| There has been some very big new titles hitting iOS this week, such as Angry Birds Epic and Supercells Boom Beach. It looks like Android gets the short end of the stick, but there are a number of new and notable titles to hit the Good e-Reader App Store. blinkbox books from Tesco – The new blinkbox books service from Tesco helps you find stories you'll love to read on the train, in the bath or on the sofa late at night. Create your own eBook library on your Android mobile, tablet or Hudl and enjoy the most popular bestsellers at your fingertips, from Dan Brown, John Grisham, Sylvia Day, and David Walliams to the classics of Jane Austen and William Shakespeare. Star Wars: Assault Team – Assemble a powerful team of your favorite Star Wars™ heroes, and battle enemies and other players across the galaxy in STAR WARS™: ASSAULT TEAM! Strategize to give your team the winning edge in this unique, turn-based combat game from Disney Mobile in partnership with LucasArts! Cut the Rope 2 – Cut the Rope 2 brings fresh challenges and unanticipated obstacles to the candy crunching, physics-based phenomenon that has delighted millions of players around the world! If you like Cut the Rope, you'll love Cut the Rope 2! Captain America: The Winter Soldier – Play as Captain America and lead your S.H.I.E.L.D. Strike Team as they struggle to contain a massive attack on the World by several nefarious crime organizations. Stop the attacks and then take the battle to your enemies. METAL GEAR SOLID V: GZ – Extend the world of "METAL GEAR SOLID V: GROUND ZEROES" (PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360*, Xbox One) into the palm of your hands. They Need To Be Fed 2 Free – Gravity in all directions means you can never fall off, but that's not to say the game is easy. This is the sequel to the original They Need To Be Fed, which received much acclaim. They Need To Be Fed 2 is bigger, better, full of new surprises but also "more of the same"! Earbits Music Discovery Radio – Earbits is a free music discovery app designed to make it dead simple to find new bands and connect with them. If you are tired of ads and commercials on Pandora give Earbits Radio a try. It is 100% commercial and ad free. Zombie Gunship Zero – Zombie Gunship puts you in the gunner seat of a heavily-armed AC-130 ground attack aircraft. Strategically fire your powerful guns to slay endless waves of zombies and protect the remaining survivors of the zombie apocalypse! Max Axe: Quest For Loot! – Tired of lame-axe games? Get ready for MAX AXE! Throw axes with your finger to slay foul beasts, collect REDONKULOUS treasure and score BILLIONS of points to outrank your friends! Top 10 New Android Apps of the Week – March 29 2014 is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Top 10 New Android Apps of the Week – March 29 2014
Russia Technology Fund Buys 25% Equity in YotaPhone
| The Yotaphone was the first commercially viable Android driven smartphone that had two screens, color and e Ink. The company has been making waves in the technology industry due to the innovative design and emphasis on mobile reading. Yota has only been selling the device in their home country of Russia and just expanded into Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, UK and some Scandinavian countries. In order to facilitate growth, Rostec, the Russian state-backed technology investment group, has invested in Yota for a 25% According to the Financial Times “Mr Martynov confirmed that Rostec had exercised an option to acquire a quarter of the company, which he said was a legacy of Rostec's participation in the restructuring of Russian internet services provider Scartel, the former owner of Yota. The YotaPhone has a 4.3 inch screen with a resolution of 1,280 x 720 pixels on the front and a 640 x 360 display on the e-ink panel. Text can be fuzzy very hard to read, there is hardly any options to augment the text size. Underneath the hood is a dual core chip rated at 1.7 GHz does a good job at keeping up performance. Honestly, the entire control scheme of the phone is the worst I have ever seen. There are no physical buttons, and instead you have to gesture on the bezel upwards or double tap in an indeterminate area to access the e-ink screen. In some cases, you have to swipe left or right to turn pages while reading a book. Some books require you have to turn pages using the volume keys, so there is no consistency in the eBook reading experience. Vlad Martynov, chief executive of YotaPhone said the goal of the first generation device is just to build awareness. The company’s priority is developing a more solid second generation model that is due out at the end of the year. The prototype was shown off at Mobile World Congress in Spain last month. One of the big selling points is the e Ink screen will be touchscreen and readers can interact with it via pinching and zooming. The Yota is an interesting phone, as a novelty item. Customers would be better served waiting for the second generation mode, instead of spending £419, since the costs to produce the phone were higher than average, given the extra materials needed. Russia Technology Fund Buys 25% Equity in YotaPhone is a post from: Good e-Reader |
e Ink Reports 10% Quarterly Loss
| The dedicated e-reader market is shrinking and the companies heavily invested in this space are diminished from the boom period of 2011 and 2012. e Ink is the primary player in this sector, their screen technology can be found on the Kindle, Kobo, Nook and Sony readers. Chief Financial Executive Eddie Chen recently told investors that e Ink’s revenue is expected to plunge 10% on the next earnings call. E Ink has been seeing a cumitive decline in sales as their primary customers get more heavily invested in tablets. This has warranted a restructuring of their business and North American operations moving to a singular building. The company is still heavily invested in the e-paper space, with 80% of their revenue still deriving from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo. Taipei-based Horizon Securities analyst Stanley Hsu said “shipments of e-book devices reached a peak of 20 million units in 2012 and then fell to 16 million units last year.” One of the ways e Ink intends on turning things around is via the red hot mobile phone industry.The company began shipping e-paper products to Russian smartphone vendor Yota Devices last quarter and is hooking up Onyx with their e-Paper Android phone. e Ink continues to make most of their money from royalties, based on the sales performance of mainstream e-readers. They have also raised capital from new investors in Taiwan and even received an income tax refund. e Ink Reports 10% Quarterly Loss is a post from: Good e-Reader |
PressReader Secures Deal with Future for Properties such as Edge and T3
| PressReader is the leading player in the digital newspaper space with thousands of international editions available on a all you can read basis. The company is not that well known in the magazine space, with only a few hundred in their portfolio. Today, PressReader has signed a deal with UK based Future to incorporate over 50 new titles into their library. Future won Digital Publisher of the year in the UK for 2013 and has a number of great properties. Some of the most notable include PC Gamer, T3, and Edge Magazine, which have a massive subscriber base. By joining the PressReader network, Future will benefit from the additional international exposure through PressReader’s established global business channels that include over 15,000 hotels, libraries, airlines, airport lounges and cruise ships from around the world. “We are excited to partner with such a well-respected international media brand as Future Publishing Limited and to be able to offer our readers an expanded collection of special interest content.” said Nikolay Malyarov, chief content officer for PressReader. “Because of our rapid expansion into new markets and business verticals, we are focused on diversifying our content and growing our selection of magazines and newspapers to attract a wider audience with a variety of interests.” PressReader Secures Deal with Future for Properties such as Edge and T3 is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Home automation. For your Enterprise-class starship.
| This is a work-in-progress from Ludwig Boltzmann. And we love it. Ludwig says he will upload his code to Github when he’s satisfied it’s properly polished, but we liked what we saw in this video at this unfinished stage so much that we wanted to show it to you now. Can it be used to play Lifeforms so we can sing along, Ludwig? Read more about how Ludwig’s making this system work over at YouTube. |
10 Free Nook Books – March 29th
| Below is a list of free Nook ebooks as of March 29th, 2014. Please note that some of these ebooks are free for a limited-time only and could expire at anytime. Make sure to double-check that they are still free before purchase. Subscribe to The eBook Reader Blog to keep updated on future free ebooks […] |
Office For iPad Already a Hit
| Microsoft's move to launch Office on the iPad seems to be paying off rich dividends, with the app already featured among the top free apps for iPad. Word has emerged as the most popular at the No. 1 slot, followed by Excel and PowerPoint at the 3rd and 4th slots, respectively. The Office app is a free download but that will only allow for opening and viewing documents; an Office 365 subscription is required to do anything meaningful, including editing or formatting a document or creating one from scratch. The Redmond-based company is also benefiting from a new and steady stream of income from Office 365 subscriptions that costs $9.99 a month or $99 a year. Of course, Apple is benefiting from a 30 percent share for every in-app purchase, creating a win-win situation for both Apple and Microsoft. Microsoft, it seems, is open to adapting to a fast changing tech scene. As for the app itself, Office for iPad impresses with the features and functionality that it offers, all of which has been optimized for touch based operations.
Office For iPad Already a Hit is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Friday, March 28, 2014
Readmill Acquired by Dropbox
| Readmill is a Berlin based Startup founded in 2010 by Henrik Berggren and David Kjelkerud. The company launched a simple e-reading app for iOS and Android that allowed people to buy eBooks from publishers such as Penguin, and engage in a unique social atmosphere. Today, the company has announced that it has been acquired by Dropbox and will be joining their team. One of thing things Readmill did to separate themselves from other e-reading apps out there was to add a social layer. In February 2014 the company announced an update to its app that lets users make mentions to their friends, giving them the ability to highlight titles and pull direct quotes from the book, even if their friends are not currently engaged in the book. By using the Twitter-like at symbol, users can highlight passages, send them to a friend, and even include a note. The recipient can respond, of course, and a genuine conversation about the book can actually take place. The app also allowed you to upload ePub books to your account through the website and then sync your library to your mobile device. In a statement, Readmill said “As of today, it is no longer possible to create a new account, and on July 1, 2014, the Readmill app will no longer be available. For the next three months, our first priority is to help you transition to other services and get back to reading. All of your books and reading data are available for export in multiple formats. Our team will be joining Dropbox, where our expertise in reading, collaboration and syncing across devices finds a fitting home. Millions of people use Dropbox to store and share their digital lives, and we believe it's a strong foundation on which to build the future of reading. We're delighted to work alongside this talented team and imagine new ways to read together.” Readmill Acquired by Dropbox is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Amazon’s Latest Line of Kindle Fire Tablets on Sale Again
| Either hardware sales are slow at Amazon or they’ve got an excess of stock because the entire line of Kindle Fire tablets is on sale once again. Sales have become so frequent over the past few months there really is no reason to pay full price. Ever. Just wait for the next sale to come […] |
New Plaintiffs Come on Board Against Apple for eBook Price Fixing
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But new plaintiffs have now announced that they’re coming on board to recover some of the damage done to their businesses due to Apple’s push for agency pricing over the wholesale model. A 2013 suit filed by Australian ebook retailer DNAML was the beginning, but it has now been joined by the owners of the Diesel ebookstore and Abbey House Media. All three of the plaintiffs are sharing the same attorneys and expect their cases to become one case against Apple. The crux of this latest suit is similar–nay, almost identical–in wording to other documents in the case, all of which allege that Apple’s actions caused these companies to no longer be able to compete in the industry. Unfortunately for Apple, these three plaintiffs have been able to demonstrate profits and constant growth among their catalogs of titles and their customers bases leading up to the collusion. They specifically cite the inability to discount and bundle titles together as a customer incentive, one of the features of bookselling that changed for Amazon during the switch to agency pricing.
New Plaintiffs Come on Board Against Apple for eBook Price Fixing is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Celebrate Women’s History
| Before March is completely behind us, take a moment to celebrate the contributions of women across history and society. The celebration of women in history began in 1980 when President Jimmy Carter issued a presidential proclamation declaring the week of March 8 to be National Women's History Week. In 1981, the week was recognized by congress. It wasn't until 1987 that the whole month of March was declared Women's History Month. Since 1995, U.S. presidents have issued annual proclamations designating March as Women's History Month, and to celebrate, we’ve put together this list of titles. These titles are great to offer as educational resources in schools or promotional packages at your library as we celebrate Girl Power through women in history as well as women who have had a profound impact on modern society and popular culture. 
Laura Guldeman is a Collection Development Specialist at OverDrive.
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MS Office Made Free for Android Phones
| Close on the heels of Microsoft launching its Office software suite on the iPad, the tech giant made its Office for Android free to use. Unfortunately, this only applies to Android phones and not tablet devices, enabling users to create and edit documents that earlier would have required an active Office 365 subscription. Interestingly, this latest move has made Android phones on par with their Windows counterparts so far as usability of the Office app is concerned. Apart from the risk of losing subscription money, the Windows phone will now be deprived of a competitive advantage and may translate into adding greater adoption of Android phones. You can download this app today from the Good e-Reader App Store.
MS Office Made Free for Android Phones is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Android Found More Stable Than iOS
| The latest finding by Crittercism, which takes stock of app usage on Android and iOS devices, is that Android has emerged as the more stable platform than iOS. However, it hasn't been a cakewalk, as Android 2.3 Gingerbread has been notorious for unexpected app crashes, earning it the least stable Android version honor. Things have improved dramatically ever since the later Android versions of Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean, and the latest Android version, Kit Kat. In numerical terms, while Gingerbread alone accounted for app crashes 1.7 percent of the time, its successors crashed about 0.7 percent of the time. The corresponding figures for iOS show that iOS 6 has been most prone to app crashes, reporting crashes an average of 2.5 percent of the time. Things improved with subsequent revisions, with iOS 7 and iOS 7.1 crashing only 2.1 and 1.6 percent of the time, respectively. That might come as a surprise to Apple fans, who often perceive iOS as the most matured mobile OS out there. These findings form part of the report titled “Mobile Experience Benchmark,” which is based on a survey of about a billion Android and iOS devices for a period of one month.
Android Found More Stable Than iOS is a post from: Good e-Reader |
George R.R. Martin’s New Book Excerpt Available on Android and iOS Phones
| Prolific author George R. R. Martin broke the internet when he posted a chapter of his upcoming book, The Winds of Winter, on his site, which crashed shortly after the announcement due to traffic. Fortunately for those who missed the chance to catch up with Mercy, the central character, they can still do so via the Ice and Fire app, available at the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. "Some of you who enjoyed meeting Mercy may not have found the other sample we've put out there of late, a new Tyrion chapter. That one is live and available with the ICE & FIRE app, and can be found at iOS; Android. Enjoy the read, " the author revealed in his blog. Martin's other fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire, has been immensely popular and has already been made into a television series Game of Thrones.
George R.R. Martin’s New Book Excerpt Available on Android and iOS Phones is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Readly Launches in UK with Unlimited Access to over 3,500 Magazines
| Readly, which follows the successful subscription models of Spotify and Netflix, has made its all you-can-read magazine collection available in the UK. For a monthly fee of £9.99, users in the UK now have unlimited access to over 3,500 magazines from some of the most popular publishers including IPC, DC Thomson, Time Out and Haymarket. Along with new titles, users can read one year of back issues and share the subscription with their household. The subscription allows access for up to five devices. Readly can be downloaded on Android, iOS, Window 8 and Kindle Fire and is also available in the US and Sweden. Users have instant access from their device and can begin reading within 5 seconds of opening a title. Readly is providing users the magazines they want, where they want it and is opening up new revenue streams for publishers. Its unique licensing agreement see what a user has read and divides the revenue between those publishers. The company is also providing publishers with valuable analytics on how customers are consuming their magazines. The company is based in Sweden and is quickly rolling out its platform internationally. It hopes to add more european countries and publishers, while adding more features to its app. Readly Launches in UK with Unlimited Access to over 3,500 Magazines is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Sony’s Transition to Kobo is Smooth, But Not All eBooks Make It
| Sony started sending out emails yesterday with links to transition customer accounts over to the Kobo ebook store now that Sony is closing the Reader Store. I received the email today and the transfer process was incredibly simple and took all of about 30 seconds to complete. All I had to do was follow the […] |
Automated home brewing
| The office conversation this lunchtime went a bit like this: Me: “Two beer posts in a week is too much, isn’t it.” So I apologise for inflicting two posts about beer on you in three days: I promise not to mention fermentation at all next week. Ted Hale blogs at Raspberry Pi Hobbyist, where he concentrates on physical computing with the Raspberry Pi. His most recent project brings in another of his hobbies: home brewing. We like this not only because we like beer, but because think more Pi projects should employ propane. We’ve seen brewing projects where a Pi controls simple heating and cooling, but here, Ted uses a Pi here to control all the parts of the brewing method called partial mash: for this he needs to be able to:
Ted had problems over the build, including discovering that one of his sensors actually melted at high temperatures, finding that the igniter gave off so much electromagnetic interference that the I2C bus was unhappy. Being a seasoned hacker, he found ways around all the problems he encountered. The following paragraph, describing how he dealt with the interference, demonstrates why we think Ted is so great:
This guy is a musician with a hot tub who brews his own beer and hacks with the Pi for fun. We are in awe. There’s a writeup over at Raspberry Pi Hobbyist about how the whole setup comes together, and James, I expect you to have overhauled your entire home system over the weekend. |
Sony Sends Out Email about Transferring eBooks to Kobo
| Sony has sent out the first batch of emails that instruct customers on transferring their library of purchased content to Kobo. The process is relatively simple, you have to register for a Kobo account and click on the Getting Started Link. It will scan your library and begin uploading your books to the Kobo account. The only books that will not transfer are books that Kobo does not sell in their bookstore. Users are reporting that the success rate of transferring their existing library of content from Sony to Kobo, is around 85%. The bulk of titles that are not transferring are self-published, magazines, newspapers, comics, manga and kids books. The Sony Reader Store is now officially closed and users will not be able to buy anything further directly on their e-reader anymore. Sony has promised that during the next few weeks they will push out a firmware update to the Sony PRS-T1, Sony PRS-T2 and Sony PRS-T3 that will replace the Sony Store with the Kobo one. Users will soon be able to buy books directly from Kobo and read them on the Sony Reader. Users are implored not to fret if they have not received the transforship emails yet. Sony obviously can not send out millions of emails at once, and it will take about a week for everyone to receive them. Sony Sends Out Email about Transferring eBooks to Kobo is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Penguin eBooks for your classroom!
 John Green, Roald Dahl, Holly Goldberg Sloan, and so many, many more are coming to your classroom! OverDrive is thrilled to announce that Penguin eBooks are now available for purchase for U.S. schools. Under a one copy/one user lending model for a one year term, thousands of incredibly popular, award winning titles are in Marketplace, just waiting to be discovered by students in your school. Imagine the possibilities, lesson plans, activities, and group discussions that can revolve around titles like The Fault in Our Stars, James and the Giant Peach, Counting by 7s, and more. Stock up as your students return from Spring Break and be ready for summer reading programs, because it's going to be hot with Penguin content. School libraries can shop the Penguin eBook catalog now on the Marketplace homepage. You can also search for the content in Advanced Search under Publisher Account: Penguin Group (USA). Check out the lists by clicking on the links below. Also, we created a cart of the “Top 100″ bestselling Penguin titles in your Marketplace carts. The list is named “Penguin Juvenile/YA.” The OverDrive Collection Development Specialists are available to help create recommended lists of the Penguin catalog. Please email collectionteam@overdrive.com for more information. We're always here to help. Happy Shopping!
Suggested lists: Penguin Hot Titles JUV/YA FIC Penguin Hot Titles JUV/YA NONFIC
Kate Seivertson is a Collection Development Specialist at OverDrive.  |
Kobo eReaders, Tablets and Covers Now Available from Walmart
| Earlier today I was browsing through Walmart’s ebook reader selection online and noticed some interesting new additions. It appears that Kobo is finally making their line of ebook readers and tablets available through Walmart (U.S.) again. Kobo used to sell their ereaders through Walmart and other major retailers in the United States, but then they […] |