This site offers news and discussion mostly about books, with a sprinkling of information on personal technology and digital literacy.
And here’s a link to a PDF version of our May New E-Content Brochure — this lists all the new e-books, audio books, music and videos added to the STLS Digital Catalog for May.
And here’s the link:
New E Content @ The Library May 2013
I’ll also be posting the suggested digital reading, listening and viewing titles for this weekend later today.
Have a great day!
Linda R.
Hi everyone, I’m not sure where today has gone but it is almost gone at least as far as the work day goes!
So here is a relatively short tech blog posting for today!
Here’s a link to a New York Times article, titled Rearranging the Furniture, Minus the Aching Back, on apps you can use that allow you to see how your room and/or house would look if you moved the furniture and paint the walls – without you actually having to move the furniture and paint the walls!
A second link to a Culture of Mac article, titled Kindle For iOS Will Now Turn Your Favorite Books Into Audiobooks, that discusses the recent (yesterday) upgrade of the Amazon Kindle app for iOS (Apple devices) that makes the app more user friendly for the blind or visually impaired:
http://www.cultofmac.com/225836/kindle-for-ios-will-now-turn-your-favorite-books-into-audiobooks/
A third link to a neat arstechnica article titled Finger-Free Phones, Full Body Gesturing, and our “touchscreen” future” that discusses how the rapidly advancing technology will become even more integrated into our lives in the near future:
And a fourth and final link that has nothing to do with technology really – except for the fact that if you appreciate all the tech/digital holdings and assistance you can obtain for free from your local library be aware May 7-8 is National Library Legislative Day – I’m not sure why it is two days – but that is okay! We should all proclaim loudly to our local, regional and national legislators that we value libraries and they should support funding for public libraries!
http://www.ala.org/advocacy/advleg/nlld
Have a great day!
Linda
References
Bell, Killian. (2013, May 1). Kindle For iOS Will Now Turn Your Favorite Books Into Audiobooks. Cult of Mac. Online.
Eaton, Kit. (2013, May 1). Rearranging the Furniture, Minus the Aching Back. New York Times. Online.
Ion, Florence. (2013, May 1). Finger-free phones, full body gesturing, and our “touchscreen” future. arstechnica. Online.
National Library Legislative Day (NLLD). The American Library Association. Online. Accessed May 2, 2013.
New York Times To Offer Cheaper Digital Subscriptions: The New York Times released information to the press today that indicates they will be offering cheaper niche subscriptions to New York Times digital content sometime later this year. The Times spokesman wouldn’t offer specific information regarding what New York Times material would be available at a cheaper price but it is believed that the pricing will be for articles within categories; for example all cooking articles or all tech articles might be offered for a cheaper price as compared to price the Times charges for access to all content on their site.
The price the New York Times currently charges for a digital subscription actually varies depending upon the device you use to access the content. Access to the Times website and content via a smartphone app costs $15 per month, access to the Times site and a content via a tablet app costs $20 per month and full digital access to Times content for all your devices currently costs $35 per month. So one would assume that the niche access would cost less than $15 per month but we’ll just have to wait and see on that point because the Times isn’t saying just yet!
And I for one would be interested in being able to pay a cheaper price to access digital New York Times content. The library has a subscription to the New York Times so you can read it for free at the library (you can even read it for free on an iPad at the library!).
However, when I am at home I frequently like to read articles found on the New York Times website and although right now there is a work-around for their 10-free-articles-and-you-must-pay-for–a-subscription-to-read-more rule – you simply clear your browser history by pressing the Ctrl, Shift and Delete keys (on a PC) and then you’ll be able to read ten more articles for free – I don’t imagine that work-around will work forever though… And although I don’t mind paying to read well written articles I personally find a $15 monthly fee to be an expensive one when the Times has until relatively recently allowed anyone to read all the articles on their site for free. And honestly I don’t have time to read all the articles on the Times site everyday– if I could pay say $7.00 a month to read all the tech stories, all the headlines stories and perhaps 20 other stories from any category I chose each month – that I wouldn’t mind paying $7 for that access but for $15 a month – I’ll read the Times at the library.
The paidContent article I came across on this subject is titled “NYT says new products to be profitable by late 2014” and can be accessed via the following link:
http://paidcontent.org/2013/04/25/nyt-says-new-products-to-be-profitable-by-late-2014/
And here’s the link to the Subscription page on the New York Times website that shows the various digital tiers you can subscribe to:
http://www.nytimes.com/content/help/account/purchases/subscriptions-and-purchases.html#purchasesq01
Link To Wall Mossberg’s Annual Spring Laptop Buyers Guide: Walt Mossberg, the Personal Technology Columnist for The Wall Street Journal, has put forth his annual Spring Laptop Buying Guide video. And basically what he says about buying a laptop right now is two-fold:
And I wholeheartedly agree with his assessment about Windows 8 – Windows 8 is most user friendly if you buy a touchscreen computer to use – it is much more cumbersome if you try to use it on a non-touchscreen computer. And Macs are very good machines so if you want no part whatsoever of a touchscreen computer you might consider buying a Mac.
Here’s the link to the article titled “Mossberg’s Annual Spring Laptop Buyer’s Guide:”
Have a great day!
Linda R.
References
Mossberg, Walt. (2013, May 1). Mossberg’s Annual Spring Laptop Buyer’s Guide. Wall Street Journal. Online.
Roberts, Jeff John. (2013, May 25). NYT says new products to be profitable by late 2014. paidContent. Online.
Tech & Book Talk at SSCL 