| Digital Manga is a company that isn’t afraid to experiment. When they rebooted their eManga site, late last year, they did something very unusual for a comics publisher, let alone a manga publisher: They offered their books as downloads in a variety of different formats, including PDFs, CBZ, and Mobi, so readers could not only download them to the device of their choice but also move them from one mobile device to another. Having expanded their digital options, Digital is now broadening their content offerings as well. They recently added American comics from Heroic Publishing to their lineup, and earlier this month they announced a new indie section that will feature a number of different genres. The most promising title is the steampunk mini-series Boston Metaphysical Society, which follows the adventures of a former Pinkerton detective and a spirit photographer in late-19th-century Boston. (It’s also available as a webcomic.) Other offerings include the sci-fi title Fuerza 7 (available in English and Spanish), and Megabook 1, a free, 212-page comics anthology featuring a mix of genres: Action, horror, sci-fi, and supernatural, among others. It doesn’t look like Digital’s current selection is going to give comiXology Submit too much of a run for their money, in terms of quality or quantity, but it’s early days yet, and there are a few interesting comics up there. It’s worth taking a look, and if you see something you like, the prices are pretty reasonable, with plenty of free content as well. Digital Manga Adds Independent Comics to eManga Service is a post from: E-Reader News |
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Digital Manga Adds Independent Comics to eManga Service
Kobo ARC Firmware Update Fixes Android UI
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One of the pleasant new updates to the Kobo Arc firmware is the shifting of the Android toolbar from the bottom of the screen, to the very top. In most file manager, games and other apps, most of their UI and button controls are at the bottom of the screen. This resulted in owners accidentally touching the time, WIFI or other notifications and the secondary menu popping up, breaking immersion. Kobo has also enhanced the animations when you hit the app menu and gesture to your library of apps. It is now way quicker to see your next page of apps and Kobo has seemed to have stopped the Crashing Tapestries bug. Finally, we have heard from many people that their discovery bar on the bottom of the screen, which hypes new eBooks and authors did not update properly. You would often see the same books all the time and a small segment never saw updates since they turned it on for the first time. They seemed to have solved this refresh issue too, with the recent firmware update. If you you have not received an update notification on your task bar, you can simply click the settings menu, then about tablet and system updates. Kobo ARC Firmware Update Fixes Android UI is a post from: E-Reader News |
Barnes and Noble Needs to Expand into International Markets
| Barnes and Noble has been seeing declining revenues for the last few quarters and the company according to 24/7 Wall Street, is on the 18th month deathwatch. This article is getting lots of attention, but is a fine example of sensationalist journalism at its finest! It does pose an interesting question though. How can Barnes and Noble turn their hardware and software ecosystem around in the next 18 months? According to 24/7 Wall Street, they said “Barnes and Noble e-reader was destined to struggle from the start. It was launched in October 2009, roughly two years after Amazon.com's Kindle, which was, and has remained, the market leader. Both products were hit by competition from Apple's iPad before the e-reader business even hit its stride. Adoption of tablets is forecast to grow 69.8% in 2013, while e-readers are expected to drop 27%.” The article went on to say “The Nook was thrown a lifeline a year ago, when Microsoft invested $300 million in Barnes & Noble's digital business, but to no avail. It has been downhill since. Sales at the company's Nook segment, which includes both the e-reader and online books, declined by 26% between the third quarter of 2012 and the third quarter of 2013. The Nook's disadvantage may have little to do with its hardware or software and more to do with size of its online audience. It competes against much larger e-commerce sites that have access to hundreds of millions of new readers. While Amazon has more than 130 million visitors a month according to Quantcast, Barnes & Noble has just over 6 million visitors.” Obviously, when it comes to the financial aspect and the investment from Microsoft, this is all true. I think the Nook eBook division is going to be fine in the short-term, but needs to expand their international footprint to do better in the long-term. The Nook brand is only available in the US and UK, you can’t buy the hardware or purchase eBooks outside of these two regions. At a financial call last year, the CEO of Barnes and Noble announced they would expand into eight more countries within a calender year. They have five months to go, and have not entered any new markets. Meanwhile, they invested a substantial amount of money into Nook Press, their indie self-publishing program. Regrettably, this is only available in the US. The United States market is over saturated with e-Readers and unlike smartphones, people don’t upgrade to every new iteration of hardware. People tend to read on perfectly fine two year old devices, and most people who want to buy an e-Reader, already has one. The United Kingdom often is a staging ground to penetrate the rest of Europe, Barnes and Noble has been there for almost a year and have not branched off. It is critically important that B&N begins to sell their Nook Hardware in Germany, Spain, France, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand. They also have to engage publishers who are friendly with them to offer eBooks localized in those markets. Finally, they need to offer their Writing Life platform to the UK and to all other markets and reach distribution deals to offer the books in local bookstores. Barnes and Noble is at a critical juncture in their hardware and eBook ecosystem. When any company starts to see cumulative revenue loses, for many quarters, something needs to be done. Maintaining the status quo and dropping the price on the hardware is something that cannot be sustainable. It is my firm belief that in order for their fortunes to be turned around they need to expand into Europe, Australia and New Zealand. This has been Amazon and Kobo’s winning strategy with their self-publishing and eBook programs, and obviously they deal with the exact same publishers Barnes and Noble does. Barnes and Noble Needs to Expand into International Markets is a post from: E-Reader News |
Good e-Reader – Week in Review
| The Week in Review is a play on words, as we have reviewed a ton of new e-readers during SID Display Week 2013 and got our hands on some tech we never thought we would see. We reviewed over six new e-readers, and as for cool examples of tech, that should be hitting store shelves by the end of summer. If you missed reading our publication for a few days, here is the gist of what we extensively covered. The Sony Prototype e-Reader is the finest example of a company gearing an E Ink display for academics and PDF reading. The resolution on the display is 1200×1600 with 150 PPI. The main attraction is using the active digitizer and interacting with complex PDF documents. You can edit documents by jotting down your own handwritten notes, or even highlight passages to go back to later. The large screen display will simply give you the best PDF experience you have ever had on an e-reader. Our second look at the e-reader takes all of the user emails we got over the week and we went back to the show to get a true hands on. View it HERE. Onyx intends on releasing a new phone this summer that is the first one in the world to use a front-lit E Ink screen. This is the same type of screen tech you would find in your run of the mill e-reader, such as the Kobo Aura HD and Kindle Paperwhite. On a phone, you will get a few weeks of battery life and will be able to load in your own apps. It is certainly a bold new step in the right direction for the future of mobility. The Booklive Reader by Lideo features an older version of E Ink Pearl with a resolution of 600×800 and 16 levels of grey. It has 4 GB of internal memory, but you only have 3 GB of practical use. There is no expandable memory, so you will not be able to load more content in via MicroSD. There is a 800 MHZ processor, which tends to make things fairly speedy. It is certainly not the best e-reader we have ever reviewed, and really has more going against it than going for it. I would give this one a miss, but read the full review and judge for yourself. Trust me, this e-reader does not have the kissing disease, but its namesake is based on the E Ink display. It features a six inch e Ink Pearl Display with a resolution of 1024×768 pixels. It uses IR technology from Neonode instead of the traditional capacitive touchscreen. Underneath the hood is a Freescale i.MX508, 800MHz processor, and 512 MB RAM. It has 4 GB of internal memory that can be expanded further via the Micro SD card. This is a fairly solid reader, and if you are a fan of manga, graphic novels, and ebooks in Japanese, you might want to take a closer look. This model is only available in Japan and is one of the newest devices to hit the market. The Pocketbook Touch Lux features the same HD E Ink Pearl display found on the Kindle Paperwhite and Kobo Glo. The exact resolution is 1024×758 and it has a front-lit display, which is optimal for reading in the dark. It also has 256 MB of RAM, 4 GB of internal memory, and a SD card support for up to 32 GB of memory. Battery life should be good up to 7,000 page turns. It also has an audio jack so you can listen to audiobooks and music. This e-reader really gives you nothing special and will likely be overpriced, considering the weak hardware underneath the hood. Still, Pocketbook is very solid about native support for almost every single ebook format currently being used. The Tolino Shine features a six inch E Ink Pearl display with a resolution of 1024×758 pixels. You will be able to garner around seven weeks of battery life and store 2,000 ebooks on it with 4 GB of storage. If you need more memory, you can upgrade it via the Micro SD card. It primarily will read EPUB and PDF files. It does have support for Adobe Digital Editions, so you can read books you purchased from other stores. It will also be running on the Google Android operating system. This e-reader stemmed from a partnership between Thalia , Weltbild, Hugendubel, Bertelsmann Club, and Deutsche Telekom. Mirasol screen technology used to have two display screens, that gave readers a very muted color scheme. This was very evident in the first onslaught of tablets they released a few years ago. Qualcomm went back to the drawing board and developed the second generation and demoed it in a smart watch and a new Android phone. The phone is especially interesting because it has a secondary screen on the back of it and is meant to be paired with the watch. One of the big aspects of SID Display Week was that everyone and their mother was pimping out digital signs. E Ink developed two new technologies that are aimed at grocery stores, billboards, airports, and supermarkets. One piece of the technology is meant to replace paper price tags, the other will work in fridges, freezers, and up to -25 c environments. Peter is starting to do Android app reviews on the Good e-Reader Youtube channel. we started with a new game that just came out, Thor – Lord of Storms. What’s Happening Next Week? The entire Good e-Reader team will be in New York covering Book Expo America and the IDPF. We are proud to be the main media sponsor of IDPF, alongside Publishers Weekly. We will be covering all of the sessions and publishing six to 12 stories a day about the future of publishing, self-publishing, ebooks, libraries, magazines, newspapers, EPUB3, HTML5, big data, and bringing you interviews with Sylvia Day, Otis Chandler, and tons of other industry movers and shakers. I am super excited that everyone will be there and it should be fun! Make Good e-Reader your one stop shop for next week for full coverage. Good e-Reader – Week in Review is a post from: E-Reader News |
Strange Kindle Happenings: Kindle Keyboard Disappears, Kindle DX Back From the Dead
| Here lately some weird things have been happening to the older Kindle models listed over at Amazon.com. In recent weeks the Kindle Keyboard, previously known as the Kindle 3, has seemingly been discontinued. Even though the Kindle Keyboard was several generations old, Amazon continued to sell it up until recently because of its unique accessibility [...] |
New $149 Hisense Tablet at Walmart Rivals Nexus 7
| This past week Walmart stores have started selling two new 7-inch tablets from Hisense that have some really impressive specs for the price. In fact the Hisense Sero 7 Pro has similar hardware as the Google Nexus 7, and at a price point of $50 less. It even adds a couple of important upgrades over [...] |
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Back by popular demand: keyboard and laptop stickers!
| New in the Swag Shop: big vinyl stickers, just the right size for hiding any logos you don’t like on the front of your laptop, and little vinyl stickers, just the right size to cover up the logo on the Windows key on your keyboard. These things are tough, and have what I understand is called “high-traffic glue” on them to make them stand up to your typing. There are some other new goodies available this week too: a logo mousemat, and a very swanky rubberised drinks coaster, which goes splendidly with a cup of coffee. Or a glass of your favourite intoxicant. Click on the images to order!
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The Guardian Newspaper Goes Global
| British National Newspaper, The Guardian has just unveiled plans to take their online news reporting global. They have announced that they will incorporate their US, UK and Australian division under the single online property TheGuardian.com. The move into a singular news website will obviously benefit readers, who will have a all encompassing destination to read country specific and world news. Really, the reason why they are doing this is for higher internet traffic and to attract online advertisers. The Guardian Newspaper has a fairly solid internet presence with 81 million unique browsers in April. This is the third straight month that they have increased the number of eyes on their digital website. They are hoping with my eyes on the main website that they will be able to have a higher click through rate and increase revenue. Simplifying their brand is the best move for further expansion into other markets. Tanya Cordrey, Chief Digital Officer at Guardian News & Media said "This may be a small URL change but it marks a big step for the Guardian and reflects our evolution from a much-respected national print newspaper based only in the UK – reaching hundreds of thousands of people once a day – to a leading global news and media brand, with offices around the world, and an ever-growing worldwide audience accessing Guardian journalism every minute of every day." She added, "our move to theguardian.com will only strengthen our global presence and is a loud signal of our status as a leading digital news provider and of the breadth and depth of our content." There is no word yet on the exact time the new website will go live. Currently, the new domain name resolves to the UK version, but it is worth to keep checking every few days to see when the entire transfer will be complete. We will let you guys know via Facebook and Twitter updates when you can see the new site in all of its glory. The Guardian Newspaper Goes Global is a post from: E-Reader News |
OverDrive Launches Digital Library Champions Contest
| Overdrive is running a new contest for libraries participating in their digital eBook lending service. They are looking for innovative ways libraries promote their eBook collections to their community and unique marketing angles that draw traffic to their websites. Winners receive $500.00 in eBook credits, an e-Reader and promotion on their main website. The contest centers around five different aspects of marketing and promotion and Overdrive is serious about libraries blazing their own trail and not being reliant on stock marketing materials. The first category is, Inside the Library – How are you making your physical branch aware of your 'Virtual Branch'? Examples could include unique shelving and displays; patron training classes; gadget galleries; staff training; in-library events. The second category deals exclusive with their online presence, What are you doing through social networking, email or on your library website to drive traffic to your digital collection? The third category deals with the real world! In what ways are you reaching out to your community to spread the word about your digital collection? Examples could include: billboards; sponsoring a local event; partnering with an area business; commuter outreach; ads in the paper or on TV. The fourth deals with libraries that loan out e-Readers and tablets via the Testdrive initiative. How are you promoting the program and making the public aware that you have technology for patrons to use and borrow? Finally, Excellent eBook Educator (Open to K-12 schools and colleges only) – This new category is set aside for any school or college who would like to share their most innovative marketing ideas. This is inclusive of any and all promotional efforts that impact your OverDrive collection, including online marketing and in school campaigns. If you want to enter your library in the Digital Library Champions contest, fill out the PDF entry form and email it to outreachcontest@overdrive.com or fax it to 216.573.6888 by Tuesday June 11, 2013. OverDrive Launches Digital Library Champions Contest is a post from: E-Reader News |
Digital Comics Review: Adventures of Superman #1-3
| DC releases all its print comics on in digital the same day as print, but the venerable publisher is taking a slightly different tack in its digital-first releases. Unlike their print counterparts, DC’s digital-first Adventures of Superman comics are short, self-contained, and not dependent on complicated continuity. That makes them a nice treat for regulars and newcomers alike. I read the first three issues, each of which is by a different writer-artist team. The result is that each is very distinct in style and story from the others. Yet they all share a common format: 20 pages of story, done in landscape format with just one to four panels per page. Unlike Marvel’s Infinite Comics, there is nothing uniquely digital about these comics—no changes in focus, no word balloons that appear when you swipe. These are simply comics you read on a screen rather than paper, and I believe the plan for print publication is to stack two of the horizontal digital pages to make one vertical-format printed page. Adventures of Superman #1, written by Jeff Parker and illustrated by Chris Samnee, is a very classic style Superman story in which the Man of Steel faces off against a crazed street guy who has taken a drug that causes him to lose his mind but also gives him telekinetic powers. Superman thus gets to use his super-powers in a variety of dramatic situations. At the end, we see who gave him the drug, which gives us some closure but doesn’t really feel like the end of the story. This issue is labeled “Chapter One,” so I thought there would be more in the second issue, but there wasn’t. In fact, Adventures of Superman #2 couldn’t be more different: Written and illustrated by Jeff Lemire, it is a story about two boys playing Superman, set in a rural area and illustrated with Lemire’s trademark wobbly line and watercolor washes. It’s a nice little story, but it’s a complete break with the first issue and isn’t even set in the world of the comic; it’s about Superman fans, not Superman. Adventures of Superman #3, by Justin Jordan and Riley Rossmo, returns us to Metropolis for a story that is pretty bare-bones: Bizarro tries to help people and messes up; Superman fights with him and then figures out another way out of the problem. To understand this comic you have to know that when Bizarro speaks, his meaning is the exact opposite of his words. DC is making these first three issues available as a print comic, Adventures of Superman #1, which is priced at $3.99 for 40 pages of story; that seems like a good deal compared to other print comics, but it’s a buck more than the cost of the three digital comics. Which is kind of interesting—most comics publishers are pricing their digital comics the same as print when they are released on the same day. As it is, 99 cents is about right for each of these short comics, and for the Parker/Samnee one, which is by far the best so far, it’s a bargain. Digital Comics Review: Adventures of Superman #1-3 is a post from: E-Reader News |
Friday, May 24, 2013
Hands on Review of the Booklive Reader by Lideo
| The Toshiba BookPlace Mono and Booklive Reader by Lideo are two Japan exclusives that popped by to say hello at SID Display Week 2013 in Vancouver. Obviously, with a new e-Reader we were all over it, and seems to do quite well in Japan. How does this e-Reader stack up against the competition and is it a worthy investment? Hardware The Booklive Reader by Lideo features an older version of e Ink Pearl with a resolution of 600×800 and 16 levels of grey. It has 4 GB of internal memory, but you only have 3 GB of practical use. There is no expandable memory, so you will not be able to load more content in via MicroSD. There is a 800 MHZ processor, which tends to make things a bit speedy. When you look at the competition in Japan with the Sony PRS-T2, Kobo Glo and Kindle Paperwhite, they all have higher resolution then than the Booklive. This is an important factor to consider if you are into Manga, Graphic Novels and image heavy content. Resolution on PDF images, are fairly important for the types of books that are popular in Japan. The price is right though, you will spend around 7,000 yen, making it more affordable then the competition. You can think of this e-Reader as a terminal. You only can connect to the Booklive eBook store, which has around 75,000 titles currently available. There is no internet browser, and it lacks critical essential social media features like Facebook and Twitter. It connects via WIMAX to the store, and there is no charge for data to download books, you just have to pay for them. The Booklive has a touchscreen display that you use to pinch and zoom and click on content. It has four physical home buttons on the bottom, similar to the old Sony designs. You can hit back, home, settings etc. Finally, you will get around a solid month of use, before you have to recharge it. This falls in line with most readers, when you engage in casual reading. The Booklive e-Reader is very simple in design, in terms of UI and the overall layout of the menu. When you first fire it up for the first time it asks for your birthday, sex, email address and name. The main screen comprises of your bookshelf, which shows the cover art by default. You can tweak the settings so it shows it in list view instead, which is useful for larger book collections. Speaking of book collections, it supports EPUB and PDF, but you can’t load in your own books. For some reason this e-Reader only works with purchases made directly from the store built into it. This might turn a ton of users off, but will curb book piracy. You can turn pages by tapping or flicking your hand in a gesture, obviously being a Japanese exclusive you tend to turn pages to the left. There is a big refresh issue with this unit, as every single page turn creates the flickering as the e Ink screen refreshes. There is no options to configure it, such as to make it refresh every three, six or nine pages. There are six different options to increase the size of the text when you are reading EPUB books, and no options to change the types of fonts. You can also make highlights and look words up in the built in dictionary. The main gripe of most reviewers in Japan is that the dictionary is weak compared to the competition.If you want to search, you can do it via the virtual software keyboard, which is actually one of the best features on this device. One of the best features is being able to adjust the brightness. This is useful, since most Manga has different art styles. Some use very hard lines and some very soft, it is great to be able to turn up the brightness of the screen to give you the best Manga experience. When you are finished reading a book, at the end of it, are links to continue reading the series. Normally, you can purchase a single issue, and if you like it, continue to buy more. Instead of making you search the next issue within the Booklive store, you get links to buy it. You can’t buy in bulk though, but most stores don’t really have a great shopping cart system on e-readers. If you subscribe to newspapers though, the new issue is delivered to you every day. Wrap Up You would buy this e-reader if you are loyal to the BookLive market place for newspapers, eBooks and Manga. It is more affordable than most other e-Readers currently available in Japan. Sharp, Toshiba, Sony, Amazon and Kobo all compete heavily in that market and sometimes its hard for the smaller players to stay relevant. In the end, I would not recommend this e-Reader. It is mostly slow and unresponsive, and the inability to load in your own books may be a deal breaker. There is a ton of eBooks available to buy, but it doesn’t matter much if all of your competition as higher resolution screens and better hardware. I would likely recommend Kobo, Kindle or Sony models better than this, mainly because of the better software and the ability to buy books in different languages. Sometimes you want to learn a new language by reading books, but Booklive only sells books in Japanese. PROS Interesting Design, looks unique Cons Sluggish and Unresponsive Rating: 4/10  Hands on Review of the Booklive Reader by Lideo is a post from: E-Reader News |
Rowman & Littlefield Opens their own eBook Store
| Publisher Rowman & Littlefield are starting their own eBook Store and taking the direct to market approach. Over 12,000 of their own eBooks will be available starting today. The eBook Store is closely connected with the publisher's Unity platform for title development, which houses full title metadata and all the digital assets associated with each new book. This close integration means that the e-book version of each new title is available for purchase from the moment of publication. The publisher also garners more revenue in the long-term bypassing the need to rely on other online bookstores. Finally, Rowman & Littlefield intends on working with libraries to provide their electronic books directly. Commenting on the launch, CEO Jed Lyons said: "Technology has become a real strength of Rowman & Littlefield, with robust bespoke systems supporting all of the processes that connect our authors with our readers. We know that our academic, library, professional and trade customers all value the ability to access our titles in every format, and this new platform gives us the capability to deliver books instantly to a range of devices including PCs, MACs, IOS and Android. The system uses Adobe Content Server to enable secure Digital Rights Management. " Rowman & Littlefield Opens their own eBook Store is a post from: E-Reader News |
Amazon Launches Summer Reading
| Barnes and Noble announced the semantics surrounding its summer reading program yesterday and online giant Amazon announced its new program today. Amazon is betting on kids trying to meet their reading goals by giving them incentives to get lost in an ebook. There are three major elements to the Amazon Summer Reading campaign, the first is The Summer Reading Sweepstakes! To sweeten summer reading even more, students, parents, and teachers can enter for a chance to win 50 Kindle e-readers for their school and keep the fun going all year round. The second focuses on Book Recommendations, with so many books to choose from, how do you decide what to read first? Now students can head on over to the Summer Reading for Kids page for hand-picked recommendations from our knowledgeable book editors. The list includes favorites for kids (and parents) of all ages. Finally, if your child is an aspiring sleuth, they can participate in the Summer Reading Adventure Map! X marks the spot! Students can embark on a reading adventure by printing out a map where they can track books they have read and what date they were completed. Of course, Amazon has curated a number of ebook titles on the main summer reading page with targeted age appropriate material. Most of it is geared towards YA Fiction, but there is lots of kids ages 1-3. Of course, there is the ubiquitous editors’ picks and discounts galore. Amazon Launches Summer Reading is a post from: E-Reader News |
Review of the Toshiba BookPlace Mono e-Reader
| The Toshiba BookPlace Mono e-Reader is a Japanese exclusive that just landed in that market a few weeks ago. For the launch of this new device, Toshiba revised its old ebookstore Blio and transformed it into the BookPlace. How does this e-reader rank up against the competition? Hardware The Toshiba BookPlace Mono features a six inch e Ink Pearl Display with a resolution of 1024×768 pixels. It uses IR technology from Neonode, instead of the traditional capacitive touchscreen. Underneath the hood is a Freescale i.MX508, 800MHz processor and 512 MB RAM. It has 4 GB of internal memory that can be expanded further via the Micro SD card. The MicroUSB cable both charges the unit and facilitates the transfer of data to your device. It is hyped up to last a few months or around 8,000 page turns. WIFI is the only way it will connect to the internet and the Toshiba BookPlace eBook store. This reader, when connected to the internet and browsing the store, is woefully slow. On the main page of the store are 3 or 4 different images hyping up manga, cookbooks, kids books, and other price points. This results in slow navigation because of all the different graphics that are loading up at once. When you are not online, and just browsing the various menus, it tends to be snappy. One of the cool things about the BookPlace Mono is the inclusion of a 3.5mm headphone jack. This allows you to listen to music and audiobooks, but there is no physical speaker on the e-reader. The overall design is very unique. The screen is deeply sunken into the body of the unit, to accommodate the IR touchscreen display. It also has a physical home button, to bring you back to your main screen. Really, it is quite a solid e-reader and the main selling point is buying content from the Toshiba BookPlace eBook store. Software The entire UI is in Japanese and there is no way to load in different languages for an English crowd. Toshiba is focusing exclusively on the Japanese market and enhanced the Japanese bookstore to launch this new e-reader. Let’s talk about the ebookstore, since this is your destination to buy content. There are various categories to browse from, as well as a dedicated search area. You can sort by price in YEN if you want to find cheaper or more expensive books. We noticed at least three thousand books total in the ecosystem that mainly comprise of Manga, Graphic Novels, Cookbooks, Kids Books, and eBooks. Most of the Manga is only available via PDF and the rendering engine to display content is painful. You can’t pinch and zoom to isolate specific panels, but if you press one, you can zero in on a panel. Obviously, page turning in Manga is swiping on the left hand side. It also, has a PDF rendering engine to allow you to scroll around the document. Your main home screen comprises of your library shelf, where the cover art of the books you own are presented in all of their glory. You can sort by list view, but the default is cover view. It looks like there are 15 titles that can be on your main screen. At the very bottom of the display area is links to your library, settings, and the BookPlace. You can configure various options, such as page refresh, WIFI setup, font sizes, and alternative settings. In the video at the bottom of the review, we show you most of the menus and sub-menus. Our Japanese is a bit rusty, but Peter knew enough to set the e-reader up for a review. In order to even start using the reader from scratch, you need to setup a user ID, password, and email address. The Toshiba BookPlace Mono reads EPUB and PDF documents by default. It sells ebooks and manga in both of these formats, but does allow you to upload your own titles that you download from the internet. There is a small sync button, so when you upload your own titles from the Micro USB to USB cable on your PC, you want to make sure to sync your new content. Overall, e-reading is very solid. The traditional EPUB book, turns pages very quickly. You can customize the font size, font type, linespacing, margins, and gesture direction. By default, the e-reader is configured to turn pages when you swipe to the left, but you can change it to the right. The PDF experience is OK, as long as you are just turning pages. The e-reader tends to buckle under the pressure if you are initiating the zoom feature or scrolling around the document. In the end, this is an ebook reader geared towards a very specific market. Toshiba spent a ton of money and man hours relaunching its online store in conjunction with the release of the Mono. You can download free samples of most manga, but we noticed that not all books had samples. Wrap Up Will this reader sell? It is priced at around $140 US, and ebooks cost anywhere from 200 Yen to 900 Yen. I can see this as being a fringe device, as most people are gravitating towards smartphones and tablets for their everyday use. The one thing it has going for it is Manga. Traditionally, it is not in color anyways, so you don’t lose out on not having a full color screen. The art, panels, and overall experience is fairly solid, and even Toshiba’s line of tablets doesn’t tap into the BookPlace ecosystem. I would recommend this over some of the alternatives available in Japan, such as the BookLive Reader by lideo. PROS Great manga selection CONS Tends to stagger under the weight of zooming on PDF files Rating: 7/10 Review of the Toshiba BookPlace Mono e-Reader is a post from: E-Reader News |
Juvenile and Young Adult Summer Reading- Part 2
| Each generation of readers has fantasy titles they grew up with: in the 1870's, Jules Verne's '20,000 Leagues under the Sea' was published to the delight of the French citizens and eventually readers the world over. The 1930's brought 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of Rings' trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien. The story of 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone' by J. K. Rowling rose to popularity during the 1990's and the boy wizard continues to enthrall children and adults alike. Fantasy is an ever-evolving genre of literature that feels both classic and modern; keeping us reading and thinking about these weird and wonderful stories well after their release.
Fantasy Tales That Soar
The 'Beautiful Creatures' series by Kami Garcia is another National Bestseller, popular with both teen and adult audiences. While it has elements of the 'Twilight' series it's set in the graceful, Old South with mystery, magic and some romance for good measure. Be sure to read the book before seeing the movie!
In keeping with the classics, the tale of Robin Hood and his Gang of Merry Thieves has been re-imagined by A.C. Gaughen with a head strong female leader in 'Scarlet'. Gaughen masterfully provides the reader with a familiar tale of a well-known hero but provides a thrilling, new angle. Other modern fairytales including 'Beastly' by Alex Flinn and 'Wildwood Dancing' by Juliet Marillier also bring new perspectives to beloved and legendary tales.
These titles and many more great summer reads are available for purchase in Content Reserve in the Summer 2012 YA/Juvenile Read-A-likes list.
Renee Lienhard is an Analyst for the Collection Development team at Overdrive  |
Ruckus Adds New Long-Distance Reading Feature with Grant from NSF
| Just when it seems that digital publishing has reached the peak of innovation, someone has to make it even better. Ruckus Media Group, known for its interactive enhanced children’s ebooks, announced that it received grant funding from the National Science Foundation to make a collaborative ebook which will enable parents and their children to read and play embedded games within the same title, even when they are physically separated by distance. “The challenge to collaborative learning comes when the parent is not co-located with the child — when a parent is away from the family home serving in the military or on a business trip, for example,” explained Ruckus in a press release. “Currently eBook platforms do not provide the opportunity for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets to work, in real time, with non-mobile devices like desktop and laptop computers; by automating the process and tapping into the growing ubiquity that networked, mobile technology can address, Ruckus' RTWA technology will provide a parent and child with the experience of being co-located so they can take advantage of the value of synchronous collaboration.” This collaboration between parents and young readers, even while apart, not only fosters a love of reading and establishes the importance of literacy, but can also greatly benefit emerging readers who are still only learning. "Nothing fosters literacy like parents, caregivers and kids reading and sharing books together," says Jason Root, Ruckus' Chief Content Officer. "Storytelling has a rich read-along, read-out-loud heritage. We are honored to have been selected by the NSF to further our idea of utilizing proprietary mobile technology to create remote read-together experiences in real time. Parents may be separated from their children due to military or business assignments or divorce, and grandparents often live in different states or countries — yet they all want to read with their children. Our goal, simply, is to keep families connected through reading, whether they are physically co-located or not." For its part, the NSF funds not only science, but broader spectrum approaches to education. Its annual budget of approximately $7 billion goes to support a number of projects in education, for which it received about 50,000 requests each year.
Ruckus Adds New Long-Distance Reading Feature with Grant from NSF is a post from: E-Reader News |
Kobo Intends to Hype e-Reader Brand on US Public Radio
| Kobo has signed a deal with the National Public Radio system in the United States to start promoting its e-readers and ebooks. The campaign starts on June 3rd and runs until the end of the year and will have brand messages on All Things Considered; Morning Edition; Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me; Weekend Edition; and Ask Me Another. Kobo is hoping to reach more than 6.5 million listeners, with more than 18 million total listener impressions. Most of the brand messages will be pointing listeners to visit their favorite local bookstore that participates with the American Booksellers association. These select locations have deals in place with Ingram to have the e-readers ready to sell in their stores and royalty channels for purchasing ebooks. "This is very big, and very good news," said ABA CEO Oren Teicher. "Responding to the needs of our market, and the direct feedback of ABA bookstores in the e-reader and ebook program, Kobo has taken a significant step in strengthening their brand in the U.S. NPR is the gold standard for reaching our best customers, and it's expected that this program's national reach and penetration will reach markets large and small from coast to coast." Kobo Intends to Hype e-Reader Brand on US Public Radio is a post from: E-Reader News |
The American Library Association Wants to Change eBook Copyright Law
| The American Library Association is getting behind a new treaty that would make books and ebooks more accessible to the blind and people suffering from reading difficulties. ALA wants to get permission to start converting publisher’s books from the normal format to braille and super large fonts. The organization also doesn’t want barriers based on geographical location, the removal of which would allow libraries in Europe and Canada share commonly converted books. ALA is running a petition on the main Whitehouse website to lobby for stronger stance at the summit. “Less than 1% of printed works globally are accessible to the blind. This is because laws around the world bar printed material from being turned into formats useable by the blind and visually impaired, or for such material to be shared across borders.” The petition goes on to say, “That's why 186 countries will soon convene in Morocco to finalize a treaty that would empower the world's nearly 300 million blind citizens with the same rights to read, learn, and earn that the sighted enjoy. However, huge and powerful corporations – many wholly unaffected by the proposed Treaty – are working to fatally weaken it or block its adoption.” Sounds like a great idea, who would be opposed to making ebooks available for the blind? General Electric, Exxon, and the motion picture and publishing industries are opposing the treaty. Emily Sheketoff, executive director of the ALA Washington Office told me exclusively, “Librarians have always been committed to getting information into people's hands in whatever format works for them, and that includes audio and Braille books. In the new modern publishing world, e-readers that are able to translate print to voice provide people with visual disabilities access to a wide range of books. We strongly support the international Treaty for the Blind because we believe that no one should be excluded from information because of where they live.” The American Library Association Wants to Change eBook Copyright Law is a post from: E-Reader News |
Thursday, May 23, 2013
A Second Look at the Sony 13.3 Inch e-Reader
| The Sony 13.3 inch e-Reader is going to usher in a brand new era of high quality e-Paper that allows for a true PDF experience. Sony has exclusivity over this brand new technology they created and worked on, in conjunction with e INK. On the first day of SID Display Week, we were walked through some of the core features, but was that really enough? We received hundreds of emails, comments and messages asking us to look deeper into what this has to offer, we have heard your pleas, and will show you mercy. I won’t rehash the specs of the hardware, you can read all about it HERE. There are some very exciting elements to this device, that no one but us has managed to capture. The PDF experience is the main attraction of the 13.3 inch e-Reader and gives you a true, full page experience. Obviously you can take notes and make annotations by either writing with the stylus or the full virtual keyboard. If you make a note, you can save that page as an independent file. If you have a big PDF document and make all sorts of edits, you can save it as a “Workspace” into its own PDF document. This insures you have your virgin file, with no edits and then your changed document with all of your notes. If you have a large document with many notes, you can actually initiate a new feature that will allow you to look up all of the notes or changes you made on the document. A search feature will bring up a list on the right hand side, listing every single change you have ever made. If you tap on any of them, the page will open. There was some confusion over the Stylus or Digitizer that came bundled with the Sony 13.3 inch e-Reader. Some people were saying the screen would not work without it and there was an air of uncertainty. I found out that you can do everything via touch. The stylus is useful for drawing notes or making changes. You can turn the pages and interact with every single menu with your hand. There is a small button on on the stylus, that acts as an eraser. Click on a body of text or notes, and you can delete it. There is a nice fully featured internet browser, that is accessible via a WIFI connection. Browsing the internet does not cause a massive amount of page-refresh issues, that normally plague lower-end devices. This might be perfect for people who check news websites, such as Good e-Reader! e Ink was very clear that the firmware and overall design might change on the commercial release. I noticed it did not currently have EPUB support, which means you will not be able to load in your own books. Likely, we will see Sony’s own eBook store loaded on the device, and will allow users to purchase eBooks directly from their regions store. Currently Sony has been opening a number of new online stores in Europe, UK, Australia and many other markets. It would make sense for them to incorporate this into their technologies. Currently, the prototype is at many different events during the next few months. Sony is listening to peoples opinions and incorporating changes into the firmware and hardware. My suggestions were to hot-key the stylus eraser button to do different things. As an example, it would be nice to turn to the next page with a click. I also suggested the ability to pinch and zoom. It seems that you cant make the fonts any larger or increase your zoom levels. This would be essential, as some people prefer bigger fonts or like to focus on specific bits of information.
A Second Look at the Sony 13.3 Inch e-Reader is a post from: E-Reader News |
Wayland preview
| If you’re familiar with the Raspberry Pi desktop experience, you’ll have noticed that windows on the desktop can be a bit slower to move around than you’re used to on your PC or laptop. This is because X, the windowing software (or composition protocol) that we use, is not optimised to use the graphics core of the BCM2835, the chip at the heart of the Raspberry Pi. All the work is done by the ARM processor instead, which slows things down and leaves the graphics core twiddling its thumbs. That graphics core is extremely powerful, so we’re working on putting it to good use to fix the issue. We’ve made the decision to bypass X completely. Over the past few months we’ve been working with our friends at Collabora to implement the open-source Wayland composition protocol on top of the BCM2835 hardware video scaler (HVS). The HVS is a very powerful piece of hardware, with a scaling throughput of 500 megapixels per second and blending throughput of 1 gigapixel per second. It runs independently of the OpenGL ES hardware, so we can continue to render 3d graphics at the full, very fast rate, even while compositing.  Wayland composited desktop with XWayland and native applications. In comparison to our current X11 desktop environment, Wayland frees the ARM from the burden of stitching together the top level of the composition hierarchy, and allows us to provide some neat features, including non-rectangular windows, fades for windows which don’t have input focus and an Exposé-like scaled window browser (the sort of thing that Mac users will be familiar with). Legacy X applications can still be supported using XWayland. Check out this video from Collabora to see these features in action, and to compare the current state of affairs with the Wayland future. Those non-rectangular shapes? They’re also windows. We’re still working to improve performance and memory consumption, and don’t expect to be able to replace X11 as our default desktop environment until later in the year, but we will be including a technology preview in our next Raspbian release. Until then, this post on Collabora’s website gives some more background. As with PyPy, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has funded this work on Wayland; it’s one of the ways we are trying to give back to the open-source community. Obviously, much of the work on this particular project is Raspberry Pi specific, but there’s a large portion of what’s being done, particularly around X-Wayland and some of the generic effects in Weston, that can be reused on many other platforms. We’re looking forward to being able to push out the full release in the next few months. We hope you like the look of it! |