| Amazon India is trying to draw attention to the Kindle Paperwhite by having authors Ashwin Sanghi and Amish Tripathi hyping the product. Each of the short films captures the respective author sharing his experiences of using the Amazon Kindle and describing the various features which he finds useful for his daily reading. Amazon is really trying to hype their digital bookstore and Kindle e-readers with the new social campaign #crazyforreading.
Amazon India Releases New Kindle Videos is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Friday, February 6, 2015
Amazon India Releases New Kindle Videos
Kobo H2O e-Reader Now Available in Australia and New Zealand
| The Kobo H2O e-reader is now available to purchase in Australia and New Zealand. Angus & Robertson, Bookworld, JB Hi-Fi, and Myer all have it in stock. The Kobo Aura H2O features a 6.8 inch e-ink Carta touchscreen display with a resolution of 1430×1080. Carta Imaging Film offers a 50% improvement in contrast ratio over previous generation of e-Paper displays. This allows for faster page turns and the ability to turn pages in a digital book, without the need of constant screen refreshes. One of the main benefits of the H2O e-Reader is the ability to enjoy eBooks, graphic novels or newspapers in lowlight conditions or complete darkness. Unlike a smartphone or tablet that has an LCD screen that emits light from behind a layer of film, the H2O has five LED lights on the bottom of the bezel. It shines upwards, insuring even light distribution and makes it easier to devour books without eye strain. Kobo has managed to attain the prestigious IP67 certification for their first waterproof device. It will basically allow users to have the e-Reader completely submerged in five meters of water for an thirty minutes, with the MicroUSB and MiscroSD ports closed. This makes the H2O the most complete, well-rounded device the market and eliminates the need to send off your reader to a third party and pay over $60 for them to waterproof it for you. During underwater tests I found that even completely submerged in water, you can still turn pages and access the core functionality. The Kobo H2O is likely the most complete e-reader the Canadian based company has ever released. It is available all over Australia and New Zealand for $229.
Kobo H2O e-Reader Now Available in Australia and New Zealand is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Business Traveler Gives Homeless Man a Kindle
| An unidentified man, who travels to Las Vegas often for business, gave a homeless man a Kindle e-reader so that he could read more books. On his most recent visit, the samaritan spoke with the homeless man, named Paul, about his book. Through this conversation, the man found out that Paul loved to read, but he only read the same book repeatedly. “I just asked him if he liked to read,” the man tells The Huffington Post. “He said he loved to but that he had been reading that one book over and over for a while now.” In order to share the love of reading the man dove into his bag and pulled out his trusty Kindle e-reader and gave it to Paul. The anonymous donor mentioned on Reddit that the Kindle has more than 200 books by William Falkner, Ernest Hemmingway, Cormac McCarthy and George R.R. Martin. What is the rational for giving a homeless man an e-reader full of books? In a Reddit post, the man using the username 'mjuad' said he had also been down on his luck in the past, “I make really good money and I have been at the bottom. I try to help out the homeless whenever I can with non-monetary means. Business Traveler Gives Homeless Man a Kindle is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Line Manga Hits 10 Million Downloads
| Line is a popular messaging app in Japan where users can enjoy games, fortune telling and even enjoy discount coupons! Since 2012, Line has accumulated over 120 million users! In 2013 Line Corporation added a brand new service to it’s list: Line Manga. Yes, the company entered the mobile e-book business for IOS and Android devices, being backed up by some of the biggest publishers such as Shueish, Shogakukan and Kodansha, to name a few. With already 30,000 manga readily available, Line users can buy manga using virtual coins that can be earned in a variety of different ways, the most common being to simply share the manga you are reading to your Time Line which can earn you up to 10 coins per share, once per day. The first ten pages could also be read for free for many of the manga on the app. As of February 6th, 2015, Line has just hit it’s 10 million manga downloads and have garnered sales of 4.9 billion yen or $41,186,852 US. The most popular genres are romantic comedies at 33%, action, 12% and Horror-mystery at 9% of popularity. In addition to commemorate the record breaking 10 million manga downloads, a list of manga such as "Saint Young Men", "Space Brothers" and "Chihayafuru" to name a few, has become free in the app store! Many people in the manga and e-comics industry are going to be surprised that Line has quietly become a juggernaut. The company rarely gets mentioned when the subject of digital distribution comes up, with most of the industries attention focused on Amazon and Kobo. Line Manga Hits 10 Million Downloads is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Great Expectations is Free Kindle eBook, Audiobook Combo for February
| Every month since last June when Amazon added audiobook support and syncing to Kindle apps, aka Whispersync for Voice, they’ve been giving away a free ebook and audiobook combination each month to help promote this exclusive feature. The free title for February is Charles Dickens’s classic Great Expectations. Make sure to check the box under […] |
Charlotte’s Web e-Book Finally Available March 7th
| Charlotte's Web is a seminal book in most peoples lives and so far has been unavailable as an e-book. This is poised to change March 7th 2015 when Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little and The Trumpet of the Swan will be available to purchase at all online bookstores. E.B White died in 1985, well before the e-book revolution swept the globe and disrupted traditional bookstores. His granddaughter Martha White has been overseeing his estate ever since. She told the Associated Press that family members had worried electronic sales would hurt business for their preferred format, paper. “After discussing this with our agent (Amanda Urban), it’s become apparent to us that e-books complement sales of paper books, instead of replacing sales,” White said. “The print books of ‘Stuart Little’ and ‘Charlotte’s Web’ have been selling strongly, and we felt like it was time to allow the books into the market in other formats.” Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo have been going crazy on social media the last few days promoting Charlotte's Web and the sequel to the Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill a Mockingbird that will be released as an e-book July 2015. Charlotte's Web e-Book Finally Available March 7th is a post from: Good e-Reader |
To Kill a Mockingbird Read-Alikes
| Here at OverDrive, we're fangirling hard over the announcement of a sequel to Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. We're guessing that you and your library patrons are, too. Seriously, who isn't?! Sadly, July 14th (the sequel's expected date) is still months away. To help tide you over until then, our staff librarians have curated a list of To Kill a Mockingbird read-alikes. Check out the highlights below and then view the entire list in Marketplace. A Time to Kill by John Grisham | Random House Jake Brigance, a young lawyer, struggles to save his client's life and his own when he defends a black man who killed the white men that brutally attacked his daughter. Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt When a fisherman in the Puget Sound area of Washington is found dead in his own nets, a Japanese WWII vet is accused of murder. Wolf Whistle by Lewis Nordan | Algonquin Books An ALA notable book based on the Emmett Till murder, one of the most notorious racial killings of our time.
Click here to view the full Marketplace list.
*Title availability may vary based on platform or region. Michelle Ross is a Collection Development Analyst at OverDrive. |
What Can Super Bowl Ads Tell Digital Magazine Publishers?
|
But an article by Erik J Martin for EContentMag.com explains why this may not translate into the return that advertisers and businesses hope for, as well as offers a mathematical look at how digital advertising in magazines, newspapers, even websites can offer higher returns. First, the bad news: “Results of a recent consumer poll by Genesis Media reveal that 90% of respondents aren’t likely to buy something they saw in a Super Bowl ad, and 75% indicate they don’t recall many Super Bowl spots from last year. Some of this can be attributed to the fact that, currently, about 1 in 3 consumers are probably browsing the web via their tablet/smartphone during the big game, the survey shows. Thirty-five percent of those polled say they prefer online ads to TV commercials, and 32% are more likely to watch an online commercial if it’s relevant to them.” Those ads may be hilarious or heart-warming or even downright confusing, but data is showing that consumers aren’t responding to them, at least not in the immediate purchasing actions. There’s more brand recognition, especially as consumers take to social media outlets like Twitter to discuss, them, but that’s not really the goal. In an interesting note, this year’s highly-ridiculed Nationwide insurance Super Bowl ad became a meme on social media before the game had even ended. Which brings up another of Martin’s points: the high volume of internet use during the live game, indicating that consumers are surfing the web on their mobile devices rather than paying attention to the advertisements. That can be frustrating considering the $4.5 million price tag of a 30-second slot, over and above the typical $1.5 million companies spend to produce a single commercial for the Super Bowl. The article highlights the dollar-by-dollar math involved in opting for digital ad space over a one-time push like the Super Bowl, indicating that there are far better opportunities in things like digital magazines, which have a farther reach over time and can be tailored to a specific audience rather than just to the general population.
What Can Super Bowl Ads Tell Digital Magazine Publishers? is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Clippett News App Takes on Murdoch’s Empire
|
So why should Murdoch be worried about a little digital news app? Because his grandson is the CEO. James MacLeod, whose mother Prudence is Murdoch’s daughter, co-founded the company with his business partner Grace Regan specifically because he had little attraction to the typical print news model. The elder Murdoch has been criticized for a number of practices within his corporation, specifically his belief in the purpose of subscription-only and paywall features surrounding the content of his major papers. While Murdoch supports for-pay access to information, MacLeod’s news app works much the same way that other platforms like Newsbeat do, with small bursts of audio advertising spaced periodically between news segments. One of the other key areas where Murdoch has been criticized but MacLeod seems to have surpassed him is in the ability to reach the newest generation of news consumers. While other Murdoch holdings haven’t yet garnered the ever-savvy millennial market (remember, this is the man who paid $580 million for MySpace, Clippet seems to be taking root and reaching listeners in much the same way that those who prefer visual news have taken to digital magazines and newspapers on their smartphones or tablets, even going so far as to subscribe to unlimited access to content through apps like PressReader. In an article for The Independent, Clippet editor-in-chief Regan commented on how the app stands to overturn what Murdoch’s empire is still struggling to provide: "We've spent a year developing how we produce editorial content. A lot of what we listened to on broadcast hadn't changed for 40 years. There's a set way of presenting news in audio and it's time for it to be updated. It's why our generation isn't connecting with the news."
Clippett News App Takes on Murdoch’s Empire is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Emulation on Raspberry Pi 2
| People have been emulating classic computers and games consoles on Raspberry Pi since we launched back in 2012. For those of us who bough our first hardware in the 1980s, this is a fun way to take a trip down memory lane, but our relatively modest CPU performance restricted us to third- and fourth-generation platforms. Anything with 3d graphics hardware was pretty much out of the question. Since we launched Raspberry Pi 2 at the start of the week, people have started posting videos of emulators for fifth-generation consoles running at full speed. Check these out: I know what I’ll be doing this weekend… (This image is taken from the excellent MGC 2011 demo by retroactive) |
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Plastic Logic Splits Into Two Different Companies
| Plastic Logic is a company in flux, they have yet to secure a meaningful contract to utilize their e-paper and are stuck in an endless loop of research and development. In order to better position themselves for the future, the company has split itself into two autonomous companies. Plastic Logic will remain as an EPD developer and producer and will mainly their factories in Dresden, Germany. Their United Kingdom arm will be now known as FlexEnable and will primarily focus their efforts on licensing out their technology to display makers. Indro Mukerjee Chairman of Plastic Logic said “I believe that the full potential of plastic electronics is now emerging as transformational developments in flexible transistor performance and bold, new concepts drive more and more applications. This, combined with the proven manufacturability and scalability of our transistor technology platform, makes this a defining moment for the industry. I look forward to working with our many partners and colleagues to fulfill the tremendous promise of plastic electronics in this exciting new era.” Recently the e-paper and display industry has been collapsing, which is indicative to tech companies being risk adverse. Pixel QI recently announced bankruptcy and their IP is currently in flux. GT Advanced Technologies went bankrupt after Apple pulled out of the deal that would have seen sapphire displays being employed on their next generation of phones and tablets. Liquavista which Amazon purchased from Samsung has never had a single commercially viable product and Mirasol color e-paper has been a massive disappointment. Plastic Logic Splits Into Two Different Companies is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Fall in love with February’s romance sale
| Just in time for the month of love, OverDrive is offering 30-50% off over 2,000 titles from our Romance collection. The sale, on now, continues through February 28, 2015.
The latest from Robyn Carr's popular Thunder Point series, The Homecoming follows Seth Sileski, a former town athlete and scholar. It's been a long time since Seth was the high school star everyone knows him to be, but he has to try to convince the people he cares about, including former flame Iris McKinley, that he's changed for the better. For Fifty Shades of Grey fans, pick up the first book of the Alpha series, Alpha by Jasinda Wilder. The heroine of this story is struggling to pay the bills and make ends meet when suddenly, a check for $10,000 shows up in the mail from an unknown sender. The next month, another check comes and another, for a year. But when a limo arrives at her home with a man claiming it's time to "pay your debt," she realizes that nothing is free.
Don't miss out on this amazing opportunity to expand your digital collection with popular titles from Sourcebooks, Baker Publishing Group, Random House, Hachette, Harlequin, Dreamspinner, NLA Digital, HarperCollins and more! See more content on sale at http://partners.overdrive.com/content-sales. *Some titles in lists may have limited regional or platform availability. Emma Kanagaki is a Collection Development Analyst with OverDrive. |
Kobo Set to Inherit 100,000 Blinkbox Books Customer Accounts
| Once again Kobo is going to be the beneficiary of another failed ebook business like they were last year when Sony decided to close their ebook stores in North America, Europe, and Australia. Tesco’s blinkbox Books will be closing for good on February 28th, 2015. This comes after an anticipated agreement with Waterstones to purchase […] |
Benchmarking Raspberry Pi 2
| If you follow us on Twitter, you’ll notice that I put a call out earlier today for people who’d benchmarked their Raspberry Pi 2 – I wanted to be able to share some benchmarking results with you this afternoon.
(Get well soon, Martin!) Our old friend Dave Hunt (click on that link – it’ll take you to some of Dave’s projects, which are among the most beautiful we’ve seen made with a Raspberry Pi) has done some thorough benchmarking against a range of other devices. Click on the table to learn more and to see some very illuminating graphs. The good folks at Adafruit have also been busy benchmarking, this time against the B+, and they also found themselves coming up with some really impressive results (a 7x improvement in some cases); click on the image to learn more. Finally, here’s a really nice side-by-side comparison of the browser experience of the old B+ and a shiny new Pi 2. I recognise that second website Marco Barisione visits. |
Magazine Media in the Digital Publishing Era
|
One particular panel at the conference included executives from Rodale, Conde Nast, Time, Meredith, and Hearst Publishing, and the question was posed to those industry leaders. "You don't define yourself by your distribution vehicle and the magazine industry did that for too long,” answered Joe Ripp, CEO of Time, Inc. Caysey Welton, in an article on the conference for FolioMag.com, made a poignant observation on Ripp’s response: “He makes a compelling point, but it doesn't really answer the question. It's true that most magazine brands are doing a lot more than producing a print or digital magazine. But, at the end of the day, magazines are still the core product for most brands. What's more, how does adding the word ‘media’ redefine the industry? By definition magazines are media; so adding the word is redundant and doesn't actually speak to what's happening, which is that brands and companies have more competition for eyeballs than ever before so they are building audiences across multiple platforms and extending themselves beyond content. In turn, that is disrupting the tried and true business model that magazines operated within for roughly a century.” The observation is especially interesting given the rise in popularity of digital magazines and their subscription apps. Zinio, for example, announced a new library partnership this morning that will bring nearly 300 magazine titles to library patrons with free access; leading all-you-can eat and library subscription app PressReader has upped that number to over 1,000 titles. With such a selection of content to choose from, is the magazine publishing sector keeping up, or is this a situation such as affects the book publishing space, in which a handful of major publishers control the content and therefore don’t feel the pressure to adapt and keep up? According to Welton, the answer is yes. “There seems to be an implicit need to stay connected to the core product that built these five major publishing companies, and the industry—magazines. That's where things get a little dicey. Magazines, while still the bread and butter for most, will continue to decline in terms of where they fit into the revenue pie. Ripp admitted that, but said, ‘We need to invest in new things that will offset that [decline].'”
Magazine Media in the Digital Publishing Era is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Backlash Against Mockingbird Sequel as Concerns for Author’s Status Come Out
|
Reports from various news sources have noted the coincidental timing in the death of the author’s long-time attorney and older sister, Alice Lee, who by many accounts was the instrumental force behind guarding the author’s privacy and career. Alice Lee retired at the age of 100 and passed away only a few months ago, leaving another attorney in her practice to serve her place as the safeguard of Harper Lee’s interests and career. Now, attorney Tonja Carter reportedly advocates on behalf of the author, but that relationship has come under fire for a number of recent events, including one in which the author accidentally signed away her rights to her original work while the attorney was looking on. One Gawker article outlined in great detail some suspicious activity involving the author’s copyrights, lawsuits and letters that intended to represent the author but did not in fact represent her true feelings, and even visitation privileges from the author’s oldest friends being formally denied in writing. The article takes pains to point out a very strange relationship, as this attorney is a cousin of Truman Capote, Lee’s one-time best friend before the two became very publicly estranged. Essentially, critics of the pending release aren’t at issue with its content or its quality, but of the fact that they do not believe the author herself would ever have allowed its publication if she were in better health and had better care watching over her interests. Lee is reportedly nearly blind and deaf and has lived in a care facility since a stroke in 2007, and some people close to her have reported she suffers from dementia. Critics have argued that this book never would have become public if Alice were still alive to protect her sister, her status as the author’s former attorney notwithstanding. Despite official-looking statements that supposedly give the author’s blessing and cooperation on the publication, there are some differences this time around, one of the most noted being the instant access to formats that this title will offer. Lee was notoriously against an ebook edition of To Kill a Mockingbird, and only acquiesced to a digital publication last year–again, after her sister Alice retired from practicing law and Tonja Carter took over Lee’s affairs. There are already a number of conflicting reports surrounding the publication of this book, the author’s state of mind and health, and other aspects of this would-be controversy. Go Set a Watchmen is already available for pre-order in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook, and is currently the number one bestselling title on Amazon.
Backlash Against Mockingbird Sequel as Concerns for Author’s Status Come Out is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Free! – Eternal Summer 14th Episode Preview
| While Free! – Eternal Summer may have ended last September, that doesn’t mean the fun is entirely over. A preview of the special “14th episode” has been released. Collectively known as ‘the swimming anime’, Free! is a staple for all anime viewers. Some watch it for the story, some watch it for the character relationships, and some watch it just to say they’ve watched it. Whatever your reasoning, you’ll be happy to see the familiar faces in this fun, lighthearted episode. It stars our favourite Iwatobi and Samezuka boys in an all-out survival water-gun fight. The preview already promises the things we’re used to seeing from Free!, like overdramatic moments and a lot of subtext. The episode also hints at character interactions we might not have seen before, mixing up the teams and forcing them into unlikely allies. Currently, Funimation has the rights to the second season only, and are working on the English dub. Whether they acquire the first season is still up in the air, as Discotek Media recently licensed the first season for subtitled DVD release. Crunchyroll currently has both seasons available. The 14th episode will be included with the 7th and final DVD bundle of Free! – Eternal Summer, which ships out on March 18th. Take a peek below and see a preview of your last time with the swimming boys!
Free! – Eternal Summer 14th Episode Preview is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Anime Studio Story Now Available on Android
| Have you ever wanted to star in your own anime TV show? Well, with Kairosoft studios new game, "Anime Studio Story", you now have the power to be the star of your own show! As the title suggests, your goal is to create the best anime you can! To achieve these goals, you first create the stat of your show and then it’s all about gaining a popular fan base. The game play allows the player to help build up their character’s charisma by making him or her win the rankings of different categories such as "Popular with kids" or "Dateability", so in the end, it isn’t just about being a cool star but by also being a nicely rounded person. But what is a star without their team? As the owner of a studio, you are also given the choice to upgrade and replace new gear, hiring new staff and add on other departments to your studio to have a better chance at making a hit anime. Add on a library, a motion capture room and theatres for previewing purposes! The goal is to make a quality anime and you’ll need everything you can get to help win those awards and be the top of the show lists. If you’re a fan of simulation games or of Kairosoft them self, you can grab a copy of Anime Studio Story from Google Play for $4.99 Anime Studio Story Now Available on Android is a post from: Good e-Reader |
The Impact of Digital Magazine Covers
|
One industry watcher went so far as to call this repeat process “lazy.” According to Chris Bond, Creative Lead, Digital Editions, for Toronto-based TC Media, in an article for TalkingNewMedia.com, "Unlike a print edition, the reader can't pick up the edition and flip through it before deciding to purchase. Cover videos give us the opportunity to give the reader a bit of that ‘flip through’ feeling by bringing to life what they'll get inside. While such elements help to amplify the value of the content, you don't want to overwhelm the reader with too much different kinds of interactivity.” To date, digital magazine distributors and subscription-based apps like PressReader and Zinio have relied on the cover image provided by the publisher, but as the information shows, too often that digital cover is simply a pixelized rendition of the cover the art department already created for paper. But the purpose of the covers is vastly different when the format changes. The cover that was designed to entice a consumer to pick up a print edition at the newsstand can easily give way to a more vibrant, useful digital design.
The Impact of Digital Magazine Covers is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Viz Manga Jump Starts “Kagamigami”
|
The initiative has been going since September. Publications of new manga are simultaneous as the debut in Japan. As Viz works closely with Shueisha, Inc., almost every new manga that comes through them will be covered by Viz here in North America. Not only is Jump Start a great way to keep material fresh and new, it also promotes Viz Manga’s interaction with its readers. We get our own say in what Viz runs, and it’s a two-way street. Readers see what they want and Viz keeps their magazine popular and current. This round of Jump Start begins with Kagamigami – literally meaning “mirror god.” The premise of the manga remains mysterious, only promising a detective story. The manga is based on a one-shot the author, Toshiaki Iwashiro, wrote last year, called Shikigami Twilight Days. The author is also known for penning Psyren, a popular manga that Viz also publishes. The fate of Kagamigami rests in the hands of the viewers. If you like the series and would like it to be a full-time runner in Weekly Shonen Jump, give your feedback! Head over to Viz Manga and complete their viewer survey. Give Kagamigami a jump start of your own. Viz Manga Jump Starts “Kagamigami” is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)