ebooks – SomeGadgetGuy

July 22, 2014July 21, 2014

The NewYorker Makes Entire Archive Free Online for the Summer!

Many magazines have been struggling with emerging technologies. On the software side you face blogs and social media, and on the hardware side phones and tablets are more “fun” than printed paper.

For their 90th anniversary, The NewYorker is trying something a bit radical for their publication. Following refreshes to their website and app, instead of hiding all their content behind a paywall, or splitting some content out for free, they’ll be making their entire archive available online for the whole summer. From any browser or through the app, even non-subscribers will be able to get their fill.

The paywall will return come fall, but for those of you scouting some fun summer reading, The NewYorker has you covered for the next couple months.

(via The NewYorker blog)

March 25, 2014March 25, 2014

Amazon settles eBook Antitrust Lawsuits with credits for customers

If you’re an Amazon Kindle customer, chances are pretty good you got an email from them today about your eBook purchasing history, with a nice little surprise.

In December 2013, a federal court approved legal settlements by publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Penguin in antitrust lawsuits filed by State Attorneys General and Class Plaintiffs about the price of eBooks. Those settlements resulted in credits for qualifying Kindle books purchased between April 1, 2010 and May 21, 2012.

Depending on how many eBooks you’ve purchased, you’ll be issued credits for future Amazon eBook purchases, but that credit is only good for 90 days.

You can catch more info, and if you have any credits waiting for you, on Amazon’s settlement page.

March 10, 2014

Android Reads You The Classics: Audiobook Test of the Updated Google Text to Speech Engine

Why “The Classics”? Because they’re public domain and I don’t have to shell out cash for them!

Google recently updated their text to speech app, and many android users wont realize that not only is this engine now a standalone app on Google Play, but digging into the accessibility settings, there’s now a “High Quality” mode, where you can download parts of the voice to live on your phone.

Seeing as how I come from a background of voice over production, do audiobook narrators and voice actors have anything to worry about? Let’s take a listen…

March 7, 2014March 18, 2014

Spritz Speed Reading App to debut on Samsung Galaxy S5 and Gear 2

Services people! I want to see more cool services!

Phones are plenty powerful, and it looks like Samsung is helping an experimental speed reading app hit the big time. Spritz thinks they’ve got the magic formula to help people become speed reading masters.

By flashing one word at a time, and aligning them to help improve recognition, Spritz thinks their system will be not only easy to learn, but should garner results quickly.

Samsung also thinks there’s some merit to this system, and will be including a Spritz app on their up coming Galaxy S5 phone and Gear 2 smartwatch. Building the software into services like the Samsung Email app, it could provide faster delivery for emails and text messages.

This is the kinda stuff which does actually make me excited to see a new phone release.

More info on the Spritz Blog, where they also have a demo of the Spritz service in action.

October 21, 2013October 20, 2013

Quick Review: 2nd Generation Kindle Paperwhite – Amazon Improves on the Best eReader

This is the second generation of Kindle Paperwhite. The first gen was largely heralded as being the best digital ink eReader you could buy. Not much needed to be changed or altered for the 2nd gen Paperwhite, but Amazon still found some areas to tweak and improve.

Paperwhite stands as an excellent execution of an eReader. If you’re looking at a gadget to primarily read books on, a digital ink display is critical. For years now they’ve near perfectly replicated the printed page. Digital ink is static, and doesn’t refresh 60 times a second like LCD displays do. Once the page refreshes it stays in place until you turn to the next page. This also radically reduces battery drain, as electricity is only used when turning pages.

In terms of design, Paperwhite is simplicity at it’s finest. There are no distractions. It’s built for one purpose: reading. We’ve even given up on the illusion that eReaders also have to be MP3 players. Nope. Reading is more than enough to justify the gadget’s existence. There’s a power button and MicroUSB port on the bottom. That’s it. You should only care about the screen and what’s on that screen. No buttons or switches or rockers. End of story.

Continue reading “Quick Review: 2nd Generation Kindle Paperwhite – Amazon Improves on the Best eReader”

September 6, 2013

Oyster aims to be the Netflix of books.

All you can eat subscription model services have proven very popular with consumers. Personally I’m on the hook monthly for Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Google Play Music. I also happen to read a lot…

Oyster is a new start-up which is trying to shake up the way we monetize reading books, namely by applying the same model which already works for movies to the printed (or digitally inked) page. The execution is simple enough. Customers spend $9.95 a month, and they get access to over 100,000 launch titles from major publishers. Read as much or as little of any book in the catalog.

It’s first launching on the iPhone with an iPad version in the works. No word on Android or Windows Phone versions of the service. If the service proves popular at all however, it would be an easy retrofit for the Google Play store. Google recently released a subscription service for music.

The idea of an unlimited monthly book subscription service is interesting. I like having a library of books both dead-tree and digital to look at. These things that I own and can page through any time I like. Oyster could combine my desire for immediacy, while overcoming my fear of buying books I might not like. I got over the notion of owning a DVD library when Netflix introduced streaming. Maybe this could work for books too?

What also remains to be seen is how subscription services might impact libraries in the future, as many are now offering ebooks.

Currently Oyster is invite only. More info at https://www.oysterbooks.com/