| As the new spring season is upon us, plenty of new and wonderful animes will soon be airing on Crunchyrolls simulcast! Two new anime’s from the Fruit of Grisaia franchise as well as the 2nd season for the popular I can’t Understand What My Husband is Saying: 2nd Thread will be added to the Crunchyroll rosters! The Labyrinth of Grisaia is a 60 minute broadcast special and will air April 12th 2015 at 12:35 pm Pacific time. The Eden of Grisaia will be set to broadcast every Sunday Starting on April 19th at 10:00 am pacific time for it’s premium members, which will become free to watch one week later. Story Summary Based on the Japanese Visual Novel by Frontwing, The Fruit of Grisaia takes place in Mihama Academy, a prison-like school built to preserve fruit that have fallen too far from it’s tree. It is home to five female students who live their lives idly within the walls of the school. Although when Kazami Yuuji, the first male student to enroll at Mihama, arrives, the controlled rhythm of Mihama become off balance. Could Yuji be the one to get the girls to get a hold of their lives once more or will the ghosts from their pasts prove too steep to over overcome? Or does Yuji have a secret even heavier than the others? The Labyrinth of Grisaia will be a 60 minute specieal episode featuring the main character’s past and a collection of sequels for the five female characters. If it sounds interesting to you, you can go ahead and watch Season 1 right now and be ripe and ready for the second season! Ready to watch more hijinks by everyone’s favorite newly weds? Voice Actors Yukari Tamura and Kenichi Suzumura are back to reprise their roles as Kaoru and Hajime, as well as singing the opening theme: "Yuruganu Futari ~Ai no Sanka~". The animation will be handled again by Seven, with director Shinpei Nagai also returning to write the script! I Can’t Understand What My Husband Is Saying 2nd Thread is set to broadcast every Thursday starting on April 2nd, at 11:30 AM Pacific Time for Premium members, and free members will be able to watch one week later. Story Summary The series revolves around the daily lives of Kaoru, a hard working office lady and her otaku husband, Hajime. Using popular anime and otaku tropes and in-jokes, the characters explore the conflicts and similarities between daily and otaku life in urban Japan. If you want to get caught up before the new season starts up, you can go ahead and view the first one here! Crunchyroll Adds Fruit of Grisaia second season and I Can’t Understand What My Husband is Saying 2nd Season is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Crunchyroll Adds Fruit of Grisaia second season and I Can’t Understand What My Husband is Saying 2nd Season
Magzter Digital Magazine App Adds New Titles to Unlimited Subscription Plan
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Unlike heavier platforms that can really only provide value to consumers through deals with libraries or other businesses that wish to offer content, Magzter GOLD is built and priced with the individual subscriber in mind. That’s why it’s $9.99-a-month plan, similar in price to all-you-can-read ebook subscription services, offers unlimited access to its catalog of over 5,000 magazines, comic books, and ebooks. "Since launching Magzter GOLD in late-January, we've seen a threefold increase in the number of magazines and pages read, and a similar increase in overall user engagement," said Girish Ramdas, CEO & Co-Founder of Magzter, in a press release. "Publishers are quickly taking note of these impressive metrics as the 'all-you-can-read' model proves capable of delivering a substantial ROI. We're thrilled to welcome major titles and publishers like American Media Inc., Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Entrepreneur and The Atlantic, and we look forward to entering additional publisher partnerships as we continue to expand our offering throughout the year." “With over 25 million users worldwide, we offer unmatched global scale for publishers and they continue to sign on,” added Vijay Radhakrishnan, President & Co-Founder of Magzter. “The ‘all-you-can-eat’ model is an increasingly popular format for all media, from movies to music, and magazine publishers can’t ignore the demand. With our userbase, technology and content, we expect even more to join our newsstand in the coming weeks.” One thing that content distributors learned early on about digital subscriptions is that eventually consumers can start to question the usefulness of the platform. Whereas unlimited magazine subscriptions make sense in terms of the quick consumption of the issue, ebook subscribers felt the pinch of paying for a service and then not having time to truly take advantage of the unlimited nature of it. Magzter GOLD launched with this obstacle in mind, and therefore also offers a “lite” subscription at only $4.99 a month, which allows subscribers to have unlimited access to only five titles of their choosing.
Magzter Digital Magazine App Adds New Titles to Unlimited Subscription Plan is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Reviewing The Wilderness of Ruin
| I am a self-professed true crime junkie. I drop everything when my TV is tuned to Investigation Discovery. Ann Rule and Harold Schechter are my superheroes. I am also a bit of a history geek; my undergrad degree is in the subject. When history and true crime intertwine in a single book, it is nerd heaven for this gal; and that's the case with The Wilderness of Ruin by Roseanne Montillo. The Wilderness of Ruin is a fascinating examination of the crimes and trial of Jesse Pomeroy, America's youngest serial killer and the original bad seed. Pomeroy's atrocious spree of violence took place in late 19th century Boston, a vulnerable town struggling to recover from a devastating fire. In 1872, at the tender age of twelve, Pomeroy abducted younger children for the purpose of torture. These acts of defilement resulted in a sixteen-month stint at the Lyman School for Boys. In 1874, mere months after his release, Jesse mutilated and murdered two children. Given his track record, it did not take Boston police long to pinpoint Pomeroy the culprit. The resulting trial sparked a national debate about mental health and capital punishment. With sparkling prose and perspicuous description, Montillo has created a supremely readable piece of nonfiction. Montillo maintains the lurid elements of a typical true crime novel while expertly capturing the essence of Gilded Age America. She offers an in-depth view of the tumultuous era by punctuating Jesse Pomeroy's tale with accounts from the likes of Boston fire chief, John Darnell; Herman Melville; and Oliver Wendell Holmes. The gruesomely detailed depictions of Pomeroy's horrific activities are evidence of Montillo's masterful research. The Wilderness of Ruin will keep you engaged page after grisly page. It is a standout among historical true crime novels. I believe it should be required reading for all who loved Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City. Michelle Ross is a Collection Development Analyst at OverDrive and she slept with the light on after finishing this book. |
First Pi in space
| Recently you may have seen some of the awesome things that Dave Akerman has been doing with Raspberry Pi and Balloons. For the eclipse he was able to capture this image from his high altitude payload. Dave who's been doing high altitude flights for some time has racked up some pretty impressive bragging rights including the first Raspberry Pi (B, A and A+) in near space. As many of you will also be aware we will be sending a pair of Raspberry Pi B+ to the International Space station later this year as part of our Astro Pi competition. We felt a little sorry for the Pi B 2, as it's never even been close to space! Having recently joined the education team, and with a little experience in launching a near space flight with my school, I wanted to do something about this. So for the last few weeks I've been working on launching a Pi 2 with a helium balloon and a Pi In The Sky (PITS) board. Here you can see the PITS+ board stacked on my Pi 2 ready for launch. This morning around 6:00am we launched our payload and sent it soaring to near space! However something quite remarkable happened…. The first part of the flight went well, the payload ascended rapidly and sent back some early flight images.
About 15 minutes later we re-established contact and were shocked to find it was at 37,000m above ground level! This is a much faster rate of ascent than we'd expected, roughly 6x quicker! In fact it didn't stop there, and appears to be rising still, the last piece of telemetry data we recieved put the payload at around 113,000m (that's technically outer space!) We don't know how but the payload appears to have reached escape velocity and is continuing to ascend. We've received a couple of images from the flight and are hoping they keep coming! Wow! This is the first Pi in Spaaaacceeee…… |
However, we then we lost contact with the payload at around 10,000m…
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Sony Digital Paper Price Reduced to $799
| The Sony Digital Paper is experiencing robust sales to industry professionals who demand a large e-paper screen. In order to broaden their reach and scope, Sony has just announced a price reduction on the DPT-S1 from $999 to $799. The Sony Digital Paper originally hit the market one year ago and the intention behind this 13.3 e-reader was establishing a new product category. Instead of being aimed at consumers, like Amazon and Kobo, Sony made the gambit of constructing a device aimed exclusively towards people who need a world class PDF experience. The DPT-S1 Digital Paper was first available at $1200 and higher education, lawyers and people involved in entertainment were the first ones to purchase the device. Once Sony had established an extensive sales record they discounted the price to $999 and started to sell it online to anyone who wanted one. The $799 price point now makes the Digital Paper extremely viable to not only professionals now, but the average consumer. If you pay attention to the e-reader sector you would have inevitably heard of e-ink Mobius. This is a flexible plastic based material that Sony had co-developed with e Ink Holdings. It weights 50% less than your traditional glass based TFT display and despite the 13.3 inch nature of the screen, it weighs less than a 9.7 inch Kindle DX. Sony has pioneered a new market for e-readers and this has spurned their competition into developing new products. Pocketbook is developing a 13.3 inch solution called the CAD, which is aimed at architects and designers who tend to use 3D modeling programs such as Maya or 3D Studio Max. Dasung has developed a 13.3 inch display that was designed to be a secondary screen for a PC and Onyx is in the process of making a commercial version of a 13.3 inch e-reader aimed at people who love reading e-book novels. The price reduction from $999 to $799 is primarily attributed to making the DPT-S1 more accessible. Likely this price will make sense to a lot of people looking for a large screen reader to use in their professional life. Sony Digital Paper Price Reduced to $799 is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Microsoft Announces Intel Atom-Powered Windows 8.1 Surface 3
| Beginning in May there will be a new Surface 3 tablet in town, and this time it’s a more affordable version of Microsoft’s flagship Surface Pro 3. While the Surface Pro 3 floated on the high-end of tablet pricing starting at $799 USD, the new Surface 3 begins at a much lower $499 USD. Aimed at students and families, this new Surface 3 doesn’t appear to sacrifice features and function to lower the price-tag; powered by a 64-bit Intel Atom x7 processor, displaying HD graphics on a 10.8-inch 1920×1280 screen, taking photos with a front-facing 3.5MP camera or 8MP rear-facing camera, and outfitted with 2GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. You may not get the keyboard thrown in at that entry-level cost, but it does ship with Window 8.1 (with the promise of a free upgrade to Windows 10 once it hits general availability). My favourite feature is the built-in kickstand… it’s so simple and elegant, I can’t believe Apple hasn’t stolen the idea yet. Generally speaking, Microsoft has taken the closest aim at business customers (who are usually willing to pay a higher price as compared to the average mobile consumer), but having a less expensive model makes it tremendously more appealing for those wanting to outfit their families with the same device they use at the office. It also helps when the Surface is being marketed as having the full capabilities of a laptop (including a full USB 3.0 port, Mini DisplayPort, and a MicroSD card reader) –making it a very attractive option for those of us with children who need these kinds of devices for school work while doing double duty as a much-sought-after tablet as well. Add in the Surface Pen (for an additional cost of course), and you’ve got a powerful note-taking machine for those who may not type during a meeting or class as fast as they can write (not forgetting you can also use it to sketch a quick diagram, add notes to the margins of your PDF files, and paint with it on-screen as if were a brush on canvas… heck, you can even handwrite musical scores or do your crossword puzzles easily using the pen as long as you are willing to pay for the requisite titles like the New York Times Crossword app in the Windows store). Bottom line? It’s a contender (particularly if the Surface 3 can truly get 10 hours of moderate-use battery life from a single charge). Release video is linked below for those of you who would like to see a little more of this new tablet before it begins shipping in May (with pre-orders available starting today). Microsoft Announces Intel Atom-Powered Windows 8.1 Surface 3 is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Goodreads Unveils Newly Redesigned Android App
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That’s why Goodreads, the online community based on reader-centric book interaction, has launched a redesign to its Android app. This update will present a cleaner interface for mobile device reading, as well as put users’ favorite features at their fingertips. According to a release from Goodreads about the newly updated app, “The app now features an easy-to-use navigation that puts your favorite features at your fingertips, and a cleaner design to help you discover great books and share your reading with friends…Now you can immediately discover new books your friends are reading, and still check your shelves on the go with just one tap. We've also included a fun new touch, a literary quote on the home screen while the app opens.” Reader reaction has been a little mixed but mostly positive, with many of the commenters asking for visibility on the home screen of their standing in the 2015 Book Challenge, one of the very popular features of the website. Others pointed to the book recommendations, something that Goodreads and parent company Amazon have prided themselves on, as one of the better uses for the app. The portability of an app like this is especially useful for book browsing and reading reviews on the go, especially as consumers make a concerted effort to shop in brick-and-morter and indie bookstores where reviews are less available. The app is currently available for download from the Google Play and Amazon app stores.
Goodreads Unveils Newly Redesigned Android App is a post from: Good e-Reader |
422 Free Art Books Available to Download and Read Online
| The Metropolitan Museum of Art offers over 50 years of out-of-print publications on art history for free online. You can view the books with a web browser and download full copies as PDF files. The paperback and hardcover versions of some of these titles cost over a hundred dollars each. So being able to get […] |
Preordering is now live in Marketplace
| OverDrive is happy to announce that support for Preorders in OverDrive Marketplace is now available for all libraries and schools, including consortia. Now, your library's digital collection has another reason to be the first stop for the hottest pre-release titles. With Preorders, you won't miss any big releases. This highly requested feature allows libraries and schools to preorder titles as many as 6 months ahead of the "street date" (date available to the public). Users can then place holds on Preorder titles on your public-facing site, and they will be among the first to enjoy new releases as soon as they become available on the street date. OverDrive worked with several librarians during the development process to assure that this new feature provided real benefits for selectors. Monty Masseurs, Collection Development librarian of Wellington City Libraries said, "We have many selectors choosing eBooks and audiobooks from OverDrive and having the ability to differentiate between Preorders and currently available titles in carts makes a lot of sense. It'll definitely help our team to track their monthly expenditure which is always of value." In Marketplace, Preorder titles are designated by a distinct Preorder font color with prominent messaging so they can be easily spotted. You can add Preorder titles to your cart, and when the cart is "purchased", the titles will be available on your site (for holds only) but your library will not be invoiced until the street date. Carts provide a convenient total for Preorder titles separate from the rest of the cart. Please note, the metadata (including price) for Preorder titles may change prior to the street date. 
At launch, we will begin with a segment of our catalog, including the Big 5 publishers among others, and additional publishers will be added in the following months. To help you identify and gather data on Preorder titles, the following reports have been updated: Collection Statistics, Current Waiting List, Library Statistics, and Purchase Order History. You will also find the following lists of the hottest Preorders featured in the Marketplace "Must Haves" for your convenience. Hottest Books (most popular next six months) http://bit.ly/1Ey4Yu4 Hottest Books of April http://bit.ly/1FLtrJq Hottest Books of April (Kids & Teens) http://bit.ly/1BKUYXd Hottest Books of May http://bit.ly/1C4FjIW Hottest Books of May (Kids & Teens) http://bit.ly/1BnR7Up Hottest Books of June http://bit.ly/1FGXLoy Hottest Books of June (Kids & Teens) http://bit.ly/1bqCIgF Hottest Books of July http://bit.ly/1C7OPbg Hottest Books of July (Kids & Teens) http://bit.ly/1DbIZsj Hottest Books of August http://bit.ly/1BKR28R Hottest Books of August (Kids & Teens) http://bit.ly/1b1ZqeT Hottest Books of Fall http://bit.ly/1FL9a6J Hottest Books of Fall (Kids & Teens) http://bit.ly/1Fg3zHJ If you have any questions on how to work with Preorders, please contact your OverDrive Collection Specialist. |
White Kindles Making a Comeback
| Amazon has started offering a white version of the current basic entry-level Kindle in China and Japan. The new white Kindle is available on a pre-order basis from Amazon.co.jp and Amazon.cn, and will be released on April 8th. It’s considerably odd that the white variation is only available in China and Japan. Usually any new […] |
MagPi Issue 32 – out now!
| In case you hadn’t noticed, Issue 32 of The MagPi, the Raspberry Pi magazine, came out at the end of last week – and we think it’s terrific. This month’s issue is packed with tutorials, reviews, features about your Pi projects, and much more. As always, you’ll find lots and lots of content from the Pi community. Build an IoT door lock with Dr Simon Monk! See if Willem Koopman can gurn so extravagantly that Open CV won’t recognise his face as a face! Dr Sam Aaron will walk you through some Sonic Pi tips and tricks, and we continue the series on writing games in Python. You can win a Raspberry Pi model A+; learn about some of the Raspberry Pi crowdfunding projects that shot for the moon (and find out which ones missed); and have an in-depth look at our distributed weather station project, the work Naturebytes is doing with the Pi, UNICEF’s Raspberry Pi work with Syrian refugees, and much, much more. As always the MagPi is a free download. (If you’d like to support us by buying a copy on Google Play or the Apple App Store so you can use the magazine on your tablet, we’d be really grateful – but we are committed to making sure a PDF will always be available for free.) This is Russell Barnes’ second month as editor; we think he’s doing an amazing job. Head over to www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/ to get your copy!
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Check out the latest Teen & YA titles available through OverDrive!
| This month, the Kids & Teens edition of our eHighlights catalog has a mix of exciting new titles, as well as some reissued classics that would both fit wonderfully into your existing collection.
Nickelodeon titles have recently been added to OverDrive to include the best from SpongeBob SquarePants and Dora the Explorer, among other reader favorites. Victoria Aveyard’s Red Queen is a can’t-miss read for teens and Susan Casey’s Women Heroes of the American Revolution is a wonderful title to add diversity and history to the reading list for ages 12 and up. Georg Rauch's Unlikely Warrior describes Rauch's efforts to help Jews escape from Vienna until he is drafted to the Nazi army, despite his admission that he is of Jewish descent. This book for ages 12 and up shares the details of his harrowing journey. Dive in to another month of fantastic books and stay tuned for upcoming editions featuring Adult fiction and nonfiction, as well as streaming video!
Emma Kanagaki is a Collection Development Analyst with OverDrive |
Amazon Announces New Ivory White Kindle
| Amazon has been fixated on piano black e-readers and tablets since the Kindle Keyboard. This mentality is apparently changing with the advent of a new ivory white edition of the Kindle Basic Touch. The new e-reader is now available for pre-order for ￥499.00 and the initial batch will be sent out by April 8th. The ivory white variant of the Kindle Basic Touch will released in China to begin with. This is the first time Amazon has changed the color on an e-reader since 2011, so its a bit of a big deal. We have heard from a source that Amazon has just filed a mystery device with the FCC. This could potentially be the white edition of the Kindle so Amazon can sell it in the United States. The Kindle Basic Touch came out in November 2014 and it is the first entry level model to include a touchscreen. It features a six inch display with a resolution of 800 x 600 at 167 ppi. The touchscreen technology is using Infrared, courtesy of Neonode. The fonts and overall screen clarity have been dramatically increased and in a head to head comparison with the Kindle Paperwhite 2, Basic surpassed it in many ways. Underneath the hood is a 1 GHZ Freescale processor and 512 MB of RAM. Amazon has doubled up the amount of internal memory from 2 GB on prior models of the basic model to 4 GB. This in effect gives you the ability to store more books and PDF files.
Amazon Announces New Ivory White Kindle is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Monday, March 30, 2015
LG Wants You to Save the Date for April 28 Product Launch
| Next on the list of big launch events is coming out of LG on April 28 in New York, London, and Paris simultaneously (with an event in Seoul, Singapore the following day, on April 29). There are no guarantees of course, but we have our fingers crossed that it means there will be a new version of their flagship smartphone coming from the South Korean company, the much-anticipated LG G4 (which seems even more likely when you take a close look at the enlarged G’s on the invitation, pictured above). (If we take the design of the invitation literally, it may also mean that a leather-backed body should also be expected…) Those loving rumours and speculation will be happy to know that benchmark results have been spotted around the Internet suggesting the LG G4 will run Android 5.1 Lollipop, be powered by a hexa-core 64-bit Snapdragon 808 processor, sport a 5.5-inch QHD display (boasting 1440×2560 pixels), have 3GB of RAM, feature 32GB of on-board storage, and take photos with an 8-megapixel front camera. The exterior design is still somewhat of a mystery, though the expectations are that the phone will be ‘radically different’ than their current LG G3 flagship smartphone. If LG wants to compete with the big guys out there already (thinking most specifically about the recently launched Samsung Galaxy S6), there had better be a secondary announcement of a phablet-sized version of the G4 –but there is no word yet on how likely that is. Are any of you looking forward to seeing what LG has to offer? What would persuade you to choose LG over other phones from the reigning Android heavyweights (beyond Samsung’s Galaxy S6, the HTC One M9 has serious competitive potential)?
LG Wants You to Save the Date for April 28 Product Launch is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Surge Your Adrenaline Playing Fast & Furious: Legacy for Android
| The promise of a solid race-themed game has been known to motivate the purchase of entire console gaming systems –so the release of a quality title for mobile should be heard as very good news by fans of the genre. Fast & Furious: Legacy covers all seven titles in the film franchise, providing a true journey through the street racing experience. There aren’t many surprises with this game, but that shouldn’t be seen as a bad thing. In a world that is all about the hottest car models and the thrill of speeding, just being able to participate using a mobile device (in stunning HD) is exciting! Start with the basics, and spend time customizing your ride (with ‘the hottest paint, vinyls, rims, and more’), unlock extras (like nitrous upgrades), and explore locations based on the movies (from Los Angeles to Miami and beyond); the more you play, the more sophisticated things will become. Run your own crew, battle against others, and find your way to the top of the leaderboards. You can grab Fast & Furious Legacy for free now for your Android device (but have no fear, you will have plenty of opportunities to spend money in-app with this game).
Surge Your Adrenaline Playing Fast & Furious: Legacy for Android is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Onyx Boox i86 HD e-Reader Review
| The e-reader industry is dominated by six inch devices chiefly because of the portability and cost effectiveness. Large screens tend to be very niche and carry a huge price tag. Onyx is hoping to buck this trend with the advent of the i86 HD e-reader which has an 8 inch screen and costs $325.00. Hardware The Onyx i86 HD features an eight inch IR touchscreen with a resolution of 1600 x 1200 with 250 PPI. It does not have a front light like most contemporary e-readers which helps keep the cost down. This particular e-reader model is not using a super modern version of e-paper, as found on the Kindle Voyage or Kobo H2o, instead it is employing an older form of Pearl. Normally, I would lament the screen quality is poor, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. In reality, reading e-books, manga and PDF files is amazing. Onyx has a bunch of software functions that enhance the rendering of image heavy content. Underneath the hood is a 1 GHZ single core processor, 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB of internal storage. There is compatibility for an Micro SD, so you can easily enhance it further up to 32 GB. One of the most exciting features about this reader is the fact it has Bluetooth and a 3.5mm headphone jack. This allows for the playbook of audiobooks and music. In addition, you can hook up external speakers to get a ton of streaming content from companies such as Spotify or Soundcloud. Software The Onyx Boox i86 is running Google Android 4.04 as the primary operating system. It comes bundled with Google Play, which gives customers the ability to download their own e-reading apps, without limitations. When you take this e-reader out of the box for the first time there isn’t very much content on it. There is two e-reading apps and Google Play, and that’s it. There is no library of royalty free e-books to get you started right away, which is a good thing. Many e-readers these days are shipped with a few hundred books on them and are normally instantly deleted to make room for paid content. When you take the i86 out of the box for the first time there is no digital bookstore bundled on it to start buying e-books, digital magazines, manga, newspapers or audiobooks right away. You will want to employ Google Play with your existing or new account to download your favorite apps. It is important to note that despite it can run Android apps, it will not play many games. In addition, anything with complex animations will also not give you a good experience. I would recommend Kobo, Nook, Manga Meow, Replico Reader, Adobe PDF Reader as apps that are fully compatible with the i86. Wrap up The Onyx i86 HD is not officially released yet and the version we reviewed was the final production model. It is currently available only via EBAY and costs $325.00 US. I think this e-reader is perfect for people who need a larger screen to read and felt underwhelmed by the Cybook Ocean. I like the fact it has audio capabilities and allows users to install their own apps via Google Play. PROS 8 Inches CONS Dictionary Support is non-existent Rating: 8/10 Onyx Boox i86 HD e-Reader Review is a post from: Good e-Reader |
The Young Innovators’ Club in Ulaanbaatar
| The Young Innovators’ Club is a new initiative to promote engineering and tech education for school-aged children in Mongolia. It’s currently piloting a Raspberry Pi-based after-school club in Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar, with support from the National Information Technology Park, where activities take place:     Scratch and Python are on the menu, and electronics features prominently, with students using Raspberry Pis to control LEDs, sensors, motors and cameras. Club Coordinator Tseren-Onolt Ishdorj says,
The idea of introducing Raspberry Pi-based after-school clubs was originally that of Enkhbold Zandaakhuu, Chairman of the Mongolian Parliament and himself an engineer by training; a group of interested individuals picked up the idea and established the Club in late 2014, and it has since attracted the interest of peak-time Mongolian TV news and other local media. The Club plans to establish After-School Clubs for Inventors and Innovators (ASCII) across the country with the help of schools, parents and other organisations and individuals; this would involve about 600-700 schools, and include training for over 600 teachers. They’re hopeful of opening a couple of dozen of these this year. We’re quite excited about this at Raspberry Pi. It was lovely to see our Raspberry Jams map recently showing upcoming events on every continent except for Antarctica (where there are Pis, even if not, as far as we know, any Jams), but nonetheless there’s a displeasing Pi gap across central Asia and Russia:  Raspberry Jams on every continent except Antarctica (yes, really: the one that seems to be on the south coast of Spain is actually in Morocco) It’s fantastic to know, then, that school students are learning with Raspberry Pis in Ulaanbaatar. We’ll be keeping up with developments at the Young Innovators’ Club on their Facebook page, where you can find lots of great photos and videos of the students’ work – we hope you’ll take a look, too.    |
A chat with Big Library Read author Dr. Laura Bates
| Last week I had the chance to chat with Dr. Laura Bates, author of the Big Library Read title Shakespeare saved my life, via Twitter. Dr. Bates took some time out of her Friday to answer questions curated from readers from around the world. Below are some of the questions and answers. You can view the Twitter chat here and check out some of her extended answers to questions below!  Tell us your first memory of going to a library Starting around age 5, I would walk 2 miles to the public library with my older sister, in hot summers and snowy winters…checking out as many books as I could carry (often MORE than I could carry). My interests were eclectic: travel, nature, literature. I was a "regular" in my elementary school library, as well. That's where I checked out "Macbeth" at the age of 10. Of course, I couldn't understand it; it was a foreign language to me, but looking back, I can see what a life-changing moment that was for me! My parents, although they were immigrants, were book-lovers, and I inherited that trait. If the roll was reversed would you feel comfortable w/ a significant other doing the work you do? What has been your most rewarding moment of this program? What is your favorite Shakespeare piece? What message do you hope readers take away of this book? Adam Sockel is a Social Media Specialist with OverDrive. He now has a new appreciation for the Bard. |
Clean Reader Controversy: Censorship, or Right to Read?
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One of the recent controversies in publishing involves the creation of an app called Clean Reader that has authors of every level crying censorship. Built by two parents who claim their daughter was upset by the amount and level of profanity in a book she was reading, the app takes an ebook and “filters” out the naughty words with three levels for the reader to choose from. Readers can decide that “damn” is okay but not “f***,” for example, all the way up to the strictest setting that will filter out biological terms for human genitalia. Personal feelings on sheltering one’s children aside, it’s important to understand how this is not censorship. First, nothing about the original manuscript is actually changed. The author’s original work is still available for sale elsewhere; this would almost be akin to an app selling a translated version of the book, since the author himself cannot speak or write in Swahili and someone else decided what words would appear in the file. Second, by definition censorship requires a larger-scale effort than one reader choosing to read a version of the book with the profanity removed. If the government required the profanity to be removed in order for the book even to be published, that would be censorship. The debate on both sides has been very interesting. Supporters of the app have stated that this is simply allowing choice for the readers, and that audiences who would have avoided the author’s work entirely for its word choices can now support the author and take part in the dialogue about the book. Other supporters have pointed out that this was a parent-driven effort, and that we should applaud these parents for not taking the typical route of complaining to the school and having the book pulled from the shelves. They didn’t interfere with other children’s enjoyment of the book, they simply provided an avenue (at their own expense) for their daughter to read roughly the same books as her peers–with their same tones, plots, and themes–without having to wade through words that the child herself found objectionable. Where things got tricky was in the selling of the books through Clean Reader. Basically, the app isn’t capable of taking any document in any file format and simply replacing certain words. The book has to get the “cleaning” treatment and then be available for sale. While supporters can easily take the stance that authors should be grateful for any sale they get, this did irk a number of authors, and for good reason. It’s one thing to filter a book at the reader’s discretion, as that would be like flipping past the sex scenes in an erotica title to get to the story. It’s something else altogether when a bookstore owner rips out the pages that contain “smut” and then sells the book on her shelves with the claim that it is “clean.” The saddest issue in this controversy is the argument that profanity in published books is a fact and that readers should have to simply put up with it because that’s how the author wrote it; the point was even made that the couple who developed the app are “sheltering” their daughter from the real world by not letting her read books with bad words in them. Critics of this app have basically said the authors’ craft is more important than the readers’ sensibilities. This would be far more understandable a concern if most consumers knew how much an author’s work is stripped away in the editorial process by major publishers, and then understood that self-published authors often chose to pursue indie authorship because random gatekeepers had deemed their book wasn’t fit or worthy enough for mass market publication. Telling an author that there’s now one more level of censor before the book can be read can sting. Unfortunately, there’s a middle ground that could be reached, and neither side has looked for it. The answer may not be simple, of course, but nothing like this ever is. This app could have been incredibly helpful for teachers who wish to support indie authors or who wish to use controversial titles in their whole-group class instruction, but instead that tool is no longer available to them as the Clean Reader developers have ceased selling books through their app’s bookstore for the time being. Consumers who flocked to Clean Reader have also been left with a bad taste in their mouths over the idea that their dollars aren’t good enough–even for self-published authors who arguably could use the money–if it means taking out a few cuss words.
Clean Reader Controversy: Censorship, or Right to Read? is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Will Publishers Start Adopting 3D Printed Book Covers as a Marketing Tool?
| Publishers and retailers are always looking for new ways for a book to stand out in the crowd. Sometimes they employ well known designers and artists to something visually compelling with an anniversary edition or bookstores will sometimes employ small motifs for bestsellers such as 50 Shades of Grey. This is all going to change with the advent of 3D printing technology. In January 2014 Riverhead Books developed a 3D slipcover for And Chang-rae Lee's On Such a Full Sea. Riverhead holds the distinction of being the first publisher to ever do something like this. The white slipcover, into which the book fits neatly, features the letters of the title rising off the surface at an angle, and the idea all along was to do something unlike anything ever seen in the world of publishing, Riverhead's art director, Helen Yentus said "I didn’t even think we'd be able to do it, because it's such a new and innovative technology." Yentus continues "A couple years ago, we thought this was the end of print and we'd just be going cheaper and cheaper and cheaper until the physical book disappears, because you could just get the e-book. With these special editions, I can't say 100% but I do think that we are trying to create a physical object that people would want to keep and have, probably as a response to the growth of the e-book," she says. "There's a lot of pressure to innovate. For us, at least in my mind, this has turned out to be a really successful result of that search." The finished design, which took 15 hours to print, was made for a special-edition run of 200 signed copies for sale—a number partially decided by how many could physically be printed in time for the shelf date. Each copy cost $150, so it certainly costs more than your standard e-book. Retail stores such as Barnes and Noble or Chapters/Indigo could really take advantage of getting the stores designers to come up with a new way to make books stand out. Most books do not have custom display stands and merely sit on tables. If the store was really behind a new book that was coming out and was a surefire bestseller, they could print up a few 3D slipcovers per store in order to capture the shoppers attention. Likely local and national press would cover this story, giving the bookseller something new and cutting edge to talk about. Publishers could also orchestrate a limited run of a book cover or slipcover that is 3D and even include an autograph by the author. I know if a new book by William Gibson or Neil Gaimon came out and was one of a kind, with a very limited run, I would certainly spend $200 on it and use it as a status symbol. 3D printing is relatively a new thing and traditional industries have yet to employ it in an meaningful way. It tends to chiefly be used by geeks and hobbyists that are looking to get some street cred on Reditt or a message board. As Riverhead Books as demonstrated there is a market for this sort of thing. Will Publishers Start Adopting 3D Printed Book Covers as a Marketing Tool? is a post from: Good e-Reader |
