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Amazon's new reading app for kids combines humor and text messages
Amazon has been obsessed with the act of reading for years, and now it's trying (again) to get kids obsessed with it too. That's why the company spent the last year building Amazon Rapids, a reading app launching today meant to help youngsters understand the joy of reading. So, what does $2.99 a month actually get you? A surprisingly fun, focused way to experience stories.
The VR reading library Oculus hid at its developer conference
Oculus' annual developer conference serves as a touchstone for its community; a time to see how far virtual reality has come in the last year and to inspire, motivate and help developers build the VR experiences of tomorrow. Most of that comes in the form of announcements, panels and software showcases, but in the media demo rooms, the VR company hid dense sources for inspiration in plain sight. Stacked just above the TV in at each demo station was a small collection of books -- all of them about either games, game development or the effect of virtual reality on our culture.
ICYMI: The NYPL's book train and better-bouncing 'bots
Today on In Case You Missed It: The New York Public Library will unveil a brand new "book train" at its Bryant Park branch that will ferry research materials up 11 floors from a subterranean storage vault to a newly refurbished reading room. Also, MIT's CSAIL lab has developed a 3d-printed, "tuneable" shock absorber that can protect anything from autonomous drones to cellular phones from violent impacts. Finally, we bring you the mesmerizing aerial ballet that is the world indoor skydiving championships. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd. try{document.getElementById("aol-cms-player-1").style.display="none";}catch(e){}
The New York Public Library has a mini roller coaster for books
On October 5th, the New York Public Library near Bryant Park in Manhattan will open up its newly renovated reading room to everyone. When that happens, members of the public will be able to get their first look not only at the gorgeous new working area, but also the building's new book delivery system. I was lucky enough to be treated to a tour of the library's facilities to get a behind-the-scenes preview of the now-colloquially-named "book train."
Google wants to help find your next book to read
It doesn't matter if you've got the biggest or best shop in the world if you can't connect people to the things that they want. It's an issue that Google is hoping to address in its electronic bookstore with the launch of Discover, a new way to show people stuff they want to read. The service is designed to replace the human booksellers you used to find in Barnes & Noble, offering up recommendations and reviews for stuff you should read.
Sex and sexuality: The Jane Austen game breaking the MMO rules
Ever, Jane is an online role-playing game set in the dramatic, romantic worlds of Jane Austen. It invites players to attend sophisticated dinner parties and fancy balls, share gossip, keep secrets, fall in love, get married and climb the ribbon-lined social ladder of Regency-era England. It is definitely not a sex game, though sometimes players get wrapped up in this universe of exquisite gowns and forbidden desire, and they simply can't help themselves. "Let's just say that we had to put in private chat," Ever, Jane creator Judy Tyrer says with a laugh.
MIT uses radiation to read closed books
There are some books that are simply too delicate to crack open -- the last thing you want to do is destroy an ornate medieval Bible simply because you're curious about its contents. If MIT has its way, though, you won't have to stay away. Its scientists have crafted a computational imaging system that can read the individual pages of a book while it's closed. Their technology scans a book using terahertz radiation, and relies on the tiny, 20-micrometer air gaps between pages to identify and scan those pages one by one. A letter interpretation algorithm (of the sort that can defeat captchas) helps make sense of any distorted or incomplete text.
Amazon to open bookstores in Chicago and Portland
For an independent bookstore, few threats are bigger than Amazon. With its e-book store and brutally competitive print book prices, it can be hard for a family-run business to compete. Well, it's only going to get tougher now that Amazon is expanding its footprint of physical stores. The company has confirmed it'll be setting up shop in Chicago and Portland -- these locations will be joining Seattle, which opened in November, New York and San Diego. The details of each store is under wraps, but it's safe to assume they'll be packed with Kindles and Kindle Fire tablets.
Google Play Books 'Bubble Zoom' makes it easier to read comics
Google Play Books become more comic-friendly last year with addition of vertical scrolling. At this year's Comic-Con, Google is announcing another handy feature that will be reading the illustrated panels even easier. The tool is called Bubble Zoom and as you might expect, it detects and zooms in on those speech bubbles as you read. Before now, you had to use two fingers to zoom like you would in other apps. When reading graphics-heavy comic panels, that isn't an ideal solution. Thanks to the new tool, you can enlarge the text with a tap while still gazing at a full-screen view of the page.
'Mass Effect Andromeda' novels tie into the full video game saga
Literary pop culture powerhouse Titan Books will publish four new novels in the Mass Effect universe between August 2016 and March 2018, as outlined in its 2016 Fiction Rights Guide. The books line up with the release of Mass Effect Andromeda in March 2017, but they'll tie into the entire Mass Effect series, serving as prequels and sequels to some events in the games. "They will focus on key characters and answer the many questions fans have been asking," Titan writes. The first novel, Mass Effect: Andromeda Initiative, is written by The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms author and three-time Hugo Award nominee NK Jemisin. The final novel will be penned by Mac Walters, creative director of the Mass Effect franchise.
Google's Family Library will let Android users share apps
It's been a long time coming, but Android users will soon be able to share apps with other family members. Android Police reports that Google has begun notifying developers that Family Sharing, which lets up to six family members enjoy the same paid app, will be enabled by default from July 2nd, giving Android households the opportunity to enjoy similar perks to those with iPhones and iPads.
E-book sales in the UK decline for the first time
There's something to be said about a printed book. It's easy to read outdoors, you can lend it to a friend and, unlike a top-end Kindle, it doesn't spell disaster if you lose it. E-readers have their place, but today The Publishers Association (PA) has confirmed that Brits still love holding paper between their fingers. In the UK, printed book sales rose from £2.75 billion in 2014 to £2.76 billion in 2015 -- the first increase in four years. Digital book sales, meanwhile, dropped from £563 million to £554 million over the same period. It's the first drop in e-book sales the PA has ever recorded.
Google won't face Supreme Court fight over book scanning
After many years, Google's efforts to scan out-of-print books for online searching is officially in the clear. The US Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal over Google's victory in a legal dispute wit the Authors Guild, effectively determining once and for all that the book scanning (which focused on excerpts) represents fair use rights. The Guild had contended that Google's move violated copyright and potentially hurt profits, and would have had the internet giant pay damages.
Amazon pushes its free shipping minimum to $49
Amazon has increased the minimum price of an order that qualifies for free shipping from $35 to $49, unless you're buying more than $25 worth of books. The last time that the cost went up was the back end of 2013, when it was bumped by $10 from $25 to $35. Of course, shipping is free if you opt to pay $99 a year for Prime, which has whip-fast shipping as well as music and video streaming. As well as pushing people toward the paid service, TechCrunch points out that Amazon has been feeling some pain of late. In its latest financials, the company reported that its logistics costs had increased by nearly 33 percent in a single year. So, really, we're all paying the price for our insatiable lust for instant deliveries.
Amazon Echo can read your Kindle books aloud on request
You don't even need to lift a finger when you're done playing Jeopardy! on Amazon Echo and want to relax with a book. Simply say "Alexa, read [Kindle book title]," and the voice assistant will start narrating almost anything you purchased from the Kindle Store, borrowed from the Kindle Owners' Lending Library/Kindle Unlimited or got access to through Family Library. Based on the commands Amazon listed, you can tell Alexa to pause, resume from where you stopped and skip chapters. But you can't specify which chapter to skip to, according to ZDNet.
Google Play Books is more comic friendly thanks to vertical scrolling
Is Google Play Books your go-to app for reading comic books? If so, your digital page turning is about to get a whole lot better. While the app is getting a number of updates, the most notable is the introduction of vertical scrolling. Rather than having to flip to the next page, which can be a bit awkward when it comes to comics on a phone or tablet, simply turn your device to landscape mode and scroll vertically with a swipe. There's a curated series section too, organizing volumes, issues and editions of some of the most popular titles. To help you find new reading material, the app will also offer personalized recommendations based on what you're reading. Just as a reminder, Google Play Books houses comics from major publishers like DC Comics, Marvel, Image, IDW and Dark Horse. The update is rolling out to Android users "over the next few days" and iOS is said to follow soon after for users in the US, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, India, Singapore, Ireland, New Zealand, and South Africa.
Former Sony Pictures exec snags the rights to a 'GamerGate' movie
Former head of Sony Pictures Amy Pascal is working on a film based on a coming memoir from Zoe Quinn, the game developer at the heart of the online controversy known as "GamerGate." Quinn's memoir, Crash Override: How To Save The Internet From Itself, is due to be published in September 2016 by Touchstone (a Simon & Schuster imprint), Deadline reports. Pascal, who now heads a production company under Sony, won the rights to Crash Override following a bidding war, according to the site. The film is tentatively named Control Alt Delete and Scarlet Johansson is looking at the script.
Actually read the iTunes TOS with this graphic adaptation
It's a little lie you tell every single time you sign up for anything on the internet. "I have read and agree to the terms of service." You haven't read them and everybody knows it, but maybe you should read the iTunes Terms and Conditions, just once. Not for legal reasons of course, or on Apple's website -- that would be boring -- but in R. Sikoryak's 'Unabridged Graphic Adaptation: iTunes Terms and Conditions.' It's exactly what it sounds like: two volumes of unwieldy legal jargon juxtaposed with gorgeous comic imagery.
Amazon opens first physical bookstore in Seattle
It may feel odd associating Amazon with a brick-and-mortar store, but you'll get used to it. The online marketplace will open its first physical outlet at University Village, an open-air shopping center in Seattle, on Tuesday. It won't be selling everything under the sun like its website, though: it's a true-blue bookstore -- though it will carry Kindle e-readers -- just like the thousands of bookstores that shuttered in the past due to the rise in e-book sales. One difference is that most goods inside Amazon Books will be displayed face-out instead of stacked with their spines in view. Also, the company will take advantage of the data it's collected for the past two decades to stock books that have the potential to sell.
US appeals court rules Google's book-scanning project is legal
Google's goal of scanning millions of out-of-print books for online access has drawn the ire of authors and publishers for years. Today, a US appeals court ruled that the practice is in fact legal. Claims of infringement brought by the Authors Guild and a group of writers were rejected by the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. The court says Google Books offers a public service by posting pieces of text online and that it doesn't encroach on laws that protect intellectual property. Instead, the practice falls under "fair use." This isn't the first time the legal system has sided with Mountain View, despite repeated attempts by authors, publishers and rival tech companies to combat the book-scanning project. Back in 2011, a $125 million settlement was rejected by a judge in New York who originally approved the deal in 2009 four years after the first lawsuit was filed. Perhaps today's ruling will be the last we hear of the Google Books saga. But then again, probably not. [Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]
