 If you're like most of the OverDrive team, you're excited to watch the conclusion of the award-winning show "Mad Men," but perhaps not entirely ready to leave the characters behind just yet. Lucky for you, we have some great lists of books to keep that "Mad Men" spirit alive. The Receptionist dives right into the 1950s and 60s heyday at The New Yorker, chockfull of lunchtime cocktails, extramarital affairs, bohemian times in Greenwich Village and other things you'll just have to read to believe. Lady Chatterley's Lover is a classic story surrounded by plenty of controversy. Plus, this book is a favorite read of Joan and the other secretaries at Sterling Cooper. Learn about the complications of the corporate game with Truth in Advertising by John Kenney or for the feminine perspective, check out The Group by Mary McCarthy. These books should get you in the spirit of "Mad Men" or help you come to terms with the end of the show. Check out Don Draper's reading list or recommended reads for "Mad Men" fans. The final seven episodes of "Mad Men" premiere on Sunday, April 5. Emma Kanagaki is a Collection Development Analyst with OverDrive |
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Mad Men read alikes
Go Set a Watchman e-Book Cover Revealed
| Harper Lee of To Kill a Mockingbird fame has a new book being published July 14th. The e-book cover art has just been unveiled today, giving us a sense on how it will look when its publicly released. Go Set a Watchman follows an adult Scout Finch who travels from New York to Maycomb, Alabama, to visit her father, Atticus Finch, 20 years after the events of To Kill a Mockingbird.According to the publisher, Scout “is forced to grapple with issues both personal and political as she tries to understand her father’s attitude toward society and her own feelings about the place where she was born and spent her childhood.” Go Set a Watchman includes many of the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird. Go Set a Watchman e-Book Cover Revealed is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Kindle Voyage vs Onyx Boox M96 Comparison Review (+Video)
| Today I wanted to put together a comparison review between two of my favorite ebook readers, the Kindle Voyage and Onyx Boox M96, to show how each has it’s own set of unique features, and how the devices are at two opposite ends of the ebook reader spectrum, both in terms of hardware and software. […] |
No Game, No Life English Dub Released in July
| Aschente! Sentai Filmworks has announced on Tuesday that it will be releasing Sectiong23 Films No Game, No Life. The DVD will have included the English dub as well as the original Japanese audio. The series will ship on July 28th on DVD for US $59.98 and on Blu-ray for US $69.98. There will also be a No Game No Life Limited Edition DVD/Blu-Ray set that will be going for US $128.98.The Limited Edition will come with episodes 1-12 plus a CD, a poster, 9 stickers, 6 postcards, a foil card, a certificate of authenticity card and playing cards, all included in a chipboard art box! Dub fans have a reason to rejoice, though, as Section23 confirmed has announced the English dub, there are no details as to who the cast or crew are yet, but we will just have to wait and see! Never seen No Game, No Life? No problem! The anime and manga follow two siblings, Shiro and Sora who have become a legendary internet duo known as Blank. Famed for their incredible game playing skills, they one day receive an invitation to play a simple game of chess. After winning the game, the mysterious person they played against,they are whisked away to a whole new world where all forms of confrontations are dealt with by wagering treasures and playing games. I highly recommend this anime as the art style and animation is absolutely beautiful and really gives it that ethereal feel. If you want to get a sneak peak of the anime, Sentai Filmworks has recently released a small trailer clip for the anime and you can also head on over to Crunchyroll to view it as well! No Game, No Life English Dub Released in July is a post from: Good e-Reader |
More Amazon Drone Delivery Woes, FAA Too Slow to Keep Up
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The crux of the problem seems to be that the design and proposal Amazon submitted for FAA approval–approval that arrived just last week–is now so far outdated that the retailer isn’t even testing with it anymore. Noteworthy is the fact that the proposal was simply for regulatory permission to test the drone, not actually fulfill consumers’ orders with it. One of the other frustrating factors in this issue is that Amazon has been able to conduct drone delivery tests in other international markets, something that the FAA is quick to point out is an unfair comparison. In statements on this issue, officials from the FAA have pointed out the vast difference in air traffic congestion in the US versus other countries, which is somewhat easy to believe given the geographical size of the country, the sheer numbers of commercial flights per day, and the lack of a solidly reliable and convenient train network. Amazon planned to use the drone delivery service over a variety of lower distances, but the original FAA proposal required a direct line of sight between the drone operator and the vehicle, something which pretty much defeats the purpose of the drone. This would basically require a truck driver to pull over on the side of the road, take a package from the back of the truck, and fly it by remote control airplane to someone’s doorstep. One other proposal from the FAA will require a commercial drone to fly no higher than 500 feet. As remote drone operation is already a reality and five hundred feet can propose a problem for city or earth structure operation, Amazon has obviously taken issue with these measures as well.
More Amazon Drone Delivery Woes, FAA Too Slow to Keep Up is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Barnes and Noble Releases New Plastic Bag Featuring Classic Books
| Barnes and Noble has been consistently lambasted by the media for losing ground in the e-reader wars and seeing diminished e-book sales due to Amazon. The Nations largest bookseller has closed many stores in the last few years as it tries to regain profitability. In order to help drive up sales the company has just released fancy new plastic bags. Barnes and Noble has designed a series of plastic bags featuring book art and quotes from Mark Twain, Herman Melville and Lewis Carroll’s classic novels. Over 100 million have been printed and will soon be available at the companies 700 bookstores in the US. “You don't get a shopping bag when you shop online — you get a box,” Glenn Kaplan, Barnes & Noble’s creative director, told Bloomberg. Barnes and Noble is hoping that their new bags become status symbols by the literary minded. The intention is to eventually make them as ubiquitous as Tiffany, Barneys, or Organic Avenue bags. Barnes and Noble Releases New Plastic Bag Featuring Classic Books is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Boyue T62 vs Icarus Illuminia HD E653
| The Boyue T62 and Icarus Illumina HD are two e-readers that feature a fully functional Android ecosystem. This is a boon to serious readers because these devices allow users to dictate their own experience and not get locked into one specific ecosystem. How do these e-readers compare against each other? Today, we take a look at the full hardware, software and user experience.
Boyue T62 vs Icarus Illuminia HD E653 is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Does Apple TV Need an App Store?
| There are many rumors swirling that Apple is poised to announce their 3rd generation TV box at the next World Wide Developers Conference in June. The big news is that finally Apple TV will get its own app store, giving users more options to install streaming services such as Twitch and who knows what else. Apple is expected to announce its next-generation Apple TV alongside a full-fledged streaming TV service at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June. The new A8-based set-top box will reportedly feature both an App Store and Siri, in addition to a redesigned remote control and significantly higher internal storage than the current 8GB model. A fully featured App Store is just what Apple needs in order to gain further traction in the television market. The big question is, what kind of content will it include? Will it go the Amazon Fire TV route and offer games that people can play on their television and use their iPhone or iPad as a game controller? Will it just have streaming services, such as the recently announced HBO Now? Or, will go the Chromecast route and have dedicated apps that are developed exclusively for the platform? Does Apple TV Need an App Store? is a post from: Good e-Reader |
A Pi’s eye view of the solar eclipse
| Last Friday morning I got up at an unfamiliar hour to board a train to Leicester, where BBC Stargazing were broadcasting a special live show to coincide with the partial solar eclipse over the UK. Regular readers will have seen Dave Akerman write here last week of his plans to launch two Model A+ Pis with Pi in the Sky telemetry boards on a weather balloon as part of the BBC’s event, with the aim of capturing stills and video of the eclipse from high above the clouds. As we’ll see, Dave was far from the only person using Raspberry Pis to observe the eclipse; to begin with, though, here’s a downward-facing view from one of his Pis of the launch, done with the help of a group of school students: I caught up with Dave a bit later in the morning, by which point the payload had been recovered after a shortish flight.  Dave explains to my three-year-old son that the balloon payload has come down in fields by Leighton Buzzard   BBC Radio Leicester interviewed Dave, making for a really interesting five-minute introduction to what a balloon mission involves. BBC Television filmed several interviews, too, including this one, broadcast on BBC Stargazing live the same evening, featuring images of the eclipse captured by the Pis: My favourite moment is when the balloon bursts, having reached a diameter of about eight metres. Despite the lack of air, as Dave points out, the pop is clearly audible: If you watched right to the end of the BBC Stargazing interview, you’ll have heard Lucie Green mention another project, this one with the involvement of BBC Weather’s Peter Gibbs. The Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading is running a citizen science programme, the National Eclipse Weather Experiment (NEWEx), to collect data to study small weather changes expected to accompany an eclipse, such as a drop in temperature and changes to clouds and wind. They particularly encouraged schools to join in, and we sent one of our weather station prototypes to the National STEM Centre in York so that they could help a local primary school take part. They installed it on their roof: Matt Holmes from the STEM Centre displayed data from the weather station alongside a webcam image of the eclipse:
If you’re in the UK and you’d like to watch the (very) brief interview with Peter Gibbs that followed the one with Dave Akerman, you can catch it on BBC iPlayer, starting at 29m40s. Other people were using Raspberry Pis to take weather measurements during the eclipse too. Cookstown High School in Northern Ireland have set up another of our weather station prototypes; you can see live data from it at www.piview.org.uk/weather/, which you can drag to see older data and zoom for more detail. School staff are also tweeting more photos and information about the weather station as @STEAM4schools. Here are its temperature recordings during the eclipse: As you can see, it’s difficult to separate out effects of the eclipse from other temperature variation, which is where NEWEx’s big-data approach will hopefully prove valuable. One computing teacher planned his Friday morning class’s eclipse observations in our forums, with help from forum regular Dougie, whose own measurements are here, and others. They held an eclipse party before school, and they and others have shared their measurements in the forum.  HOW COOL: REALLY COOL!!! We’ve seen a number of timelapse films of the eclipse captured using Pis, too. Berlin Raspberry Jam organiser James Mitchell used a Raspberry Pi to make a timelapse of the 74% eclipse seen there: It’s really great to see Raspberry Pis used in such a variety of ways to enhance people’s experiences of a rare and remarkable astronomical event, and particularly to see the involvement of so many schools. Did you use a Raspberry Pi for observations during Friday’s solar eclipse? Tell us in the comments! |
Study Finds Consumers Aren’t Interested in Paying for News
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According to the survey of more than 1,000 respondents,
But of the total number of survey takers across all age groups, more than half say they are unwilling to pay for news. A small but significant number were willing to pay a low monthly fee to read unlimited content. The least surprising finding–not surprising to people who’ve been around digital news for any amount of time–is the tiny percentage of people who were willing to tolerate a paywall, or the method of reading part of an article or a pre-determined number of articles each month for free and then being required to pay for further content. So where does that leave news outlets who still have bills to pay but who face a rapidly shrinking audience of paying consumers, as well as an ever-declining amount of advertising revenue to make up for it? This would speak to the larger need to ensure that publishers’ content is available through library apps, all-you-can-eat subscription apps, and more. If there’s a need to get consumers to pay for it, it also has to provide some level of value-added content that can’t be had just by clicking through Yahoo! News.
Study Finds Consumers Aren’t Interested in Paying for News is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Congrats to the Library Journal 2015 Movers & Shakers!
 Each year Library Journal honors librarians from around the country for their contributions to the library world. These librarians may be focused on changing the landscaping, innovating, advocating, educating, developing or building their community but regardless of their path it’s clear thet they’re doing work that deserves to be recognized. This year, OverDrive was priveleged to work with 21 of these wonderful librarians and so we wanted to say congrats to the following honorees! Ignacio Albarracin of San Antonio Public Library We are so thankful that we have the opportunity to work with innovative libraries every single day and it’s beyond thrilling to see our partners getting the credit they deserve. Congrats to all the 2015 Library Journal Movers & Shakers! Adam Sockel is a Social Media Specialist with OverDrive. He counts librarians among some of his closest friends. |
Monday, March 23, 2015
The Kindle People Wear on Their Feet
| The Kindle is the most popular e-reader of all time and e-ink screens are what makes the technology possible. Lately, dedicated reading devices have been seeing diminished sales and e-paper is being employed on keyboards, digital signage and now fashion. A new Indiegogo project started by Lithuania-based iShüu Technologies is betting that e Ink is perfect for shoes. You can control the patterns and colors via a mobile app and automatically change the color, based on your outfit. They also have tangible customization options, such as bows and flows. “The Volvorii’s clean, elegant, sturdy design brings gravitas, respect and formality in an unmistakable way,” the campaign page reads. “Whether you are a CEO at the apex of your industry or a prospective intern who got it as a graduation present going for your first interview in the corporate world, the Volvorii will carry you with grace.” For the girl who has everything you can pick it up from the campaign page for $249 plus shipping.
The Kindle People Wear on Their Feet is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Create Photo Collages With Layout App From Instagram
| When you consider the blend of photographs and mobile technology, chances are good that thoughts of Instagram are not far behind. Designed to be an easy way to share your favourite images with friends and family, Instagram is easy to use and feature-rich –unless you wanted to create a collage without using a third-party app… at least until now! Instagram has launched a new app called Layout that lets you brings groups of photographs together a Layout was only made available for iOS today, but we have been assured by Instagram that an Android version will be ready soon!
Create Photo Collages With Layout App From Instagram is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Free! Inspires new Film and Manga Based off of The Original Light Novel
| While many viewers were tuning into the highly popular Free! Eternal Summer special event on Sunday, it was revealed that High Speed!, Kōji Ōji and Futoshi Nishiya’s light novel that originally inspired the great hit anime Free! -Iwatobi Swim Club anime, will be getting its own movie! The movie will be entitled High Speed! -Free! Starting Days-. The animated film will open throughout Japan on December 5th. Kyoto Animation has also confirmed that a manga adaption of High Speed! Has been green-lit for production. The manga will be drawn by the talented Shiori Teshirogi (Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas – Meiō Shinwa) The teaser website for High Speed! -Free! Starting Days- film has also confirmed that Nobunaga Shimazaki, the voice of Haruka Nanase, is returning to to the Free! Television sereies! While the Free! Series centers on Haruka and the other swim club members in their high school years, High Speed! Follows them during their time in Middle school. The second volume of the light novel was shipped last July. Ever since the popular anime Free! First aired back in July 2013, the show has been making huge splashes with it’s fanbase, so fans can now rejoice that the anime will return to us once again in a movie format! Free! Inspires new Film and Manga Based off of The Original Light Novel is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Raspi-LTSP is now PiNet: easily manage a Raspberry Pi classroom
| Helen: Over the past year and a half, Raspi-LTSP has become very popular as a simple and easy-to-set-up way of managing Raspberry Pi users and files in a classroom setting. Today its 18-year-old developer Andrew Mulholland launches PiNet, the new incarnation of this very valuable, free, open source project. He’s written us a guest post to tell you more about it. For nearly two years now, I have been working on RaspberryPi-LTSP. The goal setting out was clear: a simple, free and easy-to-use system for schools that allowed them to manage their Raspberry Pis more easily. So today I am proud to announce PiNet, the replacement for RaspberryPi-LTSP. The idea for PiNet/Raspi-LTSP was spawned out of a workshop I was teaching two years ago in a local primary school. The workshop ran over two days and I had forgotten to install a piece of software on all the SD cards before cloning them. I also had somehow to remember which student's work was on which SD card so I could hand it out to them the next day. Logistically, managing it was a bit of a nightmare! And I only had one class of kids to worry about. How can you manage students' work when you have perhaps hundreds of different students using a set of Raspberry Pis in a week? Does each student get assigned her or his own SD card? And what happens when those SD cards need to be updated with the most recent software update? After many (many) hours of work researching possible solutions, I came up with a proof-of-concept script. The script used LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project) to build a virtual Raspbian operating system on a server, then let Raspberry Pis network boot off it. I released this on GitHub back in September 2013 not expecting much to come of it. Rather surprisingly, people slowly started playing around with it, I started getting emails with new ideas and I discovered there was an interest in the project.  A PiNet classroom, using Motorola lapdocks to provide display, keyboard and trackpad 200+ commits and 3000+ lines of code later, the feature list has grown after a huge amount of feedback from educators right across the world. PiNet's features include:
PiNet is a replacement for Raspi-LTSP, not an upgrade, so if you're already running Raspi-LTSP, you'll need a new installation to get PiNet running on your server (PiNet will automatically update your SD cards the first time you boot up your Raspberry Pis after installing it, so you don't need to make any changes to those yourself). To make everything as easy as possible, a migration utility has been included in every Raspi-LTSP release since November to allow you to migrate user data and files to PiNet; read the migration guide for help doing this.  The Raspberry Pi desktop with PiNet is like the one you're used to Here are some of the things that other people have said about PiNet/Raspi-LTSP:
PiNet is already used across the world in over 30 different countries. To give it a go in your school, all you need is an old computer, a router and some networked Raspberry Pis! To get started, head over to the PiNet website at http://pinet.org.uk/ and hit Get Started! |
Amazon Makes it Easier than Ever to Leave a Review
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But Amazon launched a new way to leave a review through prepared choices in drop down menus. This feature begins with a simple three-answer question on the plot of the book: was it predictable, did it have some twists, or was it completely surprising. Answering that question opens up more drop downs about the character development, the pacing, and more. Unfortunately, there’s no drop down menu for the quality of the writing, the quality of the editing, or more basic attributes of the book. These would apparently go in the provided space where the reader can type his own thoughts on the book. Not all books have the drop down review treatment at this time. Obviously, the questions that were offered don’t apply to non-fiction titles, for example, and several nonfic titles I looked at don’t offer any other drop down elaborations. One of the chief concerns with this type of review process was raised by Henry Baum of Self-Publishing Review, and that is the canned response feeling of these reviews which will possibly lead to less informative (and therefore, less helpful) reviews. As you can see from SPR’s take on the drop down review process, Baum was offered far more drop downs–including the options to comment more than once on the author’s writing ability and the quality of the book–than I was on the twenty or so titles I searched through this drop down process. Even the self-published horror titles I inspected didn’t give me the option to select an answer pertaining to violence, sexual content, or other thematic elements. If Amazon truly wants to encourage an atmosphere of dialogue on books and support readers’ efforts to leave a review, however, their first priority should be to make the process of inputting opinions more streamlined. Currently, a consumer goes to the sales page for the book after even remembering that he should review it, clicks on the number of reviews, then clicks on the option to see all the reviews, then clicks on Write a Review. All of this is after scanning the sales page looking for (and not finding) a giant button that simply says, “Leave a review.” Interestingly, the top of the screen will tell a consumer in rather small letters that he has already purchased the item, and that would be an excellent place to point out that a review is only one click away.
Amazon Makes it Easier than Ever to Leave a Review is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Spring break reads for travelers and staycationers alike!
| Who doesn't look forward to Spring Break? After spending all winter cooped up in the cold and snow, it is great to have the opportunity to relax and enjoy that book that we've been trying to read, maybe with our toes in the sand if we're lucky. It's a time to kick back and forget about the real world for a while, so what's a better way to do that than with some of these great titles. With everything from light beach reads, to the most talked about non-fiction, to guides on how to make the best umbrella drinks, even if you are staycationing this year, unwind with these titles today! 
Add these great Spring Break Reads to your collection today and provide your users with some great titles to escape the daily grind even if they aren’t traveling at all!
Meghan Lindenberger is a Collection Development Analyst at OverDrive, and will be spending her Spring Break on the Lake Erie coast. |
Boyue T62 vs Energy Sistem PRO
| The massive new trend in e-readers is a vanilla version of Android, which allows you to install your own apps. This is a boon for serious readers because you aren’t locked into a specific ecosystem, you have the freedom to use whatever bookstore you want or just play a rousing game of Words with Friends. Today, we look at two of the latest flagship e-readers to see how they stack up against each other. The Energy Sistem PRO and Boyue T62 both have a six inch e-Ink Pearl HD display with a resolution of 1024×758 pixels. They also have a touchscreen, which makes it easy to click and navigate around the UI or just simply flip the pages in your favorite e-Book. It also incorporates a front-lit screen that allows users to read in the dark. Underneath the hood is a ARM Cortex A9 1.0Ghz dual core processor and 8 GB of internal memory. They both have the option to expand the memory up to 64GB with a SD/SDHC card. You can listen to music via the 3.5mm headphone jack, perfect for audiobooks or music. These e-readers are very much akin to each other on the hardware level, but Boyue goes the extra distance to give Chinese users a very viable manga option and online e-reading solutions.
Boyue T62 vs Energy Sistem PRO is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Make Your Secondary Computer Screen a 13.3 Inch e-Ink Monitor
| People are attracted to secondary screens for their home computing setup. It allows you to multitask effectively and allows for some serious customization. e-Reader lovers know that e-paper is very easy on the eyes and great for long term reading sessions. Is it viable as a true secondary screen though? DaSung is hoping yes. The 13.3 Inch e-ink screen was developed exclusively to function as a secondary display. It is utilizing an e Ink Fina screen that has a resolution of 1600 x 1200 and 150 PPI. If you never heard of this before, it is currently being used on the Pocketbook CAD and Sony DPT-S1 Digital Paper. Basically, Fina is a glass based TFT technology that uses a very thin glass substrate to deliver products that are much lighter and thinner than what is possible with standard LCD displays. Fina displays weigh less than 50% of the weight of an equivalent glass based TFT and are less than 50% of the thickness as well. The monitor right now has a few different refresh mode options, similar to how the Onyx E-Readers have the varies A2 enhancements. Basically, you will be able to scroll around really fast and gain solid resolution when you want to work on something or consume media. It is only available in China right now, but international residents can order one. It is retailing for $645 – $970 US and available via the DanSung website.
Make Your Secondary Computer Screen a 13.3 Inch e-Ink Monitor is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Blackberry Leap Previewed in New Video
| The Blackberry Leap smartphone is a departure from the most recent products, such as the Classic and Passport. It is a fully touchscreen model, similar to the Z10 and Z30. The formal ID number is the Z20 and it actually just arrived at the FCC seeking approval. What is this phone all about? Well, if you are still loyal to the Blackberry brand, its fairly exciting. It has a five inch display with 1280 x 720 HD resolution, 294 PPI, 8MP Rear camera, 16GB of expandable storage and has up-to 25 hrs of battery life according to the specs put out by BlackBerry. BlackBerry has priced the device at $275 USD and its going to be available in April or May. A hands on preview of the device has been released by Blackberry, giving us a sense of the form factor.
Blackberry Leap Previewed in New Video is a post from: Good e-Reader |
