| The Kobo Glo HD was released earlier in the year, and people were really attracted to the high resolution reading experience. It is device is comparable to the 3rd generation Kindle Paperwhite, except with Kobo you can do more advanced things like load in your own fonts and have more flexibility in crafting your own unique reading experience. The only other device to be issued in 2015 by Kobo was the Touch 2.0, which is being marketed for a paltry $89 Canadian. Today, we look at the viability of these two devices and compare them directly against each other to give you a sense on what one might be best suited for your own needs. The Kobo Glo HD features a six inch e-ink Carta screen with a resolution of 1448×1072 and 300 PPI. The Touch 2.0 on the other hand is running an older E Ink Pearl screen with a resolution of 800 x 600. Additionally, the GLO has a front-lit display, allowing you to read in the dark, while the Touch does not. When you are reading the same e-book on both of the screens, sometimes it is hard to tell what screen is better. You have to jack up the fonts to the max in order to see the subtle pixelation of the letters on the Touch. A casual user would be content with either of these two e-readers. In the video below, we present the reading experience in an EPUB book purchased from Kobo and a sideloaded PDF file. Please pay close attention to the PDF comparison if you are thinking about buying the Touch 2.0
|
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Kobo Touch 2.0 vs Kobo Glo HD e-Reader Comparison
Teenagers Resist the Sirens Call of Reading for Pleasure
| When it comes to reading in the digital format, there are no surprises that adults and the elderly are reading the most. Teenagers on the other hand are simply not reading for pleasure anymore. A recent study conducted by Nielsen has proclaimed that 54% of USA adults currently read eBooks. Not only is digital on the rise but overall the average person is reading more books on a yearly basis. Interestingly, there appears to be an intersection at work between how Americans read and how much they read. Those who read either more or exclusively in the eBook format are more likely to read over 20 books in an average year (30%) than either those who read more/only in hard copy (18%) or those who read in both formats equally (21%). They also report a higher average readership per year than either hard copy hardliners or equal-opportunity readers (22.5 books vs. 16 and 15, respectively). Scholastic recently conducted a YouGov survey and 1,755 parents responded about their children’s reading habits. The results showed that children's fondness for reading lessens as they get older, because whilst 17% of the older age group read for fun, that figure is much higher among ages 6-8 (54%), dropping to 43% for ages 9 to 11 and 24% for 12-14. Parents of older children are more likely to say they do not have a preference as to whether their kids read books for fun in print versus e-books. However, about two in three parents (67%) of kids ages 6–8 prefer that their children read in print. |
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
How to get e-book discounts when you buy print
| Many serious readers have gravitated towards e-books when the original Kindle was released in 2007. Over the last eight years many companies have begun to offer a wider variety of choice when it comes to hunting around for deals or participating in alternative ecosystems. There is a large segment of people who read both print and digital, with few discounts available when you want to bundle them together. There is a severe lack of choice when it comes to buying the print edition and then getting the e-book. Normally, you have to buy both at full price, which can be financially draining. Well, there is some good news. There are a number of companies out there that give you discounts on the e-book when you buy the print version in either hardcover or paperback. In 2013 Amazon launched a program called Kindle Matchbook that allows you to buy the e-book version of a print book. There are only around 100,000 titles enrolled in the program and the books had to be bought from Amazon and not a 3rd party seller. The cool thing about Matchbook is that all of participating books are retroactive, going back 18 years. The big hyping factor is the e-book costs $2.99 or less. One of the downsides is that Matchbook is only limited to the United States and Amazon has no plan to expand it. One of the most popular e-book bundling programs out there is run by a Vancouver, BC company called Bitlit. They have received some fairly large influxes of cash from a myriad of investors, including former Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis. Readers take photos of their books’ spines on their shelves and send them to BitLit via an app, branded as Shelfie. The BitLit system then reads the spines and determines which books are available to the reader, either free or for a discounted price, as set by the publisher. In this way, readers who own print copies can obtain digital copies of them—and publishers capture new data on readers who were formerly only print customers. There are currently over 140,000 titles enrolled in the program. In the end, these are the only two companies that offer any kind of discount when you have the print edition and want a discount on the e-book, a sad state of affairs. |
Comixology Abandons Comic Reading App for Windows
| Comixology has just announced that they are discontinuing their dedicated comic reading app for Windows 8. Instead, the company is encouraging their users to use their internet browser and read comics online. It is very likely that Comixology noticed that hardly anyone was using the Microsoft Store and using their dedicated app for Windows. Keeping the app regularly updated, when a very low percentage of people actually used it is like throwing money away. Nothing will happen to the comics you have purchased if you are an existing Windows user. All of the content is stored on your account, so you can simply use their website or myriad of apps for Android or iOS. In order to make this transition as smooth as possible, Comixology is automatically adding $5.00 in free credit to your account if you had purchased at least one comic using the Windows 8 e-reading app. |
Kobo Glo HD vs Kobo Touch 2.0 Comparison Review (Video)
| Ever since I got a Kobo Touch 2.0 to review, it has really made me question the evolution of ebook readers. It’s amazing how an electronic gadget in a world of constantly evolving technology can remain virtually unchanged for over 4 years. Somehow this is par for the course when it comes to dedicated E […] |
E Ink Needs to Discontinue Low Resolution Screens
| Last week I posted a review of the Kobo Touch 2.0, Kobo’s latest entry-level dedicated ebook reader. My biggest complaint with the device is the screen. It lacks a frontlight and it uses an old low resolution E Ink screen from 4 years ago. I’m working on a comparison between the Kobo Touch 2.0 and […] |
Liz’s 10 deserted island books
| Ed. Note: This is the 8th in our series of books we'd take with us on a deserted island if we could only pick ten. Today's list comes from Liz Tousey, a librarian and Collection Development Analyst with OverDrive.
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Becoming a Shakespeare scholar was one of my secret imaginary dream careers in undergrad- along with professional musician, radio DJ, and librarian. I'm so lucky to have one! An Evening of Long Goodbyes by Paul Murray Hilarious and farcical narration and plot, with soulful and poignant monologues…Catnip for people who enjoy good character progression. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut Vonnegut has an amazing way of holding up something that we think is ever so normal, and pointing out to us that it's actually quite bizarre. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson Every time I finish one, I take a deep breath and think to myself, "Wow her books are good." (Behind the Scenes at the Museum was my close second, in case you needed to know.) How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran Bawdy, hilarious, piercing, and one of the best coming-of-age novels I've ever read. I secretly want every young woman to read this, but especially those with an inner (or outer) rocker girl. Great for the gents as well. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera If you don’t love this book within the first two pages, put it down and we shall never speak of it again. You might open it for the promise of sex and revolution, but you'll stay for the philosophy. Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas Acknowledging that most romance novels follow a fairly predictable story arc, the thing that separates Thomas from other writers of her ilk is that up until the end of the book, you find yourself thinking, "Things don't always work out the way we want. Maybe this time they won't end up together… Maybe this time she'll break our hearts." Dreams Underfoot by Charles de Lint I first read this collection of short stories in high school, and (20ish years later) recently listened to the audiobook. Like Diagon Alley or the Shire, this book (and the others in the same universe) makes you long to visit De Lint's fictional city of Newford. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin This book is clearly for book nerds by a book nerd. It’s very funny and very quotable. There might be a good reason as to why it seems to appear on every library’s Staff Favorites curated list that I’ve seen. The Condensed Oxford English Dictionary Having previously worked in higher ed for 10 years, I LOVE LOVE LOVED having the OED online at my fingertips, and teaching students about all of its fantastic awesomeness. It's so easy to fall into an etymology hole for an hour or two at a time. Liz Tousey is a librarian and a Collection Development Analyst with OverDrive  |
Quaver, the analogue looping piano
| Music hacks are my favourite hacks of all, and this one had me bounding around the office with the video below playing on my laptop so I could share it with people yesterday. Meet Quaver, the multiplayer piano. With a Raspberry Pi, some magnetic pickups, and the open-source Sooper Looper (which I am downloading as soon as I have finished writing this post), Mike and Sean from MajorMega hacked an old upright piano into an instrument that can loop up to four separate tracks, and upload your results to the internet to be listened to when you get home. This is all part of Lancaster’s Keys for the City project, where pianos are decorated and left around the city for the public to play; Quaver is the project’s stand-out this year. (And not just because of the artwork on the outside.)
The post Quaver, the analogue looping piano appeared first on Raspberry Pi. |
Monday, September 14, 2015
Top 10 Best Bookseller Signs
| Booksellers have the wittiest signage in order to capture peoples attention or just to standout in the crowd. All over Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom you are likely to run into one. Today, we are going to take a look at the top 10 best bookstore signs.
|
How to get Send to Kindle Working on Windows 10
| Send to Kindle is a popular document management tool to send e-books, PDF files and other content from your computer to your e-reader. When Windows 10 came out a few months ago, it prevented this software from working correctly. Today, you will learn how to get this program working on Windows 10 computers and tablets. To make “SendToKindle” work in Windows 10, goto “C:\Program Files (x86)\Amazon\SendToKindle” in the file explorer. Right click on SendToKindle.exe and select the properties option. Then Hit the compatibility tab, then hit run compatibility trouble shooter, it’ll do some magic, then hit save these settings. Now try to send your document, it should work now! |
How do you determine how much an e-book should cost?
| Authors who elect to self-publish through Kindle Direct Publishing or Nook Press often have trouble deciding how much their e-book should cost. Major publishers have dramatically increased the prices in the last calendar year from $9.99 to $14.99. If you are going to be submitting your book to sell online, how much should it cost? One of the biggest advantages that self-published authors have is being able to determine their own price. Major publishers on the other hand dictate the price, and the original author doesn’t have any control. Amazon offered some pricing advice to authors, when they were battling Hachette over a contract dispute. The Amazon Books Team posted on the Kindle Forum saying”For every copy an e-book would sell at $14.99, it would sell 1.74 copies if priced at $9.99. So, for example, if customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99, then customers would buy 174,000 copies of that same e-book at $9.99. Total revenue at $14.99 would be $1,499,000. Total revenue at $9.99 is $1,738,000.” Meanwhile, Mark Coker the CEO of Smashwords knows a thing or two about self-publishing. He wrote in a blog post a few years ago “we found $2.99 books, on average, netted the authors more earnings (profit per unit, multiplied by units sold) than books priced at $6.99 and above. When we look at the $2.99 price point compared to $9.99, $2.99 earns the author slightly more, yet gains the author about four times as many readers. $2.99 e-books earned the authors six times as many readers than books priced over $10.” Mark went on to mention “If an author can earn the same or greater income selling lower cost books, yet reach significantly more readers, then, drum roll please, it means the authors who are selling higher priced books through traditional publishers are at an extreme disadvantage to indie authors in terms of long term platform building. The lower-priced books are building author brand faster. Never mind that an indie author earns more per $2.99 unit sold ($1.80-$2.10) than a traditionally published author earns at $9.99 ($1.25-$1.75).” So, we have some very compelling data from the big companies that are involved in self-publishing, in one way or another, but what are authors saying about e-book pricing? Patrick E. McLean, author of How to Succeed in Evil, wrote that increasing the price of his book increased his even more modest income. That said, his sales were tiny and the original price was just shy of free. So low, in fact, that readers might have seen it as indicating low quality. He said “All we can know it what happened with that one book for that one period. So here's what happened when I raised the price of How to Succeed in Evil from $0.99 to $2.99—Sales went up. I was averaging about nine copies a day. Now I'm up to 17. It's crazy to think that an increase in price causes and increase in sales. I think if I had left the price at 99 cents I would now also be at 14 e-books a day. I don't think price matters that much.” Meanwhile , Russell Blake, said that shifting his prices didn't really move sales very much, but he didn't substantiate it with any specifics. John Keliher, a writer of books about math, said he saw a signficant uptick in his admittedly modest overall sales by lowering prices, enough that he made an extra $100 per month with lower prices. He wrote, "At $5.00 I sell about 50 e-books a month, but at $2.99 I sell about 120 e-books a month. Consequently, my profit is greater when I price my e-books at $2.99." In the end, major publishers are screwing readers over high e-book pricing and the ball is in the indie authors court to be able to demonstrate that they can prove to the big trade houses that they know more about cost than they do. |
Microsoft to Announce Surface 4 at October 4th Event
| Microsoft has just announced that they are having a press event on October 4th, where they are expected to announce the Surface 4 tablet. It seems very likely that it will be powered by an Intel 6th-gen Core "Skylake" processor and run Windows 10. Microsoft made it quite clear that their future Surface tablet is being catered to note taking rather than sketching, this is evident when they moved from Wacom to N-Trig. Microsoft further drove the point home with purchasing N-Trigs stylus technology earlier this year. |
OverDrive and Pearson bring digital textbooks to Napa Valley Unified School District students
| Students at Napa Valley Unified School District’s (NVUSD) high schools in Napa and American Canyon, California, will be able to access their math textbooks digitally using iPads, Chromebooks or other devices, beginning this month for the 2015-2016 school year. Thanks to a new partnership with OverDrive, the leading eBook and audiobook platform for schools, and Pearson textbooks, NVUSD students in grades 9-11 can access and use their Pearson CME textbooks from the same OverDrive platform that currently supports assigned novels, leisure reading, and other content from many top publishers. "Students and teachers have already benefited from OverDrive's streamlined access to resources for curriculum needs and we are looking forward to expanding our available resources to textbooks in a digital format," said Kate MacMillan, Coordinator, Library and Digital Services for Napa Valley Unified School District. As an early adopter of the OverDrive K-12 platform, NVUSD has been meeting students' and educators' needs with a custom combination of digital content for over two years. NVUSD staff selected digital books from millions of titles and thousands of publishers, which aligned with units of study and were compatible with all major devices, including the many Chromebooks purchased by the District. You can see the full story in the press release here.  |
The books the cats of OverDrive recommend
| Here at OverDrive, we love our literary pets! We asked our cats which books they think everyone should read and got some very fun and amusing responses…
Salem lives with Valentine Volk (Consortium Consultant) and recommends One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Goose lives with Sean Kase (IT Technician) and recommends No Good Men Among the Living by Anand Gopal.
Lady PawPaw lives with Meghan Volchko (Collection Development Specialist). She is not a Bad Kitty, but she does love the holidays!
Clover lives with Sydney Kalnay (Training Specialist) and recommends Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.
Maple lives with Karlee Reader (School Launch Specialist) and recommends To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
Joan Jett lives with Liz Tousey (Collection Development Analyst) and recommends The Importance of Music to Girls by Lavinia Greenlaw.
Gatsby lives with Christine Bober *Metadata Specialist) and recommends The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Mooy lives with Katie Blachman (Launch Specialist) and recommends Autobiography by Morrissey.
Toaster lives with Kenny Cruse (Metadata Specialist) and recommends Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.
Kiki lives with Shannon Hunt (Training Manager) and recommends Charlotte's Web by E.B. White.
Belle lives with Marla Levine (Collection Development Specialist) and she recommends Yoga for Dummies.
Click here to view all of these titles, as well as some of our other favorite 'Cat Reads' in Marketplace! *Title availability may vary by platform and geographic location*  |
Cube solver
| A quick survey of the desks at Pi Towers reveals thirteen Rubik’s Cubes in various states of done-ness. Gordon’s brain doesn’t work without a cube to play with, and Ben appears to breed them in his desk drawers. (Rubik’s cubes are not the worst thing that breeds in Ben’s drawers.) With this Cube Solver from Maxim Tsoy and Wilbert Swinkels, we finally have a way to completely replace both Gordon and Ben with robots. The Cube Solver uses a Compute Module to run the cube solving algorithms and move the grips and motors; you can find full details of the build and all the code you need at Maxim’s blog if you ever feel the need to replace the cuber in your life with a more compact solution. The post Cube solver appeared first on Raspberry Pi. |
Sunday, September 13, 2015
Are People Enamored with Audiobooks?
The global audiobook industry is currently worth 2.6 billion dollars and part of the reason why we have seen a dramatic increase in profitability is due to digital. This is a large amount of money but is the average person really enamored with the audio format? The overwhelming majority say no. We poised the question a few weeks ago, do you listen to audiobooks? 537 people responded and 38%, which represented 205 votes said no. 20% said they listen to them regularly and 18% said casually. I find it distributing that audiobooks are so accessible now, either via dedicated services such as Audible or your local library. Almost every single novel from a major publisher has an audio edition that is released at the same time as print, often voiced by well known celebrities. The fact that people have still not embraced the medium is quite telling. It seems people still prefer reading print and e-books, but not audiobooks. |
Canadian Print Newspapers to Disappear by 2025
| Daily paid circulation as a percentage of Canadian households, has fallen from just under 50% in 1995 to 20% in 2014. If these trends continue by 2025 print newspapers will only be in 5% of homes, leading many papers to go out of business. The largest newspaper conglomerate in Canada is the Postmedia Group. They pretty well have monopolies in every major Canadian city except Toronto and is controlled by hedge fund operators, such as New York-based Golden Tree Asset Management who have a 35% stake. In a bid to make the papers profitable they have been down sizing staff from a few hundred to a few dozen. Newspapers have been notoriously resistant to change and are paying the price. For example Kijiji, which is larger than Craig’s List in Canada, came along and newspapers did not want work with them, now classified revenue is gone. When newspapers disappear who will pick up the slack? Will we see an influx of citizen journalism on Facebook or Twitter? Pew has just released a a new report that states 63% of US Facebook and Twitter users rely on the social networks as news sources, which is a 11% increase from two years ago. |
Saturday, September 12, 2015
Google Books is in Limbo
| Google Books was one of the most ambitious book projects in history. The plan was to scan all of the worlds books and make them publicly available. Due to years in court fighting authors and publishers the project is in limbo. In 2002 Google begun scanning books and currently has over 30 million titles, putting it in a league with the world's larger libraries. If you want to see how they compare, the library of Congress has around 37 million books available. The book scanning project was not cleared by the publishers or authors because Google was targeting books that were rare, out of print or whose copyright had expired. They also had high idealism, scanning the worlds books, they thought they would win people over, they were wrong. Google began clashing with publishers in 2006 and formal lawsuits were brought to the courts. This resulted in many of the books Google put online just having snippets, and not including the entire text. In 2008 all sides managed to reach a settlement to make the full library available to the public, for pay, and to institutions. In the settlement agreement, Google promised to put terminals in libraries, for Google Books for educational use, but never got around to doing that. The settlement managed to placate some publishers and authors, but other organizations continued to fight Google. This resulted in a 2011 decision by a federal judge to side with the critics and he threw out the 2008 settlement, adding that aspects of the copyright issue would be more appropriately decided by the legislature. A few years later in 2013 a judge threw out a class action suit by the Authors Guild, that saved Google over a billion in settlement fees. Google continues to fight for the survival for their book scanning project and there is no end in sight. The courts have basically said its up to all parties to come up with a licensing solution that makes sense. The Authors Guild is strongly lobbying for a complex mechanism, that would allow the owners of scanned, out-of-print libraries, such as Google, to make a limited set of them available with payouts to authors. The dream of an internet full of all of the out of print books humanity has ever written will likely never come to fruition. |
Amazon Reveals the Specs for the $50 Kindle Fire Tablet
| A few weeks ago we reported that Amazon was developing a very affordable entry level Fire tablet. In order to offer this device for the $50 price point the Seattle company had to sacrifice performance. Today, we have new information that breaks down the specs. The new six inch entry level Kindle Fire could has a six inch screen and has a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels. This is a bit of a downgrade from last years six inch model, which had a resolution of 1280 x 800. Underneath the hood on the upcoming 2015 six inch tablet is a quad-core ARM cortex-A7 processor with Mali-450 graphics, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage. You will be able to snap pictures with the rear facing 2MP camera or access on-demand video chat via the 0.3MP front camera. I guess Amazon is trying to offer such a ridiculously cheap tablet that you could buy for your kids and not think twice. Maybe there is a student in your household, that could also benefit from this, without having to worry about it being lost or stolen. In the end, this is affordable because Amazon knows you will buy e-books, apps, magazines, newspapers and buy videos. |
Amazon Likely to Announce New Devices Very Soon
| Recent history suggests that Amazon is likely to announce new products soon, and it could happen as early as this upcoming week. Looking back at the past few years, Amazon has announced new Kindle ereaders and Fire tablets in the month of September. Last year they unveiled their lineup of new devices on September 17th. […] |