Blog Archive » ePUB 3.0 Resources Coming Out of TOC. In case you did not know, O’Reilly Media’s annual Tools of Change for Publishing 2012 started today with a series of workshops in New York City. If you have never been to Tools of Change or TOC, it is like Christmas and New Year’s Eve in one three-day stretch for people working in digital publishing, complete with free gifts from O’Reilly and others, and the post-event hangover due to being bombarded with so much new information and meeting so many friends and colleagues. IDPF and Readium Readium logo The International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), the group responsible for the ePUB specification chose the launch of TOC today to announce their new ePUB 3.o reader Readium, a “a new open source initiative to develop a comprehensive reference implementation of the IDPF EPUB® 3 standard.”
According to the Readium press release, Packaged as a test application for content developers, the Readium codebase will also serve as a steppingstone for commercial reading systems. Down & Dirty EPUB 3.0. eBook Ecosystem 2016: State of the Art, Five Years On – Summary of Program. Ebook Ecosystem 2016: State of the Art, Five Years On For the second consecutive year, YBP sponsored a special meeting of academic library consortia and publishers at the ALA Annual Conference.
They invited select representatives of each community to discuss the special issues regarding the creation, distribution, models and formats of ebooks in consortia. Below is a summary of the presentations and discussion from the program. Mark Kendall and Ann-Marie Breaux from YBP took notes, other commentary is from Michael Zeoli.
Patron-Driven Acquisitions have exploded and many consortia have organized pilot programs; there have been many developments among publishers in terms of making front list titles available electronically and offering new collection options; and the vendors have been developing in tandem with libraries and publishers to support new collecting channels and services, integrating these with traditional ones. ““The future is digital.” The Notes - Minimal DRM Discussion. Flat World Knowledge Doubles Growth, Outpaces Digital Textbook Trend. Kno Turns Textbooks 3D (Video) How do you make a digital textbook more than just a glorified PDF on a tablet?
Kno, the tablet textbook company started by Chegg co-founder Osman Rashid, is rolling out a variety of features to try to bring textbooks to life, including Facebook integration, automated quizes, an activity stream of notes. But an update to its iPad app today points to how digital textbooks can create entirely new experiences out of static notations.
In the vido above, Rashid shows me Kno’s 3D modeling feature. The 3D feature right now works only with models of molecules in chemistry textbooks. It converts the standard chemistry notations indicating how atoms are bonded together in a molecule into a spinning 3D model along the margins. These 3D models can be enlarged and rotated to give students a better visualization of how each one appears. Of all the new features Rashid showed me, this one impressed me the most because Kno is taking the original text and making it a richer experience on the iPad. With 4 New Products, Kno Finally Looks Like a Contender in the E-Textbook Industry. CourseSmart Launches HTML5-Based Reader for Etextbooks. CourseSmart Launches HTML5-Based Reader for Etextbooks CourseSmart announced the beta launch of its newest reader platform providing users with online, offline, anything, anywhere access to their eTextbooks.
The first in the industry to utilize HTML5 technology for etextbooks and coupled with the latest version of Mozilla Firefox 5.0, this cloud-based offering now provides the same productivity features whether users are online or offline. Students who have active online etextbook digital rental access will immediately enjoy the benefits of the new offline capabilities. Additionally, instructor textbook evaluation services will also be available on the new reader platform, allowing instructors free access to evaluate more than 90% of all core higher education etextbooks whether online or offline. The new reader experience also extends to CourseSmart’s productivity tools allowing users to highlight, search, copy, paste, take notes, share and print while offline. Source: CourseSmart. Our Products. Float: The ‘Netflix of Reading’ Brought To You By The ‘YouTube of Documents’ | Epicenter
“Reading for pleasure is an extraordinary activity,” psychologist Victor Nell once wrote. “The black squiggles on the white page are still as the grave, colorless as the moonlit desert; but they give the skilled reader a pleasure as acute as the touch of a loved body….” Nell crafted that passage in 1988, predating smartphones, iPads, and e-reading devices like the Kindle. Now, his words tantalize us. Our shiny new devices deliver the written word to us anywhere, instantly. Yet we yearn for a reading experience as vivid as those black squiggles on the white page that he mentions. Scribd’s new reading product, Float, is not as epochal as the printed book. “We saw there was digital reading in all sorts of devices and applications,” says Scribd’s 27-year-old CEO, Trip Adler, “and we figured that someone needed to bring it all together.” Float has two key aspects. It’s harder than one might expect to reformat text from various sources in a highly readable form on an iPhone.
E-Book Readers, Netbooks Have Most to Fear From Tablets | Gadget Lab. Study This: E-Textbook Readers Compared | Product Reviews. We all thought stand-alone e-readers were going to get wiped out by the iPad, but they're still here -- and there are still a slew of reasons to recommend them. If you're a student, they make a vital addition to your campus survival kit. They can be pricey, and they won't eliminate your need for a laptop, but the initial cost leads to long term advantages. Hardware e-readers give you the ability to rent or borrow digital versions of your textbooks, and in cases where you have to buy an e-book, digital titles are usually cheaper than the hard copies. They're also more interactive, letting you highlight the study points, take notes and share them, and click hyperlinks to go deeper into a topic. Also, the convenience of reading everything on one lightweight device instead of lugging a backpack stuffed with books can't be ignored.
The Future of Education: Textbooks vs. eBooks - bookhitch.com. The Future of Education: Textbooks vs. eBooks New ways to cut costs: As the 2009 fall season rapidly approaches students, parents, and educational institutions prepare for another academic year while publishers rush to get their books in the bookstores. The textbook market has one advantage over other markets: students are required to have the books for class. Although the used textbook market has rallied against the new, textbook revisions and additions have made it so new textbooks still get their share of the market. It is no secret that the average college student spends an arm, a leg, and the promise of their first born child on textbooks each semester. Such expenses (and finding ways to cut them) coupled with new technologies, have opened the door to many publishers looking to cash in on the market. eBooks The assumptions: students are a part of the younger generation will respond better with using technology as opposed to print; eBook/readers will be less costly than print textbooks.
The page turns: Tablets to outsell e-readers by 2012 — Mobile Technology News. Xyleme Launches Tool for Developing Interactive Learning iPad Apps. LCMS | News Xyleme Launches Tool for Developing Interactive Learning iPad Apps Xyleme has introduced Pastiche, a system for delivering interactive learning materials to the iPad. It's powered by the Xyleme LCMS ("learning content management system") hosted service, which enables organizations to create Pastiche applications that learners can download and use on their iPad devices. Organizations can use Xyleme LCMS to create new learning materials or import existing text and multimedia from Word, PowerPoint, FrameMaker, InDesign, and other development tools and formats.
Xyleme LCMS transforms those materials into granular, reusable learning objects that are stored in XML format and can be updated without reimporting. Learning objects can include text, graphics, audio, video, and other e-learning materials. Pastiche iPad applications can present materials in four different views: Pastiche supports a variety of distribution channels for the iPad applications. About the Author. A WordPress Theme for Taking Notes on Your Kindle. [This is a guest post by Aram Zucker-Scharff. Aram is the Community Manager for the Office of Student Media at George Mason University where he works with student media outlets. He also manages onMason.com, a WordPressMU system for the Mason community. You can find him on Twitter as @Chronotope. Aram blogs at Hack Text and you can find him elsewhere online via Google.] I ask for three things from my notes: that I can take them dependably, read them easily, and sort them effectively. I chose the Kindle as my go-to device for a pretty simple reason: dependability.
For months I struggled to take notes with the P2 theme by Automattic, but it didn’t work smoothly. You can find a full installation package, instructions and a detailed breakdown of modifications for the child theme at my site Hack Text. Why should I use P2 on my Kindle? There are many advantages to using the Kindle as a notetaking device. P2 for Kindle is especially useful for collaborative projects. Return to Top. Publish. Cover creation (Single spanned cover vs. Separate front and back cover) One-piece cover allows you complete artistic control of your artwork. Uploading a spanned cover is the only way to add ardwork to the spine of a book.
Our automated cover creator allows for a single color on the spine, along with any book title you insert. You must include all necessary items to the cover art, such as an ISBN number or copyright information. Acceptable file type: Cover file must be a PDF. Tips: do not include any printer marks such as crop or registrations. Front and back dimensions should be the same.
You must generat a PDF from your word processor or other layout program before uploading the file to QOOP. 1) Embed all fonts to ensure your layout stays intact. iPads Work Great in the Classroom Says Virginia Dept of Ed. - eBookNewser. Watch Out, Print Textbooks: Here Comes Inkling. Digital Tools Inkling Whether it’s the iPad that will shake up the print book industry, or some other tablet, it’s evident that education textbook publishers are going to have to adapt to the digital world. Since the iPad is still the front-runner in the education realm, publishers have to learn to think of it not just as another medium for reading. They have to completely rethink the way content is consumed. And they’re looking to the pros – the engineers — to show them the way. At the moment, it’s Inkling that’s trailblazing the path to re-conceptualizing the college textbook. “The iPad is not a book. What makes Inkling’s apps unique is the fact that “content isn’t bound by pages or sections or chapters in the same linear fashion.
The San Francisco-based startup has grabbed the attention of the media as well as of leading publishers in the industry. Here’s what’s on the agenda for Inkling next fall: Related Explore: digital textbooks, inkling, iPad, McGraw-Hill, Pearson. Virginia Shares School iPad, E-book Experiences. In four Virginia school divisions, a four month pilot of e-books and iPads sheds light on the potential benefits and challenges these digital tools offer. The Beyond Textbooks Year One Report paints a qualitative case study that gives more insight into issues like cost.
But it doesn't draw definitive conclusions, said Tammy McGraw, the director of educational technology at the Virginia Education Department. Instead, this case study provides a snapshot of class experiences with e-books and mobile devices and raises questions that school districts should ponder. The teacher and student opinions Hands down, both teachers and the 333 students who participated reported that the iPad has great potential as a teaching and learning tool.
In general, students liked its immediate access to the Internet and portability. “Students really did have a sense that this adapted nicely to the way they like to learn or the way they would like to approach things,” McGraw said. The development cycle What's next? eBooks Account For Less Than 3% Of Sales From University Presses - eBookNewser. Interactive Textbooks. News: Mixed on Media. When Apple unveiled the iPad just over a year ago, publishers had high hopes that it would finally bump e-textbooks into the mainstream. But while the Apple iPad and computing tablet kin have made rapid gains on college campuses, printed textbooks are still alive and well thanks to a boom in rentals, according to a new survey from Student Monitor. The survey, which polled 1,200 full-time students (average age: 20.6) at four-year institutions in March, found that the proportion of students who rented at least one textbook this spring doubled from last spring, leaping from 12 percent to 24 percent.
Students who rented reported an average savings of $127. And the renting trend shows no sign of slowing: 36 percent of underclassmen said they are either likely or very likely to rent at least one textbook next semester. E-textbooks, meanwhile, have continued to lag. Tablet computers, and especially the iPad, have nonetheless seized the cash and imaginations of students. iPad, Tablet Users Prefer Digital Texts. Mobile Computing | Research iPad, Tablet Users Prefer Digital Texts Acceptance of digital texts is way up, especially among users of iPads and other tablets. In fact, according to research released this week, time spent reading texts in digital formats now just about equals the time spent on paper-based texts. Ease of Use According to the report, released by market research firm Gartner, a full 94 percent of iPad users and users of other tablet devices either prefer reading digital texts (52 percent) or find them as readable as printed texts (42 percent).
Contrasted with that were laptop users, a large portion of whom--47 percent--said they find reading texts on screen more difficult than reading paper. (The next-largest group among laptop users, 33 percent, said the experience was about equal to reading printed texts.) Those who had the least acceptance of reading on screen were 40- to 54-year-olds.