than the A1-830 and B1-720 from the Iconia series that the company had launched earlier for $130 and $149 respectively. The Tab 7 though packs in specs that could belie its ultra low pricing. Powered by a 1.5 Ghz dual core cortex A9 chip mated to a 1 GB RAM, the Tab 7 offers a 7 inch 1024 X 600 pixel display and 8 GB of storage. Thankfully, there is a micro SD card slot as well to help shore up the meagre storage. The tablet runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and includes 1.9 and 5 megapixel camera along the front and rear respectively. That's really cool for a tablet that costs just $100. The 3000mAh battery though is good enough for just 5 hours of usage. Whether the low initial cost will be able to belittle the paltry back up times remains to be seen. As for its looks, the Tab 7 exudes style and character in equal measure. Donned in a shade of silver, the tablet's looks is accentuated further by the textured finish that the tablet incorporates at the rear along with the company logo in the center. However, the tablet right now is only available in China and no one knows for sure when it will be rolled out in other parts of the world.
Acer Launches a Cheap $100 Tablet – Tab 7 is a post from: E-Reader News |
PiPad – A Tablet With a Raspberry Pi Heart
| The Raspberry Pi has been subjected to all sorts of computing incarnations except perhaps a tablet device. That has been taken care of with the PiPad which is the handiwork of one Michael Castor who has a passion for devices and loves tinkering with them. He has been working on such a concept since early 2013 which is when he had started stocking the parts needed. As has been stated by him, he was particularly interested in ensuring the device exudes style and elegance as much as it would be about substance. That has been right on the spot can be made from the looks for the device which looks refined and well-built even for a hand built device. In the end, what you have is a device with a 10 inch capacitive display, and is based on the Raspberry Pi Model B mini PC that works in conjugation with a 512 MB RAM. The PiPad is also good enough for about 6 hours of usage thanks to the 10,000mAh battery that it comes with, which should be enough to give him company during flights, something that he has been particularly keen about. Also, an interesting aspect of the PiPad is that it has been made of hand crafted birch case with a carbon fiber sheet making up the rear. The finishing is good so that what you have in the end is a solid looking device even though it is half an inch thick. Michael is even contemplating future upgrades for the device which includes adding a camera along with an IR blaster. However, all of that is still in the conceptual stage right now. Click here for the complete details pertaining to the device and the way it has been put together.
PiPad – A Tablet With a Raspberry Pi Heart is a post from: E-Reader News |
Read Liverpool Program Introduces 6,000 Free eBooks
| In accordance with the global trend to adopt ebooks, the Liverpool city library has decided to go for a digital makeover by inducting more ebooks in its collection. The city council has earmarked more than £370k for the service dubbed Read Liverpool which has made available more than 6,000 ebooks for free download. Cllr Wendy Simon, Liverpool council’s assistant mayor and cabinet member in charge of libraries said, ”Liverpool city council was one of the first local authorities in the UK to introduce an e-library service in 2009 and since that time we’ve seen the popularity of e-books increase year on year. Reading habits have changed dramatically, and people want to be able to access books quickly and easily, 24 hours a day.” “Millions of people will have bought or received a tablet over Christmas, and our own figures in the city show that e-readers and tablets are hugely popular. “It makes sense for us to invest in this service and respond to the demand that is out there. “The ability to give everyone their own mobile library is a high priority. 2014 marks Liverpool’s Year of Reading and we want to do everything we can to encourage families across the city to regularly get into the literary habit.” No wonder 3,000 of the library’s 60,000 members have already started using the service in right earnest, with the figure all set to scale new heights in the coming months. Members have the option to download up to 8 titles at one go, all of which lapse after a period of 21 days. Among the devices compatible with the ebooks offered by the Liverpool Library include popular tablet and ebook readers such as the iPads, iPhones, the Kindle Fire range of tablet, along with ereaders from Kobo, Nook and Sony. Members also can read the ebooks on their PCs, and Macs as well along with other popular smartphones and tablets running Android. As for the choice of reading material on offer, members have the option to choose from ebooks, emagazines, audio books, digital archive of newspapers along with titles earmarked for kids and teens.
Read Liverpool Program Introduces 6,000 Free eBooks is a post from: E-Reader News |
Introducing OverDrive’s all-new, mobile-friendly Learning Center
| We are excited to announce that OverDrive's Learning Center has a new look to make it even easier for you and your staff to get the training you need as it best fits your schedule.
Best of all, the Learning Center now features a responsive, mobile-friendly design, which makes it perfect for finding and viewing courses on your tablet or smartphone. We hope you enjoy our new Learning Center and find it easier than ever to stay up to speed with your OverDrive service. If you have any questions, comments or training requests, please contact us at training@overdrive.com. For more visit: partners.overdrive.com/Learning-Center.
Anders Brooks is a Training Specialist at OverDrive.
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Digital Book World: Kids and eReading Study Data Released
 Photo courtesy of cbc.ca As things got underway at the annual Digital Book World conference in New York, one of the first news items to come was the results of an in-depth study on the digital reading habits of some of the youngest ebook consumers in the marketplace. “Two-thirds of children under 13 now read on digital devices; kids love reading eBooks and parents believe in their educational value. This puts us in a great place for gathering increasingly robust and insightful information to assist both e-reader designers and digital book creators," explained Alison Bryant, CEO and Chief Play Officer of PlayCollective. Some of the findings of the study demonstrate that:
The children’s digital book market has seen tremendous growth over the last two years, up from the early rise in digital publishing when children and teens were the demographics least likely to read on an e-reader or device. The Digital Book World conference will run through Wednesday in New York.
Digital Book World: Kids and eReading Study Data Released is a post from: E-Reader News |
A pure Python interface for the camera module: meet picamera!
| If you have a Raspberry Pi camera module, you’ve probably used raspistill and raspivid, which are command line tools for using the camera. Dave Jones, a Database Admin, software developer and SQL know-it-all based in Manchester has been working on an equivalent, feature complete implementation of these in Python. This means you can access the camera module directly from a Python script, without using os.system or executing a subprocess.  At Oggcamp I set up a big TV with a Pi and camera taped on top. I SSH’d in to the Pi from my laptop and entered commands in to iPython using picamera. Speaking as an avid Pythonist, picamera’s implementation is beautiful and it really is a wonderful library to use. It works really well for demonstrations using the Pi camera, and for real world applications. Part of the appeal of the Raspberry Pi is that you can work on embedded electronics projects without needing to know low-level languages or have to program a microprocessor – instead you have the choice of a range of accessible high-level languages such as Python – and this is an extension of that kind of abstraction, which open up a world of possibilities to a wider diversity of makers. Example usage:
Also you can do things like this:
and watch the preview flow through the brightness levels. The library has many configurations – you can change the brightness, contrast, saturation, image effects, exposure modes and such, as well as optionally show a live preview of the camera’s view. You can capture single images and sequences of images as well as video streams. Here’s a presentation of picamera Dave gave at Manchester Raspberry Jam XVI – where he demonstrates the basic usage of the module by typing commands in to a Python prompt on his laptop, with a monitor displaying the camera output (unfortunately out of shot in the video): Dave’s wife Holly works in the Palaeontology department at Manchester University (Interesting fact: when Dave and Holly got married, they picked a new surname to take (Dave was previously a Hughes) – so Holly could become Dr. Jones, and he would become Davy Jones) where they regularly capture images from microscopes. Rather than mount a huge camera on top of a microscope, Dave suggested attaching the Pi’s camera module to the lens.  An early version of the crudely mounted Picroscope He ended up writing a web app to support its use. This allows the user to control camera configuration settings through a web page, and capture photographs at the click of a button, as well as archive pictures taken in to a database along with metadata and extra information entered in a web form.  The web app showing pictures taken (smaller field of view due to temporary mounting setup)  Single view of image taken through the web app, with metadata fields  Picroscopy configuration settings Dave gave another presentation at the Manchester Jam, this time demonstrating a simple version of a Python web app for such an application (please excuse the numerous technical hiccups): As Dave says in the video: “This is where having a library is particularly useful. If we were doing this with, say, raspistill and raspivid, when you want to alter the brightness of your preview, you’d have to shut down the program, regenerate the command line, restart the program. Here we’re just saying “set a property”. This is why a library is better for an interactive application like this. There’s nothing wrong with raspistill and raspivid as far as they go, but they’re not ideal for building this sort of application. If you have interactivity, you want a library.” See more videos from the Manchester Jam: Jam #16 Videos. picamera has been available in pypi since October (v0.5), so it’s already in the wild – but now it’s hit the v1.0 milestone Dave considered feature complete, it’s packaged in the Raspbian archives so you install with apt-get (remember to run
or
depending on your taste. Dave also mentioned to me that this is by far the most popular project he’s ever published – and he’s been impressed by how brilliant the feedback has been from the Pi community. He’s had a great response on the forums, detailed bug reports provided by users and plenty of help from James Hughes, the author of raspistill, and from Alex Bradbury in getting it packaged for Raspbian. See the source for picamera and the picroscopy web app on github. Thanks to Dave for his hard work in building this library. Enjoy! |
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Yahoo News Digest to Battle Newspapers
| Yahoo has rolled out their first dedicated news app on iOS, entitled Yahoo News Digest. The app is one of the first new ventures under the watch of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. It presents a sleek, highly visual interface that presents you with 10 or so algorithmically generated news stories from Yahoo's network, twice a day: once in the morning, and once in the evening. The new service is designed to mimic the way newspapers approach the morning and evening editions. Yahoo News Digest is a product of tech acquired by startup Summly. It was shut down last March when it was sold to Yahoo for thirty million dollars. The 17 year old developer Nick D'Aloisio went to the London office of Yahoo and started work on the Yahoo iteration. In a conversation with the Verge, he mentioned “People have this information overload,” he says. “They're checking too many sources. They’re a bit tired of having to go through streams and streams of information, never having a sense of completion.” Yahoo will be doing battle against apps such as Flipboard, Pulse and services such as Google News. Instead of giving a million different stories they are giving curated content from their extended network. Many industry experts are saying that the News Digest App is on the same level as Yahoo Weather, as being well designed and intuitive to use. Yahoo is hoping to level some of the 400 million mobile monthly users they reported to have last year and 800 million global users overall. Yahoo News Digest to Battle Newspapers is a post from: E-Reader News |
Digital Comics Best-Sellers for January 12, 2014
| It’s time again to take a look at what comics are topping the digital best-seller lists. 1. The Walking Dead #119 The Top Ten chart leads off with two perennial best-sellers, The Walking Dead and the second year of Tom Taylor’s game-inspired Injustice. Taylor is killing it these days, as his other series, Earth 2, shows up in the number 4 spot. Detective Comics #27, which marks the 75th anniversary of Batman’s first appearance, is on the charts, as are the third issue of the Marvel Ultimates crossover Cataclysm and the first issue of Peter David’s new X-Factor story. Overall, Marvel won the week with five issues on the chart, DC had four, and Image had one. 1. Hyperbole and a Half The Walking Dead charts at Amazon as well, but in the number ten slot; Hyperbole and a Half tops the list for the second week in a row. It looks like Amazon is having a graphic novel sale, as Stephen King’s N, X-Men, and Infinity Gauntlet are all marked way down; lurking in the number 11 slot is the first volume of Saga for $3.99, which is a great deal as well. 1. Naruto, vol. 64 With the exception of the new volume of Naruto at the head of the list, this is the same books in the same order as last week. iBooks 1. The Walking Dead #119 Surprisingly, the top two comics on the iBooks list are the same as the ones that top the comiXology list. After that it gets predictably weird, though, with My Little Pony, The Walking Dead, Star Trek, and Charlaine Harris’s new book. That’s an odd mix but not an unusual one, as iBooks often includes some titles not seen anywhere else. Digital Comics Best-Sellers for January 12, 2014 is a post from: E-Reader News |
eBook Review: The Atlantis Plague by A G Riddle
| Verdict: 5 Stars It seems that recent and current global events have made readers absolute suckers for end of the world doomsday predictions, and with good reason. The what-ifs involved in medical science, experimentation, and technology come together to form an entire world of possibilities, and many authors are crafting interesting takes on the concepts. In book two of the Origin Mystery series, author AG Riddle spins the possibility of not only a worldwide epidemic that kills billions, but a battle between big name pharmaceutical and an organization that is convinced that this pandemic is the natural course of evolution for the human race. Not only will the disease reduce the global numbers, but the ones whose DNA is changed by the disease will become a stronger breed of human. Therefore, their only logical course of action is to let nature have its way with the planet. At times taking stabs at the ineffectiveness and greed of the pharmaceutical industry and making light of very real think tanks who believe in the superiority of some individuals over others, the book is a fast-paced thrill ride of pandemic proportions. The Atlantis Plague is available now, as is book one in the series, The Atlantis Gene.
eBook Review: The Atlantis Plague by A G Riddle is a post from: E-Reader News |
Hitler’s Book Rising in Non-Fiction Charts
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An article in Salon by Mary Elizabeth Williams explained an even more interesting phenomenon that has seen Hitler’s mastermind plan to spread the Nazi regime rise above books by other well-known political non-fiction writers. First, and a source of contention among digital publishing industry experts, is the price. At only 99-cents for the Kindle ebook, intrigued readers can take a peek inside the mind of concentrated evil without having to shell out a lot of money for what they may already assume to be garbage. Second, and perhaps more telling of how books are perceived in our culture, Williams points out that the assumed privacy of an ebook purchase, followed by the privacy afforded by reading it on an e-reader, may lead consumers to purchase a title that they don’t have to be seen walking up to the bookstore register with. Can you imagine bumping into your second grade nun in the bookstore with Hitler’s face tucked neatly under your arm? Ideally, the interest in the title stems from readers’ awareness that Hitler’s ability to entice people helped him rise to power, and that the renewed wave of purchases are from a cautious public bent on ensuring this type of monster doesn’t wind up in a position of authority ever again. But as Chris Farone points out to Williams, be very careful making an ebook purchase of this kind…your Amazon recommendations are going to be forever changed, and not in a good way.
Hitler’s Book Rising in Non-Fiction Charts is a post from: E-Reader News |
