| Last week when Amazon officially announced the new Kindle models for this year, they also revealed some interesting new software features that will be coming out soon. The new Kindle ereaders, and presumably the Kindle Paperwhite since it’s not going anywhere, are getting family sharing, enhanced search, more advanced info with About a Book, access […] |
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
New Kindle Software Features Coming Soon
Make your digital library a resource for teachers
| One of the best ways to increase student usage of your digital library is to get your teachers on board as active users. We recommend you expand your digital collection with professional development titles and classroom-tested educator resources from Teacher's Notebook.  Teacher's Notebook has thousands of hand-crafted educational resources including lesson plans and classroom activities for sale within Marketplace. With collections ranging from language arts, math, science, social studies and more, this newly available catalog is perfect for the classroom! Shop for these titles in Marketplace, made by teachers for teachers, today! Having these teacher-created materials available in Marketplace is a giant step forward for the OverDrive and Teacher’s Notebook partnership. Visit Teacher's Notebook for additional resources or to open up a shop of your own! When you add titles for your teachers, you can sort them into a special section called the Teachers' Lounge. That way it is easy for teachers to find what they are looking for. Ask your Account Specialist for more information about adding Teachers' Lounge to your digital library today!  Cassie Renner is a Marketing Specialist at OverDrive.  |
AT&T Offers 1 Free Year of Amazon Prime
| AT&T will be offering customers one free year of Amazon Prime with the purchase of their new internet program. The new offer also comes with a subscription to HBO and AT&T's version of basic cable for a one-year intro rate of $39 per month. This arrangement makes sense for Amazon as it tries to build a viable streaming video competitor to Netflix, pushing both new content and a huge archive of old HBO shows, which its rival doesn't have. Amazon has been offering 3G versions of their e-readers since 2007, with the advent of the first Kindle. The internet access is provided by AT&T, and allows customers to purchase books in hundreds of different countries with no extra fees. The new Fire Phone, which came out a few months ago is an AT&T exclusive, with no options to save money and bundle it on another carrier. Here is how the new internet package by AT&T works. In order to get the $39-per-month rate, you’ll need to sign on for an entire year of service. There is a $49 activation fee and a $99 installation fee, in addition to renting the digital box for $9.99 a month. If you decide to leave before those twelve months are up, and you’ll have to pay a hefty $180 termination fee. If you decide to take the plunge and indulge in television over the internet you will get a one year subscription to Amazon Prime. This not only includes their much hyped video service, but also free two day shipping, a free eBook every month and access to Amazon Prime Music. AT&T Offers 1 Free Year of Amazon Prime is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Get the Hang of Windows and OS X With Our New Tutorials
Need a quick refresher on Windows or OS X for Mac? Our new tutorials can help! |
World Maker Faire New York — a report direct from the Americas
| Rachel and Clive spent the weekend with the Pimoroni crew at the World Maker Faire New York. Here is the news report that they telegrammed via Cyrus W. Field's magnetic transatlantic telegraph cable. They call Maker Faire the "Greatest Show (and Tell) on Earth" and they're probably right. Certainly there's nothing on Earth that can prepare you for it, it's that different. It starts even before you get there. Riding the E train in from Manhattan you can play "Spot who's going to Maker Faire". It's pretty easy: they have this look of happy anticipation and glee that sets them apart from the people just going to work or to their proctologist. (OK, so some of them are dressed in robot suits made out of takeaway containers or have Asimov/Yoda/Spock quotes tattooed on their calves: there are no bonus points for picking those people out.) But it's no geek meet: it’s refreshing to see huge numbers of school and family groups there as well as the usual suspects. As you near the New York Hall of Science the buzz of the crowd is augmented by not-your-everyday sounds: exploding food, crackling Tesla coils and a 51ft long, pedal-powered crocodile blaring out "Soul man". The site is huge, taking at least three days just to get to the toilet and back*.  Mo from Five Ninjas talked constantly for 2 days without a single break The Raspberry Pi stand proved as popular as ever and we talked to hundreds of young people, educators, makers and parents. What was interesting was the increased awareness of the Raspberry Pi as a tool for making and learning. Last year, common questions were "What's that?" or "What does it do?" Now the majority of people wanted to know how to use the Pi to do specific things; or how to move on from the basics; or how to use it in education.  Rachel talking about digital creativity We were also delighted to see the Raspberry Pi used in so many projects and products around the show and want to thank all of the folk using it, especially those who we didn't manage to speak to on our whistle-stop tour of the Faire. Cheers! The exhibits and demonstrations at Maker Faire are as eclectic as it comes. Some of the stuff is fun and some serious. Some are thought provoking and some simply silly (we like silly). But as a whole it's testament to creativity, ingenuity, invention, engineering, whimsy and science. Best of all, making things has learning built in. The Hall of Science was built as part of the 1964 New York World’s Fair, a theme of which was “Man’s achievement on a shrinking globe in an expanding universe”. Looking at some of the amazing things I've seen over the past weekend it's clear that this sentiment is even more fitting than ever.  Winning!
[*This may have just been me. The night before I left for New York for Maker Faire, a giant skeleton ninja shimmied over my wall and sowed the back yard with poisoned giant skeleton ninja caltrops. Ten minutes before my taxi arrived I stepped on one of them. Inoculated to a depth of 10mm with every bacterium known to science I set off for the airport and two days of dragging a foot the size and toastiness of a well-fed coypu. (N.B. The caltrops may have been a needle sharp, week-old lamb neck bone that my brother's dog had been gnawing on. The effect was the same.)] |
Monday, September 22, 2014
Play Alien Creeps: Tower Defense Extraterrestrial Style
| There are plenty of games around just like it, but sometimes you need a little tower defense strategy game time to help you unwind. To that end, Alien Creeps TD is a game worthy of your attention. Brought to you by the developers at Outplay Entertainment, Alien Creeps TD is equal parts challenging and addictive. A quick tutorial when you begin the game will get you started, and in no time you will be using the energy gained from dead aliens to build more towers! As you embark on each campaign, choose which research to pursue that will supplement the defensive weapons you have available to fight of the hoards of invading aliens. Just when you think you’ve dominated enough enemy forces, in flies the helicopter with your reinforcements and you are left wondering if you can beat just one more wave of bad guys. Of course, my favourite part has to be the air strikes… where you sweep in and take care of business in a serious way. Progressing through each level means you earn resources that allow for the purchase more training for your heroes (or even recruiting new talent), all of which feels very satisfying. The graphic quality inside the game is quite impressive, with just enough animation to keep you engaged without adding to load times or unnecessarily increasing complexity. I have to say that I intended to put this game down about a dozen times before I was able to; anybody who is a sucker for a good strategy title might just face the same fate. If you find yourself in the mood for a little good old fashioned tower defense, download Alien Creeps TD and try your hand at saving earth. The app is free to download and play, but in-app purchases promise to speed up your progress for those of you who are a little less than patient (like me).
Play Alien Creeps: Tower Defense Extraterrestrial Style is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Patent Reveals Possible New BlackBerry Keyboard Design
| Since the beginning of the smartphone, BlackBerry has held fairly strong (with very few exceptions) to the idea that users want a physical keyboard. With the upcoming BlackBerry Passport, this philosophy stays true –and if a patent application that was recently discovered is any indication, nothing will be changing anytime soon. Text from the patent application indicates a three-row keyboard that is designed to be partially hidden:
Unlike the fold-out keyboards seen on smartphones of yester-year, this design seems to be a merging of (the best of) two worlds: the ability to use actual keys for typing without being so -obvious- about it. Reading between the lines (so to speak), leads us to believe that when folded, one row of keys would remain visible –likely giving way to gestures or special functionality to be enjoyed while in this format. Also flying around right now are rumours of new BlackBerry devices code-named ‘Visa’ and ‘Victoria’ that could feature a 5.5″ touch display on a LCD unit powered by Qualcomm Snapddragon 801 MSM8974AB; whether they also feature a version of this patent-protected keyboard is not yet known. It also isn’t known when we will see the new smartphones, but analysts are guessing at a release in the second quarter of 2015. If BlackBerry can pull off innovation like this elegantly (and quickly), consumers may get excited –but a lot will depend on the success of their upcoming Passport device, due to be launched at three simultaneous events being held in major cities later this month Patent Reveals Possible New BlackBerry Keyboard Design is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Amazon Unveils New Crowdsourcing Program for KDP Authors
| Amazon Publishing currently has 15 different imprints that span every single literary genre. These books are not only sold online for Kindle e-readers but also physically printed and sent over to bookstores. Finding the next great book to throw their marketing engine behind has always been a risky proposition. Amazon is quietly approaching authors who self-publish under Kindle Direct Publishing for a new program that will kick-start a book and potentially earn a new publishing contract with Amazon – in 45 days or less. Within the next few weeks KDP Authors will be asked to submit their complete, never-before-published book and cover. After a few days, Amazon will post the first pages of each book on a new website for readers to preview and nominate their favorites. Books with the most nominations will be reviewed by the Amazon team for potential publication. Readers who are selected for Amazon publishing contracts will get incentives that compete with first time contracts by major publishers. Authors will receive a guaranteed $1,500 advance and 50% royalties on net eBook revenue. Amazon will also acquire worldwide publication rights for eBook and audio formats in all languages, but the author will retain all other rights, including print. As a small reward to the people who nominated the eBook to become published will receive a free, early copy to help build momentum and customer reviews. The titles selected for this yet unnamed Amazon program will not have their books published by Amazon Publishing. This is mainly why they are not offering book editing or cover art design. Instead, Amazon is hoping to give authors another reason to exclusively publish with them and forgo submitting their titles to the competition. It would make sense that this new program is the first phase for using KDP as a feeder system for Amazon to make more money off of the next great author. If anything, this might be a nice visibility booster for people with a good book and a great cover, who are struggling to be found. I think more likely, Amazon is tired of authors who make a name for themselves selling their eBooks with Amazon then signing with traditional publishing houses for lucrative print contracts. The end game for this new eBook project is to publish audiobooks and eBooks and rope the authors into just dealing with Amazon and then saying “hey, why don’t we give you a bigger reason to continue to publish with us?” Amazon Unveils New Crowdsourcing Program for KDP Authors is a post from: Good e-Reader |
The Maze Runner Game Arrives on Android
| The Maze Runner phenomenon is running wild –beginning with a book series by James Dashner and evolving into an action film currently in theatres, the trilogy is now complete with an officially licensed mobile game released by PikPok (developed by Sticky Studios). Players are invited to follow a group of teenagers known as the Gladers around a complex maze in which they have become trapped. The game itself is a level-based runner, not unlike Temple Run. Using familiar touchscreen gestures, swipe left and right (or up and down to jump or slide) as you map the maze and search for clues –collecting them all (while “dodging falling boulders, fiery pits, and gushing aqueducts”) will let you advance to the next level. Skilled play will land you with upgrades and boosts that make play easier, and logging in daily will provide additional rewards. Jeroen De Cloe, CEO of Sticky Studios, describes their game:
If you would like to give The Maze Runner a try, download it now! You can get started for free, but be aware that in-app purchases will be required to eliminate ads and to enjoy other upgrades. The Maze Runner Game Arrives on Android is a post from: Good e-Reader |
BOOM! Studios Innovates Digital Comics with Sleepy Hollow
| The second season of Sleepy Hollow is all set to debut on September 22nd and Boom! Studios is hoping to capitalize on the demand. The comic book company is releasing a series of digital shorts that focuses on the central characters prologues. The first two prologues are already online, via the show's Facebook page and BOOM!'s Tumblr page, and center around Ichabod Crane and Jenny Mills. Both shorts are written by Bad Robot's Mike Johnson, with art by Matias Bergara, and take place prior to the first season — a long time prior, in Ichabod's case. There are five digital shorts planned and in the near future they will be repackaged and sold online in a graphic novel format. I think it is very interesting that Boom! decided to engage in digital comic shorts. Something like this is rarely done in the comic book industry, and most of the time they do full digital editions, that take longer to produce. BOOM! Studios Innovates Digital Comics with Sleepy Hollow is a post from: Good e-Reader |
HarperCollins Now Adding Digital Watermark DRM to eBooks
| HaperCollins has started using a new digital watermarking DRM, in addition to regular ebook DRM, to add additional security to their ebooks. HaperCollins and LibreDigital are the first companies to start using Digimarc’s new Guardian Watermarking DRM technology, which inserts unique, traceable code into ebooks at the time of transaction. The watermark DRM gives publishers […] |
Boyue T62 E Ink eReader with Android 4.2 Now Available on Amazon
| If you think the new Kindle Voyage is too overpriced or it doesn’t have the features you’re looking for in an ebook reader, there’s another new Android-powered ereader now available on Amazon called the Boyue T62. Last month while reviewing the Icarus Illumina HD, it turned out that it was actually a rebranded Boyue T61. […] |
Snakes and Ladders, Pi style
| Les Pounder is a big player in the Linux & free software community in the North West. I first met him a few years ago when he was running Barcamp Blackpool, Blackpool GeekUp, Oggcamp in Liverpool, UCubed (Ubuntu & Upstream Unconference) in Manchester plus Linux user groups and other events. When I set up the Manchester Raspberry Jam in 2012, it was modelled on the style of a UCubed event – and Les came along to help out. Les was working as a systems administrator around the time the Pi came out. Within a year or so of the community blossoming and his involvement growing, he decided to embark on a new career with the Pi at its heart. He got some work running CPD for teachers, introducing them to the Pi and to coding, he started writing articles for Linux Format, he started putting Raspberry Pi projects together for Element14, and since Linux Voice began he’s been contributing articles and Pi tutorials for them. He’s also currently working on a book with Wiley on Raspberry Pi & Arduino projects. Les recently set up the Blackpool Raspberry Jam – and at their inaugural event he demonstrated a new project he made which brings the traditional board game Snakes and Ladders in to the digital world of IO with the Model B+. It’s called Pythons and Resistors. Over to Les: For this project we will look back to our childhood and bring a much loved game from our past into the future. The humble board game. Board games have been a traditional family pastime for many generations but with the rise of computer games their novelty has started to dwindle. These card and paper based games have little to offer the children of today who have been brought up on a diet of downloadable content packs and gamer scores. But what if we could take a game from yesteryear and adapt it using the Raspberry Pi? Meet the latest interactive board game: Pythons and Resistors. The board game is based on a simple snakes and ladders setup, with 100 squares in total via a grid of 10 x 10 squares. The object of the game is for 2 or more players to roll a dice and move their game piece to match the number given on the dice. If the player lands on a python’s head, then they will slither down the game board to the tail of the Python. If the player lands on the bottom of a resistor then they will climb up the game board. The winner is the first player to reach square 100, which is at the top left of the board.
See the full tutorial in the Element 14 community and see the final code on Les’s GitHub. |
eBook Piracy Becomes a Top Concern
| The UK Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit has shut down a pirate eBook website called OnRead. This service provided over two million eBooks and bestsellers for a monthly fee. OnRead is claiming innocence, even though their entire domain has been seized by authorities. OnRead made a name for themselves by providing an illicit Neflix for eBooks concept. Their low monthly fee attracted many e-reader, smartphone and tablet owners looking to get around paying anywhere between $9.99 to $29.99 for the eBook. One of the alarming indications about how this site operated without publisher sanction was their terms of service. It stated "all materials presented on this site are available for the distribution over the Internet in accordance with the license of the Russian Organization for multimedia and Digital Systems (ROMS) and intended for personal use only. Further distribution, resale or broadcasting is strictly prohibited," the recent archive reads. ROMS is a Russian collective rights management organization that was originally founded in 2010, but the authors guild. It is ironic that this organization basically turned into a puppet for audio, video and eBook pirates to safeguard themselves by saying any content may not be resold and is only for private use. eBook piracy is becoming a large concern for many nations and their publishers. According to research by Dutch firm GfK, only 10% of all eBooks on devices were actually paid for, with most of the digital books being pirated. Meanwhile a survey conducted by Book Industry Study Group fond that during the Spring 2013 semester, 34% of college students in the United States illegally downloaded course materials from unauthorized websites. In 2010, the percentage of textbook piracy 20%. According to figures published by Russia: Beyond the Headlines, 70% of Russians read eBooks, nearly a quarter more than the number who did a year ago. Yet 92% of those readers download their books from pirate websites. eBook piracy resulted in €350 million ($467.1 million) in lost revenue for the €3 billion Spanish publishing industry in 2012. Some publishers are seeking to combat piracy, such as HarperCollins. Recently, they announced the advent of digital watermarks to work in conjunction with standard Adobe DRM. It is quite easy to remove standard eBook encryption, but is quite difficult with the watermark. This serves as a deterrent for anti-piracy agencies that scan the internet for books posted on file sharing, pirate and torrent sites and serves them cease and desist letters. Cory Doctorow said in a recent interview with Good e-Reader “Saying piracy is not acceptable is like saying gravity makes my back hurt. There is a difference between a problem and a fact. You can say that the Earth is only 5,000 years old, but if you want to make money in the oil industry you have to dig where the Earth would be four billion years old." The problem-versus-fact scenario that Doctorow refers to is one that he feels is being fostered by people who see a difference in readership and sales. "You can very firmly believe that it's incredibly bad for people to pirate things, but there's no future in which the internet makes it harder to copy. There's no articulatable theory of reducing piracy on the internet that doesn’t come from someone trying to sell you something. What I say when people claim that piracy is unacceptable is, 'Well, what do you plan to do about it?' You end up diverting a huge amount of money into alienating people." The entire modern generation of internet users feel entitled to everything and have no moral qualms about what they do. From various interviews and research we have conducted over the years, there are three main reasons why people pirate. The first reason is the type of person that grows up pirating content and has absolutely no moral qualms about doing so. The second is people who have a lack of a stable income or fixed income and still wants to satiate their literary thirst. Third, in the eBook realms people tend to pirate books they cannot get locally due to geographical restrictions or the lack of an official copy (such as Harry Potter). When users buy into the whole OnRead system of eBooks, they know what they are getting involved in. The website may be shut down, but the users paying the monthly fees, will simply find another site to fill the void. eBook Piracy Becomes a Top Concern is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Round Table Discussion – New Amazon Kindle e-Readers and Tablets
| Welcome back to another installment of the Good e-Reader Round Table Discussion Series! Today, Michael and Peter talk about all of the new Amazon products that were announced last week. They break down all of the e-readers and tablets to let you know if they are worth upgrading or what new features Amazon is bringing to the table. Good e-Reader has reviewed every single Amazon e-reader and tablet since the Kindle 2. We are in a great position to look at the evolutionary growth of the Kindle hardware and software to let you know, is this worth buying? In this video, Michael and Peter discuss the new Kindle Voyage, Kindle Basic, Kindle Fire HD6, HD7, Kids Edition, Kindle Fire 8.9 HDX, the new Sangria operating system and features like Kindle Family Sharing! If you missed the announcement last week, we break it down!
Round Table Discussion – New Amazon Kindle e-Readers and Tablets is a post from: Good e-Reader |
New Amazon Kindle Voyage e-Reader is Sold Out
| The new Amazon Kindle Voyage e-reader is experiencing ravenous demand since pre-orders went on sale last week. The device is poised to ship this October and already is sold out. New orders on the basic WIFI model with Special Offers will not be shipped out until November 28th and the 3G edition without Special Offers will be available December 7th 2014. Amazon tends to release new e-readers and tablets every year, close to the holiday season. This insures that the demand will be very high to purchase them for yourself or a loved one. Since new orders will not be shipped out until December, shipping may take longer than normal due to the inundation of packages all couriers have to deal with. The Kindle Voyage is the only e-reader that is basically sold out on Amazon. The new Kids Tablet, Fire 6,7 and 8.9 models will all be shipped out on the October 2nd. This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there is still a strong market for e-ink based readers. New Amazon Kindle Voyage e-Reader is Sold Out is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Saturday, September 20, 2014
New iOS App Gives Sight to the Blind
| Visually impaired people have a very hard time when it comes to reading and interacting with the written word around them. A new app developed by the National Federation of the Blind and Ray Kurzweil, a well-known artificial-intelligence scientist and senior Google employee is seeking to remedy this problem. Taking advantage of new pattern recognition and image processing technology, the app allows users to adjust or tilt the camera, and reads printed materials out loud. One feature I really liked was the ability to take pictures of menus, signs or small serial numbers and convert it to text. This text can then be blown up using really large fonts to assist people with moderate visual problems. People with refreshable Braille displays can now snap pictures of print documents and display them in Braille near-instantaneously, said NFB spokesman Chris Danielsen. Some early adopters like Mark Feliz said “I just finished sorting today’s mail. What a great feeling I have to be able to accomplish this seemingly trivial task. I didn’t have to interrupt my son or daughter, I didn’t have to wait for a pair of eyes, and my wife does not have to spend time sorting. [...] As my students would say, 'The K-NFB Reader rocks!” Another user, Gordon Luke, tweeted that he was able to use the app to read his polling card for the Scottish Referendum. The KNFB Reader app was designed for the Apple iPhone and an Android version is currently in the works.
New iOS App Gives Sight to the Blind is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Kindle Voyage in High Demand, Shipping Date Moves 5 Weeks Farther Away
| The Kindle Voyage might be overpriced, but there appears to be plenty of demand for Amazon’s latest new Kindle, as shipping dates for pre-orders continue to slip farther and farther away. Three days ago when Amazon first started accepting pre-orders for the new Kindle Voyage, the release date was listed as October 21st. And if […] |
Amazon Allows Family Sharing for Purchases
| One of the joys of reading has always been the ability to share books with your loved ones –how many times have you found a new favourite book that you can’t wait to discuss with the people around you? While there have been band-aid solutions and workarounds for a while now, being able to share digital book purchases from Amazon hasn’t been possible… until now! Amazon’s new Family Library feature includes support for household sharing that extends to books, apps, Prime Instant videos, audiobooks, and games. Taking their existing Kindle loan program a step further (that only allows books to be loaned once and for a limited time period), the Family Library will give up to six users the ability to share content (allowing two adults to manage up to four children). Cleverly, this feature will work on Kindle devices (including the Kindle Fire phones, tablets, and e-ink readers), but will also extend to any third-party device running Amazon’s apps. While I do appreciate their need to limit the number of people the app can share with, the 2 adults/4 children number seems a bit arbitrary. I’ve always liked the approach that says ‘anybody using the same home network’, but I may be alone on this one. Along with the Family Library announcement, Amazon also added the ability to create user profiles for Kindle devices (building on the FreeTime feature they already released that creates kid-safe sections of their tablets). This is a very nice feature for any families that share devices, allowing each user to save their preferences for things like screen brightness and progress through each book or video they have on the go. Movies, music, and television shows are not included in the Family Library, but for the moment we will take what we can get! They may have to re-think that choice though, when competing services like those offered by Apple do include this content as well. Do family sharing features like this make you more likely to choose an Amazon device (or even just use their app)?
Amazon Allows Family Sharing for Purchases is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Top 5 eBooks of the Summer
| The Summer months have officially drawn to a close and Fall is now upon us. There has been plenty of excellent fiction and non-fiction titles that kept us all busy at the cottage, beach or just curled up on the couch. Today, I take a look at the top five eBooks that riveted me the most. In the video below, I cover the entire list and give you my prospective on each one.
Top 5 eBooks of the Summer is a post from: Good e-Reader |
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