| A new feature rolling out today that lets users select up to 30 friends or Pages to ensure they get those friends' latest posts at the top of their feed.The social network is debuting the features on its iOS app first and users can not only choose whose posts will appear at the top of their feed, but also edit and filter the things they don’t want to see at all. After updating the iOS app, users will find a new settings section called News Feed Preferences with the tools for customization. Choosing users or Pages to prioritize means their updates will always appear at the top of the News Feed, making sure their posts aren’t lost in the timeline. This new feature will also help you find new Pages to follow and connect with publishers, artists and businesses you might be interested in. Based on the types of Pages you've liked in the past, you can discover new Pages in order to get more of the stories you care about. Finally, if you are like me and follow a crap ton of pages you now have the ability to filter out their stories from cluttering your timeline.
|
Thursday, July 9, 2015
Facebook iOS App Allows for Customizable News Feed
Several Obscure eBook Readers Turn up on Amazon
| A new marketplace seller recently launched on Amazon called Topjoy. Among other items, they have an odd assortment of E Ink ebook readers for sale that are normally only available outside the United States, with brand names like Yarvik and Texet. They are all listed as “used” and in very good condition but without the […] |
OverDrive presents to packed crowds in San Francisco and Tokyo
| Last week Team OverDrive traveled thousands of miles to present in front of library and business partners at the American Library Association Annual Conference as well as the Tokyo International Book Fair. At ALA, we gave standing room only crowds a sneak peek at the new OverDrive coming later this year as well as showed off the latest innovations including digital newspapers and magazines and browser-based audiobooks. We also met with a capacity crowd of librarians at our annual breakfast meeting where we took product and feature recommendations from some of our most valued partners.
 |
Pi Wars – annual public robot Olympics
| Liz: This week’s all about community. Mike Horne and Tim Richardson are old, old friends of the Raspberry Pi project. They’ve been running the Cambridge Raspberry Jam for ages – it’s one of the Jams we use as an exemplar and a showcase for anybody wanting to start their own. They’re so good at organising this stuff that we asked them to help us set up, run and host the Raspberry Pi third birthday party earlier this year. It was an enormous success – 1300 of you came from all over the world, and we had an amazing weekend. (And about a ton of pizza.) Mike and Tim are REALLY GOOD at this stuff. So it’s with enormous looking-forwardness that I asked them to prepare a guest post for us on their next non-standard Pi event (a repeat of what was probably the best Pi event I attended last year – and I go to a lot of them): a second annual Pi Wars, to be held in Cambridge this December. (We wrote about it here last year.) Over to Mike and Tim. Preparation for this year's challenge-based robotics competition, Pi Wars, is now underway! We'd like to tell you about the competition, how to get involved – and also launch a pre-event competition! Following the success of last year's event, we have plans for a bigger and better competition this year. The 2015 competition will be held on Saturday 5th December at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory (where the Big Birthday Weekend was), off Madingley Road in Cambridge, UK. For those of you who don't know, Pi Wars is an event at which Raspberry Pi-powered robots compete against each other in various challenges to win prizes and to take the title of Best Robot. Last year, we had 20 teams competing, and around 200 spectators. This year, we have raised the maximum number of competing teams to around 30, and we hope to welcome over 300 spectators to see them battle it out in 2015’s larger space. Teams come from all walks of life, including schools, Code Clubs, hack spaces, families and individuals – we even had a few robots last year that had been made in lunch-hours at offices by teams of colleagues. So why not you? Pi Wars, unlike Robot Wars, does not go in for destructive combat: we want your robots to make it to the end of the day relatively unscathed! So, our challenges are based on skills tests. The main challenges this year are:
Other elements of the competition are will be:
There are also other 'side competitions', which will include the robots in the Show and Tell area (of which more in a moment). You can find out more about these side competitions and see details of all the challenges by visiting the List of Challenges page on our website. Show and Tell As mentioned above, there will also be a Show and Tell area featuring robot exhibits. This is a great way to get involved if you have a robotics project but don't have time to make it competition-ready; or if your robot is something "a bit different". Anything goes in Show and Tell as long as it is controlled by a Raspberry Pi and it moves! Applying to enter This year, there is an application process to follow for both the main competition and the Show and Tell area. Depending on the number of robots we have entering, it may be necessary to select from them the robots that will take part. We have a selection process – follow the link to learn more. If you would like to apply and get involved in Pi Wars, head over to the Pi Wars website and fill in: Sponsorship As you can imagine, putting on an event this size requires sponsorship of various forms. We are looking for companies to sponsor the event by donating prizes (add-on boards, t-shirts, magazine subscriptions and kits all made an appearance last year) for the various challenges and, if that's not appropriate, to donate financially so that we can make the courses and print the full-colour programme that every competitor and spectator receives. So far, we have received generous offers from Dexter Industries, Ryanteck, Dawn Robotics, 4tronix, RasPiO, PiBorg, The Pi Hut, MyPiFi and Energenie. So, if your company would like to be involved, please take a look at our sponsors page for what we can do for you in return. Pre-event competition – Design the programme cover! New for this year is our pre-event competition. This competition is open to anyone 16 years old or younger and involves creating some artwork. Our programme last year (pictured) featured our logo and a photograph of a robot (we aren’t graphic designers). This year, we want a different design, and that's where you come in. We would like you to design a new front cover. It will still have our banner logo at the top, and the date will be on there somewhere, but we need a new image for the middle of the page. So, get your thinking caps on and send us your design! You can find details of how to enter here. Entries must be received by noon on 1st October. The winner will be picked by members of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and will be notified around the 8th October. This should give us plenty of time to get the design integrated into the programme and get it printed! Any questions? We are open to any questions you might have. Either visit our website and contact us, or leave a comment on this blog post and we'll get back to you. We hope to see you at Pi Wars 2015 on 5th December! Michael Horne & Tim Richardson mike@recantha.co.uk/tim@potton.me.uk The post Pi Wars – annual public robot Olympics appeared first on Raspberry Pi. |
Amazon Kindle Voyage 2 to be Released November 2015
| Amazon has driven most of the competition out of the e-reader market because the Settle company can afford to sell their hardware as cheap as possible, knowing they can make it up with e-book sales. You can purchase an entry level Kindle for $79 or the Paperwhite 3 for $139. Last year, Amazon released the Kindle Voyage, which is a premium e-reader and it carries a hefty price tag of $199. Customers bought the Voyage in such high numbers that this is prompting Amazon to develop a successor that will be released this November. The Amazon Kindle Voyage 2 will redefine what an e-reader is capable of in a myriad of ways. It will utilize the new Freescale I.MX 7 1 GHZ dual core processor which will dramatically increase the overall performance. This chipset has been optimized with e Ink Regal and the end product will be true refresh free page turns. Whenever you turn a page in an e-book you will notice a small, but discernible flicker. Every six pages it even becomes more pronounced and it breaks immersion. This will be a thing of the past with the advent of the Kindle Voyage 2. How does Amazon plan on doing it, where all others have failed? In the past, all e-readers handled everything on the software level, which limited them on the things they could do. Now things are quite different, the i.MX7 adds a Cortex-M4 microcontroller unit core for offloading processing. This will give Amazon the power to basically send all strenuous tasks directly to the processor and there will also be some added benefits. Have you ever wondered why the Kindle app for Android or iOS feels better than their e-reader? Whenever you flip a page you see a complex page turn animation that occurs. This animation technology will finally be coming to the Kindle Voyage 2, which will blur the lines between an e-reader and a tablet. There is no word yet if specific UI elements such as the battery symbol or the brightness setting will be animated too, but it does make sense that they would. Please keep in mind, all of these new elements will not drain the battery, actually I heard it will actually increase the life of a charge by 30%. Amazon has proved there is a segment of people willing to spend $200 dollars for a premium e-reader. If its well designed, offers high resolution and a great e-book experience, people will pay the money. The second generation model will ascetically look the same, including Page Press and the ambient light sensor. What I am most excited about is the increased performance in all aspects of the software. PDF files will load quicker, GoodReads discussions will be live, and the overall e-reading experience will be more fluid. |
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
Barnes and Noble Closing Nook Windows 8 App
|
The largest bookseller in the US has announced that they are closing the Nook app for Windows 8 on August 7th 2015. The only two markets that will have access to it is the US and UK and everyone else will no longer be allowed to open any Nook related content. An Email was sent out to all international users who have purchased an e-book or magazine. It stated “We recently announced that Barnes & Noble and Microsoft have agreed to terminate their commercial partnership. As a result, payments through your Microsoft account no longer supported. In addition, the NOOK App for Windows will from August 7, 2015 are no longer available outside the United States. This means that your NOOK content can no longer open on a Windows platform. Our records indicate that you are outside the United States and that you are using your Microsoft account as a payment method in your NOOK App for Windows account. Therefore, you may be eligible for a refund from Microsoft for any purchases you have made with your Microsoft account.” I think its a cool move to be able to get a refund on any digital content you have purchased if you live outside the US and UK. Normally when something like this happens users just lose everything and the store just disappears. It is very disappointing that the Nook for Windows 8 app will no longer be available. What is even more damning is that anyone who has a Microsoft Account will not be able to view their content on any Nook e-reader, tablet or Nook for Web, since Microsoft and Nook user accounts or two separate entities. |
Windows 8 e-reading appGet insight into what your students are reading with the new Unique User Activity Report
|
The upgraded Unique User Activity report went live in OverDrive Marketplace in June and allows schools to view the digital content borrowing histories of specific students. "This deeper insight provides significant benefits to funding allocation and purchasing, promoting the service and getting to know readers", said OverDrive Collection Development Specialist Renee Lienhard. The Unique User Activity report lets a school see, for example, that 60 percent of fifth graders are borrowing an eBook on a monthly basis. This data can help in the decision to allocate grants for digital content for these students to support their continued regular usage. "Schools can also observe via the Unique User Activity report that the students in a specific class haven't borrowed any eBooks recently", Lienhard said. Titles geared specifically toward these students could then be purchased and efforts to promote the service to this group could be enhanced. Schools are already realizing the existing possibilities offered by the improved Unique User Activity report. Said one OverDrive partner about getting to know her readers better, "Perfect! I'm getting exactly the information I was looking for. It's intriguing to see users who have never come to the library who are huge eBook readers. I don't recognize our number one eBook reader at all! I'm psyched to analyze this data and figure out who is using it and what we can do to encourage more usage." Contact your OverDrive Account Specialist today to learn more about the new Unique User Activity report in OverDrive Marketplace.  |
Hundreds of thousands participate in the record setting Big Library Read
| During the month of June readers from around the world had unlimited, simultaneous access to Eyes on You by Kate White through their libraries as a part of the Big Library Read program. Over seven thousand libraries joined the event which saw 200,000 checkouts of the title over two weeks, making this the most successful Big Library Read to date. In fact, Eyes On You was borrowed more than the next five most popular titles on OverDrive sites combined in June!
While the results of this event have been record setting we know there is always room for improvement. We have created two surveys that you can find at biglibraryread.com, one for readers and one for librarians. Please take a moment to provide your feedback and share these links with your users so we can continue to improve this digital book club experience. Thanks again for making this Big Library Read the best one yet!  |
Users weren't just reading the book, however. Hundreds of people joined the discussion board at biglibraryread.com and hundreds more viewed the OSMC stable release
| Liz: We first met Sam Nazarko early in 2012 when he was still at school, in the sixth form. He’d been working on a packaged version of XBMC, the open-source media player, specifically built for the Raspberry Pi. He called it Raspbmc: he’d created a way to boot your Raspberry Pi straight into a really slick media player. Since then, Raspbmc and XBMC have both been renamed (they’re OSMC and Kodi respectively), and OSMC has gone…well, it’s become enormously successful. Sam’s just finished university, OSMC has nearly half a million users, and it’s just reached a milestone: its stable release (you’ll find it in NOOBS, or you can download it at osmc.tv/download). Here’s Sam to tell you some more. It was a Wednesday in April 2012 and the postman had come early. I saw the letter and instantly knew what it was. I was in Upper Sixth at the time (Liz interjects: for people outside the UK, that’s the final year of high school), and I had been waiting to get my hands on one of these for months. Here it was, a Raspberry Pi! That was the first (and only) day that I ever skipped school. I had done some work with the 1st generation Apple TV, and spotting the new form factor, low cost and low power consumption of the Pi, I was excited. I started work on Raspbmc and for two years it amassed an astounding amount of users. But I never expected Raspbmc to grow to the size it did — it was never really designed to support such a large deployment. I learned a lot developing it and knew that it was time to start fresh. In June of last year, I decided to start the OSMC project. XBMC, now known as Kodi was renaming and I decided to follow suit. I knew that we could make Raspbmc even better. During the development of the project, more and more people joined the team and got involved. Today we have over a dozen regular volunteers. Even though OSMC has just announced its stable release, it’s already being used regularly by 450,000 users. If someone had told me that Raspbmc or OSMC were going to be so widely adopted 3 years ago, I wouldn’t have believed them. Still, didn’t you say you were going to only produce 4,000 Pis Liz? Liz: 2,000, actually. We…lacked vision. OSMC is based on Debian Jessie and we’ve made sure it’s optimised for all Raspberry Pi models, old or new. If you haven’t used Raspbmc in a while and have yet to try OSMC, I hope you’ll be pleasantly surprised with OSMC. We’ve worked hard to improve performance, stability, the update system and hardware compatibility. Thanks to the Raspberry Pi Foundation for their support. Sam The post OSMC stable release appeared first on Raspberry Pi. |
Samsung Gets a Patent for Writing on PDF Files
| Samsung has just filed for a patent that will change the course of the PDF format forever. Write on PDF is new functionality that will allow a user to write, edit and save a PDF file. Well, its not really new, companies have been doing it for years, such as the Sony Digital Paper or a myriad of apps. Samsung though, wants the patent so it can likely sue all of their competition and try to cornerstone the market with their new Galaxy Note 5. The Samsung patent filing states that it is for a “Computer application software for mobile phones, smart phones, tablet computers, portable media players and handheld computers enabling users to annotate and save PDF documents, images and files; computer application software for mobile phones, smart phones, tablet computers, portable media players and handheld computers enabling users to and annotate and save electronic documents, images and files in electronic, computer readable file format.” It really sounds to me that Samsung wants to control the PDF market for anyone that wants to edit a file, save it and access it later. This will affect competing hardware vendors, app developers, students and the technical workforce. Samsung has filed this patent to include in their upcoming Galaxy Note 5 smartphone and they are seeking to make the entire writing experience far easier. Right now its fairly convoluted process with users having to firstly activate the Screen Write feature using their S-Pen. Then, they will have to take a picture of the PDF they want to take notes on before they can finally write on the PDF. The new patent will make it so they can just write on any PDF file and save it. Samsung has also filed for another patent that features the S-Pen that can be ejected automatically. Currenly, you’d have to manually push the pen out of the smartphone in order to use it, which can sometimes be a hassle especially for those in situations where one hand is all that’s temporarily free. With this future product, if approved, the user only has to make a gesture or to you voice control and the S-Pen will then be ejected so you can use to your heart’s content. Don’t get me wrong, I think that this Note 5 will be a super viable option for anyone that wants a mobile phone that is a PDF editing machine. I just think that the company will start filing litigation against Sony for their Digital Paper or popular apps such as ezPDF Reader or Repligo. |
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
Amazon invents their own holiday – Prime Day
| Black Friday is the most lucrative day of the year for Amazon and this is apparently not enough for them. Christmas is coming early this July with the advent of a new holiday, Prime Day. Prime Day is a one day shopping extravaganza that will transpire on July 15th 2015. There will be a copious amount of deals that will only be available for Amazon Prime members who have paid the $99.99 per year fee to get free two day shipping and a plethora of other benefits. The sale promises to drop prices in a slew of categories including video games and electronics. Members will find deals starting at midnight PDT, with new deals starting throughout the day, as often as every ten minutes. |
Offer your users digital magazines and newpapers access fee free for a year
| While meeting with our library partners at ALA in San Francisco last week, many were excited to hear about the success of one of our newest products, OverDrive Periodicals. To help spread the word about how libraries can offer digital newspapers and magazines on the same platform as their eBooks and audiobooks, we offered ALA attendees a special offer: sign up for OverDrive Periodicals Given the success of this promotion we’ve decided to extend it to all of our partners. If you contact your Collection Specialist and purchase subscriptions to OverDrive Periodicals, we’ll waive the access fee for twelve months. This will enable you to provide your users over 1,000 popular magazines and newspapers including exclusive content from the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and The Washington Post. Libraries who have added this feature are seeing huge circulation increases with users coming back daily to borrow the latest issues of their favorite periodicals. Contact your Collection Specialist today for more details on how to start providing this great feature and keep your users coming back to your digital collection day after day. OverDrive Periodicals are currently available for public and school libraries in the U.S. only  |
Remote twerking robot
| Dan Aldred, of The tech’s very clever, Dan, but I’m just unable to get past the fact that the thing appears to have buttocks in certain configurations. If you want to use your Energenie in a similar fashion, you’ll find typically full and detailed instructions on Dan’s website. We’re big fans of Energenie’s Pi-mote add-on, and there are lots of uses for them outside twerking robots. (I use one at home with an IR sensor to control the lights when we open the front door, because the switch is really stupidly far away when you’re stumbling in the dark; Gordon has one he uses seasonally on his Christmas tree; and Rachel has built one into her home-made sous-vide cooking kit.) All that said, I think this is probably the most entertaining use of one we’ve seen yet – thank you Dan, and more power to your robot’s rear end.
The post Remote twerking robot appeared first on Raspberry Pi. |
eBooks and The Environment: A Greener Reading Experience
| There’s a lot to love about eBooks – they’re portable, can be accessed over the Internet, and they can be shared quickly and conveniently. Something most people don’t take into consideration when they say they love them, though, is that eBooks can be a greener choice than today’s physical books end up being. With more resources at low enough levels to impact environmental stability and more habitats being destroyed by deforestation and the search for fossil fuels, making even a small choice for a greener life can be important. So when you’re looking for that next little change that can help you have a bigger impact and thinking about switching to eBooks, here’s the rundown of how they help (and maybe even hinder) efforts towards green living. Printing and Carbon Emissions The printing press came into use in the mid-15th century and has not gone out of style even today. Mass printing can be done on huge scales now and book publishers routinely release millions of copies of new titles at a time to satisfy market demand. The problem with this method of delivery is the carbon footprint that printing is responsible for. A carbon footprint is generally defined as the total amount of greenhouse gasses an individual or group is responsible for. Every person on earth has some level of footprint on the carbon register due to carbon dioxide, but beyond that, the impact of carbon emissions from cars, factories, large building construction and other industries is a concern, as it is affecting the quality of air and atmosphere we depend on for existence. The printing industry has historically had a very high carbon footprint. The harvesting of enough timber to turn into paper alone has a high emission of greenhouse gasses and then considering that this harvesting removes trees that release oxygen that helps balance our own intrinsic carbon footprints, the impact on the environment can be astronomical. Thankfully, eBooks don’t require trees to be produced or even read. They’re not all green energy, due to the minerals that go into the electronics that most people prefer to read their eBooks on, but because they are meant to be used many times over, their impact is drastically less than that of print books. One eReader can be used to read literally thousands of books and as most of them require a charge once a week or even less, depending on how voracious a reader’s appetite is, eReaders begin to look like the more green approach to reading. The Internet and eBooks It’s not a surprise that readers have taken such a shine to eBooks, given their ultimate portability over paper copies, but the real convenience of an ebook is their availability to almost anyone thanks to the Internet. There are hundreds of stores available with just a few button clicks and they offer hundreds of thousands of titles to meet any interest or need. Online eBooks have helped the popularity of websites like Barnesandnoble.com because they offer a selection of titles for instant access. There’s no need to travel to the store to pick up a copy of the book you’re looking for when you can get it via electronic delivery in just a few seconds. The NOOK online eBooks takes delivery of popular classics and the most anticipated new titles quick and convenient. And many eBooks offer wireless or 3G cellular access to their respective stores so you can shop on the go from anywhere you have a signal. Reduce, Reuse When you’re looking to reduce your carbon footprint and you’re a bookworm, an eReader may be the best way to go for all your reading needs; they offer the classics (many of which are available free) and new material, but there are also other ways you can reduce your impact on the environment and still enjoy a good book. Many publishing companies today have made commitments to greener practices in all areas of their business and recycled materials are now being used more than ever to print physical books but there’s another way to commit to being green and still read a good book. If the book was published 20 or more years ago and is still around, it’s going to have the lowest carbon footprint of all. That’s the beauty of a good book well cared for and the green movement as a whole. When you seek to reduce your impact on the environment, you normally look to reuse as much as possible. Books make it easy to find something truly special, even if the cover is a bit worn or faded. Conclusion If you’re looking for a way to lower your impact on the environment, an old book is a good place to start. They’re readily available everywhere from thrift stores to second hand bookshops and have a very low carbon footprint, but if you’re a truly voracious reader and want to keep up on all the current titles coming to the market, an eReader allows you to tote around hundreds of good books in a tiny package and because it’s meant to be reused over and over again, it offers a modern take on a problem that’s already been around for some time. Invest in an eReader and get good books online, anytime, anywhere. |
Monday, July 6, 2015
Top 5 Tips for Reading on your Smartphone
| There is a large segment of the population that do not have a dedicated e-reader like the Kindle and instead read on their smartphones. There is no shortage of apps from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo and hundreds of others that allow you to read short fiction, novels and even classics like Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. I must say that I have been reading lots more on my phone, since upgrading to the iPhone 6 Plus. The giant phone screen is totally indicative to long reading sessions, but this and all other phones have some drawbacks. Today I am offering my top 5 tips for reading on your smartphone. 1) Disable those pesky notifications on your phone. Nothing is worse than getting into a utterly compelling plot development in a good book and getting email and Facebook notification pings. This is one of the big reasons why reading something short is easy, but longer reads can break immersion. This is not easily done for phones that have iOS, basically you have to turn notifications off on an app by app basis, or put it in airplane mode. Android makes it easier, when a notification pops up in your notification shade you can simply long press on it to bring up a link to the notification page for that app via the "i" icon. It's a shortcut to the app notification page, which you'll also find listed at Settings > Sound & notification > App notifications. Every app is listed here and you can decide if you want to turn notifications off by toggling the Block option. 2) Pick a page turner. Remember that not even Ernest Hemingway got through Ulysses. This is not the time to get overly ambitious. Is this a book that would normally hold your interest the whole way through? This is an ideal e-book to read on your phone. 3) The Synergy. Major e-book stores have a powerful synchronization feature that makes a lot of sense for people who might have multiple devices. You can start reading a book on a Nook in the evening. When going to work, just bust out your smartphone, open the Nook app, and start reading exactly at the location you left off last night. 4) Easily Customize your reading experience. Let’s face it, not everyone is blessed with great eye sight. Some people wear glasses, others get old and the eyes start to go or maybe your dyslexic. Most smartphone apps have the ability to enlarge the size of the fonts in order to make it more readable. Companies like Kobo even have a dyslexic font that optimizes every book to make it appealing to read. There is also plenty of options to engage in nighttime reading mode, which is starting to get really popular. You can change the background of the book to be black and the text switches to white. This is tremendously useful if you tend to read on your phone in low-light conditions or at night. 5) Let it feel weird at first. You’re turning a buzzing portal into a static page. You need to give yourself some time to experiment before it takes. It feels completely weird for the first 10% of the book, and then it starts to feel completely natural. |
Listen to William Gibson Read Neuromancer
| There aren’t many authors that narrate their own audiobooks, but this is precisely what William Gibson did in 1994. He recorded it on a series of cassette tapes and they were quietly discontinued soon thereafter. The audiobook never got published on CD’s or to the digital realm, which is a crying shame. Today, you can now download them and listen to the recording as the original author intended. With 1984's Neuromancer, William Gibson may not have invented cyberpunk, but he certainly crystallized it. The novel exemplifies the tradition's mandate to bring together "high tech and low life," or, in the words of Gibson himself, to explore what "any given science-fiction favorite would look like if we could crank up the resolution." It may have its direct predecessors, but Gibson's tale of hackers, street samurai, conspiracists, and shadowy artificial intelligences against virtual reality, dystopian urban Japan, and a variety of other international and technological backdrops remains not just archetypal but, unusually for older technology-oriented fiction, exciting. Now you can not only read Gibson's cyberpunk-defining words, but hear them in Gibson's voice: a 1994 abridged edition, released only on cassette tapes and now long out of print, resides in MP3 form online here .
|
Top 5 e-readers for Summer 2015
| It’s summertime and the living is easy! Many people are looking to buy a new device to read e-books at the cottage or just to bring with them to the beach. There are a slew of new resolution devices on the market that not only give you a better overall reading experience but they also allow you to read in the dark! Today, we take a look at the top 5 e-readers for the summer. Energy Sistem PRO+ We first reviewed the Energy Sistem PRO back in February and were impressed by the fact it ran Android and allowed users to install their own apps. One of the drawbacks that it was running e Ink Pearl, which is fairly old by today's standards. This has since been remedied with the advent of the Energy Sistem PRO+ that has e Ink Carta. I think the Energy Reader PRO+ is a viable investment for those looking for a solid alternative to Kindle or Kobo, because its platform agnostic. The device itself has a resolution of 1024×758 pixels. It has 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. It also has the option to expand the memory up to 64GB with a SD/SDHC card. The PRO+ is available to order from the main Energy Sistem website and costs 129 €. Onyx Boox i86 HD Plus The standard e-reader is only six inches, and Onyx has bucked the trend with the advent of the i86 HD Plus. It features Google Android 4.04, so you can install any e-reading app you want. The Onyx Boox i86 Plus 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, 1 GB of RAM and 8 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. This e-reader costs 199,99 € and you can order one HERE. Kobo Glo HD The Kobo Glo HD is a brand new e-reader that features a high resolution display and was designed to be both economical and heavily compete against the Kindle Voyage. The brand new Kobo Glo HD features a six inch e-ink Carta screen with a resolution of 1448×1072 and 300 PPI. It has the same front-lit display as the Kobo Aura H2O, so you will be able to read in low-light conditions or complete darkness. I think the main reason Kobo rushed the Glo HD to the market was because of the overwhelming success of the premium Kindle Voyage. This Amazon branded device was released late last year and at the time had the best resolution and highest PPI in the world. It also carried a hefty price, retailing for $199 US vs the $129 of the Glo HD. Due to the success of the Kobo Glo HD, Amazon has countered with the new Paperwhite 3, which matches the Glo HD specs . Underneath the hood is a 1 GHZ processor and 4 GB of internal storage. When you take the e-reader out of the box for the first time you only have 3.1 GB of memory, primarily because the OS takes up a fair amount of space. This model does have a hidden SD card, but the average user will not be able to take advantage of high memory, because you need to employ cloning software, since the entire OS is stored on it. Finally, if you are going to be be spending a lot of time around water, such as the beach or swimming pool, you will want to check out the Kobo H2O. It came out last year, but it has a bigger screen than the Glo HD and is totally waterproof. Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 3 We decided to include the Paperwhite 3 on our list because it just started shipping at the end of June and has a very respectable price tag of $139. The Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 3 has a e-ink Carta display screen with a resolution of 1430×1080 and 300 PPI. This is a huge upgrade from the 2013 model which only had 1024×768 and 212 PPI. When it comes to the visual aesthetics the new Paperwhite is virtually indistinguishable from the 2nd generation model. The only change on the hardware is very subtle, the Kindle logo on the front is piano black, while the older edition had it in pure white. The retail packaging also makes reference to 300 PPI, so this should aid you if you are looking to buy he latest edition and can't really tell what model you are looking at. Underneath the hood is a 1 GHZ processor and 512 MB of RAM. There is 4 GB of internal storage and the majority of your content will be held in the cloud. There is certainly enough space to have a thousand e-books on your device at any given time. One of the big reasons why I decided to recommend this e-reader is because the base price is very cheap, but there is an optional 3G variant for $209. Amazon is the only company to charge a premium price for a data enabled reader that does not charge any monthly subscriptions, so you can buy e-books no matter where you are in the world, without having to pay roaming or extra fees. This is important if you are looking for a vacation e-reader and if you are normally outside a WIFI network. Pocketbook Sense The Pocketbook Sense is a brand new e-reader and has just hit the open market in Europe and North America. One thing that is clearly evident at first glance is how well designed it is. Pocketbook is not known for having sexy looking digital readers, but the Sense is their best offering to date. The Pocketbook Sense features a six inch e-ink Pearl HD screen with a resolution of 1024×758. I was afraid that the outdated screen might make this reader dead in the water, but I was pleasantly surprised. Instead of going with infrared touch, Pocketbook made the decision to go with a capacitive touchscreen display. This makes pinching and zooming, as well as drawing very robust. Underneath the hood is a 1 GHZ processor, 128 MB of RAM and 4 GB of internal storage. You can enhance the memory up to 32 GB via the Micro SD card and it also has a Mini USB to charge and send data to your e-reader. One thing I really liked about the design is the manual page turn keys. Rather than have them on the front of the device, Pocketbook has them on the back. They are positioned exactly how you would hold it, so its very intuitive to hold it with one hand. Alternatively you can simply use the touchscreen display. It costs 149 euros and you can buy one from HERE. |
Reviewing Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal
| It happens a couple times a year that you come across a book that hits all the right notes and leaves you wandering around the house afterward wondering what you do with yourself now that you are finished with it. I found myself in this state of ennui last night after finishing J. Ryan Stradal's extraordinary foodie novel Kitchens of the Great Midwest.
Each chapter of the novel is from a different perspective. From her father, to her, her cousin, a boyfriend, and then people she has brief encounters with. The novel moves from direct contact and insight into our main character to a distant glimpses of her. It is a wonderful set up to reflect how elusive and legendary she becomes. Likewise, the ingredients and dishes featured in each chapter build up. Each of them eventually make their way into the dinner at the end of the book and are a reflection of who our chef is. They are a testament to the foodie world and how different people look at food and utilize it. One story of a woman who makes contest winning peanut butter bars then takes them to a competition where all the other recipes state where the ingredients are sourced from is the perfect example of the clash of cultures. Underneath all the food and ingredients that marry the novel together is the story of individual struggles and characters that are beautifully flawed. Often when reading books that diverge from the main character's side, I get upset because I've formed a relationship with that person, but I found myself digging into each new chapter with vigor, wanting only to consume a new person's story. Pick this novel up. Read it with a glass of wine, iced tea, or a sandwich (you're going to want to eat/drink something tasty while reading it), and revel in the perfect marriage of ingredients that J. Ryan Stradal lays before you.  |
Kindle Paperwhite 3 PDF Review (+Video)
| Most people use Kindle ereaders to read ebooks from Amazon, but Kindles also support other formats, including PDF. PDF files come in a wide variety of sizes and types, just about every one you get lays out differently. This often makes reading PDFs on smaller 6-inch screens problematic—a device like the Onyx Boox M96 with […] |
The triumphant return of the Raspberry Pi Guy
| Matt Timmons-Brown, who you may know better as The Raspberry Pi Guy, is one of our favourite makers of Raspberry Pi tutorials. Those of you who follow him will have noticed that he’s been curiously absent since the start of the year. There’s a reason for that: despite having a work ethic and demeanour that makes most of us at Pi Towers look like eight-year-olds, Matt’s actually surprisingly youthful. This summer, he’s been doing his GCSE exams, so he took a few months away from making tutorials to prepare and revise. We’re pleased to hear he’s finished, and he’s dived straight back in to video-making. Matt’s been wrapping up a tutorial series on robotics. You can watch them all below. If you’re trying to think up a Raspberry Pi project and don’t know where to start, go and check out The Raspberry Pi Guy’s YouTube channel – you’ll fine beginner, intermediate and advanced tutorials, reviews, and much more. Herewith robots. Welcome back, Matt: we’re sure your exam results will be spectacular, and we’re looking forward to more tutorials! The post The triumphant return of the Raspberry Pi Guy appeared first on Raspberry Pi. |