| MagPi 15 is out now. As usual it’s so full of Raspberry Pi goodness that I don’t know where to start: build a custom OS; XML; AdvMAME; our good friend James H riffing on camera stuff; real time clock; Arduino; RiscOS and more. I insist that you download it immediately and soak it up like a nice big mug of beef tea.  A cover like this needs a soundtrack. You have our permission to weep with nostalgic joy until your tear ducts dessicate. |
Friday, August 2, 2013
MagPi 15 is out and it’s a good ‘un
New Asus MeMo Pad HD 7 is a Nexus 7 Alternative for $149
| Asus has been busy making 7-inch tablets lately. Not only do they provide the hardware for the 2nd generation Google Nexus 7 that was released last week, they are also releasing a new 7-inch tablet under their own brand name called the ASUS MeMO Pad HD 7. You may recall that Asus released a similar [...] |
Guest post #2: Peeping Tom in the toilet with Raspberry Pi
| When Jeroen Danckers sent us a blog post with that title he was on to a winner. And let’s face it, who hasn’t dreamed of putting a computer in the toilet connected to a camera that reports back to a web page whether the toilet is occupied or not. I have. —  Should I stay or should I go? The trick with the webcam In all its simplicity we put a webcam in our toilet. It luckily doesn't shoot any compromising images, but measures the light intensity instead. The cam takes a boring shot of the wall in the front hall and then grants a brightness value to each pixel with PHP-GD. From those -100 or +100 values we calculate the average, which determines if the toilet is taken or not. Almost dark means no toilet action and a lot of light probably means 'danger zone in action'. Or the cleaning lady is making her rounds.  And it also lets you play Tetris while you are otherwise engaged. Technical set-up Toiletcam The calculation of the state of the toilet happens like this:
In the same time the Raspberry Pi offers a local website that refreshes each 5 seconds through an Ajax-call, pulls the current states of the toilets and shows them in a nice lay-out. Surprisingly handy innovations on the working floor Next up on our list of innovations is the realtime level of the coffeepot! |
Thursday, August 1, 2013
End-User Support Made Easier!
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Recently, we re-launched Content Reserve as Marketplace. With this revamp came improved reports, a stream-lined site user interface design, and many new features. As if this wasn't cool enough, we've decided to pack in some extra tools to make your life easier, too!
In addition to being the place to submit support requests, your Support tab is now home to the new End-User Management section.
From analyzing the most common issues reported to our support staff, we have developed ways to directly assist your users with returning titles, reactivating download links, and managing holds – all this without having to contact OverDrive Support Services.
For the complete instructions on using the End-User Management features, be sure to check out the Marketplace User Manual, available under Quick help on the Support tab in Marketplace. If you would like to see a demonstration of these features, as well as receive additional helpful hints for assisting your users, you can find the User Assistance Training and Top Ten Solutions training sessions on the Learning Center. While you're there, you can take a look at any of our other On Demand training modules.
Stay tuned, we are always looking to improve the OverDrive experience for you and your users by listening to your feedback and providing new features.
Justin Noszek is a Support Specialist with OverDrive
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Meet the Staff: Scott
Curious about the people who teach our online classes? Here's your chance to learn about one of them. |
Laika: a hardware control platform for the Raspberry Pi
| Laika is a modular add-on board for the Raspberry Pi that allows control of motors, switches, lamps, robots and more. There are plenty of great hardware control boards out there for the Raspberry Pi but we especially like this one because of the educational focus.There’s lots more information on what it can do and how you can use it on their Kickstarter page.  How a learning environment should look In 2014 computing is coming back into the UK school curriculum. And whilst this makes many of us run outside at random intervals to do Snoopy’s Happy Dance we shouldn’t underestimate the challenges involved. Computing is effectively a brand new subject and there are currently few specialist teachers, so the easier we can make it to teach (and learn) computing in an accessible, engaging and creative way the better. This is especially true in primary school. So anyone creating educational resources to go along with their hardware or software makes us happy and the Laika team are doing just that. Here they are running a robotics workshop at Highgate School in London. You can read more about Laika here and if you’d like to get hold of one for yourself or for your school then their Kickstarter has just a few days left to run. We think that Laika has great educational potential but of course you don’t have to be in school to start learning.  A Laika-Pi powered rover wandering the icy wastes of Europa, the smallest of the Galilean moons. |
Microsoft Launches Office App For Android
| Microsoft has released a new app that will introduce its Office suite to Android. The app can be downloaded free from the Google Play Store, though the catch lies elsewhere. The app can only be accesses by those who have subscribed to Microsoft's Office 365 Home Premium and ProPlus services. Also, the app will only be of relevance to smartphones users as the same is yet to be launched for tablet devices, though it is the latter community that could have benefited the most given the larger screen area. Further, the app will only work on devices running Android 4.0 and higher. Also, the Office for Android app will not allow all the operations that one is used to doing with the Office suite in a PC. Rather, the app can be seen to play only a supporting role where users can carry on with their work on Office documents such as editing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files that won't alter the formatting or the data. Also, users won't have to be connected to the internet to carry on with the editing and the files will be saved once the user is online. Another cool feature of the app is that it will allow the user to create new Word and Excel files on the smartphones. Users will be able to save the changes at SkyDrive or send it via email. Subscribing to Office 365 demands an annual fee of $100 and will allow the users to install the Office app on up to five devices, which includes PCs, smartphones, and even Macs. Microsoft's move to introduce an Office app to Android comes soon after its iOS version was launched a few weeks ago. You can download it today from the Good e-Reader Android App Store. Microsoft Launches Office App For Android is a post from: E-Reader News |
Borders Bookstore to Launch Once More in Singapore
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Borders bookstore is re-launching in Singapore and will open its doors during the holiday season. Local book retailer Popular Holdings has purchased the rights to Borders and will be launching a single store in Jurong. The last of Borders stores closed down in 2011 and many local readers are really excited about their return. Vincent Ng commented "To me, Borders advocated reading as a way of life. Unlike other places, they allowed customers to browse through the books instead of sealing them up, which helped me discover many new authors. Also, I hope Popular will not turn Borders into an assessment-books bookstore." Amid rising costs and the growing popularity of internet book retailers in Singapore, a number of stores have closed. Page One shuttered its Vivocity outlet last year. The hope is bringing back an iconic bookstore chain will draw more readers into the stores and hopefully act as a staging ground to consolidate the local physical book industry. Borders Bookstore to Launch Once More in Singapore is a post from: E-Reader News |
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Microsoft Launches Office App For Android
| Microsoft has released a new app that will introduce its Office suite to Android. The app can be downloaded free from the Google Play Store though the catch lies elsewhere. The app can only be accesses by those who have subscribed to Microsoft’s Office 365 Home Premium and ProPlus service. Also, the app will only be of relevance to smartphones users as the same is yet to be launched for tablet devices though it is the latter community that could have benefitted the most given the larger screen area. Further, the app will only work on devices running Android 4.0 and higher. Also, the Office for Android app will not allow all the operations that one is used to doing with the Office suite in a PC. Rather, the app can be seen to play only a supporting role where users can carry on with their work on Office documents such as editing Word, Excel and PowerPoint files that won't alter the formatting or the data. Also, users won't have to be connected to the internet to carry on with the editing and the files will be saved once the user is online. Another cool feature of the app is that it will allow the user to create new Word and Excel files on the smartphones. Users will be able to save the changes at SkyDrive or send it via email. Subscribing to Office 365 demands an annual fee of $100 and will allow the users to install the Office app on up to 5 devices which includes PCs, smartphones and even Macs. Microsoft's move to introduce an Office app to Android comes soon after its iOS version was launched a few weeks ago. You can download it today from the Good e-Reader Android App Store!
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Borders Bookstore to Launch Once More in Singapore
| Borders bookstore is re-launching in Singapore and will open its doors during the holiday season. Local book retailer Popular Holdings has purchased the rights to Borders and will be launching a single store in Jurong. The last of Borders stores closed down in 2011 and many local readers are really excited about their return. Vincent Ng commented "To me, Borders advocated reading as a way of life. Unlike other places, they allowed customers to browse through the books instead of sealing them up, which helped me discover many new authors. Also, I hope Popular will not turn Borders into an assessment-books bookstore.” Amid rising costs and the growing popularity of internet book retailers in Singapore, a number of stores have closed. Page One shuttered its Vivocity outlet last year. The hope is bringing back an iconic bookstore chain will draw more readers into the stores and hopefully act as a staging ground to consolidate the local physical book industry. |
The Sun Launches Innovative Digital Paywall
| The Sun is currently Britain’s largest newspaper and has the highest dedicated readership base. The company is launching a new digital subscription package today that turns their online website into a Paywall, where you have to take out a membership to read their articles. What is very exciting, is how the Sun is taking a departure from the standard way news companies make money online and doing some fairly innovative things. The Sun is not focusing exclusively on digital, although it does offer a low monthly rate to subscribe to their website. Instead, they want to promote the fact that they don’t want to sell less newspapers to get some quick digital sales. Instead, every issue of the newspaper will have a code that can be redeemed to get a free digital edition of the paper or read the news within their official mobile apps. If you redeem 20 codes in any given month, you are being given the next month for free. Derek Brown, digital editor at the Sun, told us: "We're not becoming digital first, we realize that we still sell a lot of newspapers every day – we don't want print readers to feel that they are missing out on something." Subscribing to the digital newspaper, is seemingly going far beyond just getting news on the website. Readers will also get access to the Sun+ Goals app. It will show highlights from all 380 English Premier matches all season, making them available at 5.15pm on Saturday, five hours earlier than the BBC’s Match of the Day. FA Cup rights will be added in 2014. The other major component is called Sun+ Perks. It promises at least £200 of savings and giveaways each month such as music and eBook downloads. The Sun is doing some fairly excellent things when it comes to launching their new digital subscription packages. The average news agency is just selling access to the internet websites and not giving free access to their news apps. The Sun, instead of doing what everyone else is doing, is blazing their own trail and taking the “companion” approach to mobile. |
Harlequin eBook Sales Account for 24.5% of Total Revenue
| Harlequin is seeing strong growth selling digital books with 24.5% of their global revenue in Q2 2013. This is some fairly solid growth with their entire line of digital products accounting for 20% of revenue in Q2 2012. Overall, revenue declined 7% and they made $99.5 million. One of the reasons why Harlequin is doing so well in the digital arena is because of their expanded selection of non-fiction titles. They are really trying to broaden their approach from authors like Robyn Carr and Susan Mallery. Instead, they are getting lots of sales with second quarter darlings The Virgin Diet and The Beauty Detox Foods. Harlequin saves money on their digital only eBooks for their various splinter companies, like Karina Press. Instead of giving them an advance, they give some fairly high royalty rates. This gives authors an easier time with getting a book onto the market, and more eBooks can be generated in a shorter period of time, compared to print. Digital is also on the upward trend with more readers buying disposable books on their Kindle, instead of cluttering their bookshelves with more trashy novels. |
Nokia Tablet Powered By Snapdragon 800 Chip Makes an Appearance
| Nokia perhaps is among the last of the well-known brands to not have ventured into the tablet space though behind the scene rumblings of the same continues unabated. The latest to have stoked the Nokia tablet fire once more is the unexpected appearance of the same in a GFXBench website. However, before anyone gets too excited about the prospects of a tablet appearing from the Nokia camp, let's not forget the test results can be tampered with by just about anyone. Anyway, what the test results have thrown up is a device codenamed RX-114 that is powered by the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chip coupled to an Adreno 330 graphics processor, a combination that no doubt will make for a superior performance credential. However, it is the number of pixels mentioned, 1371 x 771 that has led to some confusion. This since the above number of pixels along the longitude and latitude of the device points to something that is a lot similar to the Surface tablet that sports a pixel count of 1366 x 768. Also, with that many pixels spread across a 10.6 inch display of the Surface, what seems likely is that the Nokia tablet too sports a 10 inch display. Or maybe Nokia has just been working on a bigger smartphone or a 7 inch tablet with a longish profile packing in a higher number of pixels to make for a scintillating display. Of course all of the above are mere speculation at the moment and it's not known for sure if the tablet exists in real at all or it has just been a prototype device that Nokia had developed for testing purposes. Any which way it is, a tablet from the Finnish company has been long due. Let's hope we get to hear something concrete on this anytime soon which will be a nice break from the series of rumors we have been treated with so far. Meanwhile, in what can be considered an interesting coincidence, the Snapdragon 800 chip found mention for another high profile tablet, the new Amazon Kindle Fire range today.
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Camera board documentation
| James Hughes, last seen at the helm of a VW Camper Van heading for Dorset, has been sweating over comprehensive documentation for the Raspberry Pi camera board for some weeks now. You can download the pdf here. It’s worth printing it off; there’s a lot of meat in there. We’ll be linking to this and other useful Pi documentation in a sticky post at the top of each board in the forums in the near future.  Clive and I (plus lots of coffee, a salad from the cafe across the road and a USB analyser) compete for Most Keanu-y rotoscopiness, using the camera’s built-in Sketch effect. Click to for the documentation to find out how to produce something like this yourself. You’ll find examples, troubleshooting tips, full lists of available options, effects and modes, and much more in the pdf.  We got a bit effects-happy this afternoon. This is, in fact, me, and not someone in the mask from Scream, taken using the camera’s onboard gpen effect (we should probably have worked on adjusting the exposure a bit too, but we were in a hurry). Click to download the camera documentation. We’ll be updating the documentation with more information as the software evolves. Look out for James’ piece in August’s MagPi (which should be released later in the week) to find out more about advanced use of the camera. A spot of housekeeping: I’m off on my summer holidays tomorrow. Clive will be babysitting the blog. Please be nice to him. Toodlepip! |
A Closer Look at Sony’s First Lighted eBook Reader
| Sony is expected to announce a new ebook reader in August, the Sony PRS-T3. We already know that it has a 6″ screen and has a slightly different design than last year’s PRS-T2 based on the few photos that turned up in the FCC paperwork. One thing the photos and paperwork don’t reveal, however, is [...] |
B&N and Amazon offering Bestselling eBooks in the UK for .99p
| Barnes and Noble announced a new promotion in the UK yesterday that gives some solid eBook deals. The company is offering a copious amount of bestselling eBooks for only .99p until Thursday. Amazon, not to be outdone, is price matching every title and readers are winning with some low-prices. The list of discounted titles is headlined by And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini. It currently dominates the top position of most international bestseller list and is rising in the charts, thanks to these deals. Other solid buys include One Hundred Names by Cecelia Ahern, Revenge Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger, The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes and the Game of Thrones by George R R Martin. Most of the titles available are all being sold by major publishers and do not include the normal public domain books that normally populate sales like this. How can these digital companies offer the eBook for .99p, when the normal hardcover edition is being sold for over $20.00? You can thank the European Commission and the US Justice Department for striking down the agency pricing model. Readers win, bookstores, maybe not so much. B&N and Amazon offering Bestselling eBooks in the UK for .99p is a post from: E-Reader News |
Harlequin eBook Sales Account for 24.5% of Total Revenue
| Harlequin is seeing strong growth selling digital books with 24.5% of their global revenue in Q2 2013. This is some fairly solid growth with their entire line of digital products accounting for 20% of revenue in Q2 2012. Overall, revenue declined 7% and they made $99.5 million. One of the reasons why Harlequin is doing so well in the digital arena is because of their expanded selection of non-fiction titles. They are really trying to broaden their approach from authors like Robyn Carr and Susan Mallery. Instead, they are getting lots of sales with second quarter darlings The Virgin Diet and The Beauty Detox Foods. Harlequin saves money on their digital only eBooks for their various splinter companies, like Karina Press. Instead of giving them an advance, they give some fairly high royalty rates. This gives authors an easier time with getting a book onto the market, and more eBooks can be generated in a shorter period of time, compared to print. Digital is also on the upward trend with more readers buying disposable books on their Kindle, instead of cluttering their bookshelves with more trashy novels. Harlequin eBook Sales Account for 24.5% of Total Revenue is a post from: E-Reader News |
Instagram for Blackberry 10 is Not Accepting Picture Uploads
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Instagram has changed their developer API tools to not accept uploaded images outside of their official tools. This spells bad news for users that have loaded in the Android version of the app on their Z10 or Q10 smartphones. This means if you take a picture and upload it, it seems to disappear into the ether. An Instagram spokesman recently confirmed that "We recently made an update to the systems that we use to fight spam to help prevent future attacks and increase security." The change will affect any apps accessing Instagram outside of the official API no matter if they are using Android, iOS, Windows Phone 8 or otherwise. It remains to be seen if Instagram is only testing new security changes in their API or whether it is apart of a new long-term strategy to secure their service to facilitate further growth. In the meantime, the only Blackberry users who are able to get this to work, are the ones who installed the leaked Jellybean 10.2 firmware update. Instagram for Blackberry 10 is Not Accepting Picture Uploads is a post from: E-Reader News |
Instagram for Blackberry 10 is Not Accepting Picture Uploads
| Instagram has changed their developer API tools to not accept uploaded images outside of their official tools. This spells bad news for users that have loaded in the Android version of the app on their Z10 or Q10 smartphones. This means if you take a picture and upload it, it seems to disappear into the ether. An Instagram spokesman recently confirmed that “We recently made an update to the systems that we use to fight spam to help prevent future attacks and increase security.” The change will affect any apps accessing Instagram outside of the official API no matter if they are using Android, iOS, Windows Phone 8 or otherwise. It remains to be seen if Instagram is only testing new security changes in their API or whether it is apart of a new long-term strategy to secure their service to facilitate further growth. In the meantime, the only Blackberry users who are able to get this to work, are the ones who installed the leaked Jellybean 10.2 firmware update. |
B&N and Amazon Battling for Summer Readers in the UK
| Barnes and Noble announced a new promotion in the UK yesterday that gives some solid eBook deals. The company is offering a copious amount of bestselling eBooks for only .99p until Thursday. Amazon, not to be outdone, is price matching every title and readers are winning with some low-prices. The list of discounted titles is headlined by And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini. It currently dominates the top position of most international bestseller list and is rising in the charts, thanks to these deals. Other solid buys include One Hundred Names by Cecelia Ahern, Revenge Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger, The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes and the Game of Thrones by George R R Martin. Most of the titles available are all being sold by major publishers and do not include the normal public domain books that normally populate sales like this. How can these digital companies offer the eBook for .99p, when the normal hardcover edition is being sold for over $20.00? You can thank the European Commission and the US Justice Department for striking down the agency pricing model. Readers win, bookstores, maybe not so much. |
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