| The Kobo Aura HD is the newest ebook reader to hit the market, and it comes with a unique screen that is larger than typical E Ink ereaders, plus the resolution is higher. But is the screen good enough to win over would be Kindle Paperwhite buyers? Is the bigger screen size and better resolution [...] |
Monday, May 13, 2013
Kindle Paperwhite vs Kobo Aura HD Comparison Review (Video)
U.S. Navy joins Big Library Read
| On Wednesday, May 15th, public library users around the world will begin simultaneously checking out 'Four Corners of the Sky' thanks to the pilot program of Big Library Read. Among those enjoying the story about a naval pilot will be actual enlisted servicemen and women of the United States Navy. Just like any library's OverDrive-powered digital collection, the Navy General Library program is available for members of the Navy 24/7 and from anywhere in the world, which comes in handy for those serving their country abroad.
Big Library Read, the first program of its kind, will make 'Four Corners of the Sky' available to patrons of over 4,000 (and counting!) participating libraries simultaneously. Big Library Read runs from May 15th through June 1st. During that time, not only will the title be available for users to enjoy, but there will be a live chat with author Michael Malone as well as ongoing conversation across social networking sites. Be sure to join this discussion on Twitter by using the hashtag #BigLibraryRead and let us know your thoughts!
Adam Sockel is a Marketing Specialist at OverDrive  |
Potential Biggest Book of the Year Coming Tomorrow
| Don't miss Dan Brown's Inferno, available to purchase in eBook and audiobook formats on Tuesday, May 14th in the Content Reserve Marketplace. Inferno is a sequel to Brown's blockbuster earlier titles featuring symbologist Robert Langdon. They are, in order, Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol, and now Inferno.
As you might guess from the title, Brown's newest story involves hidden clues contained in Dante's Inferno, a part of his 14th century classic epic poem The Divine Comedy, which also includes sections on Purgatory and Heaven ( though based on the title of Brown's book, we are apparently visiting only the Hell section!)
To get a taste of what to expect, an excerpt is available on the author's website. Please note that this link is a PDF that can be read in your internet browser.
Inferno is published in eBook and print by Doubleday (Random House) and on audio by Books on Tape. For the first time, one of Brown's books will be released in English, French, German, Spanish, Catalan, Italian and Portuguese on the same day instead of weeks later. Looks like the work of those translators sworn to secrecy who have been allegedly laboring in a guarded underground bunker for two months has paid off!
Make sure to meet what is sure to be high demand from your patrons by visiting Content Reserve and adding Inferno to your digital collection as soon as possible!
Cindy Orr is a Digital Collection Advisor at OverDrive.
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Saturday, May 11, 2013
The Best Tablet for Web Reading and Web Browsing
| When you stop and think about it, there are many forms of ereading. It’s not all about reading ebooks. One of the more overlooked aspects of ereading is web browsing and reading online. Even though we may not think of it that way, the vast majority of web browsing is in fact reading. Sure there [...] |
Friday, May 10, 2013
Celebrating Literary Heroines for Mother’s Day
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Who are your favorite literary heroines? We posed this same question earlier this week on Facebook and Twitter and got some great responses. From classic characters like Elizabeth Bennet (even in her incarnation in "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"!) to adventurous protagonists Katniss Everdeen and Lisbeth Salander and even modern day park ranger/detective Anna Pigeon, we loved hearing about your favorite strong female characters.
To celebrate Mother's Day on May 12th, we want to highlight some of our favorite literary heroines – mothers! While the orphaned main character and the evil stepmother are popular storytelling devices, there are also some pretty cool fictional moms out there. Here are just a few examples:
Margaret 'Marmee' March, "Little Women" Mother to: Jo, Amy, Meg and Beth
Mrs. March loves and cares for her daughters, especially during the most difficult times like Beth's illness. Gracious, charitable and calmly running a house of four teenage daughters – way to go, Marmee!
Catelyn Stark, "A Game of Thrones" Mother to: Robb, Sansa, Arya, Bran and Rickon
As others have said, "being a mother is what [Catelyn Stark] does best." While she's not a saintly do-gooder like Marmee March, Mrs. Stark fights hard for her children.
Hester Prynne, "The Scarlet Letter" Mother to: Pearl
While her daughter was born into shame, Hester supports herself and Pearl and stands strong, even while being persecuted. Her actions lead the community to eventually grow to respect her and begin to look past her adulteress history, which could easily turn that scarlet "A" into standing for 'Awesome'.
Molly Weasley, "Harry Potter" series Mother to: Ron, Ginny, George, Fred, Charlie, Bill and Percy
When Harry Potter befriends Ron Weasley, he gains not only a new friend but a second family. With his own parents deceased, Harry is welcomed into the Weasley clan. From knitting him a sweater so he has presents at Christmas, to eventually (spoiler alert) becoming his mother-in-law when he marries Ginny, Mrs. Weasley is a loving mother figure to everyone's favorite boy wizard.
You can find these leading ladies in eBooks and audiobooks available in Content Reserve. Chime in with your top literary moms in the comments. Happy Mother's Day, everyone!
Melissa Marin is a Marketing Specialist at OverDrive.
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Thursday, May 9, 2013
Using OverDrive’s new school metadata
| What is metadata? I can't speak for librarians and other education professionals, but as a former elementary school teacher I had never heard of the term metadata before joining OverDrive. Metadata is simply data about other data. The term is commonly used within the information technology field to summarize basic information about the eBooks, audiobooks, music, and video that OverDrive offers for your library, including information such as title, author, publisher, and subjects.
As a company, we thrive on customer suggestions and feedback in an effort to create the most useful service possible. We have heard the plea from both schools and libraries to provide reading level metadata for the titles we offer. We are happy to announce that Content Reserve's advanced search function now contains options to search by ATOS level, Lexile measure and student interest level.
ATOS level and Lexile measure are definitely buzz words flying through curriculum departments and classrooms these days. These scores help determine the readability level for any given title, which can help library staff determine which titles are suitable for different age groups or grade levels, and can assist educators in charting students' reading progress.
We hope that these new tools will assist you while you explore the Content Reserve Marketplace. If you have any questions about what the new reading level metadata means or how you can use it to help build your digital collection, please contact your Collection Development specialist.
Renee Lienhard is an Analyst on the Collection Development team.  |
5 Free Instant Messenger Services
Feeling a little frustrated with the MSN Messenger and Skype merger? Here's five alternative instant messenger services. |
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
New User Assistance Training Makes Troubleshooting Easy
| Recently we have seen an increase in requests for more information and training on user assistance. Rest assured, you have been heard! We completely revamped the User Assistance (formerly Patron Assistance) training course with a new, simple 'scenario, explanation and solution' approach. There is something for everyone, whether your role happens to be in Information Services, Training & Outreach or Support & IT.
The course is divided into different user assistance scenarios: universal, those that occur on a desktop/laptop, those that occur with mobile devices and additional support tips. Each issue is clearly explained with screenshots (when applicable) and the steps necessary to get it resolved. Many of the resolutions contain links to articles on OverDrive Help, and you'll be able to click on them if you view them and/or save a copy from the Learning Center.
You can watch a recorded version of User Assistance at any time On Demand, or contact your Account Specialist to schedule a live session. Feedback on the updated training has been fantastic thus far, so our hopes are high that you'll find it helpful. For even more troubleshooting tips, view the Top 10 Support Solutions as well from the Learning Center.
As a preview, here’s a screenshot of what you can expect to learn:
Beau Livengood is a Training Specialist at OverDrive  |
Troubleshooting: so easy a ten-year-old can do it
| The ten-year-old in question is Jessica, Gordon’s daughter, who dropped into the office last week to give us a hand testing some Raspberry Pis that customers had sent back to the manufacturers as “faulty”. Whenever this happens, the Pis are passed on to us or to the Sony factory in Wales where the Pis are built, and we test them to find out what’s going on and to ensure that there isn’t a bug in manufacturing. At the moment, we see returns in the order of about 0.02% of all units (the ones Jessica is working on are on the right of her desk). The factory processes are always being refined, and we hope to see this number come down even further as all of our production transitions to the UK. As usually happens when we troubleshoot returns, though, we found that around half of Jessica’s Pis weren’t faulty at all. We can’t emphasise this enough: before you decide you’ve got a broken unit, check out the troubleshooting forum and the wiki. If your Pi doesn’t work, the first check you should make is that the power supply you’re using is a branded, reliable 5v supply. Many no-name supplies (especially in the US, for some reason) do not actually provide the voltage that they claim to, and that’s been causing all kinds of problems.  Jessica finds another working Pi. Later, we’re sending her up that ladder to clean out the asbestos tube. You should also ensure that you’re running the latest version of Raspbian. (Lorna just mailed me this morning with another handful of emails from a group of people swearing blind their Pis are broken. They weren’t. The people in question were using SD cards with an out-of-date image that they’d bought from a third-party vendor, that didn’t work with the newer chipset on their Raspberry Pis.) If you aren’t sure about your SD card image, see this post from March. Pre-flashed cards from third party dealers on Amazon or eBay are a bit of crapshoot, and they’re something we can’t police; if you need one, get your pre-flashed card from one the companies we licence to sell the Pi itself. (See the top right of the page.) Several of Jessica’s test cases had been sent back to Farnell and RS because of this issue, and while that’s great for Jessica, it’s really frustrating for the customer who ends up without a Pi for a week and who will probably find their next Pi has the same problem, because they’re using the same card. (I am aware of one person who sent SIX Raspberry Pis back to Farnell one after the other, insisting that they were all broken, that we/Farnell were charlatans, etc. etc. In the end it turned out that he hadn’t actually flashed the SD card at all. This is an extreme case.) We did make sure that Jessica was rewarded for all her hard work: this is what we were doing on Monday. Thanks Jessica! |
Gigapi: a Raspberry Pi rig for gigapixel photography
| We’ve seen a number of photographers who have taken to the Pi as a way to bring down the cost of the sort of kit that was, pre-Pi, outside the budgets of mere mortals. Case in point: gigapixel photography. A gigapixel image is made up of (at least) a billion pixels, which means you’ve now got access to the sort of fine and vivid detail on your monitor that we mere humans with our shonky eyeballs could only dream of until recently. At the moment, a camera that can take a gigapixel image all in one shot is the sort of fantasy hardware that the military is pouring millions into. But if you’re not in charge of a defence silo, you can still take your own gigapixel images by stitching together many megapixel-sized images from an SLR camera on a motorised mount into a giant, seamless mosaic with very fine detail. You’ll need something approaching a defence budget if you’re going to do this yourself without building your own hardware, though; I spent a few seconds googling and found that off-the-shelf motorised rigs for your camera can cost nearly $1000. Tim and Jack Stocker thought this was daft, so they built their own out of MDF, some Lego turntables, and a Pi with a cheap stepper motor attached.  Gigapi in use. (We love the yellow paint job – it’s a beautifully made piece of kit.) Click to enlarge.  This is the instrument box Tim is holding in the photo above, opened so you can peer inside. Click to enlarge. The Pi has a lot of computation to do here: Jack’s software (which you can download on GitHub) works out the horizontal and vertical angles required, the camera sensor size, the length of zoom used and the image overlap required to stitch everything together into a tidy mosaic later on. It figures out how many photos are needed to complete the picture, when the stepper motors should be moved, and by how much and in what order; and when and for how long the shutter should be opened – it also deals with the focus. You’ll find a long description of how to reproduce the Stockers’ setup, with a parts list, enough information for you to make your own shutter control circuit and more at GigaPi. For obvious reasons, I can’t host a sample gigapixel image here. But you can find some pictures taken with the Stockers’ rig, one of which is a simply ridiculous 15.2 gigapixels (and enormous fun; it’s full of Easter eggs, and the detail’s so good that you can count how many peanuts are left in the bird feeder) at gigapan.com. Bonus fact of the day: Sophie Wilson, of ARM and BBC Micro fame, is also a gigapixel photographer, and she’s created some really beautiful pictures using the technique – the architectural photos are my favourites. She occasionally gives talks in and around Cambridge on the subject, minus the Raspberry Pi (I spotted an advert for one in my local post office last week). Keep an eye out if you’re in town.
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Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Hachette eBooks are here!
| Just last week we announced that Hachette Book Group, one of the world's leading publishers, has agreed to make its entire digital catalog of eBooks available to libraries and schools in the U.S. and Canada. Please reference our press release for more information about Hachette eBook availability via OverDrive.
We go live tomorrow (Wednesday, May 8), and we want you to be ready to add titles by James Patterson, Kami Garcia, David Baldacci, Sarah Zarr, Malcolm Gladwell, and many more. To remove some of the burden of wading through over 5,000 Hachette titles, the OverDrive team has done a preliminary sort for you. Just log in to the Content Reserve Marketplace on Wednesday, click on the orange cart icon in the upper right corner, and you'll find several carts of titles already prepared for you.
These carts include:
You'll also find several carts of nonfiction, broken down by topic. Hachette is still working on delivering all of their titles, so don't forget to monitor Content Reserve for more of their titles to become available in the coming days. You can find new content by using the Advanced Search. Check ‘eBooks’ on the top left, then choose a time period under ‘On sale date’. Here is just a very tiny sample of some of the hottest authors you'll want to buy right away:  Customize and print this promotional flyer to inform your community about some of the great new titles in your digital collection.
Don't wait. Your readers will be so happy with your new purchases. Tomorrow's gonna be a great day!
Cindy Orr is a Digital Collection Advisor at OverDrive.  |
Review: Nook HD+ with Official Google Play (Video)
| First and foremost, it should be noted that this article is more of an addendum to my initial review of the Nook HD+ that was posted back in November when the device first came out rather than a completely new review. I’m not going to cover any of the hardware details or any specific Nook [...] |
Big Library Read is coming soon!
| Last week we announced the new Big Library Read initiative as a joint effort between Sourcebooks, OverDrive and public libraries worldwide. It's a unique program (May 15-June 1) designed to unite the world in reading the same eBook title at the same time and to demonstrate the influence library patrons can have. We already know the power of libraries – this is a unique way to let the rest of the world know!
Excitement is building….since last week, over 2,000 libraries have opted-in to participate in this event from 8 different countries – on 4 continents!
As librarians, you are helping to develop this innovative and unique event that is the first of what could be an exciting, ongoing program. Big Library Read resulted from numerous meetings with you, our library partners, ALA, Sourcebooks and other publishers, and we anticipate it will evolve into a program that can be customized for your local library or region. When you opt-in to this first Big Library Read, you'll be able to participate in the selection of future Big Library Read eBooks (and audiobooks), and you'll also have access to promotional templates that you can use to build interest in your communities!
This free program runs from May 15 through June 1, so if you haven't opted-in yet be sure to contact your OverDrive Account Specialist today. Meanwhile, join the conversation on Twitter by using #BigLibraryRead!
Adam Sockel is a Marketing Specialist at OverDrive  |
Tokyo: Big Raspberry Jam 2013
| Eben and I are going to be out of the UK for much of the rest of May, doing press, meeting partners, visiting Raspberry Pi fans, hanging out with science fair kids and giving talks. We’ll be in Phoenix for Intel ISEF, San Francisco for Maker Faire (come and listen to our talk! We don’t have a stand this year, but Raspberry Pis will be on sale in the Make Shed), and, most excitingly for both of us, in Tokyo for the Japanese Raspberry Pi User Group’s Big Raspberry Jam on May 25. Masafumi Ohta, who moderates the forums here (he’s most often to be found in the Japanese language forum, but also pops up in the English sections every now and then), is running the event. Admission is free. We’ve heard from people who don’t even live in Japan who are making the trip to Tokyo; it promises to be an amazing day, with lots of hacking sessions, tutorials, talks and opportunities to meet like-minded Pi enthusiasts. We were last in Tokyo back in November; the Pi has become much more easily available in Japan since then, and we’ve even seen an official Japanese translation of the Raspberry Pi User Guide appear since our last visit. Masafumi-san’s been sending me artwork for displays and badges, and notes about the day: we can’t wait to get stuck in. RS Components, who have a large presence in the far east and are one of our two manufacturing distribution partners, will be sponsoring the event.  Eben in Akihabara Electric Town last November. Masafumi-san has asked me to publish the following information here on the blog. If you’re in Tokyo on the day, please come and see us! – Japanese Raspberry Pi Users Group will hold the event to welcome Eben and Liz Upton, Founder of Raspberry Pi Foundation coming to Japan. It is for encouraging Raspberry Pi users and community in Japan, now growing up rapidly. Gathering 150+ people at the big event – 4 sessions, 1 mini session,3 LTs and more. It is also not only for Raspberry Pi users and geeks, but also the Raspberry Pi beginners. RS Components and some companies help the event, and have booths exhibiting Raspberry Pis and some stuff (books,boards,cases…and more). 13:00-13:30 Door Open For more information please check Japanese Raspberry Pi Users Group website. Registration: http://atnd.org/event/E0014486 (for Japanese) http://bigraspberryjamtokyo2013.eventbrite.com (for Non-Japanese). |
The Great Gatsby eBook is Free – Don’t Waste Money Buying It!
| It irritates me to no end when I see big companies trying to capitalize off of a book being turned into a movie so they can rake in every little cent that they can squeeze out of consumers. Unfortunately that is the case with The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Fitzgerald. Ever since it has [...] |
Indie Authors Help Each Other with Book Promotion
| One of the great struggles in the current climate of digital and self-publishing has been making a book stand out in the crowd. Of course, the great paradox is that even traditionally published authors now have to put in some measure of leg work to ensure that readers find and purchase their books. But more than ever, authors are banding together to help one another promote their work. Kayla Curry, author of the Mystic Stones series (Martin Sisters Publishing), created a unique event in response to not only the need for promotion, but also the need to reach a broader audience than one can do from a typical geographical book event. The Blogger Book Fair, created last summer, is a biannual event that brings authors and book bloggers together for much needed book discovery. “Blogger Book Fair was created in the summer of 2012, when I was planning the launch of my debut novel,” explained Curry to GoodEReader. “I was faced with the dilemma of whether or not to get a booth at the county fair. I decided to have my own in the comfort of my home. I had a support group of authors I had met online and I approached them about the idea. They were all very enthusiastic and I told them to tell any and all authors they might know. We ended up with over 40 authors with almost 80 books.” Putting together an event of that magnitude is no small feat. Curry originally did all of the preparation and organization of the event on her own, but as the event has grown with its third staging this summer, she has enlisted the aide of fellow authors and bloggers Fel Wetzig of The Peasants Revolt and Pereza Thompson of Pezz Rambles. Due to extra support for the event, this BBF has an additional day and will run from July 22nd through July 26th. “The basics of Blogger Book Fair include authors exchanging posts for each other’s blogs. This cross promotion is fun and helps authors and book bloggers bring more books to their audiences. Participants are matched up according to genre. There are also events hosted by whoever comes up with an idea for one. We also have our own Reader’s Choice Awards, which is hosted by our book blogger friend, Sheri at Shut Up and Read.” While there is no cost to participate in this event, authors are asked to make donations towards the prizes that are given away during the multi-day virtual event. Authors interested in signing up may do so by clicking HERE, while readers who are interested in the book discovery this event brings can be notified when the event launches this July by signing up HERE. “The authors who participate in this event are amazing people. Many of them have helped me out in this venture and others. Many of us form bonds and continue to work together on various projects even after BBF ends.”
Indie Authors Help Each Other with Book Promotion is a post from: E-Reader News |
Hearst Magazines Hit One Million Active Subscribers
| The Hearst Magazine Publishing division has seen rapid growth on tablets since the company formed a strategic relationship with Apple. In January, the two sides announced a new partnership with the Apple Newsstand that delivers the Digital Editions of its entire catalog days before print and and other sources. This means if you are a fan of Car and Driver, Popular Mechanics, Esquire, Seventeen, and Harper's Bazaar among many others, you will get them on Newsstand days before anywhere else. When this first went down, Hearst had only 800,000 subscribers and in a few short months it has hit the magical one million. Hearst claims its digital division subscriber base is jumping up by 10% each month. This is mostly due to the iPad, whose customers are often spending $70,000 per day on digital magazines. Although, the magazines are found via dedicated apps on the Kindle Fire, Google, and Barnes and Noble. Still, if you want to get your news ahead of everyone else, the iOS ecosystem is the place to be. Hearst had planned to hit the million subscriber milestone by the end of 2012, but the publisher missed its goal by 90 days, Hearst chief David Carey told AllThingsD. Carey expects that the magazine will have about three million digital subscribers by 2016, about 10 % of Hearst's entire base. Hearst Magazines Hit One Million Active Subscribers is a post from: E-Reader News |
Monday, May 6, 2013
Kno Teams with St. Mary’s Press for Interactive Bibles
| KNO is best known for its interactive learning software and digital store that allows diligent young scholars to buy content. Today, St. Mary’s Press has announced to that will be doing special versions of the Catholic Youth Bible, Breakthrough Bible, and Living in Christ series to be made available for sale immediately. This agreement actually makes a ton of sense because KNO is already in many religious schools and this new content will be welcome. The bibles will allow students to make custom notes, highlights, and share discussions with their friends on the same platform. Students can also access interactive elements like flashcards for all the terms in the glossary, and religious instructors can share their highlights and notes with their class using Kno's social-sharing feature. "Saint Mary's Press is excited to partner with Kno in offering our bestselling titles as interactive e-books," said John Vitek, President and CEO of Saint Mary's Press. "With Kno, Saint Mary's Press will provide students with powerful, easy to use digital features that help them engage with their religious studies in new and exciting ways." "Saint Mary's Press offers rich, meaningful content to students and teachers at Catholic schools across the country," said Osman Rashid, CEO of Kno. "Using interactive features like search, journal, and flashcards will allow students to explore their religious studies in new ways, leading to new insights and providing a rich learning experience." Kno Teams with St. Mary's Press for Interactive Bibles is a post from: E-Reader News |
Digital Comics in Libraries: Still Working on It
| Publishers Weekly’s Heidi MacDonald has done a comprehensive overview of graphic novels and libraries, and she includes a discussion of digital library programs, which are still evolving even as we speak. OverDrive, the biggest vendor of e-books for libraries, gets no love in this article. The prices are too high and the graphic-novel catalogue is too limited. Librarian Robin Brenner would like to see comiXology offer library services, and indeed, their competitor Comics Plus is developing a library service that will roll out this summer.
Some publishers have balked at signing on, perhaps for fear of piracy, MacDonald speculates, but they might be getting it exactly wrong: Brenner thinks readers aren’t demanding digital comics from libraries because they are going to pirate sites instead. For a publisher like Viz, whose series can run for many volumes, it makes sense to participate in a system that gives them something for each checkout, rather than have readers go to pirate sites for their fix. One thing to keep in mind with regard to all this is how digital services regard e-books. My local library has OverDrive, and I never use it, because they treat e-books like print books: The library buys a limited number of copies, and each book can only be checked out by one patron at a time, so when I go to look for a book, it’s never available. iVerse’s system, as it was explained to me, allows unlimited checkouts, and charges the library for each one. When the library reaches its spending limit, the comics disappear, although Elder told me there would always be a selection of comics available for free. So what iVerse is selling is really access to a real digital library, rather than single e-books. Instead of hedging their bets and only getting digital editions of the most popular titles (which are then always unavailable to most patrons), they can offer access to an entire library and not only allow multiple people to read the same book at once but also avoid paying for unpopular titles. Digital Comics in Libraries: Still Working on It is a post from: E-Reader News |
Baker and Taylor Releases New axisReader Apps
| Baker and Taylor has the 3rd largest market share for companies who facilitate digital ebook delivery in their libraries. Today, the company is making the process of reading easier with its new axisReader apps for iOS and Android. The new axisReader apps allow you to borrow and read books within a singular app from your local library. You can read them in PDF or EPUB formats, as well as highlight, bookmark, annotate, or look up a definition. The new app will allow patrons to tap into a huge ecosystem of 450,000 titles, including digital audiobooks. One of the most interesting aspects of this new app is the fact that BT has done away with its own Blio format, which got critical acclaim from the National Federation of the Blind. I guess with the rise of EPUB being the common ebook format, the company is better off going in that direction. "axisReader is a powerful tool that provides on-the-go library patrons with the electronic content they want," said George Coe, President of Baker & Taylor's Library & Education division. "The release of axisReader shows again that Baker & Taylor is committed to developing technologies that boost library circulation and give patrons a superior library experience." If you have an Android or Smartphone you can load the new axisReader app from the Good e-Reader App Store. Baker and Taylor Releases New axisReader Apps is a post from: E-Reader News |
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