| Summer is quickly coming to an end and many audiobook retails are gearing up for September, for back to school season. There doesn’t seem to be a ton of deals this month, but there are a number of them if you know where to look. Nook Audiobooks As summer starts winding down and we look forward to the rush of big new fall releases, August will be a big month for NOOK Audiobooks customers to take advantage of our robust end-of-summer sales. During the first three weeks of August, customers who love certain genres can treat themselves to some nice deals on big titles – select Mysteries and Thrillers will be center stage at 40% off from August 4-9, Romance titles at 40% off will be highlighted August 11-16, and a nice selection of Popular Fiction will be showcased at 40% off August 18-23. We're also excited about big upcoming releases for August, including new blockbusters from James Patterson, Debbie Macomber, and Jonathan Kellerman – and we can't wait to hear The Girl in the Spider's Web (the 4th book in Steig Larsson's Millennium series) when it comes out September 1st. And to be sure, throughout the month our Daily Find will continue – that's our daily offer of a specially priced, unabridged audiobook at 60% off or more. Audible This month Audible is offering a number of free audiobooks. Ambling Books You might have not have heard about this company, but they have some big deals going on.
Big Finish
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Friday, August 14, 2015
Audiobook Deals and Discounts – August 2015
The Sony Digital Paper is Alive and Well
| Sony has announced that they are shutting down their entire e-commerce platform on August 28th 2015 and it will be impossible for anyone to place to an order for the Sony Digital Paper. The company has told me that they are developing a new website that should be more robust than the old version, but there is no timeline on when it will launch. We do know that on August 28th the entire Sony online e-commerce network will be shut down and a new site will take its place. It is currently unknown when the new site will launch, and how long customers will have to wait until they can place orders again. I was told that it will be impossible to place a Digital Paper on the phone after August 28th and instead you will have to try and deal with some of their official partners. There is a major problem with dealing with some of Sony’s partners, and that is they only primarily sell the device to other businesses. For example, Worldox sells their products to law firms and not to the general public. My contacts at Sony really want to stress that the Digital Paper is alive and well. The department overseeing the product line continues to market the device to new customers such as the American Association of Law Libraries or visiting with the folks at the National Conference of State Legislatures. |
Rocket launch footage from an onboard Pi
| From rocket launchers to high altitude ballooning to Sonic Pi space music to Astro Pi, much of the Raspberry Pi community is excited by the idea of exploring beyond our Blue Marble. We think you’ll enjoy this video from a Pi camera belonging to Portland State Aerospace Society, who launched a rocket from the Oregon desert last month. When I first watched it, it brought the whole of the Raspberry Pi Foundation to my desk in seconds, something even Krispy Kreme doesn’t reliably accomplish. The video was captured by one of two Raspberry Pis aboard the rocket, both with cameras set up to stream live footage; the streaming seems to have been succcessful, even though the viewing angle for part of the video above wasn’t quite as planned. You’ll find plenty of technical information in PSAS’ GitHub repository for this launch, and enthusiasts will be interested to know that they’ve promised more telemetry data over the next several months. There’s also an excellent gallery of launch photos taken from the ground, including the moment of lift-off from a more conventional viewpoint. The post Rocket launch footage from an onboard Pi appeared first on Raspberry Pi. |
Amazon has Quickly Come to Dominate the Digital Comics Market
| The digital comics market garnered over $100 million dollars in 2014 and Amazon has quickly become the dominant player. The Seattle company now controls 90% of the comic market, thanks to its strategic purchase of Comixology last year. 2015 has been a year of consolidation within the comic industry as Amazon is trying to distance themselves from their competitors such as Apple, Google and Madefire. When Amazon purchased Comixology in early 2014 they immediately disabled all in-app purchases within their Android and iOS apps. Amazon simply wanted to make more money and not have to pay a commission every time someone bought a comic book. This move enraged their existing user-base because visiting a website to purchase content and then syncing all of the new data took more work. This year, Amazon has given us a sense of how their endgame for comics is going to play out. The company added over 15,000 single issue and graphic novels from Marvel. According to Publishers Weekly “Marvel dominates the single-issue market with a 41% dollar share and a 43% unit share, according to the most recent industry statistics. More importantly, Marvel comics are the gateway to merchandise and media franchises worth billions—something that Amazon certainly understands. The exclusive deal with Marvel is a major competitive advantage. It is hard to see how a competing comics distribution platform could be useful to Google or Apple without Marvel in its catalog.” One of Comixology’s biggest strengths has been their whitelabel service that powers some of the biggest digital comic apps out there. Marvel, DC, Image, and the Walking Dead are all fine examples of how Comixology allows these companies to offer digital content and the ability to make in-app purchases on Android and iOS. I remain confident in the next few years we will see Amazon pushing Comixology to add more publishers to the Kindle store, in order to provide more single issue content to get e-reader and tablet owners to keep coming back to make more purchases every week, when new comics arrive. |
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Apple Bootcamp Now Supports Windows 10
| Windows 10 has been out for a few weeks and so far Apple lovers have been left in the cold. This will all change starting today! Apple has just released a slew of drivers that will support Windows 10 from Bootcamp, allowing you to partition your drive and run modern apps. If you have never installed Windows on your MAC, the process is fairly straight forward. You will automatically download all of the necessary files from Bootcamp 6. If you’re performing a Windows 10 upgrade to an existing 64-bit Windows installation (that you access via Boot Camp), you’ll have to jump through a few extra hoops. Before you upgrade, you’ll first want to make sure that the Mac you’re using actually supports Windows 10 x64 to begin with. Apple provides a helpful list for that, so you shouldn’t run into any major problems. There are a number of problems you will likely encounter if you only have the 32 bit version of Windows installed. Basically, if you’re trying to upgrade from a 32-bit version of Windows, you’ll have to wipe the entire partition on your MAC—in other words, kiss your data goodbye. Be sure to back it up before you go through the process. Since you’ll be using Boot Camp Assistant to basically install a new version of Windows 10, you’ll grab any new drivers and such that you need as part of the installation process. One of the big advantages of running the 32 or 64 bit versions of Windows 10 on your MAC is the peripherals you will be able to use, such as USB 3 and USB-C connections, Thunderbolt, your Mac’s built-in card slot, and your normal Mac keyboard, trackpad, or mouse.
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UK Users Can No Longer Use B&N Nook Windows App
| Barnes and Noble has just dropped support for their Windows e-reading app in the UK. They closed everything down today and gave no warning that a shutdown was imminent. Nook customer service is now encouraging anyone that wants to continue reading to buy an iPad or Android device. Barnes and Noble has confirmed that since the UK store is now closed, you will not be able to read any of your past purchases. If you have bought any digital content, you should be able to get a refund from Microsoft. In the last few months Barnes and Noble has severely scaled back their international expansion efforts. In June, they closed their European headquarters in Luxembourg and one month later they disabled the Nook Windows app all over Europe, except the UK. Losing all of your e-book purchases because a store closes is nothing new and is one of the pitfalls of forging print. There is no clear path of ownership when you buy e-books, you are merely licensing them. When a store closes, customers are normally out of luck. I think its swell Microsoft is giving refunds, but how do you do it? I have researched for hours online and there is hardly any data at all on how to apply and get a refund. |
Education Summit Videos from EuroPython
| At the end of July, a subset of our Education Team went to Bilbao in Spain for EuroPython. As well as giving a number of talks at the conference, we’d arranged with the organising committee to run an Education Summit and invite teachers along. On the Thursday of the conference, we had a day of Education talks lined up, starting with Carrie Anne who gave the opening keynote, ‘Education: A Python solution‘: We were lucky enough to meet the creator and BDFL of Python, Guido van Rossum, who also gave a keynote. Watch my talk on ‘Physical Computing with Python and Raspberry Pi‘: Watch James’s first talk, ‘Raspberry Pi Weather Station‘: Watch James’s second talk, ‘Pycon – A teacher’s perspective‘: Alex Bradbury also gave a lightning talk on Pyland – a project he’s working on with a group of interns at the Cambridge Computer Lab. Pyland is a game designed for children to learn Python as a way to progress in the game. Watch out for more on Pyland next month! The conference had two Raspberry Pi powered arcade machines and all the TV screens showing the talks schedule were running on Pis too! At the weekend’s sprints we had a team of developers working on PyGame Zero, and as part of the Education Summit we ran an intro session for teachers. The Pyjokes Society This year, EuroPython was run by the organisers of PySS, a conference in San Sebastian, with a brilliant team of volunteers who helped make it all happen – they did a great job. A huge thanks to the EuroPython team! The post Education Summit Videos from EuroPython appeared first on Raspberry Pi. |
A look back at OverDrive’s Crystal Ball Report from Digipalooza
| Last week wrapped up a very successful Digipalooza conference where nearly 500 library and school partners from around the world came together with publishing executives in Cleveland to develop plans and enhance the future of the library world. This unique educational and networking conference addressed the massive surge in library eBook and audiobook borrowing with panels on industry trends, best practices and upcoming enhancements to the OverDrive service. Wrapping up the conference was the highly anticipated Crystal Ball Report by OverDrive CEO, Steve Potash. With high energy, Steve looked ahead and took participants into the future with his vision for digital media in libraries and schools. Steve opened up his report with his first theme: Access. He reiterated that the new OverDrive (codename: Thunder) will provide the deepest reader engagement opportunities and curation ability in the industry and how it will simplify the digital reading experience like never before. He previewed that the next step for libraries is individual customization for each user, allowing your readers to get recommendations and alerts based on what they enjoy. The second theme revolved around content. In the coming months, countless PDF titles that were never optimized for digital reading will be unlocked, opening up the capability to enjoy titles that previously were unapproachable with tablets and smartphones. Being able to convert PDFs into manageable formats opens up greater possibilities in the world of young readers including classroom textbooks. This led to the third and final theme of the crystal ball report: Education. You will find the next wave of eReading in the school classrooms and libraries all around the world. Over the last few years, OverDrive has helped meet students' and educators' needs with a custom combination of digital content solutions. By weaving digital reading into the classroom, schools can provide the education technology necessary in today's world and create classrooms that prepare students for future success. It also creates a lifelong love of reading. The future public library users are the hundreds of millions of students who currently aren't accessing the materials the library can offer. By partnering with your local schools, libraries can create new library card users who are already comfortable with a digital reading experience. The future of digital reading is all about access, content and education. In the next few years, OverDrive will advance all three areas to continue to provide the best value in the industry for both our library partners, our schools and your users.
Adam Sockel is a Social Media Specialist at OverDrive  |
Young Japanese Manga Writers Targeted by New Copyright Law
| Aspiring young novelists in North America often get their start by writing fan-fiction and developing a ravenous following on websites such as Wattpad. If they have very a large fan-base, its quite easy to get a publishing deal, if not, self-publishing is a viable career choice. In Japan things are quite different and fan-fiction authors are the target of a new multi-national copyright law. In Japan when someone creates fan-fiction based on anime, manga or light novels they are known as “Doujinsh”. This status is a proving ground for new artists, who can create a name for themselves through their self-published works and eventually make the leap from amateur to pro. The country's biggest geek event, Comiket, is centered around doujinshi. Fans line up to buy independently produced parodies of famous manga and starring popular characters. Traditionally Doujinsh got a free pass by the copyright holders, knowing it's where future manga artists often get their start. This all might change due to a new copyright law by the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is a proposed trade deal with twelve countries participating, including the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, Australia, and Colombia, among others. Under the new trade law a 3rd party could file a copyright dispute against a young manga artist and win. Right now under Japanese law, a local publisher has to file a grievance, which rarely ever happens. What is amazing about this situation is that a prospective dispute bypasses the rights holder. Manga artist Ken Akamatsu, who started out in the amateur comic market scene, is uneasy about the proposed changes. "If creators can be prosecuted without complaints from rights holders, it could lead to some kind of snitching battle between fans," he said. "Places for people to share their work will also disappear." |
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Sony Will No Longer Sell the Digital Paper e-reader
| The Sony Digital Paper has been a huge success story and this product has proved there is a market for large screen e-readers in our professional lives. Sadly, all good things must come to an end and it looks like Sony will be shuttering their existing e-commerce website on August 28th at 1PM. Sony initially begun to sell the Digital Paper through its 3rd party vendors because it did not have the infrastructure to sell this device directly. The vendor program was a little bit too successful, and companies like Worldox were chronically sold out. Sony had to do something about it, and they decided to open up a phone line, where customers could call in and place an order over the phone. Many customers told us that this process was much akin to an interrogation where they asked your level of technological expertise and sometimes refused to sell it. This occured primarily because Sony did not have a customer service system for the DPT-S1 and they had to make sure whoever was going to buy one knew what they were doing. In August of last year, Sony begun to sell the Digital Paper online for the first time, allowing anyone in the US to order one. A month later they opened up a customer service system to assist in troubleshooting common problems. The Future of the Digital Paper is currently unknown. The message on the Sony site says that they are working with their partners to unveil a new service, but there is an air of finality that once August 28th passes, you won’t be able to order a Digital Paper online. |
W. W. Norton titles are now available in OverDrive Marketplace!
 If you live anywhere near OverDrive's Cleveland headquarters, it's entirely possible you've heard some extra shouts of happiness coming from our Blue Sky Campus today. See, as librarians we know how frustrating it can be to want to recommend a particular title to a patron only to find that the book just isn't available, which is why the OverDrive team is excited to announce that we now have an extensive list of W.W. Norton titles in our catalog! Below you’ll find some of the titles we’re most excited about: The Dream of a Common Language Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
You can add these titles and nearly 2,000 more today from W. W. Norton today in OverDrive Marketplace.
*Title availability may vary by geographic location*  |
Science lessons with the camera board
| Before we get down to it today, a quick notice: Matt Timmons-Brown, freshly released from GCSE exam hell, will be dropping in to do some video interviews for his Raspberry Pi Guy YouTube channel next week. Do you have any questions you’d like him to put to Eben? Let us know in the comments. Steve Foster is a Computer Science and Science teacher in the UK. He’s been using the camera board to make demos for science lessons: we’ve shown you before how to make time-lapse or slow-motion video, but Steve’s been putting both of those to really good use across the curriculum. We thought these videos were such a good demonstration of how you can use the Pi outside Computing lessons that they deserved a wider audience – and they’re fascinating to watch even if you’re not at school any more. Enjoy!
The post Science lessons with the camera board appeared first on Raspberry Pi. |
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
Amazon Has Developed a New e-Book Format called KFX
| A few months ago Amazon rolled out the Bookerly font to its line of iOS apps and the Kindle Paperwhite 3. This new font was exclusively developed for e-reading in mind. In order to really take advantage of the new format, Amazon had to develop a new e-book format. In the past they used AZW and MOBI for the standard book, but they new one is called KFX. Amazon claims there are around 100,000 e-books on their website that their titles in the new KFX format. If you want to find out if a specific title will give you the optimal reading experience you look on the book's description page at Amazon. There's a new label that shows if enhanced typesetting has been enabled. Here is the real kicker, many of the e-books you already have on your Kindle might show KFX on the product description page, but still is not providing you with the most robust experience. What you need to do, is delete the e-book on your Kindle and download it again. Your purchases are safely stored in the cloud, so you won’t lose access to them. Instead, you will simply download the book once again, but in the new Amazon KFX format. What is a story about a new Kindle e-book format, if Good e-Reader did not provide a scoop. Here is the deal. Amazon has developed a tool that they are using in-house called kfxgen that they use to convert the old e-book format to the new one. Currently publishers don’t have a way to submit newer titles in KFX and the official Kindle Previewer tool does not support enhanced typesetting. Kindle for PC also does not include the new font, so if you decide you want to strip the DRM from your books, you will be unable to do so with KFX. Calibre, a preferred e-book management tool also does not have support for KFX either. OK, so what exactly is KFX and Bookerly? Many of you might be wondering. Basically, it is a new font and rendering engine that is supposed to give you a better reading experience. Many Kindle books in the past had weird spaces between words and when authors used hyphens. Sometimes it felt a little bit discombobulated when you were into a book and text “started to look like this” If you want to learn more about Bookerly, in a very scientific way, check out the advanced description HERE. |
Kindle eBooks with Enhanced Typesetting Use New KFX Kindle Format
| Yesterday Amazon released a major software update for their line of Kindle ebook readers. The update includes a new Bookerly font custom made for Kindles and a new typesetting and layout engine that adds things like hyphens, ligatures, and improved word spacing. One interesting detail to come out about the new layout engine is that […] |
After Dark
| Galleries are forbidden places once the lights are turned out at night. After Dark was a prize-winning installation from The Workers, a studio in East London, which wandered the empty Tate Modern and Tate Britain at night in London last year. With Raspberry Pi for brains. You can learn more about the project at AfterDark.io. We wish we’d known about it when it was happening, but happily, there’s a chance that the robots will reappear in another gallery in the future; we’ll be keeping an eye on their website in case that happens. (Space geeks should watch this one to the end; the first operator of the system once it went live was a certain Commander Hadfield.)
The post After Dark appeared first on Raspberry Pi. |
New Bookerly Font Now Available on the Kindle Voyage
| Amazon developed a brand new font that was designed with e-readers in mind. It was chiefly made to replace Caecilia, which has been the default font to read on the entire line of Kindles for the last four years. If you have the Kindle Voyage, now is the time to rejoice. The Bookerly font is now available to download via a wireless update. If you have an older Kindle e-readers, the Bookerly font has also been given the all clear from Amazon. There are firmware updates now available for the Kindle Touch, Kindle 7th gen and previous-gen Kindle Paperwhite. If you haven’t downloaded it automatically, check out the Amazon manual update page for further instructions. |
Monday, August 10, 2015
Major Kindle Update Finally Arrives With Bookerly Font and Hyphens
| One of the most anticipated Kindle updates of all time is finally here. It adds the new Bookerly font and new typesetting and layout engine, among other things. Amazon has started rolling out the new software to the Kindle Voyage, the $79 Kindle Touch ($59 for the next couple days), the Kindle Paperwhite 3 and […] |
3-Day Kindle Sale – $20 Off Deal
| It’s been awhile since Amazon has had any of their Kindle ebook readers on sale, with the exception of last month but only Prime members could get in on the discounted Kindles for Prime Day. Last week a few retailers like Best Buy and Staples had a brief sale for a day or two. Now […] |
Bat Pi
| Do you live in an area with bats? We do, but they’re so fast that they’re very hard to spot when they’re scudding about after insects at dusk; and, of course, human ears are not equipped to hear the ultrasonic tones that they use to make their echolocation calls, so we can’t hear them either. A bat primer. Bats are not, as folk legend has it, blind: they can see as well as you or I can. But like you or I, they can’t see in the dark, so they use a rather brilliant system of echolocation to “see” where buildings and the insects they predate on are at night. They make a series of extremely high-frequency calls, and use their big ears to judge how far objects are from them by the amount of time it takes those calls to bounce back to them, which allows them to locate prey and avoid obstacles with great accuracy. Your human hearing, depending on how old you are (we lose the top frequencies as we age) will range from about 20Hz (cycles per second) to 15-20 kHz (1000Hz). The sounds bats can hear and produce go all the way up to about 110 kHz. Their calls (which are pretty loud, so perhaps it’s a good thing we can’t hear them) aren’t just one tone: depending on breed, they sweep down from a high frequency to a low one; or move the tone around and around a specific frequency. Bat calls Over in Germany, Holger and Henrike Körber have turned a Raspberry Pi into a bat detection device. An inexpensive high-sensitivity microphone capable of detecting high frequencies, and some batty software, mean users can make graphical interpretations of bat calls; create histories of bat activity; manipulate those calls to bring them into frequencies they can hear; and identify bat species by call using an algorithmic process. The Körbers also make available a list of bat literature, so you can deep-dive into echolocation and acoustic identification of bat species. Head over to FledermausSchutz.de (that’s Bat Conversation in English) to find out what you need and how to get started. If you don’t speak German, you’ll need to run the page through Google Translate; it’s worth doing. The post Bat Pi appeared first on Raspberry Pi. |
Sunday, August 9, 2015
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. […] |