Tag: Corning

New iPod Touch, New Samsung Chromebook & Newsweek Ends Print Publication

Linda Reimer

New iPod Touch: The new iPod Touch, the 5th generation model with a larger screen and a Retina Display, has started to ship. And today, Best Buy lists the device as being available to order, Apple lists it as available for pre-order with an expected delivery date of two weeks and Amazon also has it listed as available for pre-order. There has been some speculation with the tech news community that the initial batch of this new iPod may be somewhat small due to glass manufacturers in China struggling to keep up with the demand for display glass – so if you’re interested in buying a new 5th generation iPod Touch for yourself or perhaps as a holiday gift you may want to order one now or wait until January.

New Samsung Chromebook: For those not familiar with Chromebooks they are a rather light weight type of laptop that requires an Internet connection to run and run on Google’s Chrome operating system. The new Samsung Google Chromebook costs just $249, has an 11.6” screen and weighs 2.5 pounds. Now this is a light weight type of laptop – you have to use the Google ecosystem with it so, for example, instead of using Microsoft Word for writing and Microsoft Outlook for email you’d be using Google Docs and Gmail. However, if what you need in your Wi-Fi equipped house is a laptop in the kitchen or upstairs in the den to use to quickly check email, check information found online or bring up a recipe – than this just might be the light weight lap top you need.

For more information on the new Samsung Chromebook check out the CNET article: Hands-on with the new Samsung Chromebook via the following link:

http://goo.gl/t2PPi

Newsweek Ends Print Publication: Newsweek, which has been around as a print publication since the nineteen thirties, will be ending its print publication at the end of this year. The advent of the digital reading age, via e-readers, e-books and web based articles has impacted the bottom line of the weekly news magazine making it untenable and unprofitable for the magazine to continue to offer a print edition. Digital subscriptions will continue to be available.

For more information check out the New York Times article Newsweek to Cease Print Publication at End of Year via the following link:

http://goo.gl/ueqmC

Have a great day!

Linda R.

 

Some Tech News & Library Tech Event of the Week

Linda Reimer

On a general tech news note, all I can say is wow! All one has to do is go on vacation for a couple of days for the some of the major powers that be in the tech world to make announcements! Microsoft and Apple have made major tech announcements and Amazon has announced a new Kindle feature called Whispercast which will make using, and sharing, Kindle e-books among employees and students much easier.

From the Microsoft corner, Microsoft has finally announced the price of its upcoming Surface tablet. The entry level Surface tablet, which will be running a version of the upcoming Windows 8, will cost $499 for the 32 GB version sans the neat attachable (and easy detached) keyboard. And if you want the keyboard too then the price goes up $100. So the entry level Surface Tablet will be priced at the same price as the entry level 16 GB iPad 3 – just FYI for comparison sake! And of course I am sure that the iPad Mini will be priced at less than that.

And speaking of the iPad Mini, Apple has finally sent out invitations for a new press event to be held on October 23. The press invitations hint at the unveiling of a smaller iPad (that the press is calling the iPad Mini)– the invitations state “We’ve got a little more to show you.” And I must admit to being amused at the timing – nothing like rivalry between tech companies! The Apple press event is being held on Wednesday, October 23 and Windows 8, and a multitude of PCs, tablets and hybrid devices running versions of Windows 8 arrive in stores on Friday, October 26, 2012 – only three days later!

Nothing like a little competition in introducing new tech devices just in time for the holiday season!

And on the Amazon news front, Amazon has just introduced Kindle Whispercast service. This new service is aimed at the educational and business worlds and will allow respective administrators the ability to control content delivered to any registered device that either is a Kindle or a device that has downloaded the Kindle reading app. And the devices that can download the Kindle reading app (and thus read Kindle content) include PCs, Macs, smartphones and tablets of all varieties. In essence if your tech device has a web browser you should be able to register your device to be used with this service. And as a giant added bonus for administrators – you will now be able to manage all content and pay for all e-books added to all registered devices through one account! And that is a huge, and exciting change, because previously you could have a maximum of five Kindles registered to one account which might work well if you have a family of five or less but which wasn’t a viable option for business, school or public library use!

If you’d like to read more on the tech topics mentioned above here are some article links:

The first link is to a CNET article titled At $499, is Microsoft’s Surface tablet priced to move?

http://goo.gl/VkqjO

The second link is to a Reuter’s article titled Apple sets October 23 event, smaller iPad expected:

http://goo.gl/hhPXk

And the last two links are to an article and web page that discuss Amazon’s new Whispercast Kindle service. The first link is to an article titled Amazon’s Whispercast for Kindle targets schools, business:

http://goo.gl/6Mg6s

And the second link is to the official Amazon Whispercast web page which offers more details on the new service:

https://whispercast.amazon.com/info/faqs/

And on a final note, in addition to our usual, and very popular, free one-on-one tech instruction sessions by appointment this week — we also have a program on Microsoft Excel this afternoon.

So if you’d like to learn the basic layout of the Microsoft Excel land – join us!

Here’s the info about the program:

BE:Lab Wednesday One Hour Tech Workshop: Microsoft Excel Time: 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM. Description: This workshop assists new Microsoft Excel users in learning how to use the software. Sign up is required by calling (607)936-3713 ext. 502.

Linda R.

Angry Birds App Cook Book

Linda Reimer

It is rather quiet on the new tech news front today; I think all the news about upcoming Apple products and Windows 8 has died down just a little bit, although I expect the tech rumor mill to be buzzing with word of the iPad mini and Windows 8 features again soon.

Having said that, I did find a rather cool article about of all things…an Angry Birds e-Cook Book!  The cook book is called Bad Piggies Best Egg Recipes

The new cook book is available in app form from iTunes and there will shortly be an Android app for it.

The cook book features recipes and interactive humor from everyone’s favorite green, egg-stealing pigs and costs ninety-nine cents. And it really does have egg related recipes in a number of categories – the recipes have step by step instructions, color photos of the food and some interactive sections with the pigs.

And the article that I came across that relays that information is titled Rovio announces Angry Birds book app: Live from Frankfurt Book Fair and may be accessed via the following link:

http://goo.gl/UlqJV

Have a great day!

Linda R.

Roku & 3 M Release Streaming Video Projector

Linda Reimer

Roku and 3 M have just come out with a new streaming video projector. The projector costs $299 and the streaming stick is $99 so the total price of the set up is much cheaper than your usual costs for a projector. And this is neat as it is portable so you can, for example, access kids videos via Netflix and Amazon and project them on a wall anywhere you have a Wi-Fi connection. So you can take the set up to your summer home or on vacation with you and enjoy TV shows and movies via a projector!

Here’s the link to the a CNET article on the subject, titled 3M Streaming Projector has integrated Roku Streaming Stick, fits in your hand:

http://goo.gl/b1yGU

And if you’re free at 2 PM this afternoon and have recently purchased an iPad please feel free to attend our Wednesday One Hour Tech Workshop on the iPad!

 Linda R.

High Tech Sailing in Outer Space

Linda Reimer

High Tech Sailing in Outer Space: NPR has a cool article on their website that discusses the sailing technology Columbus had in the fifteenth century and, in contrast, the modern solar powered sailing technology developed by Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency for their solar powered space ship IKAROS.  JAEA’s solar powered sailing ship is named IKAROS, after the mythical Ikaros of Ancient Greece fame, and is pushed along through space at yacht speed by solar winds.

The NPR article, titled Eat Your Heart Out, Columbus: A Sailing Ship That Travels On Sunshine, offers a bit of historical information and even shows you video clips of this cool space sailing ship!

The article may be accessed by clicking on the following link:

http://goo.gl/NJPSb

Have a great day!

Linda R. 

Library Tech Programs Week of October 8 – 14, 2012: iPads, Streaming Video Players and More!

Linda Reimer

Wednesday, October 10 2012

BE:Lab Wednesday One Hour Tech Workshop: iPad: Time: 2:00-3:00 PM.

Learn to use an iPad, navigate between screens and search for and download apps. Registration is required please call (607)936-3713 ext. 502 to register.

Thursday, October 11 2012

Evening Tech Workshop: Streaming Video Players: Time: 6:00 – 7:00 PM.

Check out the cutting edge way of watching movies and TV shows. We’ll demonstrate the two most popular media streaming players: Apple TV and Roku, and show you how to access TV shows, movies, music, photos and more- all so you can watch and view them on that big HDTV in your living room. Registration is required please call (607) 936-3713 ext. 502 to register.

Free one-on-one assistance is also available throughout the week! So don’t forget if you have tech questions – you can come to the library for assistance!

So if you have questions about how to use that new gadget or tech item you just got – whether that gadget or tech item is a PC, Mac, a new piece of software, an e-reader or tablet etc. Let us know  – our tech staff is here to help! We don’t know everything of course, however, we are not afraid to do research on a tech subject and find out and will do our best to assist you.

And you may be able to walk into the library and find one of our staff free to assist you, but as we also teach several classes and could be busy with another one-on-one session we suggest that you call or email ahead of time to schedule a session, and tell us a bit about what you are seeking.  You can call us at either: 607.684.0361 or 607-936-3713 ext. 212 to make an appointment, or email us at either: belab@stls.org or reimerl@stls.org

We encourage you to bring your own laptop or device. Please let us know if you would like the use of one of our laptops or check out (in-house) one of our tablets or e-readers.

Linda R.

Library E-Book App Now Available for Nooks & A Cool Article On Serendipity

Linda Reimer

Library E-Book App Now Available For Nooks: Owners of the Nook Tablet, Nook Color, Nook HD and Nook HD+ (basically Nook owners who own a Nook with a color screen) rejoice! There is now an app that will allow you to quickly and easily download free library e-books directly to your Nook without you having to first download the e-books to a computer!

Barnes and Noble & OverDrive just announced the new app. The link to the OverDrive story that announces the new app is titled OverDrive Media Console: Library eBooks Audiobooks, and can be accessed by clicking on the following link:

http://goo.gl/gtd55

And if you have a Nook with a color screen you can cut to the chase and just open the web browser on your Nook and then open the following page which will allow you to download the app:

http://goo.gl/3swWy

A Cool Article On Serendipity: In reading news and book reviews for my work as the Acquisitions Librarian at SSCL I came across a neat New York Times article today. The article was written by the author Mark Helprin and it illustrates, by his real life examples, how serendipitous events can occur in our lives.

The article of course has absolutely nothing to do with technology – I just thought it was cool and figured I’d share it!

Mr. Helprin kicks off the article by stating that “THE great essayist Roger Rosenblatt once generously reminded me that “good writers have good accidents.” Helprin then goes on to illustrate how those little accidents – that occur to one simply because one is in a particular place at a particular time – can and do occur in everyday life and add spice to our lives.

To give you an example, Helprin recalls that as a child he and his family lived in a grand old house on the Hudson River and that he used to walk past a certain old house in the region on a regular basis. And in walking past the house he heard someone in the house playing the piano and he notes that the piano player was quite good and that his name was…insert drum roll here for dramatic effect …the piano player was Aaron Copland!

Not all of the author’s real life examples include famous personages; however, they all relay what I might deem the extra spice of life that one gets when time, place and events conspire to bring about those delightful and fleeting moments of serendipitous wonder that are so hard to describe; but that we all experience during our lives.

So if you like serendipitous events or would just like to read an article that contains gentle humor and dashes of nostalgia you should check out this one!

The article is titled Bumping into the Characters and can be accessed by clicking on the following link:

http://goo.gl/QcFgr

Have a great day!

Linda R.

 

Humorous David Pogue Post On The E-Reader Wars!

Linda Reimer

And I had to share this! David Pogue, the New York Times resident tech guru and reviewer, has a humorous article on the e-reader war going on between Amazon and Barnes & Noble. And he notes how exhausting it must for the e-reader development teams at both companies to try and continually out-do each other – and he compares the new Amazon Kindle Paperwhite e-reader to the Barnes & Noble Glowlight e-reader to do so. It is a fun and informative article titled New E-Reader Lets There Be More Light and it can be accessed via this link:

http://goo.gl/BAMlS

Enjoy!

Linda R.

Self Publishing Your Own Novel Via Amazon, Some Helpful Apps For The Absent Minded Among Us & The Cheerful Computer Smiley Face Has A Birthday!

Linda Reimer

Self Publishing Your Own Novel Via Amazon: PC Magazine offers an interesting article on their website regarding the way e-books are changing the landscape for writers. It used to be, and not so long ago either, that if you had written a novel you had to really sell it to a traditional publisher – that is convince them the work would sell if they published it.

And if you couldn’t get a publisher interested in your book you could shell out money and try and sell the book yourself but you were usually out of luck as far a attracting a large audience and getting your book read.

Today all that has changed.

The E-Book revolution currently underway translates into aspiring writers being able to very easily self-publisher their works as e-books – and they don’t have to convince traditional publishers that their books deserve to be published either!  There are naturally a number of digital publishing platforms you can use to publish your work and to translate that – I simply mean that you can sell your e-book through well-known e-book sellers with self-publishing services like Amazon, Barnes & Noble and iBooks (Apple) as well as independent e-book publishers like Smashwords and Book Tango. However, The PC Magazine article highlights some of the reasons why you might want to consider using the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing service to get your e-book read by the largest number of people. So if you’re a writer who’d like to get your work published and ready by as many people as possible you may want to check out the article!

You might also want to talk to the library’s writer in residence and all round literary guru Michelle Wells who also knows a thing or two about the process of self publishing one’s works electronically!

And here’s the link to the PC Magazine article, titled How To Self-Publish Your Novel on the Amazon Kindle that focuses on the benefits of using the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing service to get your novel published:

http://goo.gl/VVAqZ

Some Helpful Apps For The Absent Minded Among Us: You know how the common adage goes that your memory at mid-life isn’t quite what it was when you were twenty?  Well… as someone who now has both feet planted firmly in that middle age category, I can tell you there is some truth to that adage! Thank goodness for the synched calendar app on my iPad and iMac because if not for that – I’d be forgetting to do things I wanted to get done!  And to assist all of those people that are of a certain age in remembering things we’d like to get done – there is, as the expression goes – an app for that!

Or several apps for that!

The New York Times offers an article on just that subject – apps that assist one in remembering all the items on one’s to-do list! The article is titled For the Absent-Minded, a Few Forget-Me-Nots and the three apps discussed are Any.DO and Remember the Milk, both are free and available for both Android and iOS devices, and, It’s Clear which is only available for iOS devices and costs one dollar.

Here’s the article link:

http://goo.gl/IT5V4

The Cheerful Computer Smiley Face Has A Birthday!  I have to admit I didn’t know that the computer smiley face, the one you create by pressing first on the semi-color key, second on the dash key and third on the right parentheses key so it looks like this 🙂 actually has a name.

As it turns out it does! And this week that cheerful friendly dweller of the web turns thirty! NPR has a short and fun article and podcast combo on the subject titled The Emoticon Turns 30, Seems Happy About It 🙂 and the article link can be found here:

http://goo.gl/joZKp

Have a great day!

Linda R.

More on the iPad Mini & Time Warner Cable Will Begin Charging Modem Rental Fees

Linda Reimer

More on the iPad Mini: The tech rumor mill is a-buzz today with rumors of the impending unveiling of the new iPad Mini. The most noteworthy report on the subject comes from Fortune magazine who cite “a major Apple investor who says he’s heard it from “multiple sources;”” “it” of course, being the news that Apple is getting press invitations ready to be sent out on October 10 inviting the press to an event on October 17. And if all of that comes to fruition the iPad Mini could be unveiled by the end of the month. And I think that is very exciting news because if it is true, and Apple is notoriously mum on its future plans until the events where the actually unveil those new items occur, than there should be a cheaper 7” Apple tablet for sale before the holiday shopping season starts.

And if you’re thinking to yourself “Why is the introduction of an iPad Mini exciting?”

My answer to that question is that it is exciting because at the present time the best tablets, as far as a smooth, exciting and in-depth usage experience goes, are Apple tablets.

And anyone who owns both an Apple and an Android tablet knows that how great the hardware is…that is only half the story – the other half is about the apps – how many apps there are in categories that interest you and how well they work are of great importance too and Apple’s App Store offers thousands more apps than the Android (aka Google Play) App Store. And Apple seemingly has higher standards for which apps it allows to be sold through its App Store so those apps tend to generally work quite well.

Additionally, I have found using the iPad to be a smoother more user friendly experience overall than using an Android tablet. So for Apple to step into the less pricey 7” tablet space is exciting because it will offer a more affordable iPad to the general public which translates into more people being able to purchase a cheaper Apple tablet and truly experience what I’ll call the joy of using a tablet to access information, content (think TV shows, movies and music), play games, Skype, take pictures and modify them and even get some work done!

Not that I am a tablet fan or anything…

And speaking of tablets – if you’d like to sit down and play with an iPad, Kindle Fire or Nook stop by the library sometime – we have iPads and e-reader here for patrons to use in-house and even circulating Nooks with pre-loaded ebooks for patrons to check out. And that is not to mention the e-books in the STLS Digital Catalog…

Here’s the link the brief Fortune article, titled Rumor iPad Mini Invitations Set to be Mailed Out October 10, reporting the iPad Mini unveiling event via the unnamed Apple investor:

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/10/01/rumor-ipad-mini-invitations-set-to-be-mailed-out-oct-10/

And here’s an AppAdvice story titled How the iPad Mini Could Change Everything that offers more information as to why the introduction of a cheaper Apple tablet could greatly impact the tech world:

http://appadvice.com/appnn/2012/10/how-the-ipad-mini-could-change-everything

Time Warner Cable Will Begin Charging Modem Rental Fees: The New York Times Bits Blog relayed some unsurprising information today; for just as the price of just about everything seems to keep going up, certainly gas prices come to mind, Time Warner is adding a new fee for its wireless customers to pay.  The fee is a new fee that will be charged to Time Warner Cable customers who have Wi-Fi set up at their houses via a Time Warner provided modem. The Time Warner modems have been provided free of charge in the past but now there will be a monthly fee of $3.95 to rent the equipment. Of course, Time Warner also offers a list of suggested modems that will work well with their equipment if you’d rather buy a modem than lease one from Time Warner.

Here’s the link to the Bits blog article titled Time Warner Cable Modem Rental:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/02/time-warner-cable-modem-rental/

And here the link to the Time Warner Cable page that suggests modems you can buy that will work well with their equipment:

http://www.timewarnercable.com/nynj/support/topic.ashx/Buy+or+Lease+Your+Modem

Have a great day everyone!

Linda R.