| Welcome to another Good e-Reader Video Comparison! Today we take a look at two of the most popular tablets in the world, the Apple iPad Mini and Google Nexus 7. Currently, these two devices really shine with iOS and Android Jellybean, and you can think of them as the flagships of their respective brands. Over the course of this video tutorial we put a heavy emphasis on the e-reading experience. We look at magazines, comic books, and ebooks to give you a sense on how they perform against each other in real world circumstances. In many cases, you are buying a tablet to get games, apps, video, and music. We take a look at their respective ecosystems with Google Play and iTunes. If you are torn between buying either of these two devices as an e-reader, look no further! Apple iPad Mini vs. Google Nexus 7 is a post from: E-Reader News |
Friday, March 8, 2013
Apple iPad Mini vs. Google Nexus 7
Supercharge Your Gaming Experience This Weekend
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Fine-Tune Your Gaming Hardware
Repurpose an Old Console or Get the Most Out of a New One
Upgrade Your Mobile's Gaming Experience
Have a great weekend and enjoy your games!  |
With such versatile technology, your gaming systems can do more than play games and your other devices can double as fantastic gaming platforms. Take a few hours this weekend and supercharge your gaming experience. 
Your gaming rig may be relatively powerful, but that only goes so far if it isn't tuned for optimal performance. If you're new to tweaking your graphic settings, 
You can do a lot with old consoles, or even newer ones. Streaming media centers make for one of the most popular hacks, and 
While you've likely played a few games on your phone or tablet, it can do a lot more than you might find in the app store. For starters, Remains of the Day: CCleaner, Our Favorite Windows Maintenance Tool, Is Coming to Android
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Photo by photastic (Shutterstock), a2bb5s (Shutterstock), and Feng Yu (Shutterstock).  |
Turn a Cardboard Box into a Photo Light Box
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Craft blog Flax & Twine details the steps to make your own light box from these inexpensive materials. It's even easier to make than using 'K'nex sticks, a baby changing table, or other objects. A trip to the office supply or crafts store for a box, some tissue paper, and white poster board can set you up for making your own gorgeous, professional-quality photos of any object. DIY Photo Light Box - A Finish Fifty Project | Flax & Twine  |
Light boxes are the key to making magazine-like photos of objects. If you want to take beautiful photos that put your object front and center, all you need is a cardboard box and some craft supplies. Lost Photos Finds Old Pictures You've Misplaced, Is Free This Weekend
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We've talked about Lost Photos before, and it's a pretty handy little app. Lost Photos is always free on Windows, but Mac users usually have to pay $2.99. This weekend, it's on sale thanks to AppyFridays, so head over to the Mac App Store and check it out while you can. Lost Photos (Free) Lost Photos (Free) | Mac App Store via AppyFridays  |
Windows/Mac: You've probably received a ton of photos over email in the past few years, but never really added them to your photo library. Lost Photos is an app that scrubs your email for all those missing pictures, and it's free this weekend only. Judging eBooks By Their Covers
| We've all heard the adage "Don't judge a book by its cover." But when it comes to library eBooks, the visual appeal of cover images is more important than ever. OverDrive's Next Generation library websites prominently displays book jackets to provide users with a more visually engaging browsing experience. Eye-catching cover images can prompt users to sample and borrow titles that they would've otherwise missed.
Recently, a number of publications have compiled "Best-of" lists for book jackets. Do you agree with these picks?
The New York Times' "Favorite Book Cover Designs of 2012"
The Los Angeles Times' "18 Fantastic 2012 Book Covers"
The Atlantic Wire's "Most Wonderful Book Covers of the Year"
To order these and other eBooks and audiobooks with attention-grabbing covers, visit Content Reserve. (Title availability may vary by geographic region.)
Melissa Marin is a Marketing Specialist at OverDrive.
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March 8, 1918: Killer Influenza
| With World War I reaching its climax, the first case of Spanish influenza is reported. It quickly spreads, and the resulting worldwide epidemic — the worst in history — ends up killing more people than the war. |
B&N Now Giving Away Paid Nook Apps for Free Every Friday
Barnes and Noble is launching a new promotion to help reinvigorate the Nook brand by taking a page from Amazon’s book and giving away a paid Nook app for free every Friday. While B&N isn’t giving away a free app every day like Amazon, hopefully the quality of the apps will be better. They are [...] |
Hyundai T7 Budget Android ICS Tablet Launched
| There is a new tablet in town, and it's not every day that we get to see a top notch car maker launch a tablet. This that makes the Hyundai T7 special. The specs are impressive as well, with a quad core Samsung Exynos 4412 processor, Mali 400 graphics, 1 GB RAM, and 8 GB of internal storage. Upfront lies a 7 inch display with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. The tablet also boasts of a few other niceties, such as an HDMI out port, a micro USB port, and a microSD card slot. The tablet runs Android 4.0 ICS instead of the latest Jelly Bean, which could have added to its appeal even more. The T7 has also been endowed with a pair of cameras, front 0.3 and rear 2 megapixels, while Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth round off the connectivity options the tablet has to offer. However, while all the above makes the T7 pretty likeable on paper and the tablet impresses with its performance, the device lacks in quality. Also, as liliputing points out, there is still some work to be done with the tablet's software to ensure it provides a seamless working experience, something that the device seems to be lacking. While the T7 out performs the Nexus 7, as well as the recently launched Asus MeMo Pad ME301T (both of which feature a Tegra 3 quad core chip), the T7's rather disappointing experience on the software front as well as its build quality leave something to be desired. Hyundai has worked its way to the top in the world of automobiles and is already respected for its commitment towards quality and ease of use. That is, however, lacking with the T7. The only consolation is that the T7 is priced around $166, while some retailers are ready to shave off a bit more to entice buyers. It remains to be seen if this can win it some big time buyers.
Hyundai T7 Budget Android ICS Tablet Launched is a post from: E-Reader News |
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Marvel Brings Its Unlimited Service to iOS; Android to Follow
| Last December, I noted that Marvel had quietly released a beta version of its Digital Comics Unlimited service for tablets, and today they made it a real thing with an iOS app and the promise that an Android version is on the way as well. They also rebranded the service as simply “Marvel Unlimited.” That’s a good description: Unlike the other Marvel app (and comiXology, which runs it), Marvel Unlimited doesn’t sell you one comic at a time; it’s an all-you-can-eat service with a subscription cost of $60 per year or $10 per month (and one of the few criticisms I have of the app is that you can’t find the price anywhere on it). The library currently numbers 13,000 issues. This is a service designed for readers who want to go deep and read all the back issues, not for those who want to get the latest thing. All the comics on MU are at least six months old. But if you’re OK with that, or if you use it as a supplement to comiXology’s Marvel app, it’s a pretty good deal. The app does away with some of the complaints that people had about the original service: You don’t have to sit in front of your computer to read the comics (the one digital comics experience that is universally loathed), and while Marvel Unlimited on your computer is streaming-only, the app allows the user to download up to six comics to read offline. How does it work? Beautifully, at least on the iPad. It’s true that the iPad screen is smaller than a standard comics page, but the images are crisp and easy to read. The pages load quickly and navigation around the page is simple and intuitive. There is a panel-by-panel view function, called Smart Panels, but it’s not all that smart. Unlike comiXology’s Guided View, which carefully pulls the page apart into individual panels and letterboxes each one, the Smart Panels feature just chops the page into pieces, each of which may contain several panels. In every sample I looked at, the panels were poorly cropped—either a strip along the edge was chopped off or a strip of the adjacent panel was left in. You can also use the iPad’s pinch-and-zoom to enlarge the page, but you can’t turn the page without going back to the original size. (This is an annoying feature of the Kindle as well.) The good news is you probably won’t have to, as the pages are pretty easy to read. The iPhone is a different matter: The pages are too small to read, and the Panel View is just as bad. If there’s a problem with this app, it’s findability. The problemis that many Marvel characters are featured in different comics, and there are multiple lines that get renumbered from time to time. As a result, if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for—or even if you do—it can be hard to find things. I read part of Daredevil #1, and when I went looking for it again, I couldn’t find it. There were over 20 Daredevil series listed in the browsing area, but that particular issue was nowhere to be found. I have had similar problems on the website, so I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong or the comics are just poorly indexed. Even in the best of circumstances, if you’re new to the Marvel universe(s), the array of titles and characters can be daunting. ComiXology does a nice job of organizing comics into story arcs, but Marvel just throws them up there, so it’s a little hard to know where to start and where to go next. In the past, users have complained about gaps in the story arcs, but Marvel is working on fixing that. Even when I had to read the comics on my laptop, I thought the Marvel Unlimited service was good value for the money. The iPad version puts it over the top. The comics look great, and there are plenty of them. Marvel seems to be pretty serious about putting comics onto the service once they are six months old, so if you’re willing to wait, you can read to your heart’s content at a very reasonable price. Marvel Brings Its Unlimited Service to iOS; Android to Follow is a post from: E-Reader News |
Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7 vs. Google Nexus 7
| Welcome to another Good e-Reader Video Comparison! Today we take a look at two of the hottest Android tablets on the market today, the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7 and Google Nexus 7. Both of these tablets use the Android operating system, but are quite different in terms of the overall user experience. In this video we will show you how each one stacks up against each other in a battery of tests. The Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7 features a seven inch IPS display with 1,280 x 800 pixels. It offers an amazing viewing experience and the ability to watch 720p movies right on the unit. Underneath the hood is a 1.2GHz dual-core TI OMAP4460 processor and 1 GB of RAM, which makes accessing media, books, and other content very fast and easy. One of the best aspects of this model is the fact that it has twin stereo speakers with Dolby Surround Sound technology. It is seriously the loudest tablet I have ever used! The speakers themselves are on the back of the unit, but creep up the left and right sides. Even if the Kindle Fire HD is lying flat on its back, you still get amazing sound. he Google Nexus 7 features a seven inch capacitive touchscreen display with a resolution of 1280×800. The resolution overall is fairly solid and videos looked a little bit better than the Apple iPad Mini and Kindle Fire HD. One of the strongest elements this tablet has going for it is the processor. It crushes all other e-readers on the market with a Nvidia Tegra 3, quad-core 1.3 GHZ processor. In conjunction with 1 GB of RAM, you can multitask to your heart's content and not experience stuttering while watching videos or turning the pages in ebooks. Over the course of this video comparison we will show you how music, video, eBooks, newspapers, magazines, comic books and the stores work. If you are thinking of buying these tablets as an e-reader, you won’t want to miss this. Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7 vs. Google Nexus 7 is a post from: E-Reader News |
A $2 smartphone
Pottermore Gives Back with eBooks for Red Nose Day
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Pottermore, the interactive site created by Rowling’s company of the same name, will release two titles that were previously only available in print, with a large portion of the proceeds going to charity Comic Relief. When Rowling initially wrote the two titles, Quidditch Through the Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the were created with the charity in mind. Now the Comic Relief is hosting its Red Nose Day, and the titles will be available digitally through Pottermore.com with 40% of the purchase price going to the organization. "J.K. Rowling has long been associated with Comic Relief,” said Alex King, head of marketing at Pottermore, “so we were really keen to highlight to givers and supporters of the charity that the eBooks of Quidditch Through the Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them are now available – with at least £1.15 from every sale going to Comic Relief. The new generation of Red Nose Day participants will now be able to discover the eBooks for the first time, via social media channels – and we are enlisting the support of the loyal Pottermore community to help get the Red Nose Day message out too." The entire digital catalog of available Harry Potter titles, along with the two new digital titles that benefit Comic Relief, are available for sale at Pottermore.com.
Pottermore Gives Back with eBooks for Red Nose Day is a post from: E-Reader News |
Official Amazon App Coming to BB10 This Month
| The Amazon Kindle e-Reading app has been one of the most asked for apps for the Blackberry Playbook, since it first came out. Amazon has never developed an official app for the platform, but is thought to release their seminal reading app and bookstore this March on BB10. Rumors are swirling that Amazon is actively developing a native version of their app to be released sometime in March. This will give customers the ability to both buy and read books on their Z10 phone. Currently, the only way to get Kindle working is to sideload in the converted Android file and the main downside is that you always need to maintain a WIFI connection. This potential app, might be good news for everyone in the Blackberry sphere who is really looking for a mainstream reading app to hit their platform. Currently no big name company has a dedicated reading app for BB10. Official Amazon App Coming to BB10 This Month is a post from: E-Reader News |
Wexler Flex One Discontinued
| Russian based Wexler has confirmed with us today that they have discontinued their Wexler Flex One e-Reader. This device had the distinction of being the only company in the world to use LG’s new flexible e-paper technology and garnered tons of media attention due to its lightweight and innovative design. The Wexler Flex One was a six inch e-reader and whose claim to fame was LG's Electronic Paper Display (EPD) technology. The resolution on this device was on par with the big boys with 1024 x 768 pixels. There are 8 GB of internal storage, which beats the Kindle and Nook in the sheer amount of memory you have to store your books, comics, and PDF files. This reader was actually the lightest in the world. Wexler has confirmed they are announcing a new e-reader in April, but did not mention if they will be releasing a second generation Flex One e-Reader or if they are moving into another direction. Towards the end of the readers life-span, the company suffered from supply chain issues and couldn’t meet the demand of customers. Wexler Flex One Discontinued is a post from: E-Reader News |
Barnes and Noble Nook Video gets an Influx of New Content
| Barnes and Noble has announced today that they have signed new agreements with Lionsgate, MGM, Paramount Pictures, Relativity Media, National Geographic, Little Pim, and Film Buff. This will add hundreds of new movies and television shows to their Nook Video system for the Nook HD and HD+. One of the big hyping factors about these new deals is that any customer that buys the Ultraviolet version will be able to incorporate the digital edition into the Nook account. Barnes and Noble is one of only tablet companies to really integrate cloud delivery of movies and television shows onto your tablet. Although B&N has many tablets in their portfolio, Nook Video currently only works with their latest generation Nook HD and HD+ tablets. "NOOK is one of a growing spectrum of new digital buyers for our film and TV content and illustrates the breadth and depth of opportunities for monetizing our content across a broad array of platforms," said Thomas Hughes, Lionsgate Senior VP Digital/On Demand. "We look forward to an exciting and productive partnership with NOOK." Both Amazon and Barnes and Noble have been working very hard the last year securing new partnerships with major studios. The two companies both deliver television shows and movies with their established ecosystem and offer various incentives to their base of customers to make them more appealing. Currently both Nook Video and Amazon Instant Video only work in the USA and fail to appeal to international users. Barnes and Noble Nook Video gets an Influx of New Content is a post from: E-Reader News |
March 7, 1897: First Morning of the Cornflake
| Dr. John Kellogg, believing that a strict diet (along with vigorous exercise, fresh air and plenty of rest) benefits the patients at his sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan, serves up the world's first cornflakes. |
Asus Transformer Book Now on Sale in Japan
| The Windows 8 based 13 inch Transformer Book that Asus had launched long back (at the June 2012 Computex to be precise) is now finally ready to make it to the store shelves. However, that is a Japan only phenomenon as of now and Asus hasn’t revealed when it is going to be extended to the rest of the world. About the tablet, the Transformer Book lives up to what the Transformer range from Asus is known for. The tablet comprised of a 13 inch display that can be attached to a keypad unit, turning the entire thing into a notebook device. The tablet offers a 1920 x 1080 pixel display, weighs a shade less than a kilo, and is built around an Intel Core i5 chip, 4 GB of RAM, and 128 GB of internal storage. The keypad unit houses a separate hard drive of 500 GB capacity, as well as a separate battery unit, two USB 3.0 ports, and a full sized SD card slot, while adding another kilo to the overall weight. Unfortunately, the combined battery backup times add up to just about 6 hours, a far cry from the lofty figures that the Transformers are usually identified with. The tablet part alone is said to deliver five hours. In any case, six hours of run time is decent enough to be identified in the ultrabook space. In this state, the Transformer Book commands a price tag of around $1280. A higher speced version is also in the works. One that will have Core i7 chip and maybe a batter battery unit, and (of course!) a bigger price tag.
Asus Transformer Book Now on Sale in Japan is a post from: E-Reader News |
Galaxy Tab 3 Plus LTE Seen at Bluetooth SIG
| The Galaxy Note 8.0 is heralded as Samsung’s next move in the tablet space, though that does not mean the oldies (the original Galaxy Tab range) have been shoved to cold storage. Instead, the 10.1 inch Galaxy Tab 3 as well as the Galaxy Tab 3 Plus are both alive and well. In fact, the Galaxy Tab 3 Plus in its 4G LTE avatar has already made it to Bluetooth SIG, where it is known by the model number GT- P8220. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group also mentions the Galaxy Tab 3 Plus is meant for release in the European market, though the tablet will undoubtedly be made available in other regions of the world soon thereafter. Meanwhile, while details about the tablet duo are scarce at the moment, we rely a lot on rumors. With that, what we know of the device is that the 10.1 inch Galaxy Tab 3 will offer a range topping 2560 x 1600 pixels. This will put the tablet in the same league as the Google Nexus 10. Android Jelly Bean as the operating system is a given, as is perhaps a quad core processor. More details are awaited. Pity the two tablets didn’t get to show up during the just concluded MWC event.
Galaxy Tab 3 Plus LTE Seen at Bluetooth SIG is a post from: E-Reader News |
