10 Free Kindle eBooks & 80% Off Kindle Book Deals – 8/9/15

Here’s a list of ten free Kindle ebooks to get your Sunday started off on the right foot. Amazon is also running a big sale on select Kindle ebooks today only that includes over 70 top-rated books across a variety of genres up to 80% off. All of the ebooks are marked down to $1.99. […]

URL: http://feeds.the-ebook-reader.com/~r/feedburner/cmWU/~3/dtJjWpr_nn0/

Harlequin Audiobooks Now Available for Libraries

Harlequin developed an audiobook imprint back in May and the fruits of their labor have come to fruition. Libraries can now stock up audiobooks from Harlequin starting today. The Harlequin Audio titles will be available through all major library distributors in digital and physical formats," says Sean McManus,  "Our partners, Midwest Tape and Blackstone Audio, will handle the distribution for physical CDs into libraries and Harlequin Audio works directly with all digital distributors." McManus adds that the audiobooks will also be available via streaming services such as Overdrive and the majority of digital library distributors. This is good news for libraries, but whats the deal with Harlequin even getting involved in audiobook production? For that information, we have to look back in recent history. News Corp announced the purchase of Canadian based Harlequin from Torstar on May 2nd, 2014. The entire deal was a cash purchase of $455 million dollars and the romance publisher has become a division of HarperCollins.  One of the ways to make the romance publisher profitable was to expand their offerings and to get involved in the billion dollar audiobook industry. In 2015 Harlquin audio launched and the current plan is to have 200 audio editions by the end of the year. Since Audio is so new to Harlequin, they are going to have to change the way author contracts work. In the past, authors negotiated their audio rights separately, allowing audio versions of their books to be released by different publishers. Harlequin is going to start pushing for audio rights, since they can now has a solid distribution agreement for libraries.

URL: http://goodereader.com/blog/audiobooks/harlequin-audiobooks-now-available-for-libraries

Should Amazon Release a Large Screen e-Reader?

Amazon has an extensive track record for developing six inch e-readers and has done it consistently since 2007.  These devices may be pocket friendly, but some people have been lamenting a wider array of screen choices. Should Amazon develop a large screen e-reader? In 2009 Amazon made a departure from the six inch screen and developed the Kindle DX. This e-reader failed to make an impact in the marketplace because it did not have a touchscreen and users complained about the full QWERTY keyboard and a primitive D-Pad. In 2015 touchscreen e-readers are the absolute norm and Amazon is in the perfect position to make a larger screen device that would appeal to readers of all shapes and forms.  First of all, students would find something like this appealing. Amazon does have a digital textbook program where diligent young scholars could save up to 60% off the print price, also Amazon rents textbooks out too. Elderly people with vision programs, would likely pay the extra cost to have more screen real estate. Finally, the average reader simply wants something bigger to read digital comics, manga, e-books, newspapers and magazines. All July we ran a poll on Good e-Reader, asking people if Amazon should make a larger screen e-ink device. 389 people took part in the vote and  42% of the respondents wanted something large than six inches. 24.16% said they like the six inch size the way it is, while 19.02% said they wanted a true next generation Kindle DX.

URL: http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/should-amazon-release-a-large-screen-e-reader

Do you Listen to Audio while you Read?

Do you like to listen to music or audio while you read a book? One company that is hoping you do has just raised five million dollars to expand their catalog. Booktrack is based in New Zealand and has been in business since early 2012. The premise of the their business model is to provide an audio soundtrack to accompany the books you read. Booktrack has a catalog of 15,000 titles and over 2.5 million users in the last four years have used their services. Their website and fleet of mobile apps monitor your individual reading pace and sync up the audio. Its one thing to imagine standing in Times Square in New York, and its another to hear the passing crowd, honking taxis and hucksters shilling gear to tourists. Paul Cameron the founder of Booktrack said "Reading is the only mainstream entertainment medium without synchronous sound. You don't go home and watch TV with the sound all the way down." Publishers seem to have come around to the way Booktrack handles the audio narrative to books. Book publishers can either create their own soundtracks, or pay Booktrack around $1,000 per novel to create the track for them. Currently 50 publishing companies including Harper Collins and Random House are using the platform to generate a new revenue stream from both old and new titles. You can check our their website if you are interested in what Booktrack is doing, or download their apps for iOS or Android.

URL: http://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/do-you-listen-to-audio-while-you-read

People Stop Reading Books in Russia

Moscow is considered to be the most well read city in Russia, but bookstores have been closing anyways. There are now 226 bookshops left to serve a population of 12 million, said Boris Kupriyanov, a publisher and co-founder of Falanster bookshop. In Paris, whose population is five times smaller, there are 700 bookshops, he added. The number of bookstores are significantly declining in Russia primarily to high rent. In the Soviet era, bookshops were freed from paying rent and even received some subsidies to pay utilities bills. Rent is at record levels and the state taxes for bookshops is the same as liquor stores. This is compounded by a new law that just passed this July called the “trading fee”, a fixed quarterly payment that stores must pay to legally sell goods. High rent is one thing, but the average Russian is simply not reading anymore. In 2014 more than half of Russians didn't read a single book, up from one-quarter in 2009, Sergei Stepashin, president of the Russian Book Union told news agency TASS this month. Young people see books as pure entertainment, and in that category they cannot compete with modern gadgets, said Kupriyanov. Without measures by the state to stimulate interest in reading and promote books as a source of education, interest will continue to wane, he said. With bookstores closing due to high rents and a lack of demand from your average reader, this is putting pressure on the publishing industry. Last year, the number of book and brochure titles published in Russia was the lowest in seven years, according to a report issued by the Federal Press and Mass Media Agency. With the number of titles falling, the size of print runs is also declining, and the total amount of printed material shrank by 10.4 percent last year compared to 2013, according to the report. More than half of books published in Russia now have a circulation of less than 1,000 copies. In the US, thousands of published authors and self-publishers derive their primary income from writing books. In Russia there are currently 10-12 people in the whole country that can earn their living only by writing books, and there will be even fewer of them in the future.

URL: http://goodereader.com/blog/bookselling-3/people-stop-reading-books-in-russia

Kobo Tip: How to Fine-Tune Sideloaded Fonts with TypeGenius

One of the cool things about Kobo’s ebook readers is they aren’t completly locked down like Kindles are, so users can make all kinds of customizations and changes to the software by adding various patches that developers have put together over at MobileRead. One of my all time favorite customizations is the full screen fix. […]

URL: http://feeds.the-ebook-reader.com/~r/feedburner/cmWU/~3/iGlT2HuP5wg/

Software Update Breaks Videos on Kindle Fire Tablets

The Kindle customer discussions forum at Amazon is littered with numerous complaints about videos no longer working on some Fire HD and Kindle Fire HDX tablets. This is a result of a recent software update that Amazon has started issuing to Fire tablets. It has nothing to do with Adobe Flash Player or any of […]

URL: http://feeds.the-ebook-reader.com/~r/feedburner/cmWU/~3/RS_nX5xio0s/

Toronto Library is Developing Book Vending Machine

The Toronto Public Library is developing a book vending machine at Union Station and it should be available by the end of the year. This is the first time something like this has been done in Canada and if its successful more will be rolled out in the future. The exact logistics have not been worked out yet, but there will be a number of perennial bestsellers available, in addition to DVD’s. The library also has not ruled out the ability to borrow e-books directly from the machine. Toronto Public Library communications officer Ana-Maria Critchley said “We need to confirm details about location and reach an agreement with Union Station before we can finalize anything about the service that we will be providing, the timing or even the design of the kiosk. There aren’t many details at all that we can share at this point, simply because we don’t know yet.”

URL: http://goodereader.com/blog/digital-library-news/toronto-library-developing-book-vending-machine

Recapping the morning session of day 2 of #DigiP15

The morning began with a moving keynote speech from 16 time bestselling author Jane Green. Jane shared her life story ranging from her early days spent hidden away in libraries all the way through her most recent title, Summer Secrets. Jane discussed some of her favorite “Hollywood” moments when she got to cook a meal for Hugh Grant and how she has ridden in a helicopter with Harrison Ford. Jane shared the source of inspiration for many of her books, how she overcame cancer and engaged in a wonderful question and answer session where she provided insight on her writing process and her love of escaping in her local libraries.   The OverDrive innovation roadmap   After the keynote, Ryan Fish, Director of Product Management at OverDrive, opened a session everyone has been waiting for, OverDrive’s innovation roadmap. Ryan’s message was about the three pillars upon which the new OverDrive is being built. Those pillars revolve around simplifying the onboarding process so first time users can get started more quickly; providing users the ability to be more deeply engaged with titles available from the library; and making sure we’re reaching your entire community. Moving forward libraries will be empowered to easily and regularly promote your brand and your collections.   OverDrive’s Chief Technology Officer, Jeff Sterling, took the stage next to discuss “Project Thunder”, the basis for the new OverDrive. The next version of your OverDrive services come from the feedback we get from our library partners and the desire to re-imagine our platforms. Jeff shared the story of how the new OverDrive prototypes came from OverDrive hackathons and teased the process of where our new vision came from before Michael Haren provided a demo.   Michael walked through the website that will be coming later this year for our library partners showing off the new speed and capabilities by instantly searching and borrowing various titles by using the powerful facets and filters available in the library. We will be offering a number of updates in the near future but the crowd was excited with what was previewed as well as the promises of what more is to come.   Publisher Prospective   The morning conference ended with a spirited and informational publisher round table where representatives from Baker Publishing Group, HarperCollins and Blackstone Audio all spoke about the state of the publishing industry and the ever growing digital library market. These types of forums provide valuable opportunities for librarians to share their thoughts and ideas with publishing partners and to engage with one another.

URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OverdrivesDigitalLibraryBlog/~3/iUt6hh0qFVs/

String pong

If you’re not a daily reader of this website, you might have missed our big news last week: The MagPi, our official magazine, is no longer a download-only magazine; you can now buy or subscribe to a print copy. Lots of you have been sending us photos of your own MagPis. Here’s a small selection; we’ll be publishing some of them in the magazine itself, so keep them coming – you can send them to magpi@raspberrypi.org, or tweet them to @TheMagP1. One limitation of the printed magazine is, of course, that we can’t show you videos of the projects inside. Fortunately, we also have this blog. Mike Cook, who is behind Mike’s Pi Bakery, the magazine’s brilliant hardware projects series (not-so-secretly, my favourite bit of the MagPi, and the page I always turn to first), sent me this video of this month’s Pi Bakery build: meet String Pong. Love it. You’ll find a complete tutorial in this month’s magazine. If you want to try before you buy (and please do buy – every penny The MagPi makes goes straight back into the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s charitable work), a free download of the magazine is always available. You’ll find copies in WHSmith and many other British newsagents; in a couple of weeks, US readers will find The MagPi on the shelves in Microcenter and Barnes & Noble; and readers all over the world can subscribe to receive the magazine on their own doorsteps.     The post String pong appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

URL: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/string-pong/

Barnes and Noble Website Still Experiencing Massive Errors

In late June Barnes and Noble unveiled their new website and immediately there has been a number of glaring errors. Some of them have been fixed, like being able to read e-books with their online reading software, but most haven’t. The Barnes and Noble Marketplace for 3rd party sellers went down for over two weeks at the beginning of July. The service is still not operational 100%. This is somewhat discouraging to a number of people who sell a lot of items through the service. One seller told us that Barnes & Noble’s Marketplace for sellers “was STILL not working after a month of their “fixing” it,” and said things had gotten much worse. “I still cannot update OR refund OR even look at my inventory with B&N. I’ve received orders that I had listed were SOLD years ago, but the only answer I get from B&N is, they’re working on the site AND WILL LET ME KNOW WHEN IT IS available!” Another seller said they hadn’t received payments for sales since June 23rd. “I am a small company. A couple grand may not be a big deal to B&N, but it is to me.” Not only is the seller program a complete mess, but if you want to pay for an e-book using your giftcard, this system is broken too. One user wrote into us and said “This morning, I logged onto the Barnes and Noble site and placed an order for a Nook book. I had a balance on a B&N gift card to cover the cost of the book. The new website ignored my gift card balance and charged my credit card instead. After speaking to SIX different B&N reps, they realized – during the course of trying to resolve the gift card issue – that the book was never delivered to my library in the first place. Apparently, due to “technical issues” with the new website, it is currently taking “one to two hours” for digital content to be placed in a customer’s library. YES . . a multi-hour delay in delivering Nook books to customers. Not to mention that none of the six representatives I spoke with could resolve the problem with the Nook book being charged to my credit card instead of my gift card. One rep became so frustrated that he finally said he could just “manually deduct” the amount from the gift card . . . which would take one to five days.” The user went on to say “Another of the six reps actually berated me for not being able to use the new site, until I asked him to walk me through the order process during which he realized that, in fact, the site did incorrectly charge the credit card rather than the gift card. At that point, he just said, “You need to hold on and talk to somebody else.” That person is the one who informed me that Nook content is being delayed for hours. This is the state of B&N customer service these days, apparently.” Have you guys noticed any other errors with the existing website? Drop a comment below and we will do updates to this post so everyone can be aware of the big issues.

URL: http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/barnes-and-noble-website-still-experiencing-massive-errors

e-Reader Ownership Increases in the United Kingdom

E-Reader ownership is trending upwards in the United Kingdom. Over the course of the last year the number of people who owned a Kindle, Nook or Kobo has increased 28%, up 4% from the year prior. The United Kingdom has quickly become a market that everyone wants to have a stake in. This is because not only are device sales profitable, but so are the sales of e-books. A few months ago Nielsen released data showing that online spending on books had overtaken in-store spending for the first time. E-books now account for 30% of book units purchased in the UK, and the sales of print and e-books together in 2014 stood at £2.2 billion, up from 4% the previous year. Barnes and Noble is very bullish on the UK market, this is the only other country other than the US that they have any sort of presence in. The company has sponsored the Get London Reading campaign which saw 1,000 NOOK Simple Touch e-Readers get donated to Beanstalk, a national literacy charity that recruits and supports reading volunteers in schools. Barnes and Noble has also made the greatest impact on having their line of e-readers available in the retail sphere. Currently you can buy them at  John Lewis, Argos, the leading academic bookseller Blackwell's,  Foyles and Dixons, which oversees PC World and Currys. Many independent e-reader companies also have a niche presence in the UK, such as Pocketbook, Energy Sistem, Onyx, Bookeen and Icarus.  The vast majority of these e-readers have the open Android concept, which allow readers to install their own apps, instead of being locked into a walled garden. Speaking of walled gardens, Amazon has the largest footprint in the UK.  It is estimated that they account for 95% of all e-book sales and the Kindle is the most popular e-reader. Whenever a new device is issued, the UK is always the second market to get it after the US. No one can quite explain why e-reader ownership is constantly increasing, not even the researchers compiling the data. I surmise that it has to do with e-books being cheaper than print and serious readers saving money. There is also e-books subscription services that are available such as Kindle Unlimited and Scribd.

URL: http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/e-reader-ownership-increases-in-the-united-kingdom

e-Book Sales Fall 9.3% from January to July 2015

Our love affair with e-books is on the decline as sales have dramatically fallen 9.3% from January to July 2015. April was the worst month this year with e-book sales decreasing 51.6% year on year. The Association of American Publishers releases data every single month from 1,200 publishers. According to this organization e-book sales have been on the decline all year long. Why are e-book sales falling? The big 5 publishers, which includes Penguin/Random House, Macmillan, Simon and Schuster, Harper Collins and Hachette have implemented a new pricing mechanism that has seen the price of e-books increase from $9.99 to around $14.99.  I have found that often it is now cheaper to buy the paperback version or wait a few weeks after a big book release and watch the hardcover get my favorite sticker in the world – 40% off. It is no surprise that publishing companies are seeing diminished revenue. If books cost a lot more, fewer people will buy them.

URL: http://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/e-book-sales-fall-9-3-from-january-to-july-2015

Recapping the afternoon of day 1 of #DigiP15

Strengthen the foundation: Insights from Collection Development Analysts   OverDrive’s own Collection Development Analyst, Kristin Milks, opened our afternoon sessions by going through some great tips and tricks for navigating OverDrive Marketplace to quickly find any and all of the content available. These are great for saving your collection development analysts time when their adding new content.   Holly Varley from the Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County spoke next about how they budget for their collection to meet the demand of their users. Instead of simply dividing their budget by 12 for each year they increase their budget each month to meet the growing use of their OverDrive materials. She also mentioned how their staff takes advantage of the pre-pub access of OverDrive Marketplace titles to help drum up excitement and get the titles their patrons frequently want to read faster.   Hélène Golden from Southern Ontario Library Service came up next discussing purchasing on behalf of a consortium. She manages the collection development of an entire consortium by making sure that they use OverDrive’s automated features including metered alerts, holds manager, recommend to library and curated lists. She also mentioned that weeding their large collection is essential to keep up the ability to enable their patrons to find materials.   Jeriann Thacker of Phoenix Public Library finished the session by sharing how Greater Phoenix emphasizes their budget on special collections for community language speakers and ESL readers as well. They also stress the importance of using OverDrive’s Recommend To Library (RTL) tool as part of their patron driven acquisition efforts. An important part of this is promoting the RTL feature as often as possible. They use RTL to replace their inter library loan (ILL) program. On average this take three says using RTL as opposed to six weeks for the ILL program. The session ended with a spirited Q&A that provided valuable feedback including the importance of the power of the reporting available in OverDrive Marketplace.   Readers’ Advisory: Connecting users with books and authors   Cindy Orr began our Readers’ Advisory (RA) panel by discussing the importance of RA by stating that 84% of users believe that it is essential. The more often you refresh your collection and change your displays the more your circulation will grow. Maria Cipriano from Toronto Public Library took the stage next to discuss the art of curation and merchandising content.   In 2013 Toronto had a circulation of 1.5 million eBooks through OverDrive and this year they are on target to hit 3 million downloads thanks in large part to their tireless marketing efforts from everywhere to their malls to their train stations to universities and word of mouth. Merchandising is essential because provides the ability of readers advisory and engage with your customers. And don't forget about curated collections. They are prime real estate to promote your titles. Maria also shared some of Toronto’s curated collections that are frequented often by their users.   Rachel Kray, a Collection Development Analyst with OverDrive, next presented on how OverDrive can assist with RA including our suggested and recommended lists which can be found on our Partner Portal. These are great time savers and help provide high circ’ing options for your users. The OverDrive Collection Development team also provides monthly eHighlights catalogs to let you see the hottest titles coming out. Rachel showed powerful stats as well on the importance of curating collections. Libraries using curated collections are seeing 100%+ increases in circulation of those titles.   Robin Nesbit from Columbus Metro rounded out our RA panel by sharing the history, successes and future of the wonderful LibraryReads program. LibraryReads increases library relevance with publishers and helps launch great authors and their books. Using LibraryReads in the library is great for building displays as well as on social media and for book clubs. Robin then excitedly shared her favorite titles that are coming out soon that we can’t wait to check out.   Take your digital library from ordinary to extraordinary   Our final session of the day was a series of lightning talks. Each library speaker got five minutes and one powerpoint slide (!!) to share their creative ideas on how they’re bringing in new users and keeping their existing users engaged. We saw wonderful presentations on reaching out to users of all ages and how to help get them started by using creative how to guides.   There were also slides showing off libraries engaging with patrons at community events as well as with local schools. Some libraries also used earned media to get local news coverage. Our first school librarian, Jenn Peterson, from Menasha Joint School District gives OverDrive accounts to every staff member so they all have the ability to talk about their eBook collection. For schools it’s very important to stress summer reading availability not just for the students but for staff as well because they finally have time.   Other librarians discussed how they made sure not only to train their users but especially their staff so they could talk up the digital library to patrons. Many also took advantage of the OverDrive Challenge as a way to motivate new checkouts and OverDrive APIs to conveniently provide users their titles.    The panel had tons of wonderful ideas and if you’d like help you can always reach out to your Account Specialist. We’re happy to assist. Now it’s off to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for a night of dancing and fun!

URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OverdrivesDigitalLibraryBlog/~3/rYRANOgPRdk/

Recapping the morning sessions from day one of #DigiP15

Libraries and Digital Media: State of the Industry  The morning of #DigiP15 began with a wonderful breakfast sponsored by Tantor Media and then some welcoming remarks from OverDrive CEO Steve Potash. It wouldn't be Digipalooza without a surprise performance and the Cleveland Cavs Scream Team didn’t disappoint, putting on an tumbling performance throughout the conference hall. Steve used his remarks to put into perspective where Digipalooza and OverDrive were and where we’ve grown to since the first Digipalooza in 2006. In that year only 12% of the New York Times bestseller list was available through OverDrive. In 2015 that number is 100%. After Steve spoke the President of the American Library Association, Sari Feldman took the stage to share her perspective on the state of the digital media industry. She discussed the beginning of the internet with libraries and stressed the importance of taking into account what patrons are coming to the library for because access to digital media has changed this. Today, libraries remain the critical place for curiosity, learning and knowledge. It’s essential that libraries continue with a forward thinking thought process to keep up with technology. Meredith Schwartz of Library Journal then took the stage to give a sneak preview of their user survey that will be coming out in the fall. We don’t want to spoil the results but she stressed the challenges that different sized library systems face and how libraries are working to make eBook reading possible for all users. Meredith also discussed the many “homegrown” solutions libraries are using to remove the digital divide and how they’re using eBooks as a powerful outreach tool. By incorporating eBooks into outreach campaigns and putting eBooks into places like airports and train stations libraries are making sure the community has the ability to access these titles anytime and anywhere. Andrew Richard Albanese was up next on behalf of Publishers Weekly to discuss the eBook and library relationship from a publishers point of view. He stressed that while the relationship is strong there are still some reservations that publishers feel about this new landscape. His key observations were that we are in an era of experimentation and digital reading is here to stay. Librarians are facing competition for the attention of the readers and digital reading can help capture that attention. He also mentioned that the product is no longer books. The product is reading. One of OverDrive’s “resident geeks” and Product Owners, Quinton Lawman closed out the session by showing how users can stay connected to the library by using the technology of today. Digital and physical libraries coexist beautifully and the physical library itself is the perfect place to provide access to technology for your community. The Ultimate Mission: Reaching every corner of your community Scarlett Fisher-Herreman opened up second session about reaching new users by discussing how to create an entire community of digital enthusiasts. Topeka uses various methods including shor TV ads featuring people outside their normal demographics as well as using social media and bi-monthly newsletters that go out to every household in Shawnee County whether they have a library card or not. She also stressed the importance of cross-promoting eBooks and print books. When you curate a print collection, create the same collection for digital. Creatively align the two collections. Adri Edwards-Johnson of the Pioneer Library System in Oklahoma spoke next and focused on how they use analytics and market segmentation to target specific portions of their community. They started with virtual library cards in 2009 and started getting businessmen who wanted to use the resources, but didn't want to take the time to come into the library. In 2010 they started using civic technologies and book boxes. In 2012-13, they worked with OrangeBoy to begin the process of creating a 24/7 library kiosk. The now incorporate OverDrive Media Station so that while they wait for their print book to "vend" they could also navigate the digital collection. They also do 1-to-1 sessions where they focus on teaching how to use the service, not doing it for patrons. David Cooksey from San Antonio Public Library took the stage next to focus on the importance of having a digital presence that corresponds to the physical presence to help marketing efforts. When you walk into their new branches you see an OverDrive Media Station. They also provide Digital Library Walls that displays books on a shelf with QR codes that can be scanned. These are great to use in Convention and rec centers, senior centers, children's museum, etc. Adam Sockel of OverDrive presented last on how OverDrive is providing marketing tools for library partners and the importance of content marketing to reach new users. Some examples include using Pinterest boards and eBook of the day posts. You can also use OverDrive Readbox samples to enhance the experience of your library websites, newsletters and blogs. Another great tool to take advantage of is Facebook ads which enable you to target specific sections of your community who have an interest in reading but aren't currently aware of your library's digital offering.

URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OverdrivesDigitalLibraryBlog/~3/gTe1G51ejLM/

Solar Eclipses from Past to Future, Earth to Jupiter

Liz: Here’s another space-themed post from our friends at Wolfram Research, showing how the Wolfram Language can be used to visualize solar eclipses total and partial, past and present, and as seen from Earth, Mars and Jupiter. ____ You may have heard that on March 20 there was a solar eclipse. Depending on where you are geographically, a solar eclipse may or may not be visible. If it is visible, local media make a small hype of the event, telling people how and when to observe the event, what the weather conditions will be, and other relevant details. If the eclipse is not visible in your area, there is a high chance it will draw very little attention. But people on Wolfram Community come from all around the world, and all—novices and experienced users and developers—take part in these conversations. And it is a pleasure to witness how knowledge of the subject and of Wolfram technologies and data from different parts of the world are shared. Five discussions arose recently on Wolfram Community that are related to the latest solar eclipse. They are arranged below in the order they appeared on Wolfram Community. The posts roughly reflect on anticipation, observation, and data analysis of the recent eclipse, as well as computations for future and extraterrestrial eclipses. Mapping Total Solar Eclipse on March 20, 2015 From Ukraine: photo and map of the solar eclipse Mar 20, 2015 Aftermath of the solar eclipse Path of the total 2017 solar eclipse across US Solar eclipses on other planets I will take almost everything here from the Wolfram Community discussions, summarizing important and interesting points, and sometimes changing the code or visuals slightly. For complete details, I encourage you to read the original posts. First, before the total solar eclipse happened on March 20, 2015, Wolfram’s own Jeff Bryant and Francisco Rodríguez explained how to see where geographically the eclipse is totally or partially visible. Using GeoEntities, Francisco was able to also highlight with green the countries from which at least the partial solar eclipse would be visible: Jeff Bryant is in the US and Francisco Rodríguez is in Peru, so as you can see above, neither was able to see even the partial solar eclipse. The intense red area shows the visibility of the total eclipse, and the lighter red is the partial eclipse. I consoled them by telling them that quite soon—in the next decade—almost all countries in the world, including the US and Peru, will be able to observe at least a partial phase of a total solar eclipse: Another great way to visualize chronological events is with a new Wolfram Language function, TimelinePlot. I’ve considered the last few years and the next few years, and have plotted the countries and territories (according to the ISO 3166-1 standard) where a total solar eclipse will be visible, as well as when: The image above shows the incredible powers of computational infographics. You see right away that a spectacular total solar eclipse will span the US from coast to coast on August 21, 2017 (see a related discussion below). You can also see that Argentina and Chile will get lucky, viewing a total eclipse twice in a row. Most subtly and curiously, the recent solar eclipse is unique in the sense that it covered two territories almost completely: the Faroe Islands and Svalbard. This means any inhabitant of these territories could have seen the total eclipse from any geo location, cloudiness permitting. Usually it’s quite the opposite: the observational area of a total eclipse is much smaller than the territory area it spans, and most of the inhabitants would have to travel to observe the total eclipse (fortunately, no visas needed). The behavior of the Solar System is very complex. The NASA data on solar eclipses goes just several thousand years into the past and future, losing precision drastically due to the chaos phenomenon. At the time of the eclipse, I was in Odesa, Ukraine, which was in the partial eclipse zone. I made a separate post showing my position relative to the eclipse zone and grabbing a few photos of the eclipse. Using the orthographic GeoProjection, it’s easy to show that the total eclipse zone did not really cover any majorly populated places, passing mostly above ocean water. The black line shows the boundary of the partial eclipse visibility, which covered many populated territories: The Faroe Islands were in the zone of the total solar eclipse, and above I show the shortest path, or geodesic, between the islands and my location. In a separate post (see further discussion below), Marco Thiel posted a link to mesmerizing footage of the total solar eclipse, shot from an airplane (to avoid any cloudiness) by a BBC crew while flying above the Faroe Islands (see related discussion below). Francisco actually showed in a comment how to compute the distance from Odesa to the partial eclipse border: My photos, shot with a toy camera, were of course nothing like the BBC footage. Dense cloud coverage above Ukraine permitted only a few glimpses of the chipped-off Sun. Most images were very foggy, but ImageAdjust did a perfect job of removing the pall. A sample unedited photo is available for download in my Wolfram Community post: By the way, can you guess why you see the candy below? As I said in my post, the kids in my neighborhood in Ukraine observed the eclipse through the wrapper of this and other similar types of Ukrainian candy. The candy is cheap, and the wrap is opaque enough to keep eyes safe when the Sun brightens in the patches between the clouds. Do you remember using floppy disks? It was typical in the past to look at the Sun through floppy disk film. Many people may remember. And this is where the conversation got picked up by our users. Sander Huisman, a physicist from the University of Twente in the Netherlands, asked a great question: “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could find your location just from the photos? We can calculate the coverage of the Sun for each of your photos, and inside the photo we can also find the time when it was taken. Using those two pieces of information, we should be able to identify the location of your photo, right?” I did not know how to go about such calculations, but Marco Thiel, an applied mathematician from the University of Aberdeen, UK, posted another discussion, Aftermath of the solar eclipse. Marco and Henrik Schachner, a physicist from the Radiation Therapy Center in Weilheim, Germany, tried to at least estimate the percentage of the Sun coverage using image processing and computational geometry functionality. This is the first part of the problem. If you have an idea of how to solve second part, finding a location from a photo timestamp and percentage of the Sun cover, please join the discussion and post on Wolfram Community. Marco and Henrik used photos from Aberdeen, which was very close to the total eclipse zone. Even though he was so close, Marco did not have a chance to capture the partial eclipse due to high cloudiness. What irony and luck that the photos he used came from a US student from Cornell University, Tanvi Chheda, who spent a semester abroad at Marco’s university. She grabbed the shots with her iPad, but what wonderful images with the eclipse and birds. Thank you, Tanvi, for sharing them on Wolfram Community! Here is one: Well, that’s the turbulent nature of Wolfram Community—something interesting is always happening, and happening quite fast. I’ll summarize the main subject of Marco’s post in a moment (see the original Community post for more images and eclipse coverage estimation), but as Marco wrote: “Even before today’s eclipse, there were reports warning that Europe might face large-scale blackouts because the power grids would be strained by a lack of solar power. This is why I decided to use Mathematica to analyze some data about the effects on the power grid in the UK. I also used data from the Netatmo Weather Station to analyze variations in the temperature in Europe due to the eclipse.” Marco owns a Netatmo Weather Station, and had written about its usage in an earlier post. He used an API to get data from many stations throughout Europe, and also tapped into the public data from the power grid. One of his interesting findings was a strong correlation between the eclipse period and a sharp rise in the hydroelectric power production: For more observations, code, data, and analysis, I encourage you to read through the original post. There, Marco also touched on the subject of global warming and the relevance of high-resolution crowd-sourced data. To visualize the diversity of the discussion, I imported the whole text and used the new Wolfram Language function WordCloud: It’s nice that the Wolfram Language code, as well as the text, is getting parsed, and you can see the most frequently used functions. In the code above, there are three handy tricks. First is that the option WordOrientation has diverse settings for words’ directions. Second is that the option ScalingFunctions can give the layout a good visual appeal, and the simple power law I’ve chosen is often more flexible than the logarithmic one. The third trick is subtler. It is the choice of background color to be the “bottom” color of the ColorFunction used. Then not only do the sizes of the words stress their weights, but they also fade into the background. From the TimelinePlot infographics above, you can see that a total eclipse will span the US from northwest to southeast on August 21, 2017. I made yet another Wolfram Community post showcasing some computations with this eclipse. You should take a look at the original for all the details, but here is an image of all US counties that will be spanned during the total eclipse. Each county is colored according to the history of cloud cover above it from 2000 to 2015. This serves as an estimate for the probability of clear visibility of the eclipse. The colder the colors, the higher the chance of clear skies. That’s very approximate, though, especially taking into account the unreliability of weather stations. GeoEntities is a very nice function that selects only those geographical objects that intersect with the polygon of the total eclipse. Below is quite a cool graphic that I think only the Wolfram Language can build in a few lines of code: And now that we’ve looked into the past and the future of the total solar eclipses, is there anything left to ponder? As it turns out, yes—the extraterrestrial solar eclipses! We live in unique times and on a unique planet with the angular diameter of its only Moon and its only Sun pretty much identical. I mentioned above a documentary where a BBC crew shot a video of the total solar eclipse from an airplane above the Faroe Islands. Quoting the show host, Liz Bonnin, right from the airplane: “There is no other planet in the Solar System that experiences the eclipse like this one… even though the Sun is 400 times bigger than the Moon, at this moment in our Solar System’s history, the Moon happens to be 400 times closer to the Earth than the Sun, and so they appear the same size…” So can we verify that our planet is unique? In a recent Wolfram Community post, Jeff Bryant addressed this question. He made some computations using PlanetData and PlanetaryMoonData to investigate the solar eclipses on other planets. The main goal is to compare the angular diameter of the Sun to the angular diameter of the Moon in question, when observed from the surface of the planet in question. He used the semimajor axis of the Moon’s orbit as an estimate of the Moon’s distance from its host planet. Please see the complete code in the original post. Here I mention the final results. For Earth, we have an almost perfect ratio of 1, meaning that the Moon exactly covers the Sun in a total eclipse: Now here is Mars’ data. The largest Moon, Phobos, is only .6 the diameter of the Sun viewed from the surface of Mars, so it can’t completely cover the Sun: With human missions to Mars becoming more realistic, would you not be curious how a solar eclipse looks over there? Here are some spectacular shots captured by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity of Phobos, passing right in front of the Sun: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems/Texas A&M Univ. These are the sharpest images of a solar eclipse ever taken from Mars. As you can see, Phobos covers the Sun only partially (60%, according to our calculations), as seen from the surface of Mars. Such a solar eclipse is called a ring, or annular, type. Jupiter’s data seems more promising: Jupiter’s Moon Amalthea is the closest with a ratio of 0.9, yet even if its orbit allows a perfect 90% of Sun cover, the spectacular Earth-eclipse coronas are probably not visible. During a total Earth solar eclipse, the solar corona can be seen by the naked eye: Image Courtesy of Luc Viatour Do you have a few ideas of your own to share or a few questions to ask? Join Wolfram Community—we would love to see your contributions! Download this post as a Computable Document Format (CDF) file. The post Solar Eclipses from Past to Future, Earth to Jupiter appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

URL: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/solar-eclipses-from-past-to-future-earth-to-jupiter/

How to use Calibre to Manage your eBook Collection

Calibre is one of the premier open sourced e-book editing and creation programs out there and it makes managing your e-reader or tablet very easy. You can convert books from one format to another, change up the cover art and change the author or book name. Today, I want to give you a simply overview on what this program is all about and how you can use it to edit books you download from the internet and send them to your device.

URL: http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/how-to-use-calibre-to-manage-your-ebook-collection

Looking back at the opening night of #DigiP15

Here are just a few moments from the opening night part of Digipalooza. To get the full story of the conference be sure to follow #DigiP15 on Twitter all week long!   Time Square is ready for the party Team OverDrive about to welcome librarians from around the world to our city andy our home! A bright day at Blue Sky Campus needs shades The Digital Bookmobile is looking good… Some librarian friends getting a Blue Sky Tour! A Caricature artist was on hand to capture the moment! (And draw some puppy pics…) Just a couple OverDrive brothers…. Steve Potash delivers his opening remarks.

URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalDistributionBlogOverdrive/~3/ooR-ja0q68U/