| Visually impaired people have a very hard time when it comes to reading and interacting with the written word around them. A new app developed by the National Federation of the Blind and Ray Kurzweil, a well-known artificial-intelligence scientist and senior Google employee is seeking to remedy this problem. Taking advantage of new pattern recognition and image processing technology, the app allows users to adjust or tilt the camera, and reads printed materials out loud. One feature I really liked was the ability to take pictures of menus, signs or small serial numbers and convert it to text. This text can then be blown up using really large fonts to assist people with moderate visual problems. People with refreshable Braille displays can now snap pictures of print documents and display them in Braille near-instantaneously, said NFB spokesman Chris Danielsen. Some early adopters like Mark Feliz said “I just finished sorting today’s mail. What a great feeling I have to be able to accomplish this seemingly trivial task. I didn’t have to interrupt my son or daughter, I didn’t have to wait for a pair of eyes, and my wife does not have to spend time sorting. [...] As my students would say, 'The K-NFB Reader rocks!” Another user, Gordon Luke, tweeted that he was able to use the app to read his polling card for the Scottish Referendum. The KNFB Reader app was designed for the Apple iPhone and an Android version is currently in the works.
New iOS App Gives Sight to the Blind is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Saturday, September 20, 2014
New iOS App Gives Sight to the Blind
Kindle Voyage in High Demand, Shipping Date Moves 5 Weeks Farther Away
| The Kindle Voyage might be overpriced, but there appears to be plenty of demand for Amazon’s latest new Kindle, as shipping dates for pre-orders continue to slip farther and farther away. Three days ago when Amazon first started accepting pre-orders for the new Kindle Voyage, the release date was listed as October 21st. And if […] |
Amazon Allows Family Sharing for Purchases
| One of the joys of reading has always been the ability to share books with your loved ones –how many times have you found a new favourite book that you can’t wait to discuss with the people around you? While there have been band-aid solutions and workarounds for a while now, being able to share digital book purchases from Amazon hasn’t been possible… until now! Amazon’s new Family Library feature includes support for household sharing that extends to books, apps, Prime Instant videos, audiobooks, and games. Taking their existing Kindle loan program a step further (that only allows books to be loaned once and for a limited time period), the Family Library will give up to six users the ability to share content (allowing two adults to manage up to four children). Cleverly, this feature will work on Kindle devices (including the Kindle Fire phones, tablets, and e-ink readers), but will also extend to any third-party device running Amazon’s apps. While I do appreciate their need to limit the number of people the app can share with, the 2 adults/4 children number seems a bit arbitrary. I’ve always liked the approach that says ‘anybody using the same home network’, but I may be alone on this one. Along with the Family Library announcement, Amazon also added the ability to create user profiles for Kindle devices (building on the FreeTime feature they already released that creates kid-safe sections of their tablets). This is a very nice feature for any families that share devices, allowing each user to save their preferences for things like screen brightness and progress through each book or video they have on the go. Movies, music, and television shows are not included in the Family Library, but for the moment we will take what we can get! They may have to re-think that choice though, when competing services like those offered by Apple do include this content as well. Do family sharing features like this make you more likely to choose an Amazon device (or even just use their app)?
Amazon Allows Family Sharing for Purchases is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Top 5 eBooks of the Summer
| The Summer months have officially drawn to a close and Fall is now upon us. There has been plenty of excellent fiction and non-fiction titles that kept us all busy at the cottage, beach or just curled up on the couch. Today, I take a look at the top five eBooks that riveted me the most. In the video below, I cover the entire list and give you my prospective on each one.
Top 5 eBooks of the Summer is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Friday, September 19, 2014
Everything You want to Know about the Kindle Voyage
| Many companies involved in the e-reader sector are paying attention to what Amazon has created with the new Kindle Voyage. This new device has a number of innovative hardware features such as Page Press and the front-lite controlled by an ambient light sensor. Amazon has also developed exciting new software that even allows you share content with family members. Has Amazon set the bar so high now that no one else can compete? The Kindle Voyage features a six inch e-ink carta display with a resolution of 1430 x 1080. It has 300 PPI, which is the highest we have ever seen for an e-reader. The upcoming Kobo H20 has a 6.8 inch screen with the same resolution but a lower 265ppi. The Barnes and Noble Nook Glowlight is the most affordable one, but only has a resolution of 1024 x 758 and 212 PPI. Lets face it, people are used to interacting with touhscreen smartphones and tablets on a daily basis. All prior Kindle models had a sunken screen and employed infrared touch. The Voyage has the screen completely flush with the bezel, which is the same sort of tech that the Kobo Aura and Tolino Shine used. A capacitive touchscreen allows for better interaction and better pinch and zoom capabilities. Instead of physical page turn buttons, the new Kindle Voyage has a feature called PagePress. This is a custom-designed force sensor made of carbon and silver, which reacts to a subtle increase of pressure, triggers a page-turn, and provides a haptic response only your thumb can perceive. Because PagePress has no moving parts, the haptics provide you with the most minimal indication that you have pressed the button, to reduce distraction from reading. The Kindle Paperwhite 2 had one of the best illuminated screens in the world. Unlike tablets and smartphones that have light emitting from behind the screen, most e-readers have five small LED lights on the bottom of the bezel that project light evenly access the screen. Many companies got this technology wrong, by having splotches all over the screen, or by a pale blue hue, as seen on the Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight. The new adaptive front light automatically adjusts the brightness of the display based on your environment, and can even be fine-tuned further to your personal preferences. When reading in the dark, the adaptive front light slowly lowers the display's brightness over time to match the way the eye responds to darkness." According to The Verge “The ambient setting is actually smarter than you’d expect. If it detects you’re reading in the dark — say, in bed — it will slowly lower the brightness. The idea is that your eyes naturally adjust to darkness over time, so what seems bright enough at first will be too bright once your pupils dilate. It’s a thoughtful, clever feature, and Amazon also says that you can fine tune the behavior if you don’t like the default.” Sure, the hardware is really good on the new Voyage, but what improvements has Amazon made on software front? Likely the most important one is the Kindle Family Library, which allows users connect their Amazon accounts to share content with family members. The new feature "links your Amazon account to that of your spouse or partner so you can easily share apps, games, audiobooks, books, and Prime Instant Video content," according to the company. What is even better about the sharing program is that Amazon says it will work across Amazon devices and Amazon's third-party apps for platforms including iOS and Android. It can link the accounts of two adults, who can, in turn, manage up to four child accounts. Amazon has also improved their internal searching feature to work smoother when browsing the Kindle Store to discover new books. It previews results based on your past purchases and GoodReads. In addition Amazon has added a small timer on the books you are reading. Based on your reading habits it will let you know how long it will take you to complete the chapter or the book itself. Take THAT traditional page numbers! I really like the About the Book function, which tells you all about the author and if the eBook apart of an established series. Amazon has many advantages over their competitors. Apple sees the iBooks business as an afterthought. During their entire iPhone event they never mentioned their bookstore once. Barnes and Noble is floundering, continuing to lose money and is still piggy backing technology from late last year. Kobo is going to release their H20 e-reader very soon and is likely going to generate strong revenue. Many of the smaller companies such as Onyx, Ectaco, Tolino, Bookeen and Pocketbook are very hard to come by. They are mainly sold by small websites in Poland, France or Russia. Shipping alone to the US or UK is enough to frighten off any prospective buyers. When you buy the Voyage e-reader you are going to have access to over 600,000 titles, by legitimate bestselling authors and indie ones. It has arguably the best eBook social networking site, in the form of GoodReads firmly integrated into the entire eBook discovery experience. I think one of the big strengths of Amazon, that no one really talks about is their user review system. Whenever someone leaves a written review, its automatically populated in their e-readers, tablets, apps or websites. Companies like Kobo fetch their reviews from 3rd parties, and even their Android app is comprised of reviews left just on that specific platform.
Everything You want to Know about the Kindle Voyage is a post from: Good e-Reader |
NEW! Engage your readers with curated collections
| Did you know that you can now curate your own themed collections of digital titles and publish them right to your public-facing website? This is an exciting new way to tap into your curatorial expertise, showcase your digital offerings, and engage with readers who appreciate hand-picked recommendations. Libraries and schools have already started putting together wonderful curated collections using this new feature, like:
Once you've switched to curate in Marketplace, you'll be able to build collections of titles that you own and then publish them immediately to select locations on your public-facing website. If your public-facing site offers multiple languages, you'll be able to enter a translated name and description for each collection so that you can publish curated collections in every language you offer. You can find illustrated, step-by-step instructions for creating, editing, publishing, and removing curated collections in the "CURATE" section of the Marketplace User Guide (located in Marketplace under the SUPPORT tab). We can't wait to see what you create! Carrie Smith is a Technical Writer at OverDrive.  |
Does Amazon Prime have 50 Million Members?
| Amazon is one of those companies that never divulges specific dollar amounts or how many eBooks they have sold. During the holiday season last year they strayed from the normal PR blackouts and proclaimed that tens of millions of members were members of Prime. This got annalists salivating, and we now have potential figures that give us an accurate portrayal of Amazon Primes worldwide numbers. RBC Capital conducted a research note yesterday and Mark Mahaney said RBC is now estimating that 30 million and 40 million in the U.S. and 40 million to 50 million globally are members of Amazon Prime. Most of this data comes from a new survey that RBC conducted from 4,000 Amazon customers and found that 37% were current Prime members. According to a recent survey by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners The Amazon Prime has become a significant drivers of Amazon sales, even in light of the recent Amazon Prime price increase from $79 to $99. That means by 2016, the $20 price bump could generate incremental revenue of as much as $1.7 billion. “Prime members spend twice as much, as the rest of Amazon's customers," said CIRP co-founder Mike Levin. Does Amazon Prime have 50 Million Members? is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Kindle Comparison Table Updated
| This is a quick note to mention that I’ve updated the Kindle Comparison Table with all the new Kindle models currently being offered. The table lists all the older Kindle models for reference too. There are so many different Kindle models available that’s hard to keep track of them all. The chart helps keep things […] |
How to Download Nook eBooks Now That B&N has Removed the Option
| It looks like B&N is intent on ticking off what little Nook customers they have left. Lots of reports are coming out online, and in Barnes and Noble’s own Nook support forum, about how B&N has removed the option to download Nook ebooks to a computer for backup from their website. Many people are reacting […] |
World Maker Faire and PyConUK
| It's been quiet around Pi Towers lately. Quiet and disquieting, rather like standing in your nan's best front room when you were a kid and really needing a wee but were too afraid to break the silence. But we have good and exciting reasons for our quietude: we've all been busy preparing for two of our biggest events of the year. This weekend the education team is spreading it's feelers of learning goodness around the world, from the Midlands to East Coast America. Carrie Anne, Dave and Ben are at PyConUK while Rachel and I, along with James (our Director of Hardware), were beaten with a sock full of oranges until we sobbingly agreed to go to World Maker Faire New York. The Maker Faire contingent will be joining our friends on the Pimoroni stand, demoing all sorts of goodies both new and old; selling shiny swag; giving out freebies; and talking and talking until we cough our larynxes into our fifteenth cup of Joe (as my American-English dictionary tells me I should call coffee if I want to be street). Our director of hardware engineering James Adams will be there – he’s giving a talk on What’s next at Raspberry Pi? on [Saturday at 2.30pm according to this / Sunday 2pm according to this] in the NYSCI Auditorium – and Rachel and I will be speaking about digital creativity (details TBA). If you are at Maker Faire do come and visit us. At Maker Faire Bay Area earlier this year it was great to see so many educators and I hope to speak to at least as many in New York. But whatever your interests in Raspberry Pi – from digital creativity to hardware to making stuff (of course!) – we would love to see you.  New swag bags! Grab ‘em while they’re hot Meanwhile Carrie Anne, Dave, Alex and Ben are in Coventry for PyConUK – the UK’s annual Python conference. They’re running Python workshops on Pis, giving talks about Raspberry Pi in education and chatting to teachers, educators and developers in the Python community.  Raspberry Pi team hard at work |
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Top 5 e-Readers of the Summer
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Top 5 e-Readers of the Summer is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Sony Responds to the 10 Page Note Taking Limit on DPTS1
| A few days ago Good e-Reader broke the news that there was a 10 page note taking limit on the Sony Digital Paper DPTS1 e-reader. This prevents people from making a note from scratch and going beyond 10 pages. Today, Sony has responded to this limitation with a promise that a future firmware update will remedy it and also provided us with a 25 page PDF document, that can be used to bypass the limitation. "Sony is highly aware of the 10 page limitation and we already have plans to address this limitation in a forthcoming release of firmware which will be available toward the end of the year. Users will no longer be limited to 10 pages of notes. The improvement will be available to everyone via Over The Air update (or by connecting Digital Paper via USB to the computer)." said a Sony rep. Ray Zwiefelhofer and his team at Worlddox has done some experimentation and they have developed some fun forms and other features from which Sony Digital Paper users might enjoy http://www.worldox.com/products/sony_digital_paper_tools and if you are looking for a 25 page PDF that can be used to take bigger notes, you can download it from HERE. Sony Responds to the 10 Page Note Taking Limit on DPTS1 is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Click here to view the Marketplace cart of these…
 Click here to view the Marketplace cart of these titles and many more.
The Usual Suspects: Guaranteed Bestsellers
Fiction Stephen Eirik Clark – Sweetness #9 In 1973, David Leveraux is a Flavorist-In-Training testing a new artificial sweetener – "Sweetness #9". He notices unusual side effects in the lab animals, but fails to blow the whistle. Years later, Sweetness #9 is America's most popular sweetener and David's family is displaying the same behavior as the lab animals. Is Sweetness #9 to blame, along with David’s failure to stop it? Or are these just symptoms of the American condition?
James Ellroy – Perfidia This crime novel is James Ellroy at his best. On the eve of Pearl Harbor, a Japanese family is discovered dead in their home. The investigation becomes a political storm that throws together and rips apart four members of the LAPD. A Kirkus starred review and one of Vulture's 57 Books to Read This Fall.
Emily St. John Mandel – Station Eleven One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time-from the actor’s early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains-this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor’s first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet. A Kirkus starred review, LibraryReads pick, and one of Amazon's Best Books of the Month.
Joseph O'Neil – The Dog Distraught by a breakup with his long-term girlfriend, the hero of this novel leaves New York to take an unusual job in a strange desert metropolis. In a Dubai at the height of its self-invention as a futuristic Shangri-La, our protagonist struggles with his new position as the “family officer” of the capricious and very rich Batros family. And he struggles, even more helplessly, with the “doghouse,” a seemingly inescapable condition of culpability in which he feels himself constantly trapped–even if he’s just going to the bathroom, or reading e-mail, or scuba diving. Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and selected as one of Publisher's Weekly Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2014
Andrea Portes – Anatomy of a Misfit Mean Girls meets the Perks of Being a Wallflower in Andrea Portes's first young adult novel. Anika Dragomir is the third most popular girl at Pound High School, but inside she knows she's a freak. She can't stop thinking about loner Logan McDonough, but he's off-limits. Will Anika ignore her feelings and keep her social status? Or will she follow her heart and become a pariah? Selected as OverDrive's Big Library Read for Fall 2014.
Jason Segal & Kirsten Miller – Nightmares! Jason Segel, multitalented actor, writer, and musician, teams up with New York Times bestselling author Kirsten Miller for the hilariously frightening middle-grade novel Nightmares!. Charlie Laird hates his new stepmom, her creepy house that his family has moved into, and the nightmares that plague him every night. When his nightmares appear in the real world, Charlie and his friends must face their fears to save their town.
Jane Smiley – Some Luck On their farm in Denby, Iowa, Rosanna and Walter Langdon abide by time-honored values that they pass on to their five wildly different yet equally remarkable children: Frank, the brilliant, stubborn first-born; Joe, whose love of animals makes him the natural heir to his family’s land; Lillian, an angelic child who enters a fairy-tale marriage with a man only she will fully know; Henry, the bookworm who’s not afraid to be different; and Claire, who earns the highest place in her father’s heart. Selected as one of The Most Anticipated Novels of Fall 2014 by Kirkus.
Sarah Waters – The Paying Guests After World War I, an impoverished widow Mrs. Wray and her daughter, Frances are obliged to take in lodgers. With the arrival of a modern young couple of the “clerk class,” the routines of the house will be shaken up in unexpected ways. Little do the Wrays know just how profoundly their new tenants will alter the course of Frances’s life–or, as passions mount and frustration gathers, how far-reaching, and how devastating, the disturbances will be. One of Amazon's Best Books of the Month, selected as one of The Most Anticipated Novels of Fall 2014 by Kirkus, and one of Huffington Post's Best Books for Fall 2014.
Meg Wolitzer – Belzhar Acclaimed novelist Meg Wolitzer's first book for teens explores loss and love. Jam Gallahue is sent to The Wooden Barn, a therapeutic boarding school, to recover from her boyfriend's death. At The Wooden Barn, a journaling assignment restores the untainted past and reunites Jam with her boyfriend. But there are hidden truths on Jam’s path to reclaim her loss. A starred Kirkus review, selected as one of Publisher's Weekly Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2014, and one of Huffington Post's Best Books for Fall 2014.
Nonfiction Karen Abbot – Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy The best-selling author of Sin in the Second City and American Rose is back to tackle Civil War history. In Liar, Temptress, Solider, Spy, Abbot tells the spellbinding stories of Belle Boyd, Emma Edmonds, Rose O'Neal Greenhow, and Elizabeth Van Lew. Abbott’s pulse-quickening narrative weaves the adventures of these four forgotten daredevils into the tumultuous landscape of a broken America, evoking a secret world that will surprise even the most avid enthusiasts of Civil War–era history. One of Flavorwire's 25 Must-Read Books for the Fall and Amazon's Best Books of the Month.
Cristin O'keefe Aptowicz- Dr. Mütter’s Marvels A mesmerizing biography of the brilliant and eccentric medical innovator who revolutionized American surgery and founded the country’s most famous museum of medical oddities.In the narrative spirit of The Devil in the White City, Dr. Mütter’s Marvels interweaves an eye-opening portrait of nineteenth-century medicine with the riveting biography of a man once described as the “P. T. Barnum of the surgery room." A Kirkus starred review and one of Amazon's Best Books of the Month.
Benedict Carey – How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens In the tradition of The Power of Habit and Thinking, Fast and Slow comes a practical, playful, and endlessly fascinating guide to what we really know about learning and memory today–and how we can apply it to our own lives.
Betty Halbreich – I'll Drink to That: A Life in Style, with a Twist Eighty-six-year-old Betty Halbreich is a true original. A tough broad who could have stepped straight out of Stephen Sondheim’s repertoire, she has spent nearly forty years as the legendary personal shopper at Bergdorf Goodman, where she works with socialites, stars, and ordinary women off the street. She is trusted by the most discriminating persons–including Hollywood’s top stylists–to tell them what looks best. But Halbreich’s personal transformation from a cosseted young girl to a fearless truth teller is the greatest makeover of her career. One of Amazon's Best Books of the Month.
Steven Johnson – How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World Johnson examines unexpected connections between seemingly unrelated fields: how the invention of air-conditioning enabled the largest migration of human beings in the history of the species–to cities such as Dubai or Phoenix, which would otherwise be virtually uninhabitable; how pendulum clocks helped trigger the industrial revolution. Accompanied by a major six-part television series on PBS, How We Got to Now is the story of collaborative networks building the modern world, written in the provocative, informative, and engaging style that has earned Johnson fans around the globe. Selected as one of 10 Nonfiction Books You'll Be Hearing About This Fall by Kirkus.
Jeffrey Kluger – The Narcissist Next Door Narcissists are everywhere. There are millions of them in the United States alone: entertainers, politicians, business people, your neighbors. Recognizing and understanding them is crucial to your not being overtaken by them, says Jeffrey Kluger, in his provocative new book about this insidious disorder. Highly readable and deeply engaging, this book helps us understand narcissism and narcissists more fully.
Alexander Lee – The Ugly Renaissance: Sex, Greed, Violence and Depravity in an Age of Beauty A fascinating and counterintuitive portrait of the sordid, hidden world behind the amazing cultural innovations of the Italian Renaissance.The Ugly Renaissance is a delightfully debauched tour of the hidden, gritty, real world of the Renaissance that brilliantly explores the extraordinary contradictions behind some of the most celebrated artworks of all time.
Christian Rudder – Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One's Looking) What is the secret to a stable marriage? How many gay people are still in the closet? Do we truly live in a postracial society? Has Twitter made us dumber? These are just a few of the questions Christian Rudder answers in Dataclysm, a smart, funny, irreverent look at how we act when we think no one’s looking. One of Vulture's 57 Books to Read This Fall.
Sheila Weller – The News Sorority: Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, Christiane Amanpour – and the (Ongoing, Imperfect, Complicated) Triumph of Women in TV News The News Sorority takes us behind the scenes as never before to track Sawyer’s, Couric’s, and Amanpour’s ascendance to the highest ranks of the media elite, showing that the compelling desire to report the news–a drive born of curiosity, empathy, and humanity–must be matched by guts, awesome competitive fervor, and rare strategic savvy. Named one of Flavorwire's 25 Must-Read Books For the Fall.
Click here to view the Marketplace cart of these titles and many more.
*Geographical rights may vary by title.  |
Instapaper for iOS Goes Freemium, Gets Updates
| With the arrival of iOS 8, apps are starting to release updates to take advantage of the new features. Instapaper is no exception, adding several new features this week but also moving to a freemium business model. What this means for users is that the universal iOS app can now be downloaded for free –with the old subscription package being renamed to Instapaper Premium. Reviewing a list of the new key features should persuade you that Instapaper continues to be a productivity app leader:
– Save an article with a single tap (functionality that the Android and web versions of the app have enjoyed previously, but was noticeably absent in the iOS version until now) – Unified browse brings articles from your favourite editors or friends into a single feed – Link to your friends’ profiles based on the articles that they like – View your article saves from today which will now appear in the Notification Center (and read with a single tap) Once you give Instapaper a try, you will likely agree that a Premium subscription is worth the price of admission (currently listed at $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year). Premium members will enjoy unlimited highlights (free users only get 5 highlights per month) and text-to-speech playlists of saved articles. If you happen to be an existing subscriber, you will be automatically upgraded to the new premium service at your current rate. If you purchased Instapaper in the past, you will enjoy a free month of premium service as compensation.
Instapaper for iOS Goes Freemium, Gets Updates is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Surf the Web via SMS Using Cosmos for Android
| The next time you are waiting in line somewhere and trying to pass the time for 28 seconds, complaining about the speed of the Internet on your smartphone… keep in mind that there are a lot of countries in the world where there are no proper data connections. As smartphone manufacturers start building less expensive Android One devices in many of these countries, finding ways around the lack of data plans is important. Fortunately Cosmos for Android is an app that could help –letting users browse the web using SMS text messages. Sure it’s cumbersome, and definitely slower, but it’s nonetheless possible. How it works is simple in concept: visit a web URL using the app, which will then send a SMS request to the Cosmos backend. The response will be a compressed package containing the source of the website being requested (minus the interactive pieces, CSS, and JavaScript). It may not look pretty or quite as the web developers intended, but the jist of the content should be there. There are other considerations, of course –such as needing an unlimited text messaging plan, given the number of messages that are likely to be flying back and forth if you are using Cosmos. Having this extra SMS traffic may also delay other text messages Cosmos should be released by the end of the month. You may want to give the app a try even if you do have a data plan, you never know when you might be without 3G or LTE and needing to find out a piece of important information (you know, very important things such as settling a bet made around a campfire, or trying to find out the actual rules to a board game that you are playing at the cabin).
Surf the Web via SMS Using Cosmos for Android is a post from: Good e-Reader |
The New $79 Kindle is Basically a Downgraded Kindle Touch From 3 Years Ago
| It’s interesting to see how technology evolves over the years. Some technologies advance a lot faster than others. Some, like E Ink, seem to evolve at a snail’s pace. The new entry-level $79 Kindle is a good example of just how slow innovation is in the field of dedicated ebook readers and the electronic ink […] |
Barnes and Noble Suspends the Ability to Download Nook eBooks
| Barnes and Noble has just removed the ability to download eBooks that you have bought from the online Nook Store. They did this so users could not download purchased content locally on their PC and either strip it of the encryption or use a 3rd party reading app. The Barnes and Noble customer care division has sent out a tweet, letting people know that this is their new policy and not a bug. “The ability to sideload NOOK purchased content has been discontinued. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.” If you own a Nook e-reader or tablet, you will continue to enjoy purchasing and reading books right on your device. Ditto for people who use the official Nook app for Windows, Android or iOS. This issue mainly affects people who use an internet web-browser and accesses their Nook Library. In the past, a download option would appear, but now this has been removed. There are some rare cases where select eBook titles still have the download button, but include the text “We’re working on making this title available on NOOK for Web. In the meantime, read it on our free NOOK Reading Apps.” I also confirmed that graphic novels still have the download button, because they are currently incompatible with the Nook for Web HTML5 based e-reading app. The elimination of downloading titles to your PC will mainly effect the “power users” that tend to use 3rd party e-reading apps for their mobile devices or strip the DRM completely and bypass Nook security. Barnes and Noble is currently in the process of totally revising their website for purchasing content and also the way Nook books are presented. In early 2015 it will be formally unveiled and likely this change to downloading content is likely a precursor to reading everything exclusively online. Barnes and Noble Suspends the Ability to Download Nook eBooks is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Is the Kindle Voyage Too Overpriced?
| Yesterday when Amazon unveiled the new Kindle Voyage ebook reader, initial impressions were positive given the new super high-resolution screen and fancy page turning sensors, but there’s definitely a bit of sticker shock to go along with the new Kindle Voyage as well. Amazon is clearly aiming for the “premium” dedicated ereader market, but have […] |
Hands-on Videos of Kindle Voyage and New Kindle Touch
| Yesterday after Amazon officially announced the new Kindle Voyage and entry-level Kindle Touch, a few tech sites posted some early hands-on videos showing the new Kindles in action. Actually pretty much everyone focuses on the Kindle Voyage; the new entry-level Kindle is barely mentioned at all anywhere, and is being treated as more of an […] |
Editing Photos? Remember to Keep Your Originals!
When editing photos, some changes are irreversible. Luckily, there's an easy way to ensure you'll be able to undo any change! |