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Archive for the ‘Ebooks’ Category

Review: Flick the Little Red Fire Engine for the iPad

September 5th, 2010 |

The ongoing relationship between Kiwa Media’s Qbooks and Penguin New Zealand has produced this little “retro” number – a retelling of an old classic that I was previously unaware of called “Flick the Little Red Fire Engine“. I previously reviewed “Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy” and this title backs that one up very well.

I am a fan of what this partnership is producing. They are going for good quality stories and content. They are treating the original stories and illustrations with respect. They are getting serious voice talent for their books (this one has Sam Neill as Narrator). But, they are still making the experience an interactive one for children and making use of what the iPad has to offer.

I enjoy the use of sound effects sparingly — a bark for a dog, the wail of a fire engine — maximum two per page. The fact children can point at individual words, and have that single word read to them is an excellent device for early readers. You’ll see it demonstrated at the end of the above promo video, it even spells out the word. I guess what I am getting at is that the developers have kept the best of the book, the thing that makes children’s books so enjoyable like the actual story and illustrations and they’ve given it some extra educational value and a few nice technological tweaks. This is done with a simplicity that makes it work. It isn’t about all the bells and whistles but about the story, and that is what many creators of ebooks for children are missing. Just like the ABC apps, there are a lot of books that are missing the mark. But these ones don’t.

That said, I am not sure the song at the end of this ebook app was really required. It obviously has a history, and the crackle and hiss remind me of the old vinyl LPs I had as a kid that played stories and songs to me (“And when you hear the bell, then turn the page”). What value it really adds to this story isn’t that great.

Wired: A great story, that will capture younger readers and encourage reading.

Tired: Not sure the song was a necessary element.

Note: The author of this piece received a free review copy of the application

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Review: Flick the Little Red Fire Engine for the iPad

Virgin MiFi With True Unlimited 3G Data for $40

August 25th, 2010 |

Author: Stacey Cook

Virgin Mobile’s truly unlimited MiFi data plan is official. Leaked by Virgin itself through Facebook a few days ago, the new Broadband2Go plan gives you as much internet as you can use for just $40 per month. Best of all, this is done without a contract, meaning you can stop any time your like, or just take a pause for your vacations.

First, the major caveats. Virgin Mobile piggy-backs on Sprint’s network, which means that you can only use this if you have Sprint coverage. Second, because Sprint uses CDMA technology for its network, you can’t just pop in a SIM if ever you take the Virgin MiFi abroad.

Aside from that, though, this looks like an amazing deal. You can share the 3G data connection with up to five devices via Wi-Fi, which means netbooks, notebooks, cellphones and iPads. Hell, you could even use this as your main home connection.

You’ll need to buy the MiFi itself, for $150 (there is also an $80 USB dongle available for laptop users), but you’d be paying that indirectly anyway if you signed up for a contract. The new plan isn’t yet live on the Broadband2Go page (linked below), so I haven’t had a chance to dig into the small print, but barring any weird definitions of “unlimited” by Virgin, this could be as big a turning point in mobile internet as the original, short-lived unlimited iPad plans from AT&T.

Broadband2Go [Virgin. Thanks, Kevin!]

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Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Original post:
Virgin MiFi With True Unlimited 3G Data for $40

Apple’s Macs Could Gain a Sense of Touch

August 24th, 2010 |

Author: Christen Arquette

Perhaps the touch revolution will extend beyond tablets and smartphones and onto our traditional computers. A new patent application shows how Apple might build an iMac or a MacBook with a touchscreen.

It’s a lot more than simply slapping a multitouch screen onto an iMac. Filed earlier this year, the patent application portrays an iMac-like computer that can transition from being used as a traditional mouse- and keyboard-controlled PC into a touchscreen computer. It’s a convertible desktop tablet, so to speak.

The invention described would switch between input modes detecting the position of the screen with an accelerometer or a rotation hinge inside a flexible stand. One input mode would be a high-resolution interface controlled with a mouse and keyboard, and the other method would be a lower-resolution tablet mode for touch controls.

Moving on to notebooks, the patent application says a notebook-like device could transition into a touch-based UI by folding the display, face up, against the keyboard.

To be clear, convertible tablets are nothing new. We’ve seen a handful of convertible tablet notebooks and “kitchen” PCs equipped with touchscreens. However, I’ve had hands-on time with a bunch of them at the Consumer Electronics Show, and they’ve consistently failed to impress, because they’re just touchscreen devices running Windows — a UI designed for keyboards and mice, not ideal for touch controls. Duly, these convertible computers haven’t been popular sellers.

With Apple’s patent application, it sounds like the transition method would involve switching between two operating systems: the Mac OS for PC input and iOS for tablet usage (though they’re technically one OS since they’re carved out of the same core). That important UI transition might actually make a convertible touchscreen computer make sense.

Indeed, Apple appears to be eyeing touchscreens for Macs. Fan blog Patently Apple recently discovered a collection of 10 patent applications covering display technologies, which also allude to a touchscreen display for notebooks. Also, a few rumors emerged earlier this year that Apple was developing a touchscreen iMac.

From Patently Apple

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Read the rest here:
Apple’s Macs Could Gain a Sense of Touch

Apple’s Macs Could Gain a Sense of Touch

August 24th, 2010 |

Author: Buck Howard

Perhaps the touch revolution will extend beyond tablets and smartphones and onto our traditional computers. A new patent application shows how Apple might build an iMac or a MacBook with a touchscreen.

It’s a lot more than simply slapping a multitouch screen onto an iMac. Filed earlier this year, the patent application portrays an iMac-like computer that can transition from being used as a traditional mouse- and keyboard-controlled PC into a touchscreen computer. It’s a convertible desktop tablet, so to speak.

The invention described would switch between input modes detecting the position of the screen with an accelerometer or a rotation hinge inside a flexible stand. One input mode would be a high-resolution interface controlled with a mouse and keyboard, and the other method would be a lower-resolution tablet mode for touch controls.

Moving on to notebooks, the patent application says a notebook-like device could transition into a touch-based UI by folding the display, face up, against the keyboard.

To be clear, convertible tablets are nothing new. We’ve seen a handful of convertible tablet notebooks and “kitchen” PCs equipped with touchscreens. However, I’ve had hands-on time with a bunch of them at the Consumer Electronics Show, and they’ve consistently failed to impress, because they’re just touchscreen devices running Windows — a UI designed for keyboards and mice, not ideal for touch controls. Duly, these convertible computers haven’t been popular sellers.

With Apple’s patent application, it sounds like the transition method would involve switching between two operating systems: the Mac OS for PC input and iOS for tablet usage (though they’re technically one OS since they’re carved out of the same core). That important UI transition might actually make a convertible touchscreen computer make sense.

Indeed, Apple appears to be eyeing touchscreens for Macs. Fan blog Patently Apple recently discovered a collection of 10 patent applications covering display technologies, which also allude to a touchscreen display for notebooks. Also, a few rumors emerged earlier this year that Apple was developing a touchscreen iMac.

From Patently Apple

CourseSmart Launches E-Textbooks for iPad

August 14th, 2010 |

Author: Buck Howard

Back to schoolers just got another great reason to convince Mom and Dad to buy them an iPad: CourseSmart, the e-textbook provider, just released an iPad app. Now, you can carry all your textbooks with you on the tablet instead of schlepping a backpack full of dead trees round the campus.

If any device was right for taking to lectures, its the iPad. Unlike a laptop, it doesn’t put a barrier between you and the teacher. It also doesn’t clatter when you type (meaning you can sneak in some YouTubing instead of paying attention) and the battery lasts, like forever. Now, with CourseSmart, it looks pretty perfect.

CourseSmart sells e-textbooks which can already be used on your laptop or your iPhone. The texts are typically cheaper than their paper counterparts and CourseSmart claims to have 90% of “core textbooks” in its catalog. The iPad app adds a bookshelf (the thumbnail view used by most e-readers), sticky-notes for scrawling onto pages, and a neat thumbnail navigator for quickly finding the right place.

Best of all, the application is free, although you will of course have to buy the books. And if you do lose the iPad Mom and Dad are going to buy you, you’re just a login away from all your texts and notes when you get a replacement. Try that with a book-bag.

CourseSmart for iPad [CourseSmart. Thanks, Jennifer!]

CourseSmart [iTunes]

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Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

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CourseSmart Launches E-Textbooks for iPad

How Unsexy Publishing Arcana Cloud E-Books’ Future

August 2nd, 2010 |

Author: Eric Moss

Publishing professionals and the journalists who cover the industry approach electronic books fundamentally differently from technology journalists and enthusiasts. Just as technophiles’ debates over open vs. closed systems or the relative value of different programming languages rarely filter down to the uninitiated, publishers’ attention to agency vs wholesale models and dramatic power plays between agents, retailers, and publishers can initially be confusing to folks not directly involved.

For example, before Amazon announced its new Kindle last week, the major — and I mean, epoch-making — news in these circles was literary agent Andrew Wylie finally making good on his threat to bypass publishers and ink a deal giving the exclusive e-book rights to his agency’s backlist to Amazon through his imprint called Odyssey Editions. This means that books by Borges, Nabokov, Rushdie, Roth, Ellison, Updike, and Erdrich — some of which had been unavailable in any electronic format — are now available but can now only be bought for the Kindle. It’s the most serious skirmish in a longstanding industry-wide debate between publishers and authors’ representatives over the proper royalty rate authors should receive for e-books, and (in some cases) who owns the rights to electronic versions of a book altogether.

These are arguments readers rarely have the interest or need to pay attention to — until someone claiming the rights to a book (say, George Orwell’s 1984) turns out not to have proper ownership of it, forcing Amazon to remotely remove the book from readers’ machines. Or The legal and economic agreements girding the foundation of the publishing industry, including the sale and availability of e-books, turn out to be like the plumbing running through your house — until there’s a crisis, there isn’t much need to pay attention to it.

I asked publishing professional Don Linn, who’s worked as a book distributor and small press print publisher before starting a much-anticipated but short-lived digital only press called Quartet that closed operations last year, to expand on some points he made on his publishing and technology blog about what he called “L’affaire Wylie.” What became clear is that even publishers, agents, and retailers, who’ve rightly been focused on signing writers and selling books, didn’t appreciate how much the arcana of the business would matter in the move to digital platforms.

Publishing metadata, for instance — things like ISBNs, trim size, etc. — has traditionally been one of the dullest aspects of the business, useful for selling to retailers and libraries but not much else. Now, however, publishers are expanding their definition and uses of metadata, to make their titles easier to find in text searches. Readers don’t care about metadata — until they can or can’t find the book they’re looking for. “Making a title discoverable in a world where hundreds of thousands of books are published each year is more critical than when only tens of thousands were being published,” Don says. “Basically, if you do a poor job with your metadata, you’re hosed.” Metadata is good information management, but in a search-driven business, good marketing too.

There’s also the even thornier issue of rights and licensing — for instance, whether e-books count as a primary right (like the right to print and sell a book in a specific geographic area) or a subsidiary right (like a translation, or in some cases merchandizing). Evan Schnittman of Bloomsbury Publishing wrote a terrific post delineating the specific kinds of rights and royalty rates assigned to each, arguing forcefully that e-books like those sold for the Kindle have to be considered a primary rather than a subsidiary right, since the work of editors, designers, marketers, etc., is the same for each; and most importantly, because the shared ecosystem of print and digital sales means that sale of an e-book typically substitutes for the sale of a printed book.

This may be one reason why innovation in e-books often takes the form of transmedia promotion of print books, like the popular and acclaimed “Cathy’s Book” iPhone app. The app, in this case, is part of a broad network of objects, including the printed text(s) and web sites, positioning the book as part of an alternative reality game (ARG). But what about genuinely self-contained multimedia books, the long-promised synthesis of text, images, video, music, and interactivity that futurists have long-awaited? Are those rights identical to those of a plain-vanilla text e-book like those sold for the Kindle? What happens to them? Linn is wary:

The skill sets required to produce a first class enhanced title are simply not resident in publishing houses, nor are those most qualified to bring those skills to the party likely to choose book publishing as the most promising career path. Because of this, if I were an agent or author, I’d be very careful about which rights (therre’s that word again) I licensed to book publishers unless and until the publisher can demonstrate that it can take full advantage of anything beyond print, digital and audio.

He added that the major e-book retailers were unlikely to do much to push for enhanced titles, or create them: “I could see Apple getting involved as a way to expand hardware sales in the education or business market, though they’ve shown no inclination to create content so far.” Amazon and Barnes & Noble have been cool towards enhanced texts — although Amazon does sell some enhanced ebooks in its Kindle store that, oddly, can’t be read on the Kindle — and are likely to follow the market, rather than lead, according to Linn.

What does this mean for the average reader, trying to bet on a platform or waiting for an immersive experience reading an enhanced version of Austerlitz or House of Leaves? If exclusive ebook deals bypassing the publisher become the rule, some books you want simply won’t be available for the hardware you have. And ultimately, your device’s capabilities will be secondary to whether or not a rights holder has the technical skills and legal clearances to bring the product to market. It may be a few years before the real future of the book is settled. And then, if history is any guide, only for a moment.

Photo credit: www.cathysbook.com

Read the original:
How Unsexy Publishing Arcana Cloud E-Books’ Future

How Unsexy Publishing Arcana Cloud E-Books’ Future

August 2nd, 2010 |

Author: Alexander McQueen

Publishing professionals and the journalists who cover the industry approach electronic books fundamentally differently from technology journalists and enthusiasts. Just as technophiles’ debates over open vs. closed systems or the relative value of different programming languages rarely filter down to the uninitiated, publishers’ attention to agency vs wholesale models and dramatic power plays between agents, retailers, and publishers can initially be confusing to folks not directly involved.

For example, before Amazon announced its new Kindle last week, the major — and I mean, epoch-making — news in these circles was literary agent Andrew Wylie finally making good on his threat to bypass publishers and ink a deal giving the exclusive e-book rights to his agency’s backlist to Amazon through his imprint called Odyssey Editions. This means that books by Borges, Nabokov, Rushdie, Roth, Ellison, Updike, and Erdrich — some of which had been unavailable in any electronic format — are now available but can now only be bought for the Kindle. It’s the most serious skirmish in a longstanding industry-wide debate between publishers and authors’ representatives over the proper royalty rate authors should receive for e-books, and (in some cases) who owns the rights to electronic versions of a book altogether.

These are arguments readers rarely have the interest or need to pay attention to — until someone claiming the rights to a book (say, George Orwell’s 1984) turns out not to have proper ownership of it, forcing Amazon to remotely remove the book from readers’ machines. Or The legal and economic agreements girding the foundation of the publishing industry, including the sale and availability of e-books, turn out to be like the plumbing running through your house — until there’s a crisis, there isn’t much need to pay attention to it.

I asked publishing professional Don Linn, who’s worked as a book distributor and small press print publisher before starting a much-anticipated but short-lived digital only press called Quartet that closed operations last year, to expand on some points he made on his publishing and technology blog about what he called “L’affaire Wylie.” What became clear is that even publishers, agents, and retailers, who’ve rightly been focused on signing writers and selling books, didn’t appreciate how much the arcana of the business would matter in the move to digital platforms.

Publishing metadata, for instance — things like ISBNs, trim size, etc. — has traditionally been one of the dullest aspects of the business, useful for selling to retailers and libraries but not much else. Now, however, publishers are expanding their definition and uses of metadata, to make their titles easier to find in text searches. Readers don’t care about metadata — until they can or can’t find the book they’re looking for. “Making a title discoverable in a world where hundreds of thousands of books are published each year is more critical than when only tens of thousands were being published,” Don says. “Basically, if you do a poor job with your metadata, you’re hosed.” Metadata is good information management, but in a search-driven business, good marketing too.

There’s also the even thornier issue of rights and licensing — for instance, whether e-books count as a primary right (like the right to print and sell a book in a specific geographic area) or a subsidiary right (like a translation, or in some cases merchandizing). Evan Schnittman of Bloomsbury Publishing wrote a terrific post delineating the specific kinds of rights and royalty rates assigned to each, arguing forcefully that e-books like those sold for the Kindle have to be considered a primary rather than a subsidiary right, since the work of editors, designers, marketers, etc., is the same for each; and most importantly, because the shared ecosystem of print and digital sales means that sale of an e-book typically substitutes for the sale of a printed book.

This may be one reason why innovation in e-books often takes the form of transmedia promotion of print books, like the popular and acclaimed “Cathy’s Book” iPhone app. The app, in this case, is part of a broad network of objects, including the printed text(s) and web sites, positioning the book as part of an alternative reality game (ARG). But what about genuinely self-contained multimedia books, the long-promised synthesis of text, images, video, music, and interactivity that futurists have long-awaited? Are those rights identical to those of a plain-vanilla text e-book like those sold for the Kindle? What happens to them? Linn is wary:

The skill sets required to produce a first class enhanced title are simply not resident in publishing houses, nor are those most qualified to bring those skills to the party likely to choose book publishing as the most promising career path. Because of this, if I were an agent or author, I’d be very careful about which rights (therre’s that word again) I licensed to book publishers unless and until the publisher can demonstrate that it can take full advantage of anything beyond print, digital and audio.

He added that the major e-book retailers were unlikely to do much to push for enhanced titles, or create them: “I could see Apple getting involved as a way to expand hardware sales in the education or business market, though they’ve shown no inclination to create content so far.” Amazon and Barnes & Noble have been cool towards enhanced texts — although Amazon does sell some enhanced ebooks in its Kindle store that, oddly, can’t be read on the Kindle — and are likely to follow the market, rather than lead, according to Linn.

What does this mean for the average reader, trying to bet on a platform or waiting for an immersive experience reading an enhanced version of Austerlitz or House of Leaves? If exclusive ebook deals bypassing the publisher become the rule, some books you want simply won’t be available for the hardware you have. And ultimately, your device’s capabilities will be secondary to whether or not a rights holder has the technical skills and legal clearances to bring the product to market. It may be a few years before the real future of the book is settled. And then, if history is any guide, only for a moment.

Photo credit: www.cathysbook.com

Here is the original post:
How Unsexy Publishing Arcana Cloud E-Books’ Future

Level One: Delving Into Dungeons & Dragons As A Family

July 29th, 2010 |

Author: Angela Chin

Image: John Booth

We stood outside the tomb, watching it collapse. Then we got our Experience Points and had pie.

In a moment a quarter-century in the making, I completed my first Dungeons & Dragons quest this month, with my wife and daughter playing their first adventure alongside.

I never got to play D&D for real as a kid. In middle school, my interest was at its peak thanks to TSR’s Endless Quest books like Pillars of Pentegarn and that absolutely terrible Mazes & Monsters movie. (Thankfully, I was too young to realize what a ridiculous pile of anti-gaming propaganda it was, and at any rate, it actually fueled my fire to learn D&D, so BRAINWASH FAIL.) Unfortunately, I only had one friend who shared my curiosity about the game. Over the course of a year or two, we each got a basic set and some modules and books, and while we loved rolling up characters and reading about creatures and cave systems and towns hiding dark secrets, it was tough to actually play with just the two of us. We took turns faking our way through adventures, one of us loosely Dungeon Mastering – in fact, even calling it that is an insult to DMs everywhere – the other running a party of 3 or 4 characters and basically jumping from encounter to encounter and grabbing treasure. Nobody ever died.

Still, my thing for roleplaying games stuck around for years: In addition to my old D&D stash, I owned rulebooks and sourcebooks and modules for Shadowrun, James Bond and Star Wars gaming systems even though I never actually got to play any of them, with the exception of a one-session Shadowrun adventure in college.

This year, though, the D&D itch came back during my trip to PAX East. I met up with my friends Kato and Wendy there, and the three of us spent a good chunk of time hanging out with the other GeekDad writers and Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks author Ethan Gilsdorf. The whole atmosphere really got to me, from the gaming tables and the dice vendors to Wil Wheaton’s keynote to just listening to Natania and Michael and Kato and Wendy talk Dungeons & Dragons. Seriously: I came awfully close to buying a set of dice to replace the ones I’d lost track of decades ago, despite having absolutely no need for them.

Upon returning home, I read Ethan’s book which, coupled with Kato’s offer to make room for me in a game he was running, pretty much made my delve back into D&D inevitable.

The really cool thing is that when I mentioned this to my wife, she threw me for a wonderful loop by saying she’d like to give it a try, too.

So it was that I found myself buying three sets of dice, my first Player’s Handbook, printing out character sheets and puzzling over abilities and powers and traits.

Kato and Wendy are RPG veterans, both with gaming roots going back to their early teenage years, and both have several years of D&D experience. Kato, who blogs about DMing at One Inch Square, ran a few Middle-Earth Role Playing system games as a kid and started sitting behind the D&D screen with the Third Edition.

I don’t have the longview to put D&D’s seemingly-divisive 4^th edition in detailed perspective, but I can say that as a first-timer, I found the d20-based play far easier to digest than the one I remember trying to wrap my junior-high brain around. The power, action and weapon cards Kato provided made for quick learning during combat, and I was also happy to see a hit point system far different than the one I tried to learn when I was younger – one in which, say, the wrong roll of a d4 could off your first-level cleric before you even crossed a tavern’s threshold.

Playing with miniatures also helped the learning curve. As much as I loved drawing maps on graph paper back in middle school, it was really difficult to visualize our combat playing out in those little quarter-inch squares. But with a battle map and walls and pillars laid out on the table, where sixth-grade me would’ve simply settled for saying “I swing my sword,” grown-up me was able to fully consider my character’s abilities and the environment and what moves might work.

Image: John Booth

My wife, having had no prior exposure to the game, was nervous at first, but by the end of our first session, when we got in the car to head home, it was a thrill to hear her say 1) how much fun she’d had, and 2) things like, “You know, I should have used my Elven Accuracy to re-roll one of those attacks.”

Our daughter, at 13, was intrigued and was on the fence about playing – Kato rolled up a character and worked up a background just in case – but while she only sat and watched that first night, as soon as we left, she said something to the effect of “Next time, I’m in.” She joined the party for the remaining two game nights, admirably filling her wizard’s role and even earning bonus XP for a particularly good roleplaying impulse moment. Again, those reference cards were invaluable in helping her keep track of spells and powers and abilities, and she took to the game quickly. (She even earned bonus role-playing points for a pure-adrenaline “I kick the body” moment after a really hard-fought encounter.)

It was about far more than the fighting, though. I loved listening to Kato set up our adventure, working in the brief back story I had created for my halfling rogue and fleshing out the stories behind my wife’s elven cleric and my daughter’s wizard and Wendy’s fighter. I loved hearing my wife react in character to a none-too-subtle halfling cough of warning. I loved the moments of silence right after a scene was set, when the four of us needed to figure out what we were going to do next. And I loved the energetic post-session conversations my wife and daughter and I had about the game and our characters and what we could have done, and what we might try the next time around.

The biggest factors for the success of the three-session adventure, of course, were our gaming companions, so if you’ve got friends willing to show you the ropes, by all means take them up on the offer.

Kato not only crafted a great one-shot adventure perfectly suited for our characters’ levels and our gaming experience – our final encounter included a couple pretty close brushes with death, although my inexperience showed in my failure to force a re-roll on a particularly damaging hit – he also ran the game while teaching it and made it a crazy amount of fun.

And Wendy played her half-orc fighter with a great balance of enthusiasm and patience, encouraging us new players and illustrating how to use different actions to achieve specific goals in combat.

I can’t say enough how awesome it was finally playing this game I’d been wanting to give a shot for so long, and having it turn out to be such an incredibly fantastic family experience at the same time.

(Hey, sixth-grade me? If you’re out there — the Second Chance power is important: Don’t forget to use it.)

Read the original here:
Level One: Delving Into Dungeons & Dragons As A Family

Lenovo Promises Android Tablet by Year-End

July 20th, 2010 |

Author: Melissa Shroeder

Lenovo has chosen a name for its Android tablet that it says will be in the hands of consumers by the end of the year. The device will be called the ‘LePad,’ and will make its debut in China.

The LePad is likely to combine ideas from Lenovo’s Skylight smartbook that the company showed at the Consumer Electronics Show in January and the IdeaPad UI notebook-tablet combination to create a new device that could potentially compete against the iPad.

Since Apple introduced the iPad in April, it has sold has more than 3 million devices. The company’s success with the iPad is forcing competitors such as HP and Dell to build similar devices. Dell’s tablet called the Streak has a 5-inch screen and is already available in the U.K. It is expected to hit the U.S. in summer.

ABI research estimates that 11 million media tablets will be sold this year. The forecast is based both on the broader availability of the iPad and the delayed introduction of competing products, says the firm.

“Assuming that competing tablets from other vendors do arrive in the second half of the year as expected, we believe that the iPad will account for a significant portion – but not all – of the projected 11 million units,” says Jeff Orr, principal analyst with ABI Research.

In China, at least, Lenovo hopes to step into the gap left by Apple. Lenovo has long offered convertibles–notebooks that can be flipped over to act as tablets. But the company has not released a touchscreen only tablet so far. Earlier this month Lenovo’s chairman Liu Chuanzhi told the Financial Times that Apple hasn’t focused on the Chinese market. Lenovo has seen success with its Android phone called ‘LePhone’ that’s currently available only in China.

With the LePad, Lenovo hopes to do the same, says PCWorld. After all, there are a billion potential customers in China alone.

See Also:

Photo: Lenovo x41 tablet (Oliver Regelmann/Flickr)

Continue reading here:
Lenovo Promises Android Tablet by Year-End

Livescribe Updates its Digital Smart Pen With the Echo

July 19th, 2010 |

Author: Major Workman

Livescribe’s Pulse smart pen that can automatically digitize written notes is a big hit among students and business professionals who want to move away from paper.

Now the company has introduced a slimmer version of the its pen called Echo that offers more storage and improved features including support for PDF files.

The Echo pen has double the capacity of the Pulse and is available in 4 GB and 8 GB models that record 400 and 800 hours of data respectively. The 4 GB version will cost $170 and the 8 GB version is priced at $200. The 2 GB Pulse pen will cost $130, down from $200 when it was first introduced.

Livescribe has also added a 3.5 mm audio jack so consumers can use their own headphones, instead of having to buy specifically designed ones from LiveScribe.

Livescribe introduced its first smart pen Pulse in March 2008. Users write notes on Livescribe’s sheets of paper, just as they would on a notepad. The Pulse pen captures everything the user hears using a audio record feature. As for the notes, they can be accessed by simply tapping the pen at any point on the sheet of the paper or through a computer using the Livescribe desktop software. The only drawback is that the pen will work only with Livescribe’s proprietary paper. The company also launched an app store that now has more than 60 apps including study aids and dictionaries.

With Echo, Livescribe has updated the user interface so it is easier to access apps, added features such as password protection so the audio recorded on the smartpen can have more privacy, and introduced the idea of custom notebooks so users can group and organize notes more easily.

Later this year, Livescribe plans to add new software called Connect, which will allow users to email notes, audio and PDFs from the smartpen and paper when the pen is is docked to a Mac or PC.

The company also plans to introduce a collaboration software called Paper Tablet, that will allow consumers to communicate directly from a Livescribe notebook to a computer using the Echo pen and a USB cable. That means if you draw an image on the Livescribe notebook then it can directly appear on the screen in real time–a feature that should be very useful for creating graphics and for artists.

Check out Livescribe’s video of the Echo pen and some of its key features:

See Also:

Photo: Livescribe

See original here:
Livescribe Updates its Digital Smart Pen With the Echo

Archive for the ‘Ebooks’ Category

Review: Flick the Little Red Fire Engine for the iPad

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How Unsexy Publishing Arcana Cloud E-Books’ Future

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Level One: Delving Into Dungeons & Dragons As A Family

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