| The main media lobby behind Spain's new intellectual property law, which caused Google to announce that it was to close Google News in Spain, has backpedaled and proclaimed it wants the Spanish government and European competition authorities to intervene to stop Google shutting down the service. New legislation requires every Spanish publication to charge services like Google News for showing even the smallest snippet from their publications, whether they want to or not This has prompted Google to shut down the service on December 15th for every newspaper, blog and online journal originating in Spain. The Spanish Newspaper Publishers' Association issued a statement Friday night, stating that Google News was "not just the closure of another service given its dominant market position", recognizing that Google's decision: "will undoubtedly have a negative impact on citizens and Spanish businesses". Major media publications stand to gain the most with Google News shutting down, as the general public will have fewer choices to discover start-ups and small news outlets. It looks like the majority of small and medium sized companies are ramping up their efforts to try and get Google to remain open for business, as the aggregation service is pivotal for new users and to monetize their websites with online advertising. When it comes down to it, the media lobby organization bit off more than it could chew. They want the best of both worlds, lots of search engine traffic, but want Google to conform to their narrow views. Spanish Publishers Don’t want Google News to Shut Down is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Sunday, December 14, 2014
Spanish Publishers Don’t want Google News to Shut Down
Saturday, December 13, 2014
Amazon Brings Kindle Unlimited to France and Brazil
| Amazon has been steadily adding more counties to their Kindle Unlimited ebook subscription service since it first launched in the United States this past July. Now Kindle Unlimited has become available in both France and Brazil. That makes seven countries that now have access to KU. The other five include the United States, United Kingdom, […] |
Friday, December 12, 2014
Amazon Kindle Unlimited Launches in France
| Amazon Kindle Unlimited is an all you can read platform for a low monthly price. Five months after its launch in the United States, the Amazon platform has expanded to France. The Unlimited program currently has 20,000 French language titles, which is fairly paltry compared to the 200,000 Amazon currently sells. This goes to show that for the most part, publishers are wary of giving their content away with low returns. In addition, there are 700,000 English eBooks. Amazon is hyping a number of bestsellers included in Unlimited, such as the Harry Potter saga, the series I stop by Eyrolles, Rush by Maya Banks, The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and Grandma in Nettles by Aurélie Valognes. English include The Hunger Games and Life of Pi. Until January French customers can try out the Unlimited program for €1 and after the promotional period is over, it will cost €10 a month. I don’t think e-Book subscription systems, like Kindle Unlimited is sustainable, except as loss-leaders. Oyster and Scribd rely on venture funding in order to keep their businesses afloat. Their losses today can only be turned into profits tomorrow if they pay publishers and authors less per "read" (which on average is $2) or if they substantially increase their monthly fee to their users or they maintain a high number of subscribers who don't use their services much. Amazon Kindle Unlimited Launches in France is a post from: Good e-Reader |
The Maritime Industry Embraces eBooks and Digital Newspapers
| The Maritime industry is not the first thing you would think of when the conversation of digital books and newspapers comes up. There are over 70,000 cruise, cargo, oil rigs and military vessels in operation globally. The vast majority of staff that keep these operations running properly are workers from the Philippines, Malaysia, Russia and India. Many of the corporations that bankroll everything are putting a new emphasis on crew welfare and retention by investing in digital. Commercial vessels really need to keep their crew entertained so they don’t jump ship to the competition. Companies spend a lot of money training them and are heavily invested in keeping them happy. Sadly, in a world full of streaming movies and audio services, it doesn’t work when it comes to being entertained on the high seas. If the crew wants to download small bits of content they have to insure their parent company is dealing with satellite internet providers such as VSAT and IMTECH. Internet access is purchased in blocks, where ships have very specific limits on how much data is available. In order to download eBooks, magazines or newspapers they have to be accessed in off-peak hours, when the internet is more reliable and not congested. Satellite obviously, is not indicative to downloading lots of content and new companies are meeting the challenge with innovative solutions. If you are a crewman on a military submarine or apart of the US Air Force, your options to access leisure content is severely hampered. Internet access is certainly not the norm, due to security concerns, which traditionally made reading eBooks unfeasible. This has prompted the US Navy and Air Face to partner with Findaway World for the NERD and Aero e-Readers. The devices are shipped out with hundreds of eBooks and audiobook titles. There is no USB port or wireless internet access, so they are about as locked down as you can get. The US Navy also has established ties with Overdrive since 2007 for their Knowledge Online initiative. There is currently 400 titles, with heavy emphasis on foreign language and graphic novels. Foreign language learning audio books are consistently one of the highest circulating subjects in the Navy's collection, and the addition of eBooks in more than 10 languages was highly anticipated. Popular graphic novels, such as "The Time Machine" from Stone Arch books, and best-selling "Dummies" books for investing, grant writing, and small business, are also available to download. Vancouver based PressReader currently has a catalog of over 3,000 newspapers and magazines. They have developed a new offline system that will allow vessels to download content in non-peak hours and distribute it to smartphones and tablets via a shipwide WIFI network. Maritime companies are starting to select publications that are relevant to the nationalities of their workers and getting the top three or four titles from those countries. This would allow a boatswain from the Philippines to get free access to the Manila Times, UNO Magazine, and Daily Inquirer to read at their leisure. Providing perks like free newspapers and magazines gives workers and officers a taste of home, without having to spend any of their own money, its the corporate cash after all that pays for it. Getting your staff to read safety guides, regulations, weather reports and orientation information is a trial and tribulation. The print editions are often destroyed in the heat and humidity or easily get lost. This has given digital distribution a new emphasis, and PressReader Offline supports the ability for companies to upload their documents in PDF form, to be downloaded to tablets and phones on-demand. The entire commercial maritime industry and military is trying to take advantage of the digital revolution. Crew are normally aboard for months at a time and things can get rather tedious. Can you imagine if you had the same 100 song playlist on repeat for months at a time? No matter how cool it is, it gets redundant. This is why everyone is turning to e-Books, digital magazines and newspapers to break the tedium. The Maritime Industry Embraces eBooks and Digital Newspapers is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Where Should You Self-Publish an e-Book?
| One of the top concerns on most indie authors minds is what company to self-publish with. There are some strong benefits with throwing down exclusively with Amazon, but others want a more global reach for their content. The Publishing Service Index has just released their annual December report, which lists all of the companies out there that specialize in self-publishing. It goes into great detail on their overall reach and how many people have published with them. The most significant change to this report is that that Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing has slipped to third and also reflects the growing discontent self-published authors have with the introduction of Amazon Unlimited and recent communications regarding the new VAT law in Europe for 2015. Also, not on the list at all is Kobo Writing Life and Barnes and Noble Nook Press. As much as these companies are trying to promote the service, authors simply are bypassing them altogether. DIY – Do-it-yourself bespoke services Where Should You Self-Publish an e-Book? is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Dr. Seuss e-Books Available via Overdrive
| Overdrive has just unveiled their new Dr. Seuss e-Book collection that is available to Canadian and US libraries. The big selling point is that these titles are available in EPUB3, but none of the content has interactive elements. If you are expecting multimedia enhancements, prepare to be let down, these e-Books all just have fixed layouts. Dr. Seuss titles, published by Random House Children's Books, include some of the most beloved children's titles of all time. Titles include The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, The Lorax, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Oh the Places You'll Go! and many more. See the complete list and sample an excerpt here. "No children's collection is complete without Dr. Seuss, and now public and school libraries can have these popular titles as eBooks," said Karen Estrovich, director of collection development at OverDrive. "We're excited to make these available in EPUB3 fixed-layout, as the author intended, to preserve the original flow and experience that we all are familiar with." Dr. Seuss titles are available on a one-copy per-user basis in OverDrive Read, OverDrive's browser-based reader. Once the title is checked out in OverDrive Read, there is no app to install and the title becomes instantly available in the browser without downloading. Dr. Seuss e-Books Available via Overdrive is a post from: Good e-Reader |
How to take Screenshots on the Kindle Voyage
| The ability to take screenshots is not just relegated to phones or tablets, but your Kindle Voyage too. It is rather simple to take a screenshot of anything displayed on your screen. Today, we show you exactly how to do it in another Good e-Reader Video Tutorial. Taking screenshots just needs you to click on opposing corners on the very edge of the touchscreen. You need to ideally do it on the top right and bottom left, or vice versa. When you take a screenshot the screen will briefly flash, there is no confirmation message. If you want to access your list of screenshots, you simply need to plug your Voyage into your PC with the USB cable. All pictures are on the root drive, so you don’t need to go hunting for it. How to take Screenshots on the Kindle Voyage is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Christmas shopping guide
| Christmas is coming, and we’re all panicking because we haven’t bought all the presents yet. (My Dad’s difficult.) Waking up at 3am in a cold sweat because you don’t know what to buy the Raspberry Pi fan in your life? Sweat no longer: we’re here to help! Raspberry Pi kitsIf you want a Raspberry Pi on its own, you can buy it from one of our manufacturing distributors, from our Swag Store, and from many other vendors. There are also some great kits available if you want to get all the extra bits and bobs you’ll need in one box. We sell a starter kit containing a lot of goodies: it’s £75. If all the extras in there make things a bit rich for your blood, check out The Pi Hut’s kit, which doesn’t have the shiny PiBow case, the special bag, the stickers or the keyboard or the mouse, but has everything else you’ll need. It’s £42. Specialist starter kits for people wanting to use their Pi as a media centre, or focusing on using the camera board, are available from CPC in the UK, or MCM in the United States. BooksThere is now a terrifying number of books available on the Raspberry Pi – check out the electronics or computing section of your local bookshop. Some of our favourites are: The Raspberry Pi User Guide – this book’s written by our very own Eben Upton and by Gareth Halfacree; it’s the canonical guide to the Raspberry Pi, from the person who created it. This link goes to the latest edition, which covers things we’ve done this year like the Model B+. Sticking with the “books wot we wrote” theme, here’s Carrie Anne’s Adventures in Raspberry Pi. Aimed at kids aged 11 and up (younger kids will still get a lot out of it, but we recommend Mum or Dad lends a hand), we think it’s the biggest seller of the Raspberry Pi books so far this year; and we highly recommend it. If you’re an adult who doesn’t mind the branding, Raspberry Pi for Dummies is a superb guide to the device and what you can do with it. It’s good for beginners, but it’ll take you a long way – much further than you might guess from the title! You can find many, many more Pi books at Amazon. Add-on boards and funOne of my favourite add-ons of the year was a late entrant: it only came out last week. Pimoroni’s Skywriter is a motion and distance sensor HAT for your Pi – and you can do this sort of thing with it (click the button to turn the sound on). It’s £16. Pimoroni’s other add-on boards are among our very favourites: Pibrella is only £10, and offers you lots of inputs and outputs; we use it a lot in our own teaching sessions. It’s a fantastic way to get started with electronics: it’ll allow you to make noises, flash lights, drive motors and much more. The Unicorn HAT is just magic. And it’s £18. That’s all we have to say about it. Babbage the Bear is our mascot, and he’s had a very busy couple of years, going to near-space, having a camera stuck up his bum and becoming an Internet of Things device, and being cuddled by lots of small children. You can buy him at our Swag Store. He’s £9. Today, we’re launching a NEW accessory for Babbage: the Babbage Backpack Game Kit. For £8.10 you can buy a cute little backpack for Babbage, filled with everything you’ll need to make an electronic memory game and instructions (no soldering required) – a perfect stocking-filler and a really great little project for electronics beginners. Plus, it makes Babbage look super-chic.
Ryan Walmsley set up his own business to make and sell electronics more than a year ago, and he’s still only 18. The RyanTeck Budget Robotics Kit is fantastic – it’s affordable at only £24.49, and contains everything you need to get started with robotics – all you need to add is a Raspberry Pi. Pi&Bash is another new offering, this time from Piventor. THIS BOARD REQUIRES SOME SOLDERING, so it’s not ideal for first-timers. But it’s really good fun if you do fancy getting the soldering iron out, with traffic light LEDs, push buttons, a little backlit LCD screen, a thermometer, and digital and analogue inputs and outputs. It’s only £23.
The CamJam EduKit is the perfect stocking filler at only £5. It’s available from The Pi Hut, and it’s my absolute favourite learning kit of the year, coming bundled with worksheets to get you building electronics projects from scratch – or at least it was until the CamJam EduKit 2: Sensors came out last week, for a simply ridiculous £7. The Sensors kit contains everything you need to make a bedroom burglar alarm, a tea-temperature-tester, a device to test whether the light in your fridge really goes off when you shut the door, and much more, with worksheets. It’s a wonderful, wonderful, versatile little kit, and we think that the CamJam team and The Pi Hut have done an amazing job in getting it out for such an affordable price. Finally, for those not worried to get a soldering iron out (soldering is easy – it’s really worth having a go), you can get an entire Christmas tree for your Pi for only £6. I saw several of these in action at the Cambridge Raspberry Jam last weekend; great for a festive addition to your workbench. Here’s one on a Model A+.
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Dr. Seuss eBooks now available in OverDrive Marketplace
Beginning today, These wondrous stories There are dozens of options The font is the same We hope our excitement Young readers will love Discover these stories eReading is green So help save the planet **Title availability may vary by geographic location. For further information click here.**
Adam Sockel is a Marketing Communications Specialist and the resident Seuss expert at OverDrive. |
Why Do Some People Avoid Commercial e-Readers?
| The Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble Nook and Kobo have become strong brand names and have been ubiquitous with the very concept of e-reading. The vast majority of people are engaging in reading digital books are often turning to these three devices in North America and Western Europe. Amazon currently controls 75% of all eBook sales in these markets and the worldwide industry totals $14.5 billion. Many people are blissfully unaware that there are dark forces surrounding your commercial e-reader. The three major companies involved in the e-reader sector all sell eBooks that tell them everything about you and your reading habits. They can tell how long it took you to complete a book and what time of day you are more likely to read. They can monitor your reading progression to see if you gave up on a book a few chapters in or never even opened it up to begin with. These companies have a heavy investment in your personal life in order to email you other product offerings or use your data as a bargaining chip in establishing relationships with international bookstores and distributors. Kobo recently released a new reading report in Canada, UK and Australia. It had some interesting facts, such as Aussies are captivated by mystery novels and they have 63.5% completion rate, meaning the percentage of books that are read from cover-to-cover, compared to Sci-Fi at 56.5%, while Non-Fiction entered at 37.8%. The Goldfinch may have won Donna Tartt the Pulitzer, praised by judges as a novel which "stimulates the mind and touches the heart", but the acclaimed title's 800-odd pages appear to have intimidated British readers, with less than half of those who downloaded it from e-bookseller Kobo making it to the end. The Goldfinch was the 37th bestselling e-Book title of the year but it was only completed by 44.4% of British readers. Kobo speculated that it "likely proved daunting for some due to the length of the novel". Meanwhile in Canada, many people would assume Sunday would seem the most popular day of the week to finish a book, it’s interesting to note that in 2014, 70% of books were actually completed during the week – Monday to Friday. Canadians were likely savoring the last few pages on their commute to and from work. Amazon likely has the largest empire when it comes to monitoring your reading habits. They own Shelfari, which is a social media site, focused on eBooks and statistics. The company bought the largest book discovery site GoodReads and now own a huge percentage of the digital comic industry with the purchase of Comixology. Rarely does Amazon provide public data to the end users, but they use this internally to market to you better and actively give your personal information away to the authorities in China. Commercial e-readers track every single thing you do on the device, in regards to reading books. This has allowed smaller companies to flourish, even if they aren’t capitalizing on the lucrative digital book market. Icarus, Onyx, and Pocketbook are likely the largest players in the international scene that markets their readers all over the world. The big benefit about dealing with these companies is that they have no ulterior motives to capture your personal information, beyond the hardware sale. If you download free books from the internet or strip the DRM from commercial books, you are basically not able to get tracked by the dominant players in the industry. Commercial e-Reader companies are not the only ones to blame for your private reading information falling into the wrong hands, sold to other companies or used as leverage in business dealings.. Adobe recently made headlines when it was discovered they were sending your device ID, full name and everything about the book you bought over the internet in plain text. This opened up the doors for people to develop hacks that could literary take over your Kindle. Does the average reader care if all of their reading habits are being monitored? It is justified to pay less for an e-Book over a print edition for your freedoms to slowly erode? Is this a good case for a movement to return to print over digital? Are people buying a non-mainstream e-reader because they care about privacy or because the hardware is better? Sadly, we might never know the answers to these questions. If you have any thoughts, weigh in below. Why Do Some People Avoid Commercial e-Readers? is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Thursday, December 11, 2014
Amazon’s Hidden & Functional App Store Gets Them Ousted From Google Play
| In September, Amazon updated their Android app such that it was actually a completely functional app store. Flash forward to today, and it appears Google has made Amazon’s signature application un-findable using search in the Play Store (though the Amazon direct link does seem to work, for now). There is a new app in its stead (we presume) called Amazon Shopping that looks pretty much like the old app did, minus the App Store bit. The moral of the story, is that it appears as if Google wasn’t thrilled with Amazon making their digital catalog available for sale in this manner. When asked for a comment, Amazon noted:
Of course, the question that begs asking is if Amazon didn’t think it was doing anything sneaky or against the rules… why did they keep it so hidden? Google hasn’t responded with a comment so far, but it has to be making Android fanatics a little nervous… the search giant seems to be locking things down in a way that labels them more like the thing they hate the most (Apple).
Amazon’s Hidden & Functional App Store Gets Them Ousted From Google Play is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Apple Announces Top eBooks of 2014
| If you are looking for gift to by someone for the holiday season or want to catch up on some reading, Apple has you covered. The iBooksstore has just announced the top free, paid and audiobook titles of 2014. When it comes to purchasing eBooks on the iPhone or iPad, Apple is one of the only retailers that actually sells them. A few years ago Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo all pulled the ability to sell books through their apps, because they did not want to pay Apple a percentage of each book sold. This has relegrated these apps to basically be gloriified e-reading apps for books purchased on other devices or on their websites. With the advent of iOS 8, the Apple bookstore is now preloaded on any new Apple device that is purchased or on older devices that have been automatically upgraded. Fiction The Fault in Our Stars, John Green (Children & Teens) Nonfiction Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt, Michael Lewis (Business & Personal Finance) Free Books Private, Maxine Paetro,James Patterson (Mysteries & Thrillers) Audiobooks Divergent (Unabridged), Veronica Roth (Kids & Young Adults) Apple Announces Top eBooks of 2014 is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Google Announces Top Reading Apps and eBooks of 2014
| Google is in a prime position to give everyone a sense of the most popular news and eBook apps. The Play app store is basically bundled on 85% of every Android phone and tablet on the market. Today, Google has announced the most popular apps, video and music. What is surprising about the top reading apps this year, is that the majority of people are consuming digital news. The New York Times, TMZ, Forbes, Verge and Huffington Post were the most popular reading apps during 2014. The Top eBooks of the year were The Fault in our Stars, Fifty Shades of Grey, Divergent, Twelve Years a Slave and Insurgent. Google Announces Top Reading Apps and eBooks of 2014 is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Kobo Launches 3 e-Books for the Price of 2 Promotion
| Kobo has just launched a new e-Book promotion in Canada that allows readers to buy three digital books for the price of two. This new deal is only applicable to Hachette titles and will be transpiring from now until December 15th. The publisher Hachette Book Group, home to some of the world's bestselling authors, was first off the mark to partner with Kobo on this offer to bring the most passionate readers a selection of top reads such as Burial Rites by Hannah Kent, Lion's Game by Nelson DeMille, Beautiful Day by Elin Hilderbrand, Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple, Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes, and more. Click here to see the full list of Hachette tittles that are included in this promotion, in addition to their imprints, such as Orbit. "This new feature makes it easier for people to enjoy more of the books they want to read at a better price, and we're thrilled to be working with Hachette to launch the program," says Anderson. "As we continue to work with our publisher partners, we know this new capability will prove to be an interesting and effective option to further promote their authors and series." Kobo Launches 3 e-Books for the Price of 2 Promotion is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Weekly eHighlights: Kids & Teens Edition
Click here to view the Marketplace cart of these titles and more.
Picture Books A. Rey – Curious George Windy Delivery – Houghton Mifflin Harcourt eBook Michele B. Slawson – Apple Picking Time – Random House eBook Andrew Zuckerman – Creature ABC – Chronicle Books eBook Michaela Muntean, – Zip! Hop! Pop! And Other Fun Words to Say – Sesame Street eBook Chris Van Allsburg – The Misadventures of Sweetie Pie – Houghton Mifflin Harcourt eBook
Early Readers Tad Hills – Rocket's 100th Day of School – Random House eBook Jennifer Mckerley, illustrated by Paul Mirocha – Amazing Armadillos – Random House eBook
Middle Grades Katherine Applegate – Home of the Brave – Macmillan eBook & Books on Tape audiobook read by Dominic Hoffman Wayne Thomas Batson – Search for the Shadow Key – Thomas Nelson eBook Michael Bond – Love from Paddington – HarperCollins eBook Jason Fry – Curse of the Iris – HarperCollins eBook Joan Holub – Aphrodite the Fair – Simon & Schuster eBook Ace Landers – Emmet's Guide to Being Awesome – Scholastic eBook Nancy Rue – You Can't Sit with Us – Thomas Nelson eBook Kirkpatrick Hill – Bo at Iditarod Creek – Henry Holt and Co. Robert Simpson – Frozen: The Cinestory – HarperCollins eBook Amy K. Nichols – Now That You're Here (Duplexity Part I) – Knopf Books for Young Readers Ages 12 and up. A debut novel that has received great reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, School Library Journal, and VOYA, and a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Much buzz about the "brainy, kickass heroine" and a sci-fi theme that explores theoretical physics.
Teens Molly Cochran – Seduction – Simon & Schuster eBook Skylar Dorset – The Boy with the Hidden Name – Sourcebooks eBook Patricia Dunn – Rebels by Accident – Sourcebooks eBook Lauren Oliver – Alex – HarperCollins eBook James Patterson & Emily Raymond – The Lost – Hachette eBook & Blackstone audiobook read by Spencer Locke and John Glouchevitch Christopher Pike – Black Knight – Simon & Schuster eBook Frank Portman – King Dork Approximately – Random House eBook Sara Shepard – Vicious – HarperCollins eBook Zoe Sugg – Girl Online: The First Novel by Zoella – Simon & Schuster eBook Katie Dale – Little White Lies – Random House eBook. Neil Gaiman, Michael Reaves – InterWorld – HarperTeen Ages 13 and up. Book 1 of a new series, this title is written by powerhouse Neil Gaiman and award-winning scriptwriter and novelist Michael Reaves. Already a New York Times bestseller.
Nonfiction Megan Miller – Minecraft Hacks: Combat Edition: The Unofficial Guide to Tips and Tricks That Other Guides Won't Teach You – Sky Pony Press eBook Mary Pope Osborne – China: Land of the Emperor’s Great Wall: A Nonfiction Companion to Magic Tree House #14: Day of the Dragon King – Random House eBook Oliver Stone – Untold History of the United States, Vol. 1: Young Reader's Ed. – Simon & Schuster eBook Click here to view the Marketplace cart of these titles and more. *Geographical rights may vary by title. |
MagPi issue 29 – out now!
| The MagPi magazine is a free download created by the Raspberry Pi community, for the Raspberry Pi community. Click the link, or on the picture, to visit their website. Here are the editors to explain what’s in this month’s issue:
There’s lots to be going on with here – plenty to get your teeth into over the Christmas break. (And Will Bell demoed his Scratch space arcade game to me a couple of weeks ago – if you don’t love it, you’re dead inside.) Thanks, as always, to Team MagPi – we hope you all have a great Christmas break! |
Google News Excludes Spanish Publishers Due to New Tax Law
| Google News is apart of our lives, it's free to use and includes everything from the world's biggest newspapers to small, local publications and bloggers. Due to new tax laws passed in Spain, Google News is shuttering their doors on December 16th. In October, the Spanish government passed a new copyright law that goes into effect in early January. It imposes fees for online content aggregators such as Google News and Yahoo News. This was chiefly done to to protect the country's print media industry. Known popularly as the "Google Tax", the law requires services that post links and excerpts of news articles to pay a fee to the Association of Editors of Spanish Dailies. Authorities will have the power to fine websites up to $748,000 for linking to pirated content. “This new legislation requires every Spanish publication to charge services like Google News for showing even the smallest snippet from their publications, whether they want to or not,” Richard Gingras, head of Google News, wrote in the post. “As Google News itself makes no money (we do not show any advertising on the site) this new approach is simply not sustainable.” Google News will continue to run in Spain, but will longer aggregate news content from Spanish media sites. It will continue to offer content from the rest of the world, but the lack of local inclusion will be felt by small and medium sized blogs and websites. Even large newspapers will feel the pinch. In November, Germany’s biggest news publisher, Axel Springer, scrapped a move to block Google News from running snippets of articles from its newspapers, saying that the experiment had caused traffic to its sites to plunge 80%. Google News Excludes Spanish Publishers Due to New Tax Law is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Bookshout Partners with South by Southwest for eBooks
| Bookshout has announced that they have partnered with South by Southwest this year. Conference attendees and remote online followers will be able to purchase e-books from key speakers, authors, and panelists. Attendees can purchase e-books exclusively through the BookShout platform. Throughout the week of SXSW, attendees will be able to text-to-buy as well as share interesting content opportunities with their Facebook and Twitter networks. Authors and sponsors will also be able to promote these opportunities to their own audiences, dramatically increasing the reach, interest, marketing, and purchasing opportunities for all. Bookshout has thousands of e-books on their platform and has pioneered the concept of marketing their services towards businesses. Instead of a consumer focused bookstore they partner up with companies to provide coupon codes that can be redeemed online. They recently celebrated a milestone that had them distribute 9.5 million e-book coupons. South by Southwest will be occurring March 13-22, 2015 in Austin, Texas. Bookshout Partners with South by Southwest for eBooks is a post from: Good e-Reader |
What Features Would the Ultimate e-reader Have?
| e-Reader technology has come a long way since the first Kindle hit the market in 2007. Not only have the prices come down from over $300 for your standard six inch device, but e-paper has been polished and more refined. Companies such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo invest copious amounts of money in research and development to give customers the best reading experience possible. But, what would constitute the ultimate e-reader? Good e-Reader has been reviewing dedicated e-ink devices since 2008 and we have really seen the industry grow. The devices in 2014 all offer faster page turns and really high resolution to make reading much more intuitive. We have looked at hundreds of different devices that come out over the years and we really have a sense on what customers want in an e-reader and what features everyone yearns for. Today, we look at the e-paper technology, hardware and features that would capture the imagination of millions of digital readers. The Ultimate e-reader Six inches – The most common screen size of e-readers today is six inches, because its more pocket friendly and many shells bought from China price has come down dramatically. Larger e-readers are possible, but the reason they are so expensive is because all of the internals cost more due to the lack of mass production. 1430 x 1080 resolution – This is currently the benchmark established by the Kindle Voyage for the highest resolution in the world. Most e-readers on the market have 1024 X 758 which look quite a bit dated by 2014-2015 standards. The future of e-readers is super high resolution and at least 300 PPI. e-Ink Mobius – Mobius uses a TFT technology that will enable the development of much lighter and rugged products. Mobius displays can weigh less than 50% of an equivalent glass based TFT. This is particularly important for mobile products requiring larger display areas, such as the Sony Digital Paper and Pocketbook CAD Flex. Capacitive Touchscreen – Many e-readers still employ Neonode IR touchscreen technology which provides a diminished experience for people used to interacting with their smartphones and tablets. The ultimate e-reader would have the same type of capacitive touch with the screen flush with the bezel. Notable e-readers that have this are the Kobo Aura and Tolinio Vision 2. Front-Lit Display (Glowlight) – Smartphones and tablets use LCD screen technology that have the light emitting from behind the screen into your eyes. A new study from the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute shows that a two-hour exposure to electronic devices with self-luminous "backlit" displays causes melatonin suppression, which might lead to delayed bedtimes, especially in teens. Front-Lit displays have 4-6 LED lights that project light evenly across the screen, not into your eyes. The 3rd generation lighting system has been very polished and refined. Flexible rubber housing – Only the Pocketbook CAD and Wexler Flex One have flexible rubber housing and it allows it to be more durable for transportation and daily use. Hybrid Magnesium Alloy – The Kindle Voyage has this new technology on the back , it prevents finger oil from staining it. 1.2 GHZ Duel Core processor – In order for a more optimized experience when opening books, accessing menu features and running apps, a dual core processor is a must. 1 GB of RAM – Many of the most popular e-readers out there only have 128 or 512 MB of RAM. Having additional RAM would step up the performance and allow for larger buffering system for multitasking. SD card – Many e-readers these days forgo the SD card in order to promote their own cloud services. SD Cards are really important because you don’t need to rely on WIFI to download content. Audio – e-Reader companies these days have all abandoned audio in order to provide the lowest cost device possible. The ultimate e-reader would have stereo speakers, preferably Dolby Audio and a 3.55 mm headphone jack. This would allow users to listen to music and audiobooks. Microphone – This would allow people to interact with the e-reader and give voice command prompts. It would also allow people to use the audio chat feature found in apps like Skype or Whatsapp Messenger. Ivonna Text to Speech – One of the big reasons why schools have not embraced e-readers in a big way is because of the lack of accessibility for people who are visually disabled. The Ivonna system would allow every single aspect of the interface to have audio. Disabled people would be able to say “Open Audio Player” and “Play Audiobook X”. If they don’t have any audiobooks they could simply buy e-Books via audio command prompts and then have the books read to them. Camera that takes pictures in e-ink – The Pocketbook Ultra is the only e-reader in the world with a built in camera. It has built in OCR software to be able to scan books or just snap selfies. Sadly, when you take pictures and export them to your computer, they are not in high resolution greyscale e-ink, but full color. The ultimate e-reader would take pictures and export them in black and white. Duel Band WIFI – Wireless internet access has never really changed in e-reader technology and smartphones/tablets have all embraced duel band WIFI. This allows for content to be downloaded faster, such as larger dictionaries or apps. 3G/4G Micro SIM – Amazon is the only company left that still provides data access, so customers can buy eBooks while outside a WIFI zone. Having the ability to buy your own low-cost data plan through your local provider would not limit you anymore and you can buy content on vacation, at the cabin or beach. It would certainly allow for more impulse buys and offload the cost of the data to the customer. Extensive Dictionary Support – Many e-readers ship with a single dictionary, depending on the region you live in. The ultimate e-reader would have all of the major European and Asian languages available to download. Expanded Font Support – Many e-readers only ship with six different font types and 12 variations of size. I think its important to have a lower selection of fonts, to not confuse your average user but borrow a page out of Kobos playbook by allowing users to load in their own fonts they buy or download online. Reading a newspaper is far more effective in Times New Roman, than generic font #8. Android OS – The biggest trend of 2014 has been the shift from Linux based operating systems for e-readers to Android. Icarus, Onyx and Pocketbook have been the only companies laughing modern devices with a vanilla version of Android. This is very important, as it doesn’t lock users down into any one specific ecosystem, but instead gives them freedom. Bluetooth and GPS – There are not many e-readers at all in the world that have GPS and Bluetooth technology, but they should. This would allow users to transfer books from their computer to their e-reader without having to plug it into their PC. It would also allow people to plug in external speakers, like a Beats Pill or keyboard. In addition the GPS aspect would allow people to use new technology to prevent theft. Anti-Theft Software – Taking advantage of the GPS technology in the ultimate e-reader a simple app, such as “Find my e-Reader” would allow people to track down their device if they misplaced or lost it. It would also be able to remotely wipe all personal information if it were to be stolen, limiting the possibilities of identity theft What Features Would the Ultimate e-reader Have? is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Amazon Adds Remote Alarm, Find, Lock and Reset Features to Fire Tablets
| Today I was checking out the Manage Your Devices section at Amazon and noticed some new options under “Device Actions” for Fire Tablets. Maybe I just haven’t been paying close enough attention lately, but there seems to be a whole set of new functions available that I don’t remember ever seeing before, including several remote […] |