| Created by the community, for the community, The MagPi magazine is the world's first and only free, regular magazine about Raspberry Pi. It has been published online almost every month since May 2012, and every issue is packed full of hardware and software projects and tutorials for all skill levels. Now there’s a Kickstarter campaign to bring Volume 3 of the magazine into print.  Draft of the design for the Volume 3 binder cover Volume 3 comprises all ten issues published in 2014 (issues 20-29): that’s 468 full colour pages! They’ll come in a lovely smart binder, with a spine designed to match the Volume 1 and 2 binders so that they look neat beside one another on your shelves (we care about this kind of thing at Pi Towers, and we’re quite sure that MagPi readers feel no less strongly). And that’s not the end of this week’s MagPi goodness: Issue 30 is out now. It features electronic ping pong using the Pi’s GPIO and LEDs, an account of using Raspberry Pi to enhance navigation data on marine voyages, an air hockey arcade game in Scratch, an introduction to C#, Raspberry Pi 2 (of course!) and plenty more. Download your pdf copy now! |
Thursday, February 12, 2015
The MagPi – Issue 30 out now, and a Kickstarter for Volume 3 in print!
Top 5 Shojo Manga
| Valentine’s Day is nearly upon us, and everyone is feeling the pull of Cupid’s bow. The flowers, the chocolates, the jewellery, and the heartfelt cards from your significant other, it’s all a staple of this holiday. But flowers and chocolates are such typical Valentines, and there are only so many fancy restaurants to attend on dates. Instead, why not spend this year with the best Valentine ever – a shojo manga? As Valentine’s Day fast approaches, here are the top 5 shojo manga, perfect for spending the day cuddling up with your loved one. 5. Lovely Complex What do you do when you’re the tallest girl in high school? Get a crush on a tall boy, of course. Certainly not get a crush on the shortest boy in high school – but that’s exactly what Risa Koizumi does. The romantic comedy by Aya Nakahara tells the story of Risa and her 5’1 love interest, Atsushi Otani, and their journey from snarky classmates to friends to something more. The series is fun and lighthearted, while still managing to get a few sad scenes as well. But those sad scenes do nothing to detract from the humour of Risa and Otani, often referred to by friends as the comedy duo. If you’re looking for a manga full of laughs to share with your lover, this is the one for you. Find it at Viz Manga! 4. Boys Over Flowers If you’re looking for more of a sweet, vintage taste this holiday season, this is the manga for you. Written by Yoko Kamio, Boys Over Flowers is the tale of a poor girl attending a rich academy for the elite. This ‘weed’, Tsukushi Makino, runs headlong into the Flower Four, otherwise called the F4, the most popular boys in the school. As the only girl who has never swooned over Tsukasa Domyouji, the leader of the F4, she unwittingly gains his attention. This attention later blooms into admiration and love in this slice of romance. Follow along with Tsukushi and Tsukasa and their love story at Viz Manga! 3. Kaichou wa Maid-Sama! When an all-boys school suddenly becomes co-ed, there’s bound to be a few bumps in the road. Misaki Ayuzawa is determined to smooth out those bumps in the road, becoming the student council president and determined to make the female experience better for her school. Along the way, she gains a reputation for being a boy-hating demon – but, as popular boy Takumi Usui discovers, this isn’t entirely true. The rigid Misaki atually has a part-time job…at a maid cafe. This series from the pen of Hiro Fujiwara has a great sense of humour, and the maid cafe theme might help put a little spin on your Valentine’s Day charm. Tokyopop distributes Maid-Sama, and can be found in your local bookstores! 2. Ouran High School Host Club You already knew this one was on the list. If you didn’t, this is one manga you need to read immediately. Bisco Hatori’s tale has been a staple in the shojo manga genre since its debut. The story follows Haruhi Fujioka, a poor girl attending a rich, elite school, who encounters a group of six popular boys. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? But Host Club differs from other series by satirizing many shojo cliches. The manga pokes fun at stereotypes, and characters will even break the fourth wall on occasion. But the humour of the series does nothing to detract from its plot, which is truly romantic at heart. Despite being mistake for a boy, and breaking an expensive vase on her first visit, Haruhi gains the love and affection of the Host Club, and finds love for herself in return. The misadventures of the Ouran High School Host Club can be found at Viz Manga. 1. Fruits Basket Picking the best is the hardest, but after reading this manga, you’ll be surprised there was even a contest. Written by Natsuki Takaya, this manga follows Tohru Honda, a girl who is temporarily homeless and living in a tent. These unfortunate condition are discovered by the Sohma family – specifically, by Yuki and his cousins Shigure and Kyo. Tohru quickly learns that the Sohma family is under a curse. They are possessed by the spirits of the Chinese Zodiac, and will transform into an animal whenever under stress, or hugged by a member of the opposite gender. This, of course, leads to problems as Tohru begins living with them. Instead of being afraid when she discovers their secret, Tohru sets out to break their family’s curse. It’s a true love story, a modern-day fairy tale that would warm the hardest of hearts. Sold through Tokyopop, this manga is available in just about every bookstore across North America. Instead of the typical flowers and chocolates, why not gift your Valentine with a basket of Fruits Basket? And for all the people out there who will be alone this Valentine’s Day, whether you’re single by choice, single and pining, or single and freshly out of a relationship, here’s a manga to boost your lonely spirits. Skip Beat! Drawn by Yoshiki Nakamura, this shojo is still going strong today. It tells the story of 16-year-old Kyoko Mogami, a girl who discovers that her boyfriend isn’t what she thought he was and thinks of her as a doormat. Instead of getting sad and depressed about it, Kyoko gets angry and swears she’ll get revenge. The only problem is, Kyoko’s boyfriend is a teen pop star, and the only way to get revenge on him is by overtaking his career. In true Legally Blonde fashion, Kyoko dives headfirst into the world of superstardom. Although the story begins as a revenge campaign by Kyoko, it evolves into more of a journey of self-discovery as she grows and changes. It’s a great manga for anyone looking to stand on their own two feet as opposed to leaning on someone else’s. If you’re going to be single this Valentine’s Day, don’t spend it alone – spend it with Kyoko and her story. Read it at Viz Manga! Top 5 Shojo Manga is a post from: Good e-Reader |
ALA to Craft a Monumental Survey on the State of Digital in Libraries
| Libraries in all over the world are embracing digital content as major publishers have firmly committed themselves making audiobooks and e-Books available. The American Library Association knows that 95% of all US libraries have an e-book collection. That's up from 89% in both 2013 and 2012, when researchers thought that adoption had plateaued for good. In provide key information on digital usage in libraries, ALA has partnered Book Industry Study Group and Nielsen for a monumental survey. The survey will seek to understand library patrons' use of digital resources and other services offered by public libraries, and will "examine the impact of digital consumption behaviors, including the adoption of new business models," on library usage across America. Over 10 different libraries in the US and Canada had over one million digital loans in 2014, with two libraries lending out two million e-Books. This number will likely double in 2015, as companies like 3M Cloud Library and Baker and Taylor begin to gain further traction. Likely the survey will talk about these companies and also new audiobook distributions systems like Hoopla. Results from the survey will announced at the American Library Association's Annual Conference in San Francisco at the end of June. Good e-Reader will be live on the scene making all of the key findings known. Currently, it is unknown what the exact questions on the survey will be. I pinged ALA and other people involved in the project and everyone said it was too early to talk about anything definitive. ALA to Craft a Monumental Survey on the State of Digital in Libraries is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Christian Fiction Experiences a Dramatic Decline in Sales
| Christian Fiction is on the decline, as overall book sales have plummeted 15% from 2013 to 2014. Today we look at some of the reasons why this sector is crashing and what the industry is doing about it. Publishers are not too concerned right now with the decrease in Christian book sales, whether its print or digital. Instead of lamenting how their industry is suffering, they are trying to make it work. David Lewis, the VP of sales and marketing at Baker Publishing Group, said "Our trade paper fiction revenue declined by 8%, our e-book revenue increased by 3%, and our cloth fiction has increased by 45%." HarperCollins Christian Publishing is pumping out close to 60 new titles each year and "our program is showing revenue growth over last year," said Daisy Hutton, VP of fiction. "Print is here to stay, but the category is undergoing a period of reinvention. The migration to digital reading is part of this, but the changing demands of our readers are an even bigger factor." The changing demands of readers basically boils down to two things, the amount of free content that is available digitally and brick and motor stores discounting Christian fiction in abundance. One of the big reasons why Christian fiction right now is on the decline is authors are no longer getting good incentives from traditional publishing companies. Literary agent Chip MacGregor said in a recent blog post that “Christian fiction is really struggling. That's become obvious to me over the past couple of years, and I’ve discussed it with many other agents. Several houses have stopped doing inspirational fiction, others have trimmed back their lists, still others have simply put a "freeze" on new acquisitions, so it's become evident that it's a tough time to be trying making a living writing Christian fiction.” When it comes to book data, Nielsen is likely the most trusted source. The company gets sales information from all of the major online retailers and stores that sell print. The big problem, is that they are only able to fetch data on content that have ISBN numbers. Self-published e-books do not necessary need one to be published by Amazon, Barnes and Noble or Kobo. Nobody really knows how well Christian fiction is doing on those platforms, as the companies rarely breakdown sales in this manner. Despite the unknowns, traditionally published authors are starting to take control over their own destiny and are electing to self-publish. Ava Morgan is a traditionally published author who stated “As an author who published traditionally for the Christian/inspirational market in the past, I agree about the changing demands of readers being one of the factors for sales decline. People come from all walks of life and the CBA (Christian Book Association)has been slow to address the lack of diversity in the titles it allows to be published. For instance, I tend to write stories with multicultural and multiethnic characters who overcome adversity, be it financial, social, etc. I've had several issues with editors and publishers asking me to tone down the characters' hardships or change their race because it may make the readership "a little nervous". As to whom this narrow readership is, I cannot say, because when I attend church and go to Christian events, I encounter people of many different colors, shapes, lifestyles, and levels of faith. Unfortunately, there are powers-that-be within the Christian book market who are so afraid of offending a select few, that they choose to continue offering books to appeal to one segment of the Christian population that is getting smaller every day. A problem very clearly seen in the secular book market as well, when publishers keep releasing the same one-storyline-fits-all books to generate sales. Inspirational writers are starting to self-publish as a way to reach the changing Christian reader demographic. As both a Christian and African-American woman, I feel that my demographic is not adequately represented in CBA fiction. Later this year, I'll be self-publishing under my real name a historical Christian romance featuring African-American protagonists. It's truly a blessing to live in an age of publishing where you can independently get your story out into the world without fear of gatekeepers.” Authors who elect to self-publish should be wary about the sheer number of options out there. Amazon is likely the best move, but requires technical knowledge on how to actually create a digital book from a Microsoft Word Document. It is important to beware of the scams and shady companies out there that are more concerned with taking your money, than publishing your book. Donald L. Hughes of Christian Writing Today offered some advice “There are many Christian companies these days that pretend to take the marketing and book manufacturing process off your shoulders. They include such names as Xulon, Westbow or Winepress. These companies will charge you an arm and a leg for services that you can do on your own or with the help of a consultant. These companies actually do little more than the old-time vanity presses; you have to think twice about what that will do to your credibility as a writer. And, if you use profitability as a measure of your ability to gain readership, then these companies will not help you. They take such a big chunk of money for their editorial and design services that they leave nothing on the table for you.”
Christian Fiction Experiences a Dramatic Decline in Sales is a post from: Good e-Reader |
PressReader, Kindle Update their iOS Apps
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The Kindle app now supports eTextbook reading, which is big news because the iPhone now supports this format. This has been one of the missing features from iBooks Author, but now that support for the smartphone is available to readers on the go. For its part, PressReader announced its update and the inclusion of digital content from over 100 countries, with language editions in more than 60 different languages. According to the announcement of the update, “PressReader partners worldwide are now sponsoring access to our entire library of more than 3,500 full-content publications from 100+ countries in 60+ languages in their places of business. Just open up your tablet or smartphone in one of their designated Wi-Fi zones called PressReader HotSpots for instant access to any newspaper or magazine. To find one near you, just open up the PressReader HotSpot Map from the app navigation menu. “The HotSpot map shows networks where premium PressReader access is sponsored by a network owner. If location services aren’t provided to the app, your location will be estimated by IP address. The search function displays HotSpots by name. If there are more HotSpots in the visible map area than can be shown without overlapping, one of the most popular HotSpots will be shown, and the full list will be shown on the right.” The HotSpot map feature is one of the standouts that has made PressReader a popular choice for the hospitality industry. A number of hotel chains and restaurant locations already work with the app developer to cover the associated cost of the content while their patrons are on location. This kind of free incentive is one of the many steps that hotel chains are taking to win loyal customers.
PressReader, Kindle Update their iOS Apps is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Fans Pick Haven’t You Heard? I’m Sakamoto as #1 Manga They Want Animated
| Last week, about 1,800 readers voted on a pole on Anime! Anime!’s website asking them what mangas they wanted to see turned into an anime. The voting took place between February 3-8th and the mot ranked manga was Nami Sano’s Haven’t You Heard? I’m Sakamoto (Sakamoto Desu Ga?) The series ranks in top book sales in Japan and won the best "male oriented" comics volume award from Da Vinci magazine in 2013 and Comic Natalie Grand Prize. The full list is as follows: Haven’t You Heard? I’m Sakamoto by Nami Sano One-Punch Man by ONE and Yuusuke Murata Yotsuba&! By Kiyohiko Azuma March Comes In Like A Lion by Chika Umino Drifters by Kouta Hirano Nijiro Days by Minami Mizuno Yandere Kanojo by Shinobi Amaama to Inazuma By Gido Amagakure Soul Catchers(S) by Hideo Shinkai And there we have it! I highly suggest checking out these mangas! Hopefully we will see their animated counter parts soon. Are there any mangas you’re hoping to see become an anime? Let us know! Fans Pick Haven’t You Heard? I’m Sakamoto as #1 Manga They Want Animated is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Kindle for iOS Software Updated to Version 4.7
| Amazon has issued an update for their iOS Kindle app for iPad and iPhone. The new software version 4.7 doesn’t add as many features as the last update; it’s more geared toward bringing the iPhone version up to par with the iPad version. With the last iOS Kindle update Amazon introduced a new feature called […] |
Oprah’s Book Club has Returned
| The Oprah Book Club ended four years ago when her official daytime show off the air. Her recommendations assisted authors in selling over 55 million copies since 1996. There is good news, Oprah Picks are now back and its time to discover some great new reads. The first author to gain Oprah's seal of approval is Cynthia Bond. She is an actress by trade and has been teaching writing to homeless and at-risk youth throughout Los Angeles for more than fifteen years. A writer whose "unflinching yet lyrical prose" O Magazine recently compared to Toni Morrison, Bond might just have penned the breakout novel of the year with Ruby, a period drama set in rural Texas. Ruby tells the epic story of a man determined to protect the woman he loves from the town desperate to destroy her. Utterly transfixing, with unforgettable characters, riveting suspense, and breathtaking, luminous prose, Ruby offers an unflinching portrait of man's dark acts and the promise of the redemptive power of love. "When I found out that Bond is 53 and hadn't written a book before, I thought, Wow. This woman was born to write. There's no other explanation for such a vivid, searing first-time novel that penetrates through the page to the reader's heart. Writing is Bond's calling. No question about it. And when I found out that she's spent more than 15 years teaching writing to homeless and at-risk youth, I knew she must be truly special. I couldn't wait to call and tell her that Ruby is our new OBC 2.0 pick." said Oprah. The novel will be out in paperback on Tuesday, with a printing of 250,000 copies. The hardcover currently has 20,000 copies in print, according to Hogarth, an imprint of Penguin Random House, and is available as an e-book. Oprah's Book Club has Returned is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Coming soon for U.S. and Canadian libraries: Disney streaming video!
| We are excited to announce an agreement with The Walt Disney Studios to offer more than 100 streaming video titles to public library partners in the U.S. and Canada. This licensing agreement strengthens a robust catalog of thousands of streaming video titles available through OverDrive, and reinforces the value of a single central platform for eBooks, audiobooks and streaming video. "Few brands evoke nostalgia and provide entertainment to all ages the way that Disney does with its iconic films," said Lee Milstein, Chief Strategy Officer at OverDrive. "We are thrilled to collaborate with such a respected and trusted company to make these animated and live action streaming videos available for lending through our U.S. and Canadian networks of library partners." Libraries will soon be able to browse or search for a selection of Disney and Touchstone titles in OverDrive Marketplace and tailor their collection to match the unique interests of their communities. As with other content and access models from OverDrive, libraries will set user lending policies for Disney movies to maximize value of their material budgets. Library patrons across the country soon will be able to use PCs, Macs, iPads, iPhones, Android Tablets or nearly any connected device to stream Disney titles such as Air Bud, The Muppet Movie (Jim Henson, Mel Brooks, Steve Martin), Billy Bathgate (Dustin Hoffman, Nicole Kidman), Oliver & Company (Billy Joel, Joey Lawrence), Tom and Huck (Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Brad Renfro), I Love Trouble (Julia Roberts, Nick Nolte) and White Squall (Jeff Bridges, Scott Wolf, Ryan Phillippe). For more information about streaming video from OverDrive, visit our website.
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Shop e-Readers Unveils New Program to Sell your Old e-book readers
| Shop e-Readers is starting to compete with eBay and Amazon to sell your old e-readers and tablets. The company has unveiled a new program that allows anyone to list their used product with the website and then sell it. The used e-reader program was designed for people who just upgraded to a new device and is wondering what to do with the old one. Alternatively you might have received a Kindle or Nook as a gift and found you don't really like it. The Shop e-readers e-commerce site is the perfect fit, because its the only store in the world that carriers numerous brands and is exclusively geared towards the sale of e-readers, which makes it a very specialized service. Listing your e-reader on Shop e-Readers is free, simply fill out a form and it will be listed within a few hours. When a customer finds your product while browsing the site and decides to buy it, Shop e-Readers handles the transaction via credit card or Paypal. Once the sale has been confirmed the company will email you the customers address for you to ship out, once its been received you get paid! The one exciting thing about what Shop e-Readers is doing is they are not focused just on Canada or the US, but will accept used e-reader listings globally. Since the company has launched the service in the last 24 hours almost 12 new e-readers have been added. Get started today and list your used e-reader with Shop e-Readers. Shop e-Readers Unveils New Program to Sell your Old e-book readers is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Prepare for Pi Day!
| With the date formatting used in the United States, 3/14 is considered Pi Day, so it's a great excuse to get Raspberry Pi enthusiasts together to share what they do. Not only are we officially participating in Pi Day at SXSW in Austin, but we'd like to support and promote any kind of jams, bake-offs, user groups, showcases, or workshops that are taking place on March 14th throughout the United States. There are a few events that are already confirmed and I'll highlight them below. If you’re organizing a Raspberry Pi-focused Pi Day event that you'd like us to promote, please click here to submit your event information. We'll do another blog post leading up to Pi Day — ahem — rounding up all the events happening across the country so that Raspberry Pi fans can find one near them. Austin, TXMembers of the Raspberry Pi team (including Eben, Liz, Rachel, and yours truly) will have a stand at SX Create, which is part of the SXSW Interactive festival. We’ll have a few demos and hands on activities that we’re excited to share. We’ll also be surrounded by companies, products, and organizations all related to hacking and tinkering with technology. Even though we’re especially excited about Pi Day, we’ll be there for all of SX Create, which runs from March 13 to 15 and is free and open-to-the-public. Bay Area, CAOur friends at the absolutely fantastic Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA are planning a big Pi Day bash and they’re looking for Raspberry Pi projects to showcase. Here’s what they have to say about it:
Little Rock, ARIn Arkansas, a third annual bake-off will take place on March 14th at the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub. Organizers David J. Hinson and Tony Bates of Arkansas Geek Central had this to say:
Visit their site for more information about this Pi Day event. Your Event HereIf you’re planning a Pi Day event, let us know about it so that we can tell the rest of the Raspberry Pi community where they can find you. And if you’re excited about the prospect of bootstrapping your own Pi Day event, it’s not too late to start planning. |
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Still Time to Use $6 Play Store Credit for Chromecast Users
| Planning a quiet night in for Valentine’s Day? Thinking of renting a movie? Save a little of your hard-earned money and get those extra toppings on the pizza you order by using a $6 credit from Google exclusively for Chromecast users. Not a fan of movies? Use the credit to purchase something else from the Play Store (nothing says romance like a few extra bonuses in Candy Crush). It may seem a little strange for Google to give away something for nothing, but it makes excellent sense –get users in, get them thinking about the Play Store as their go-to source for entertainment, show them how easy it is… all while leaving a ‘no cost’ pleasant taste for everybody. Let’s just hope it works as advertised –if the process doesn’t work or feels tedious, the opposite effect will take place. Visit Google’s Chromecast Offers website if you want to find out for sure whether you are eligible for this credit. When you check, note that you have to be connected to the same network as your Chromecast device.
Still Time to Use $6 Play Store Credit for Chromecast Users is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Huffington Post Starts a Local Australian Edition
| The Huffington Post will launch a local Australian edition of the online publication in conjunction with Fairfax. The liberal blogging platform said it is going to hire Australian editors and reporters to work in Sydney independently of Fairfax. Fairfax is no stranger to publishing and currently is the force beyond the the Sydney Morning Herald, Stuff and the Age. Fairfax will have a 49% stake in the joint venture, which will have a staff of about 12. The total costs to setup the Huffington Post is going to be around $10 million. One of the big reasons Fairfax pursued this deal is because of their company wide priority in digital. In 2014 they now have 140,000 digital subscribers to the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age and over 1.2 million visit their website on their smartphones and tablets. Outside of Australia, international distribution via PressReader assists in reaching the traveling business crowd and expats. The chief executive of the Huffington Post, Jimmy Maymann, said Australia was chosen because it was a rare combination of a digitally advanced economy and a relatively young digital media market. "Australia is the third-largest digital ad market in Asia, and has the third-highest rate of social media penetration in the world," Maymann said in a statement. "At the same time its shift to digital news consumption is still in relatively early stages, with digital media readership continuing to grow at 11% annually and still only 50% of all readers regularly consuming news online. The combination of these characteristics make Australia a very exciting destination for our latest Huffington Post edition." Established news companies moving into Australia is starting to become big business. The Daily Mail, BuzzFeed and the Guardian have all setup localized editions of their publications. This is a savvy move because not only do their news stories gain an audience in Australia, but the big stories end up crossing over into their main newspapers and blogs. Huffington Post Starts a Local Australian Edition is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Scribd is Now the Netflix of Comic Books
| Scribd is likely the largest e-book subscription website where users pay $8.99 a month to read as many books as they would like. Lately, the company has been on a rampage adding audiobooks and now comic books in order to appeal to a new demographic of users. Starting today, 10,000 single issues and graphic novels will be available a month after they are published. This will keep the Scribd library feeling really current and relevant. You can start reading modern comics from Marvel, Archie, Boom! Studios, Dynamite, IDW/Top Shelf, and Valiant. The most recognizable publisher in this list is Marvel, whose line of movies is bringing in an entirely new audience to the comics. Scribd is launching their comic catalog with about 20% of Marvel’s entire catalog. This includes classic runs of the Avengers, the X-Men, Daredevil, and Spider-Man; YA titles like Ultimate Spider-Man and Runaways; and current series like Mark Waid’s Daredevil. They also got fan favorites like Captain America, Iron Man and Thor. The one interesting thing that Scribd is doing with comics is incorporating the entire binge concept that Netflix made famous. Scribd CMO Julie Haddon said “One feature we’re excited about is what we’re calling the “binge button,” which allows readers to advance to the next issue or volume in a series without having to leave the reading experience to search for the next installment. We love those moments when you’re immersed in the world of a series and devouring issue after issue. We designed this feature to facilitate exactly those kinds of moments for our readers.” Scribd is Now the Netflix of Comic Books is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Amazon has Mad Deals on e-Readers and Tablets Right Now
| Are Amazon Fire and Kindle e-reader owners suffering from fatigue? It seems every month the Seattle based company is hyping some deal to get their base of customers to upgrade their devices. Valentines Day is no different and there is some big deals to be had $79 Kindle for just $59 $119 Kindle Paperwhite for $99 $99 Fire HD 6 for $84 $139 Fire HD 7 for $114 $149 Fire HD 6 Kids Edition for $134 $189 Fire HD 7 Kids Edition for $164 Fire phone is available unlocked with a no contract price of $199 (starting on 2/11) Amazon has Mad Deals on e-Readers and Tablets Right Now is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Scribd Adds 10k Comics & Graphic Novels to Subscription Service
| The rising tide of ebook subscription services has been gaining ground lately with more and more major publishers getting onboard with the idea. Scribd has been doing their part to expand on their monthly subscription service, which costs $8.99 per month. Over the past three months they’ve added audiobooks, signed with Macmillan to bring in […] |
You can add Teacher’s Notebook materials to your Marketplace cart
| One of the best ways to get your faculty excited about your digital library is to ask your teachers what titles they'd like for their classes. Having your teachers (and students) assist in collection development is a surefire way to increase usage and promotion of your collection. But did you know that in addition to purchasing your eBooks and audiobooks in Marketplace, you can also get 100% teacher created lesson plans and classroom activities from Teacher's Notebook as well? Teacher's Notebook has thousands of educational resources available, including novel review materials and interactive activities for sale within Marketplace. With collections ranging from language arts, math, science, social studies and more, this newly available catalog is perfect for your classroom. Your teachers can even earn money by opening up a shop of their own! When you add titles for your teachers, you can sort them into a special section on your school OverDrive-hosted website 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. Adam Sockel is a Social Media Specialist at OverDrive |
Amazon Launches Giveaway Tool
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The program allows users to set up giveaways of any of the eligible items on Amazon, including self-published titles. At the time of this writing, though, ebook titles (even those posted through both KDP and KDP Select) were not automatically included, although print counterparts were. The user selects the item, clicks the Giveaway button towards the bottom of the sales page, and walks through the process on-screen. There are variables to choose, such as how many items to give away, how to select the winner, and whether or not the entrant must follow the host on Twitter before entering. Unfortunately, users have already experienced a flaw, one that will hopefully be worked out soon. On giveaways that require a Twitter follow to enter, one user pointed out that following the account also resulted in favoriting that account. This turned on notifications automatically when using an Android phone. Overall, the process is quick and fairly inexpensive. But keep in mind as authors that you will be purchasing your own print editions at full retail cost on Amazon in order to participate in the giveaway, not at your CreateSpace author price or the discount offered by other print on demand services. While this still results in a royalty, that amount is far, far lower on a print edition than on an ebook. Your $10 investment can end up returning only a dollar or two. But as one critic has pointed out, it’s the cost of doing business…or buying Twitter followers, however you look at it. The important thing will be remembering to leverage all the followers you just paid for by sharing personal, focused content on your Twitter feed in the days immediately following your giveaway.
Amazon Launches Giveaway Tool is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Raspberry Pi Weather Station for schools
| When I first joined the Raspberry Pi Foundation, over a year ago now, one of my first assignments was to build a weather station around the Raspberry Pi. Thanks to our friends at Oracle (the large US database company), the Foundation received a grant not only to design and build a Raspberry Pi weather station for schools, but also to put together a whole education programme to go with it. Oracle were keen to support a programme where kids get the opportunity to partake in cross-curricular computing and science projects that cover everything from embedded IoT, through networking protocols and databases, to big data. The goals of the project was ambitious. Between us we wanted to create a weather experiment where schools could gather and access weather data from over 1000 weather stations from around the globe. To quote the original project proposal, students participating in the program will get the opportunity to:
After a year of grafting on hardware prototypes and software development I'm pleased to announce that the final PCB design has been committed to manufacture and we are ready to start pre-registering schools who'd be interested in participating in the programme. We have 1000 weather station kits to give away for free so to find out how your school can be part of this read the rest of this post below, but first some background on the project. If you’ve been on Twitter a lot you’ll have noticed me teasing this since about March last year. Below is a photo of the very first version.
I did a lot of testing to ensure that the components were reliable and wouldn’t become problematic on the software side after a long period of uptime. The goal was to have the Pi controlling everything, so that we could leverage learning opportunity: helping kids to learn about writing code to interface directly with the sensors, as well as displaying and analysing collected data. I settled on the following set of sensor measurements for the weather station:
This seemed like a good enough spread of data. I’m sure some people will ask why not this measurement or why not that. It was important for us to keep the cost of the kit under control; although there is nothing to stop you from augmenting it further yourself. Once that was nailed down I wrote a few lessons plans, and Lance and I trialled them with with two schools in Kent (Bonus Pastor Catholic College and Langley Park School for Boys). BBC Schools Report were on site and recorded a short feature about the day here. We gave the kids one lesson from the scheme of work, showing them how to interface with the anemometer (wind speed sensor) in code. One thing that was clearly apparent was how engaged they were. Once their code was up and running, and was able to measure wind speed correctly, they had a lot of fun seeing who could get the fastest movement out of the sensor by blowing on it (current record is 32 kph, held by Clive “Lungs” Beale). Warning: there is a fainting risk if you let your kids do this too much! We went away from this feeling we were very much on the right track, so we continued to design the scheme of work. I’m also very glad to report that we’re not doing this all on our own! We’ve partnered with the Met Office and OCR Geography to produce the learning resources that will cover understanding how weather systems work and interpreting patterns in the data. The scheme is has been broken down into three main phases of learning resources:
My next task was to take the breadboard prototype and create a PCB test version that we could use in a small trial of 20 or so units. I had not done any PCB design before this. So over the course of a couple of days I learnt how to use a free, open source, PCB design tool called KiCAD. I used a brilliant series of YouTube videos called Getting To Blinky by Contextual Electronics to get to grips with it. Below is my second attempt. This board is what most hardware designers would call a sombrero. The Pi goes in upside down so it’s like a HAT that’s too big! I was aware that it was a huge waste of PCB real-estate. However, for the small volume run we were making, it was a convenient way to mount the board inside a cheap IP65 junction box that I wanted to use as the case. Below is the PCB prototype when first assembled. The little silk screen rain cloud graphic was borrowed from BBC Weather (thanks guys).
You’ll notice there are two boards. The small board marked AIR holds the pressure, humidity and air quality sensors. Since these must be exposed to the air they are at risk of atmospheric corrosion, especially in coastal environments. I wanted to avoid this risk to the Pi and the main board so this is why I split those sensors off to a separate smaller board. Below is how they look inside their respective cases.
The Pi sits inside the water-tight box on the left with M20 grommets to seal the cables going in and out. The AIR board on the right has conformal coating (a spray on protective layer), and is connected to the main board by a short length of cable. There are three large holes on the base of its case to allow the air in. The weather station also needs a reliable network connection for remote monitoring, further code changes, to allow it to upload to Oracle, and to make sure that other computers on your school network can load its web pages. Most importantly it also needs power. So instead of considering large batteries or solar panels I decided to kill two birds with one stone and use power over Ethernet. This allows power and network connectivity to be supplied through a single cable, reducing the number of cable grommets needed. You might be thinking that WiFi is an option for this; however, school WiFi networks are notoriously overloaded with many mobile devices competing for service. So, if you go the same way as me, your school will need a long cable to run from the school building out to the location that you choose for the weather station. This basically means you never have to worry about its power or network connectivity. You are welcome to solve these challenges in your own way though, and this can actually be a very engaging and fun activity for the students to do themselves. Once I had the PCB prototype working I had to get twenty more made and tested. This involved spending hours (it seemed longer) on the Farnell website building up a massive basket of electronic components. When the new boards and components were in my possession we took them down to a local company, EFS Manufacturing, in Cambridge for assembly. Here are the twenty assembled and tested boards:
And here is another layer of the conformal coating spray going onto the AIR boards in the Pi Towers car park. It was a bit smelly and I didn’t want to gas out the office!
You’ll notice there are small bits of sticky tape on there. This is because the conformal coating needs to protect the solder joints on the board, but not block up the air holes on the sensors. This was a bit of a delicate job involving cutting the tape into tiny shapes, waiting for the coating to dry, and peeling it off using a scalpel. So then it was just a matter of assembling the 20 kits with everything required to build a weather station. From the power bricks, rain gauges and wind vanes right down to grommets, screws and rubber washers. The trial participants were chosen by us to give us a coverage of field-trial users, schools and promotional partners. We kept one back to put on the roof of Pi Towers, and the rest were shipped at the end of November last year.
Slowly but surely reports have been coming in about these prototype kits being used in schools and code clubs. Dan Aldred of Thirsk School & Sixth Form College has introduced Weather Wednesdays.
Matthew Manning, who runs the awesome YouTube channel RaspberryPiIVBeginners, made this video about setting his one up: Andrew Mulholland, of Raspi-LTSP fame, has been using one at a Raspberry Jam where he volunteers in Northern Ireland.
James Robinson’s year 10 pupils from Soham Village College have been working through the scheme of work too.
OCR are putting one on their roof, and we’re still trying to acquire permission from the building owners at Pi Towers so we can put ours up on the roof. (Right now it’s operating from an outside window ledge.) Meanwhile, now that I was confident about it, I handed over the electrical schematic of the prototype to our engineering team. They imported it into the professional CAD package that the Raspberry Pi was designed in, and proceeded to make the Weather Board into an official HAT. They have gone through it and essentially reworked everything to the same standard that you would expect from our products. So here it is, feast your eyes. You snap off the one side, and that is the equivalent of the small AIR board on the prototype. If you join our weather station scheme, this is what you will get, along with all the wind vanes, screws and other bits you’ll need. The plan is to mount the HAT onto the Pi using standard 11 mm stand-offs. Those will then mount onto a perspex sheet, and that sheet will screw into the electrical junction box. Nice and cheap. The Raspberry Pi Weather Station kit is a great way to get your pupils involved in a wide range of computing activities whilst undertaking a practical science experiment. There is lots of opportunity for cross-curricular discussion on the science of meteorology, geography and global climate change. You will also get to participate in a global programme with other schools around the world. We have 1000 weather station units to give away to schools that sign up. The supporting educational resources are written in the English language and targeted at students aged around 15-16 years old; however we’re anticipating participation from pupils both younger and older than this. If your school would like to be one of this thousand then please sign up on THIS PAGE. People we would like to thank:
In case you missed it above, here’s the School Sign Up again. |
Viz Manga Adding “Boys Over Flowers, Season 2″
| Viz Manga has announced the next round of manga they’ll be running in their Jump Start initiative, and one is the long-awaited Flowers, Then Sunny Skies; otherwise known as Boys Over Flowers Season 2. The manga serves as a sequel to 1992’s shojo hit. The original Boys Over Flowers follows the life of a sixteen-year-old girl named Tsukushi Makino. She is a poor student at Eitoku Academy, a school for the rich and upper-class, where she is known as the “weed” of the Academy. The school is ruled by a group of handsome, high-society boys known as the “Flower Four,” or the F4. Tsukushi finds herself on the wrong side of the F4 when she becomes the only girl in school who doesn’t immediately fawn over the F4 leader, Tsukasa Domyouji. Boys Over Flowers was a hit from the start, spawning a movie, two live action adaptions, and seven television dramas including a top Korean drama. The author, Yoko Kamio, has done several other manga series since, but is now returning to Eitoku Academy. Season 2 takes place a few years after the graduation of Tsukushi and the F4, bringing all-new charactes to the cast list. It will tell a new story from the familiar setting, but hopefully the readers will still get some hints at how the lives of the old favourites are going. It will begin on February 16th. The issue of Shonen Jump will be running the first three chapters, and after that, a new chapter every two weeks. As Boys over Flowers Season 2 is part of Viz Manga’s Jump Start program, chapter releases will be simultaneous with Japan’s. Anyone who was a fan of Boys Over Flowers, who liked the Korean TV drama, or who enjoys shojo in general will need to read this manga! The original was a staple of the genre, and Season 2 will certainly not disappoint. Viz Manga Adding “Boys Over Flowers, Season 2″ is a post from: Good e-Reader |
