| Amazon has penned an open letter on their website which spells out their mentality in approaching the ongoing Hachette eBook dispute. They primarily contend that selling eBooks at the $9.9 price point sells more copies and garners more money than titles that retail for $14.99. In a written statement Amazon said “A key objective is lower e-book prices. Many e-books are being released at $14.99 and even $19.99. That is unjustifiably high for an e-book. With an e-book, there's no printing, no over-printing, no need to forecast, no returns, no lost sales due to out-of-stock, no warehousing costs, no transportation costs, and there is no secondary market — e-books cannot be resold as used books. E-books can be and should be less expensive. It's also important to understand that e-books are highly price-elastic. This means that when the price goes up, customers buy much less. We’ve quantified the price elasticity of e-books from repeated measurements across many titles. For every copy an e-book would sell at $14.99, it would sell 1.74 copies if priced at $9.99. So, for example, if customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99, then customers would buy 174,000 copies of that same e-book at $9.99. Total revenue at $14.99 would be $1,499,000. Total revenue at $9.99 is $1,738,000. The important thing to note here is that at the lower price, total revenue increases 16%. Amazon also made the keypoint of exactly how royalties are pointed to be shared between Hachette and the Seattle based company. “While we believe 35% should go to the author and 35% to Hachette, the way this would actually work is that we would send 70% of the total revenue to Hachette, and they would decide how much to share with the author. We believe Hachette is sharing too small a portion with the author today, but ultimately that is not our call.” In closing Amazon said “Is it Amazon’s position that all e-books should be $9.99 or less? No, we accept that there will be legitimate reasons for a small number of specialized titles to be above $9.99.” Amazon says $9.99 eBooks Make More Money is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Amazon says $9.99 eBooks Make More Money
BookPal Starts Wholesale eBook Business
| BookPal has just launched a brand new wholesale eBook operation, that will allow schools, government and businesses to buy titles in bulk. When you purchase eBooks from BookPal the only way to read them is via the BookPal app. It is a fairly robust with the ability to make highlights, annotations, look up a definition and share excerpts with Facebook or Twitter. In order to customize the overall e-reading experience users can adjust the font size, brightness, margins or initiate night mode. You can download the apps for free for iOS and Android. The overall catalog books is fairly small with the launch, and currently there are only one thousand titles. They come from publishers such as Perseus Books Group, Harvard Business School Press, Gallup Press, Workman Publishing, Storey and Open Road Media.
BookPal Starts Wholesale eBook Business is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Amazon Partners with Warner Bros for Digital First Imprint
| Amazon has announced a new partnership with Alloy Entertainment, a division of Warner Bros. The two sides will publish digitally at first, gauging the market to see if a print run is warranted. The new imprint, which will also use the Alloy Entertainment name, will publish young adult, new adult and commercial fiction titles. Three titles were released for the Kindle today, as part of the partnership; Imitation by Heather Hildenbrand, Every Ugly Word by Aimee Salter, and Rebel Wing by Tracy Banghart. Warner Bros is hoping to leverage films, television and media properties it owns to develop original works for the Kindle. Leslie Morgenstein, president of Alloy Entertainment, said: "One of our strengths is working with talented authors to create and develop properties that have mass entertainment appeal. This program is an exciting extension of our business and will allow us to leverage Amazon's ability to distribute to an incredibly diverse and broad readership." "Alloy has a tremendous track record developing stories, like Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars and The Vampire Diaries, that our customers love," said Jeff Belle, Vice President of Amazon Publishing. "We're thrilled to promote these books from Alloy Entertainment with our Powered by Amazon program. It's a great fit." Warner Bros and Amazon have been working together for quite awhile with the Alloy properties. Kindle Worlds, the officially sanctioned fan fiction publishing initiative has been using Vampire Diaries, Pretty Little Liars and Gossip girls as properties for aspiring writings to craft original stories, set in that particular universe. The solidification of Alloy and Amazon might see some of these authors get proper publishing contracts, but likely we will just see movie and television show tie-ins. Amazon Partners with Warner Bros for Digital First Imprint is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Scholastic Storia Closing – What Parents and Schools Need to Know
| Scholastic has announced in a very covert manner that they are closing the Storia eBook store, as we know it, and transitioning it into STORIA SCHOOL EDITION and Family Streaming Edition. Instead of selling eBooks directly, they intend on adopting the uber popular Netflix for eBooks ideology. What happens to the hundreds of thousands of books already purchased? How does this new subscription system actually work and is it a viable business model? Storia was Scholastics catch all system for purchasing eBooks on an individual basis. Parents, schools and kids would use the reading app for iOS, Android and the Kindle Fire to purchase books on-demand. In order to preserve your existing content, you have to open the titles by October 2014 or they will be unable to be read them. You can think of Storia eBooks as dedicated apps, similar to how digital magazines work on the Apple newsstand. If these apps require an update between now and August 2015, they will likely break the book. This is the primarily reason why Scholastic has stealthy offered a refund policy for any books purchased via the Storia platform. They aren’t really doing a good job making this publicly known, as there is a simple one paragraph blurb on their main website about it. Scholastic confirmed with Good e-Reader that “Our customer service lines are fielding calls, facilitating refunds and assisting schools in transitioning from individual books purchased by teachers to streaming for an entire school. The advantage is easier access and that each ebooks is accessible by more than one child at a time (rather than buying multiple copies) which is a huge plus for the classroom; teachers are also learning about the new student progress tracking features and they like them.” Scholastic Storia for Education was first announced in April 2014 and will be formally launched at the beginning of September. It is a system that has 2,000 eBooks and will be delivered in a subscription format. The exact rate that schools pay are dependant upon the size of the student body and how much content they intend on downloading. I have heard that the average rate is between $1,500 and $2,000 per year. This system might be beneficial for schools as they can deliver multiple copies of the same book, without having to buy 30 individual copies. It will likely be awhile before parents and children themselves can opt into the new subscription system. Scholastic has confirmed with Good e-Reader that they are developing a Family Streaming service that is currently in the Research and Development stage. Therefore the sales structure has not been announced as single title or subscription or both. There has been no ETA given for the official launch, but likely we will not hear about until next year. The main priority is to get the new Education system up and running. Basically, what Scholastic is doing is shuttering selling eBooks directly to schools, parents and kids. Instead, they are adopting a more financially lucrative subscription based system, which alienates families. Why have a parent buy a few titles a year, when you can have steady income generated from hundreds of schools in the US all paying a few thousand dollars a year. My biggest concern with Storia technology being integrated into Storia for Education is awareness. Parents and Kids may casually use the app on their tablet or phone to buy and read books. They certainly don’t look at the official Storia website or read publishing geared websites like Good e-Reader. What happens when a new 39 Clues book is announced and little Jimmy is a huge fan of the series. They open the Storia app to try and buy it, only to realize all singular title purchases have been suspended and some of their past purchases don’t even work anymore.. Parents will likely be wondering why some titles work and some don’t and blame their device. In the end, they might decide that Amazon, Barnes and Noble or Kobo might be the more viable method to purchase future titles. After all, they don’t change their entire eBook selling paradigm at the drop of a hat. Scholastic Storia Closing – What Parents and Schools Need to Know is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Shop Til You Drop Magazine to Focus on Digital
| Australian based fashion magazine Shop Til You Drop intends to focus on digital, while still publishing four tangible issues a year. The new online edition will be available every two weeks and focus on emerging fashion trends. Shop Til You Drop was founded in 2004 and is the modern girl's fashion and beauty bible. It aims to make shopping easier and more accessible for time-challenged women. With a focus on shopping smart, it covers the entire market of fashion, beauty and homewares, providing the reader with the ultimate edit of what she needs this minute – mixing high-end fashion with chain-store must-haves; luxury beauty buys with pharmacy products. Most of the writing and editorial staff of the magazine will be let go, due to sagging readership base. Instead, they will deal mainly with freelancers to write stories and contribute fashion ideas. Shop Til You Drop falls under the ACP Magazines banner and it was purchased in 2012 by the German media conglomerate Bauer Media. We are now seeing the entire ACP portfolio undergo drastic changes to remain profitable. Grazia and Madison have shuttered their doors and Elle Australia has launched to take their place. Shop Til You Drop Magazine to Focus on Digital is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Studies Still Show Print Edging Out Digital for Reading Preference
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According to the article on the findings, “Those most in favour of e-books were predictably under 30 year olds who only preferred the printed book by a 28 per cent to 27 per cent margin. “Those aged 45 to 49 were the most hostile age cohort for e-books with 42 per cent preferring the printed version and 18 per cent an e-reader. “Consistent with the BBQ debates the major factor cited by those who preferred reading printed books was that they enjoyed the feel and smell. A secondary factor coming through was that there was less strain on the eyes. Lower level factors cited by printed book advocates were they didn't run out of power, it was easier to skip back and forward, habit and print books filled bookshelves.” It may seem unrelated to some industry watchers, but the fact that consumers still prefer and buy more print than digital actually speaks to the increased validity of data about how self-published authors are faring in the market. Given that indie authors as a group generally sell more of their ebooks than their print titles, and given that consumers purchase more print than digital, it would show that the greater piece of the publishing pie that indies now earn is on even greater sales. They sell fewer books and at cheaper prices, yet still earn more income than traditionally published authors. This data is no more prevalent than in the Author Earnings reports, who recent study of Barnes and Noble data showed that self-published authors are earning even higher amounts of income than traditionally published authors. Studies Still Show Print Edging Out Digital for Reading Preference is a post from: Good e-Reader |
OverDrive Challenge success stories: Part 1
| Last week, we announced the winners of the first ever OverDrive Challenge. The Challenge represented something new for us – if we set specific goals for every public library partner, would they rise to the occasion and try to meet those goals? The answer was a resounding yes! An outpouring of interest flooded in from more libraries than we have ever had participate in an OverDrive contest in the past. Not only did we want to see our libraries boost circulation, we wanted to see how they would do it. Every library is different and we knew there wasn't a one size fits all solution. We asked our successful libraries to share what they did to hit their highest circulating month ever and thought we'd share a sampling of some of the diverse responses we received. Maybe you can find a new strategy to use at your own library! Get every staff member involved "The campaign demonstrated what a difference staff awareness of (and confidence with) the collection makes to circulation figures. At the beginning of the campaign, all staff received an email with some key benefits of our OverDrive collection that they could use as talking points with customers. In addition, all staff who had not yet tried downloading OverDrive eBooks were encouraged to set themselves the aim of using the service themselves in June. The response to this was positive: as a result of browsing our collection and reading the eBooks they had selected, some staff have since followed up with suggested titles for our collection!" – Athina M, Monash Public Library Service "The circulation staff really got involved in telling people about the challenge. For us, we didn't do anything particularly clever but used enthusiasm to encourage people to use eBooks and eAudio for the first time." – Marlene J, Municipal Library Consortium of St. Louis County
“We held one-on-one 'eBook open houses' to help beginners. I also give infinite credit to our front desk staff, who faithfully mentioned the challenge to patrons as they checked out print books. During this time, we had a patron come in to learn about eBooks. She's a regular library supporter, and attends many of our author talks and other programs, although she says she hasn't been able to read a book in several years because her eyes have gotten bad. After hearing about eBooks due to the buzz about the challenge, she bought a tablet and came in for help setting up. When I showed her how to select the text size she prefers, she smiled so brightly! She's all ready to start enjoying her favorite authors again. eBooks are like a miracle for our large-print readers." – Heather D, Hancock County Library System Reward your users "We held a public contest and partnered with our local Best Buy. The highest downloading customers received a Kobo Arc tablet or a $20 Best Buy gift card!" – Lynn Y, Ajax Public Library "We used our content credit prize to buy eBooks for a new patron driven sponsored collection: Patron Recommended Titles – June 2014 Challenge Reward." – Mark S, Beaver County Library System "In addition to providing staff with talking points about our eBooks and promoting via email and social media, we ran a giveaway. We randomly picked winners for an eReader and shared the photos of the winners on our Facebook page." – Joyce K, Yukon Public Libraries "Patrons had the chance to win gift cards if they borrowed an eBook during June, which helped boost interest. Near the end of the month, we were so close to surpassing our goal that we offered a new incentive – we promoted on social media that if we reached our goal, the male staff members would dye their facial hair blue. We called it the "Blue Beard Promise" and our patrons got behind us and gave us the push we needed. You can see our blue beards in action in our YouTube video." – Jason H, Bartholomew County Public Library
Check back tomorrow for more great ideas from our winning library partners! Melissa Marin is a Marketing Specialist at OverDrive.  |
"We had a Nook class with an employee from Barnes & Noble. We used this opportunity to educate not only our patrons, but bring the whole staff up to speed. To keep track of our stats, we created a goal chart and as a reward for our entire staff working together to reach our goal, we had a staff ice cream party." – Barbara T, Shasta Public LibrariesOur Excel Formulas Tutorial is Finally Here!
Need help creating formulas in Excel? Understand how they work with this interactive tutorial! |
Comixology Now Offers DRM-free Comics for Backups
| Last week at Comic-Con in San Diego Comixology announced that they will now offer DRM-free downloads of comics purchased from Comixology. This allows readers the option to save comics for backup outside of the Comixology app. Not all titles are available DRM-free; it’s up to individual publishers to decide if they want to offer a […] |
Submit your application to the Raspberry Pi Education Fund
| Got a great idea or project to teach kids about computing? Need some help raising the finance to make it a reality ? We have some good news: the Raspberry Pi Education Fund is finally open for applications. As a reminder, thanks to all the Raspberry Pis brought by the community of the past 2 years, we have been able to put together a £1 million education fund to help fulfil our charitable mission. Applications are invited from organisations looking to fund projects that encourage young people to learn about computing or illustrate how computing can be used enhance education in STEM or the creative arts. You can find more details on the eligibility criteria and submit you application here.  Coding Marathon at the Cambridge Centre of Computing History sponsored by Raspberry Pi Foundation Go on, what are you waiting for? This is your chance to make a difference. |
Amazon’s Latest Tool a Great Benefit to Indie Authors
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Even before Amazon’s attempt at joining this market, these portable devices are a must for indie authors. Typically, self-published authors take on all the “leg work” associated with their writing careers. That means not only finding their own professionals to assist with the actual creation of the book, but it means the marketing and promotion as well. Authors often find themselves looking for opportunities like speaking engagements, book signings, and more. Whereas a bestselling book tour set up by a major publisher will handle the sales of titles at each stop along the tour, a self-published author typically has to arrange the signing, set up the space at the venue, sell the books, and then sign. Portable card readers from trusted companies make sales far more likely in the increasingly cash-less society. Also, a number of authors–who’ve been thwarted by bookstores and libraries when they call to request permission for a book signing–find themselves selling their work at events that are not strictly bibliocentric. Outdoor festivals, themed events, and city holidays come to mind. In these cases, there may not even be wifi to work from, let alone a cash register in place. A portable reader feeding into a cellphone can mean the difference between potential readers simply browsing, as opposed to buying. Finally, just as the age-old “elevator pitch” wisdom meant being prepared to tell an agent or publisher about a manuscript on the off-chance the author bumped into one, the current wisdom for independent authors to be ready to sell a book at any time. The elevator pitch still applies, but it’s now shifted to talking one-on-one to a potential reader. But having a few copies of the authors’ books handy for these instances means giving away their work–which still isn’t a bad thing–but there’s only so long an author can afford to give away her print material. A portable card reader will let the author offer the book to a potential reader and take the reader up on his offer of payment. But why Amazon’s? If the reader devices themselves are so useful, should it matter? Obviously, that remains to be seen. Pricing will be the first factor; Square, Intuit, and PayPal readers are free when users sign up at the website, and cost about $10 or so when purchased through a store like Target or OfficeMax. Reports are that the Amazon reader will cost about the same. And with percentage fees as low as 2.4% (Intuit) and 2.8% (Square), it will interesting to see if Amazon’s ingrained drive to be a better value than everyone else results in a lower fee. Moreover, with the constant threat of credit card fraud and identity theft, consumers may feel some measure of security by handing their cards to someone with the Amazon logo at the top of the card reader. On the flipside, there’s the potential for a customer to refuse on the grounds that they’re in the anti-Amazon camp. However it works out, authors would do well to make sure they’re able to accept payments in some electronic way in order to maximize on their own hard work.
Amazon’s Latest Tool a Great Benefit to Indie Authors is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Monday, July 28, 2014
Library Patrons Embrace eBooks in Northern Ireland
| Northern Ireland libraries have been loaning out eBooks since 2009. Patrons have recently been embracing the digital platform, as the digital collection improves. When eBooks first became available at Northern Ireland Libraries in 2011, there was only 363 eBooks to loan out. In 2014, the collection has grown and 9,439 titles were downloaded in a single month. On average, they are loaning out 363 a day. Since the start of this year, the most popular genre for e-book borrowers in Northern Ireland has been romantic fiction, followed by the work of crime writers. Library Patrons Embrace eBooks in Northern Ireland is a post from: Good e-Reader |
App Businesses Not Making Enough to Survive
| When the Internet really started to take off and companies were making e-commerce profits hand over fist, all it took to make money was an idea and just enough technical skill to hang a web-shingle. Many years later, in much the same way, app developers are popping up everywhere –every day there are hundreds of new titles fighting for our attention. Some are worth it, but according to VisionMobile's latest Developer Economics report, many are not. Details in the report indicate that half of iOS developers, and 64% of Android developers are operating below the app poverty line (identified as making $500 per app per month). While it may seem like a reasonable profit for work that is already completed (once an app is released), one needs to see a return on their invested development time –but there is also a need to see revenue to compensate for Apple licensing, hardware, and ongoing support as required. It could be worse of course, 24% of all app developers are making nothing at all (and 23% are bringing in under $100 per month). If your idea is particularly amazing, or you have marketing genius that helps lead consumers to your app, you could find yourself among the 1.6% of development houses responsible for generating the most app store revenue (many making more than $500,000 for each app per month). At first glance it may seem like these figures shouldn’t be of particular concern to end-users, but consider that if developers are unable to sustain upgrade and support channels for the apps they put out, the app stores will soon be cluttered with junky apps that probably shouldn’t be bothered with. Consequences of those apps seen as disposable will ripple through app stores as users learn not to trust or rely on anything they download and install.
App Businesses Not Making Enough to Survive is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Podcast – Amazon Credit Reader, Storia Closing and eBook DRM
| Welcome to the Monday edition of the Good e-Reader Radio Show with Michael Kozlowski and Mercy Pilkington. Today, we talk about the new Amazon Credit Card Reader and how its a boon to indie authors to accept mobile payments while at events. Scholastic has announced the closure of their Storia eBook platform and is transitioning to a subscription system. Finally, many eBook resellers have gone out of business in the past few years, is your purchases protected? Podcast – Amazon Credit Reader, Storia Closing and eBook DRM is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Buying Books as Gifts Decline in the UK
| Buying that special someone a book for their birthday or Christmas is on the decline in the United Kingdom. The Nielsen Book Survey has just decreed that the share of books bought as gifts fell from 24% to 22% – equating to a decrease of nine million books. Jo Henry, director of the research, said that the decline in giving books as gifts would be of particular concern to publishers and called it a “concerning trend” which has also been seen in the US. Gifts accounted for 22% of book sales in 2013, down from 24% in 2012. She is calling for more research to find out the reasons why people are not buying books as gifts as much anymore. Nielsen also provided data on continuous climb of the eBook industry, as a whole. The survey found that digital eBooks now account for 25% of all book purchases (up from 20% in 2012) and that their growth is at the expense of paperbacks. Buying Books as Gifts Decline in the UK is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Vote for the next Big Library Read title!
 OverDrive is preparing for the next Big Library Read this coming October, and we are excited to invite you, your library staff, and your readers to help select the next Big Library Read title. October's title will be in the Young Adult category, and thanks to participating publishers, there's a great selection to choose from. To vote, simply visit https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BigLibraryRead. Feel free to share this link with your readers, too. We'll announce the winning title and provide more details about the October Big Library Read in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!  |
Do We Need Consumer Protection for eBooks?
| There is no true path of ownership when you purchase eBooks, digital comics or manga from online retailers. Instead, you are merely granted a license and if the store closes you will lose everything. In the last few years we have seen BooksonBoard, Diesel eBooks, FictionWise, JManga, Scholastic Storia, and the Sony Reader Store all shutter their doors. Do we need consumer protection laws to protect our eBooks? When Amazon sells you an an eBook for the Kindle they have the right to remove it at any time. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is referenced and Amazon can take your books away if it finds you’ve been naughty. Being naughty is fairly general and can apply to a myriad of factors. A Norwegian women tried to purchase a Kindle book from the UK bookstore. Under Amazon’s rules, this type of action is barred, as the publisher seeks to control what content is read in which territory of the world. Her account was promptly deleted and all content lost. Should you attempt to break the DRM security block or transfer your purchase to another device, Amazon may legally “revoke your access to the Kindle Store and the Kindle Content without refund of any fees.” In the past, Amazon has remotely deleted purchased copies of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm from customers’ Kindles after providing them a refund for the purchased products. This was primarily due to a rift with the original publisher and rights issues. Commenters have widely described these actions as Orwellian, and have alluded to Big Brother from Orwell’s book. When eBook stores decide they cannot stay in business anymore they allow for a small window period that allows you to backup the purchases and store them locally. If you are an average reader who might check the website or a use a reading app periodically, you will likely miss out the opportunity to save your books. Backing up your books presents a wide array of challenges when you want to read them in the future. When Sony or Diesel eBooks closed, the content was incompatible with the Kindle. Instead, readers had to find a third party reading app for iOS or Android, which are not heavily promoted. If readers have an e-reader such as the Kobo, Onyx or Icarus, they can use Adobe Digital Editions to transfer them over. This program is not the most intuitive and may present a barrier to the non tech savvy. There are only a few online bookstores of note that do not sell their books using Digital Rights Management (DRM) and allow for a somewhat clearer path of ownership. TOR books is a science fiction and fantasy imprint and they made the call to abandon DRM and sell books directly to customers. Pottermore came into existence as an avenue to use digital watermarks as a way to sell Harry Potter books, and not restrict how a user can read them. Self-publishing companies such as Smashwords leave it up to the author to decide if they want to employ DRM or not, but when you buy a Smashwords title from iBooks, it does have DRM. Theoretically, what would happen to your purchases if Smashwords went out of business? According to the latest numbers from the Association of American Publishers, adult trade ebooks brought in $1.3 billion in revenue in 2013, up 3.8% from $1.25 billion in 2012. Ebooks now account for 27% of all adult trade sales. With this much money at stake and more customers adopting them, consumer protection for digital books is going to be needed. Australia, Canada, Europe, UK and the United States do not have any current protection laws for digital books. They leave it up to the publishing industry and resellers to determine how best to run their own businesses and to develop their own licensing agreements. With millions of eBooks, comics and manga being lost after purchasing on a worldwide scale, something needs to be done to augment the First Sale Doctrine, Copyright Software Rental Amendments Act and Digital Millenium Copyright Act to protect customers from companies indiscriminately removing purchased content or to save it from a company going out of business. Do We Need Consumer Protection for eBooks? is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Apple Buys BookLamp, Creators of Book Genome Project
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According to TechCrunch, things became a little cryptic in April of this year, at least on BookLamp’s end. Once the anonymous tipster let it be known that Apple had completed the purchase for between $10million and $15million, which includes all of the technology and the manpower within the company. Facebook (of all places) provided some more of the clues, as key team members from BookLamp still listed Boise as their places of residence but had multiple FB posts that were tagged from the Cupertino, California, location. As to how this is going to help Apple take down Amazon, as some reports are already claiming, that remains to be seen. Amazon purchased Goodreads over a year ago, with some estimates on the cost ranging from between $150 million and over one billion dollars. While the move has been good for Amazon, for Goodreads, and even for readers, it doesn’t appear to have been a game changer within the bookselling industry, at least not in the way that these kinds of dollars reflect. One thing that has come out, though, is a renewed focus on Apple’s part in terms of selling titles through its iBooks platform. With agreements already in place with publishers and even Smashwords, and with the iOS8 update coming this fall that is supposed to make book purchasing even more streamlined, incorporating a search feature for right-fit books makes a lot of sense. Of course, as Apple explained to TechCrunch, the company has a long history of buying smaller tech companies and then not discussing the details. Apple could just as easily have plans for the BookLamp technology–say in the area of app discovery–that doesn’t have much to do with bookselling.
Apple Buys BookLamp, Creators of Book Genome Project is a post from: Good e-Reader |
100 years since World War I: build a Morse code virtual radio
| On this day 100 years ago, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia in response to the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. As the dominos began to tumble Russia mobilised against Austria-Hungary, causing Germany to declare war on Russia. Germany then invaded Luxembourg and declared war on France; and on the 4th of August the United Kingdom declared war on Germany. So began one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history, that would draw in all of the great economic powers of the world, lasting until November the 11th 1918. A century later the effect of this war is still with us. Every one of us has some kind of connection to it, whether it be an impact on our family history or on the place we live. This year events are taking place all over the world to commemorate and remember the millions of people who lost their lives. You can visit www.1914.org to find out more.  The cover of QST magazine showing a call for women radio operators. We expect lots of schools will be taking part in these events, and in the spirit of commemoration we have put together an educational resource called the Morse Code Virtual Radio. This allows you to simulate and experience the main form of radio communication that was used back then, using your Raspberry Pi. If you have an ancestor who was an ex-telegraph operator or world war serviceman, you may have an old Morse Code key in your attic which you could use.  An antique Morse Code key. Invented by Samuel Morse in the year 1836, Morse Code is a method for sending and receiving text messages using short and long tones. It was adapted for early radio communication, before it was possible to send or receive voice, and was used extensively during both world wars. Morse Code is also a really great skill to have. There is a very human element to it which is difficult to quantify and describe. Human skill is required to key in Morse Code correctly which takes only minutes to learn, but a lifetime to master. Skill is also required to listen to the tones and decode them. Our educational resource provides learning opportunities for both aspects. Want to have a go? You’ll find everything you need here on our resources pages. |
See The Apps Your Friends Use With Homer
| There are millions of apps floating around out there, and you’ve installed a good number of them… which are worth keeping? Often the best apps on your smartphone or tablet came to reside there by way of recommendations from friends and family, and thanks to PayPal co-founder Max Levchin you can find out what they are using without even having to ask. Homer is an app available for the iPhone that lets you share your app picks with fellow users. There is no magic to Homer, it’s all about screenshots of the screens on your phone. Not to worry, privacy features are built-in –which shots you share are completely voluntary. Is there value in an app like Homer? Truthfully I’m not so sure that I care what most of my friends have installed, but I’m terribly interested in what productivity apps colleagues are using. Consider the lists of tips put out by highly successful people, wouldn’t it be interesting to see what they have installed on their smartphones? Unfortunately there isn’t an Android version of Homer available just yet, but it seems reasonable to expect that one will head our way soon.
See The Apps Your Friends Use With Homer is a post from: Good e-Reader |
