Our E-Books Are Reading Us (WSJ 6/29/12)

Wall Street Journal article by Alexandra Alter, "Our E-Books Are Reading Us" is worth reading, sharing, and discussing.  http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2012/06/our_ebooks_are.shtml

As publishers and authors learn more about how readers read, which books they read faster, which lines are highlighted the most by readers... it will change what readers are offered. That is not necessarily a good thing. Think I'll stay offline book-wise and keep my reading choices a little more to myself. On the bright side, it might help text book publishers learn how to better engage students. My suggestion is to reference good books -- such as historical fiction, science fiction, collections of best science articles -- throughout a textbook.  Serious students will be enriched. Others might just stumble upon some really great reads.

Here's how Alexander Alter's article starts...

"It takes the average reader just seven hours to read the final book in Suzanne Collins's "Hunger Games" trilogy on the Kobo e-reader—about 57 pages an hour. Nearly 18,000 Kindle readers have highlighted the same line from the second book in the series: "Because sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them." And on Barnes & Noble's Nook, the first thing that most readers do upon finishing the first "Hunger Games" book is to download the next one."  more

E-Books and Exercise

What is your daily workout? Do you exercise both your mind and body?  Each day, do you step onto a treadmill or climb onto an exercise bike to stay in shape while reading or listening to a good book?  This image illustrates my daily visit to the YMCA. 

Download a thick page-turner mystery or best seller, start walking (hold on to the treadmill's siderails or your eReader) and shed pounds while getting your cardio exercise.  This is a book lover's fitness secret. In fact, I bet schools could help fight youth obesity and increase literacy levels with this secret strategy: an hour a day walking with a book. Librarians and coaches could collaborate on how to best use these cool tools: eReaders, eBooks, and treadmills. 


Notice that one person prefers the printed word while the second image shows an eReader, in this case, an iPad and an iPod.


A variety of gift items are available at the Library Advocate's DesignClass with this design.  See cafepress.com/DesignClass

  

Pew Internet and American Life: E-reader Ownership Doubles in Six Months

Rush Brandis of the California State Library alerted librarians of a new Pew Internet and American Life Report on E-Reader Ownership. Here is an overview taken from the report:

Overview:

• The share of adults in the United States who own an e-book reader doubled to 12% in May, 2011  from 6% in November 2010.  E-readers, such as a Kindle or Nook, are portable devices designed to allow readers to download and read books and periodicals.  This is the first time since the Pew Internet Project began measuring e-reader use in April 2009 that ownership of this device has reached double digits among U.S. adults. 

• Tablet computers—portable devices similar to e-readers but designed for more interactive web functions—have not seen the same level of growth in recent months.  In May 2011, 8% of adults report owning a tablet computer such as an iPad, Samsung Galaxy or Motorola Xoom.  This is roughly the same percentage of adults who reported owning this kind of device in January 2011 (7%), and represents just a 3 percentage-point increase in ownership since November 2010.  Prior to that, tablet ownership had been climbing relatively quickly.

The full report is at

http://www.pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2011/PIP_eReader_Tablet.pdf

Library Technology Trends: Big Shift, Wifi Saturation, Laptops

Florida-based Free Range Librarian Karen Schneider wrote a summary of library technology trends when she returned from ALA Mid-winter conference in San Diego.  Karen's trends refer mostly to academic and public libraries.

• The Big Shift:  ebooks and streaming (rather than DVDs) is catching on faster than anticipated; moving seldom-used materials to off-site facilities.  Regional repositories are a far better investment than compact shelving.
• Wifi saturation: more and more people carry multiple wifi-enabled devices and increasingly depend on access to the Internet.  
• Laptops: most college Freshmen now have laptop computers and need wifi, power, and security. There is a reduced need for desktop computers in academic (and public libraries in affluent communities).

Google eBooks

Google eBooks are here!  On December 6, 2010, Google eBooks opened. The online book store idea is good, and at some point most of us will have a variety of mobile devices. I still prefer real books for great stories.  But I could see reading fast reads like mysteries and thrillers as eBooks so they won't go in the bags of books that eventually go to library and YMCA book sales. 

Contra Costa County Library: QR (quick response) Mobile Application

Emerging Technologies Specialist Susan Kantor posted an announcement on the CALIX listserv about "Snap & Go!", a Contra Costa County Library mobile patron support system to support QR (Quick Response) codes. I first heard about QR or "2D Bar Codes" for retailer loyalty marketing from a March 2010 Bloomsberg Business Week article. I learned more about QR codes a few months ago at a print industry conference, PINC (now Visual Media Alliance), in San Francisco. It is good to see a California library moving ahead with this and other customer service tools. Kudos to the CCCL and Cathy Sanford's technology team

Susan says the California public library system expanded its "services to people on-the-go by providing mobile access to downloadable audio eBooks, podcasts, reading recommendations, library catalog and account information, and more through QR codes and a new mobile website. The website is part of the Snap & Go project which links customers with cell phones to library services and information." The Contra Costa County Library used funding from a $60,000 BALIS (Bay Area Library & Information Service) Innovation grant to work with Quipu Group to develop a mobile patron support system for pushing new and existing library content and services into the hands of the growing number of people who want to access library services on the go. See the library's press release.

Free E-Books from Internet Archives

The Wall Street Journal carried a 6/29/10 news item about the Internet Archives and several public libraries offering free ebooks. The article is "Libraries Have a Novel Idea:Lenders Join Forces to Let Patrons Check Out Digital Scans of Shelved Book Collections" by Geoffrey Fowler.

A video news program also covers the OpenLibraries announcement.

hive.

Netbooks as EBook Readers

The February 10, 2010 issue of LifeHacker features an item by Jason Fitzpatrick on"Turn your netbook into an e-book reader". He says “E-book readers are popular for reading digital books, but they’ve got their limitations. If you have a netbook, you already have a powerful and virtually unrestricted portable e-book reader on your hands. You just need to know how to set it up. Dedicated e-book readers do have certain things going for them, but you can’t tweak them, modify them, or use them as you see fit. Netbooks suffer from no such shortcomings.”...

Hummm, maybe I'll experiment with my netbook. In a related item, more than 65,000 19th-century works of fiction from the British Library’s collection are to be made available for free downloads by the public this spring. Owners of the Amazon Kindle will be able to view well-known works by writers such as Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and Thomas Hardy. Users of the British Library service, funded by Microsoft, will be able to read from pages in the original books in the library’s collection....The Times (U.K.), Feb. 7 See British Library offers free Kindle downloads

Ray Kurzweil's eBook Reader - blio

"Technologies don't really take off until all the necessary enabling factors are in place..." according to Ray Kurzweil (Kurzweil Technologies, Inc.), who demos his new blio ebook reader and discusses the future of books and publishing, artificial intelligence, and more with Tim O'Reilly (O'Reilly Media, Inc.). Ray Kurzweil has a partnership with the National Federation for the Blind, KNFB Technologies. He has also written a book, "The Singularity is Near". Below is the discussion from YouTube, which lasts about one hour.

CES - Consumer Electronics Show 2010

Good to hear that the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was more upbeat than last year. Apple no longer does trade shows, but in anticipation of Apple's planned end-of-January announcement, lots of vendors showcased tablet PCs. Top three products that got media attention were tablets and netbooks, 3D TVs, and e-book readers. See Wildstom's summary and LATimes item on e-book Readers. See FLICKR slideshow for a glimpse at all the gadgets, games, and guys (99% male audience). CNET editors announced its "Best of CES" (Panasonic 3D plasma TV and Intel Wireless). Local California company Sling Media made some big announcements -- Slingbox is a TV streaming device that allows consumers watch their home TV from all sorts of devices, from anywhere.

CES reported its 2010 Top Trends:

1. Year of the App - 2009 was only the beginning!
2. iPhone vs Palm - 2010 will see more mobile announcements
   
3. Green is the new black - Sustainable planet
4. Software - Windows 7
   

Education products and applications were addressed in several forums, including "Living in Digital Times"and HigherEd Tech Summit, but the news media focused mostly on consumer gadgets.

2010 Horizon Report Preview

Horizon Report 2010 preview
The New Media Consortium released its list of six Horizon Report Topics for 2010 (PDF file) and the Horizon Report 2010 Preview (PDF file). It is "must reading" each year. Read it. Share it. Discuss it. The reports were originally for a higher education audience but now has a huge following.

• Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less
  • Mobile Computing
  • Open Content
    
• Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years
  • Electronic Books
  • Simple Augmented Reality
• Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years
  • Gesture-Based Computing
  • Visual Data Analysis

An example of Open Content by the California School Library Association is their free, online professional development tutorials: School Library Learning 2.0, Classroom Learning 2.0, and Discovering Assistive Technology. Also Learning 2.0 for Teens. These and all sorts of free online courses are available anywhere in the world via the Internet.

Personally, I think gesture-based computing will become more mainstream sooner than 4-5 years. The Nintendo wii technology has amazing potential, not just fun and games. Nintendo competitors seek to outshine the wii. Microsoft announced Project Natal , which simplifies use by eliminating the use of a controller. Sony has a motion controller in development that includes a handheld, wandlike device that pairs with a camera, splitting the difference between Wii and Natal.

Critical Challenges (4) - the third challenge resonates most with me: "Digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key 21st century skill, but there is a widening training gap for faculty and teachers. Often not seen as a priority for faculty or teacher training, digital media literacy is nonetheless a critical skill not only for students but for those who work with them. Faculty and instructors are beginning to realize that they are limiting their students by not helping them to develop and use digital media literacy skills across the curriculum. This
challenge is exacerbated by the fact that it is not clear exactly how to codify the skills or set standards for their measurement."

The Horizon Report documents are also available the Horizon Report Wiki. They are the result of the rounds of discussions and voting by the advisory board members. The final report will be officially released on January 20. The preview version of the report includes a section called Critical Challenges as well as a section for Key Trends. - Buffy Hamilton, AASL Blog, Nov. 23

Book Seer - Fun Application for Recommending Books

Santa Barbara's Cold Spring School Librarian Janet Seer alerted me to Book Seer: "You just type in the title and author of a book you (or your students) liked and it will give you suggestions for other titles you might also like." See http://bookseer.com/ It compares recommendations from Amazon.com v.s. LibraryThing. Amazon is huge, but LibraryThing is cool. It also suggests: "Of course, you could go ask your local bookshop or your local library."

Fill in the blanks...
Child! I've just finished reading by . What should I read next?

This application is just one of many cool tools (literary web project) created by Aptstudio.com

Another new, cool application is Enhanced Edications for the Apple iPhone. Here is a promo for the Death of Bunny Munro:

The Death of Bunny Munro - Enhanced Edition Promo from Enhanced Editions on Vimeo.

ScrollMotion - New eBook Reader

American Libraries Online alerted me to another new eBook reader by ScrollMotion. The company has done deals with a number of publishers to make eBooks available on the iPhone and the iPod Touch mobile devices. Eventually, the applications will be available on Android and Blackberry platforms.

One Laptop Per Child - Columbia

One of this week's TED videos was on the One Laptop Per Child program update by MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte about his visit to Columbia, where he gave out 650 laptop computers to students. The Columbia Department of Defense was his host, not the Department of Education.

Negroponte said each laptop had 100 books on it. Each laptop had a different set of books on it. So, imagine if a village had 100 students with laptops, that would mean students would have access to 10,000 books. Powerful video about a powerful program. Check it out: