I'm never thrilled when people take real books and transform them into fake books, and it's even worse when the books in question are actually nice. That said, these Book Charging Docks are kind of snazzy:
Labels: Fake Books, Technology
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Monday, August 08, 2011
Parenting in a digital age
NPR's "All Tech Considered" blog has an article up featuring a handful of parenting tips about girls and social media from Rachel Simmons, author of the best-selling nonfiction title Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls. I'm not sure what makes the tips gender-specific (they seem 100% applicable for boys, too), but they're all solid suggestions. Labels: Nonfiction, Technology
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posted by Yulianka at 3:44 PM
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0 comments
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Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Plus after plus
Finally, some e-book news I'm genuinely excited about: Google has launched an online e-book retail store. Their e-books aren't fancy (no 3-D pictures or dictionary definitions on demand), but they are stored online, which means they can be read on almost any Internet-connected device—PCs, e-readers (except for Amazon's Kindle), and smart phones. Users just buy their book(s), sign in, and read. And in addition to their widespread availability, Google's e-books will allow independent booksellers to get a cut of the revenue! When readers buy the books via their local booksellers' websites, those stores will receive a portion of the profits.Labels: ebooks, Google, Technology
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posted by Yulianka at 10:20 AM
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Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Looking to waste some time?
Have I got the iTunes app for you: several "classic" Choose Your Own Adventure titles have been launched recently as interactive reading experiences for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Even as a child, I hated CYOA books (they aggravated my OCD, which forced me to constantly backtrack and read every potential outcome), but I suppose this news will warm the hearts of the (inexplicably) vast numbers of people who actually experience '80s nostalgia.
Labels: Old Books, Series, Technology
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posted by Yulianka at 12:59 PM
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0 comments
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Wednesday, May 19, 2010
A far, far better thing
I was hanging out in the Vienna airport a few years ago, and was thrilled to discover that they sold packets of gummy bears in the ladies' restrooms. (I don't actually eat gummy worms, being vegetarian, but it was still very exciting.) However, I would have been even MORE stoked to find one of these cigarette machines that have been transformed into book dispensers. How awesome is that?Labels: Technology
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posted by Yulianka at 8:39 AM
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Monday, April 19, 2010
For serious?
Whoa: the Royal Shakespeare Company has arranged something called Such Tweet Sorrow, a five-week-long event that allows six actors (playing Romeo, Juliet, and four additional characters) to tweet their way through the events depicted in the play. Each actor is following a loose script overseen by the RSC, but they'll write their tweets themselves. This leads to fascinating character insights like this one, which Romeo (@romeo_mo) wrote about Mercutio (@mercuteio):Mercutio is seriously on the prowl tonight,ladies look out!!He's like a dog on heat! @mercuteio close your mouth, your drooling in your pintI do love me a good literary gimmick, so I'll probably be following this.
Labels: other websites, Technology, William Shakespeare
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posted by Yulianka at 8:35 AM
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Thursday, February 11, 2010
Skeleton Creek and Ghost in the Machine, by Patrick Carman
Patrick Carman clearly appreciates a good literary gimmick. He promoted his Land of Elyon books via a four-month-long cross-country tour in a decorated bus, he contributed a novel to Scholastic's bell-and-whistle-laden 39 Clues series, and his latest work combines conventional YA horror writing with online videos.
Skeleton Creek and Ghost in the Machine are set in an isolated town in the Oregon wilderness. As the story opens, 15-year-old best friends Ryan and Sarah are still feeling the effects of an ill-advised trip to an abandoned gold-mining dredge outside of town: Ryan's leg was broken, their parents have forbidden them to see one another, and they're pretty sure they encountered the ghost of Old Joe Bush, a former dredge worker who died on the site twenty-odd years earlier. Carman's story is divided into two parts—the books, which are told from Ryan's perspective in diary format (complete with fake handwriting and drink stains), and Sarah's videos, which consist of short clips of the Blair Witch-style hijinks at the dredge. The videos are posted online and accessed via passwords the characters exchange over the course of the series.
Ryan and Sarah's severed friendship adds an interesting element to the books, but Carman's ghost story plot is about as original as an episode of Scooby-Doo. Still, there is a reason why haunted house (or haunted dredge) stories continue to find a market—take a dark, creepy space, toss in some unexplained footsteps, add a few wide-eyed victims and voilà: horror gold! Carman doesn't even need to write a convincingly creepy description of his dredge; the videos do most of the work for him. We're not arguing that these stories are great literature, or even genuinely scary if you're older than, say, nine, and we're not even going to start on the implausibility of a 15-year-old boy catching a Castle of Otranto reference off the top of his head. (Plus, Skeleton Creek ends on a shameless cliffhanger, so you can kiss the cover price of both books goodbye if you want to find out what happens.) But Carman's book/video hybrid is entertaining enough, and his blend of kid-appropriate horror and accessible technology might be the very thing to tempt reluctant readers to give reading for pleasure another shot... so we'll give him a pass on the Otranto thing.
But just this once.
[Review copies provided by publisher.]
Labels: Book Reviews, Kids' books, Technology
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posted by Yulianka at 4:54 PM
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1 comments
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Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Tempting... but not tempting enough
Barnes & Noble is throwing its hat into the e-book ring with the Nook, a $259 reader with a 7.7 inch screen. It is the first color reader, features 3G Wireless and Wi-Fi, and will work with either PCs or Macs. Most interestingly, it also includes something called the "LendMe" feature, which allows Nook owners to lend e-books to friends with similar devices for a two week period. I'm still not buying one of these suckers until they drop way, way in price (like, halfway), but they're getting cooler, huh?
[Via PCAdvisor]
Labels: Technology
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posted by Yulianka at 10:32 AM
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Thursday, July 02, 2009
Revenge via Twitter?
Whoa--has anyone been following this Alice Hoffman thing? She was apparently upset by an unfavorable review Boston Globe critic Roberta Silman wrote about her latest book, so she went on a Twitter rampage, calling Silman a "moron" and an "idiot", and concluding by publishing the critic's phone number and e-mail address, and inviting her fans to write to Silman and "tell her off".Charming, no? And making me very, very thankful that all of the authors we've written about in a less-than-glowing light (and there have been quite a few) have been absolutely gracious. Thanks, guys!
...oh, and it also makes me wonder if Twitter should maybe work on something like those cellphone apps that stop people from drunk-dialing.
Labels: hissyfits, Random authors, Technology
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posted by Yulianka at 8:55 AM
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1 comments
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Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Foldable-e-readers: gimmicky or cool?
I was reading an Unplggd post about the Readius e-reader, an upcoming e-reader with a newfangled roll-up display. Behold:
I don't know anything about these machines (no info on price, etc.), but they certainly look like the sort of thing that will have technophiles all a-quiver.
[Images via Readius.com]
Labels: Technology
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posted by Yulianka at 1:28 PM
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0 comments
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Thursday, December 11, 2008
Monday, May 12, 2008
Picture books for baby techies
Slate is currently featuring a slideshow about the frequently out-of-date portrayal of technology in kids' books.The slideshow introduced me to Sylvia van Ommen's Jellybeans, which kicks off with the two main characters arranging (via text) to meet in the park for jellybeans, cocoa, and deep philosophical discussion:
Doesn't it look cute? I'm a little grossed out by the jellybeans/cocoa combo (that would definitely be an either/or choice for me), but the texting and deep philosophical conversation sound perfectly wholesome.
Labels: Technology
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posted by Yulianka at 1:42 PM
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Thursday, December 20, 2007
eBooks GALORE!
Girlebooks.com is a website with a mission: it offers free e-books by female writers, all in an effort to “make classic and lesser-known works by female writers available to a large audience through the e-book medium”. Their titles include well-known novels by Jane Austen, Edith Wharton, and Lucy Maud Montgomery, as well as books by lesser-known authors like Hanna Webster Foster and Fanny Fern.In an effort to judge the e-book experience, I compared the Girlebooks version of Fanny Burney’s Evelina with my print copy. The idea of reading a 400-plus-page-long novel online was a little daunting (even to a longtime fanfic reader like me), but I was happy to discover that Girlebooks had done everything possible to make their readers comfortable:
1. The digital version was surprisingly easy to read. I wouldn’t recommend trying to wade through Girlebooks’ Spartan “Plain Text” version of Burney’s novel, but their PDF version was attractive, neatly organized, and written in large, clear font.
2. There weren’t many differences between the printed and the digital texts, although I noticed that the e-book typist didn’t include any italics, and they appear to have changed some of the original punctuation marks. On the other hand, 18th century grammar and spelling wasn’t standardized, so I can’t be certain that the text in my print version is accurate, either.
And last, but definitely not least…
3. The e-book version of Evelina is free, while the cheapest (unused) print copy I could find was ten bucks. (There doesn’t seem to be a Dover Thrift edition.) Sure, you can’t curl up in an armchair with an online novel—unless you have some kind of fancy e-reader doohickey, which I don’t—but did I mention that it’s FREE?
My hat is off to the fine people at Girlebooks: their e-books are beautifully designed, and you can’t beat their prices. Anybody who hasn’t read Evelina—or any of the other excellent titles they offer—should run, not walk, to check them out.
Labels: ebooks, Fanny Burney, Technology
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posted by Yulianka at 7:57 PM
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2 comments
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