By Edward Nawotka Today’s lead story covers the FutureBook conference held in London this past Tuesday and highlights several projects — The Elements and The Solar System iPad apps — that manage to make the most of emerging digital platforms. In March, for the first time, the UK’s The Bookseller magazine will offer prizes for digital innovation during their annual …
Report from the UK’s FutureBook Conference: Bringing Great Writers into the Digital, Multimedia Mix
By Sophie Rochester LONDON: If there was a key lesson from the first FutureBook conference organized by The Bookseller magazine and held in London for the first time last year, it was “experiment, learn and adapt”. Back again for a second conference, held the past Tuesday, the UK publishing industry appears to be responding well to the challenges of digital …
Apps and eBooks: Readers Have Great Expectations, But How Do You Deliver?
• In a preview of his talk at next week’s Tools of Change conference in Frankfurt, Brandwidth creative director Dean Johnson — the company behind the bestselling Guinness World Records: At Your Fingertips app — shares his thoughts on the role apps play in the world of e-reading and offers a guide for how publishers can use them to achieve …
App Downloads Explode: 755m in Germany, 3.9bn Worldwide in Q1 & Q2
By Siobhan O’Leary Germans love their apps now more than ever. Based on data provided by the market research institute research2guidance, BITKOM [the German Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media] estimates that German mobile phone users will have downloaded 755 million apps by the end of 2010 — that’s a 78% increase over last year. In the first …
Apple App Guidelines, No-Print Future of NY Times, Kobo’s Global Expansion
By Hannah Johnson Our tech digest today includes some recent announcements from the last few days, as well as a great video at the end! Apple Publishes App Store Guidelines Until now, the criteria Apple used to approve or reject apps for sale in its App Store was unknown to developers. Companies had to first spend the money to create …
Romanian Alexandru Brie Aims to Bring iApp Books to the Masses
• Romanian app developer Alexandru Brie has already produced several bestselling book apps and now intends to bring standalone iPhone/iPad apps to the masses via his TouchBookReader platform. • He promises a platform that allows “anyone, regardless of their programming skills, to turn their HTML content into a customizable self-contained e-book app.” By Edward Nawotka BUCHAREST: iPhone/iPad e-book frenzy is …
Do Standalone Book Apps Have a Future?
By Edward Nawotka Today’s lead story discusses Romanian Alexandru Brie’s attempt to bring stand alone iPhone/iPad apps to the masses via his TouchBookReader platform. As e-books have developed and gained acceptance, there have been two distinct steams of books landing on people’s phones: books packaged as individual apps and e-book reading platforms (such as Kindle, Nook, et al.) that allow …
Social Entertainment Site GetGlue Launches IPhone App
by Helen Gregg A growing social networking site focusing on books, movies, video games, television shows, and music launched its iPhone app yesterday, reported eBookNewser. The site, called GetGlue, allows users to ‘check-in’ (ala FourSquare) with what they’re currently watching, reading, playing, or listening to. And similarly to FourSquare, users receive stickers that reflect their interests, and are occasionally eligible …
Rebtel Provides Cheap International Calling on Android Phones
by Helen Gregg Rebtel, a mobile Voice over IP (VoIP) provider, expanded its presence in the mobile markertplace today with the release of a new Anroid app, reported TechCrunch. Rebtel provides cheap international calls by assigning foreign numbers a local number, and the customer only incurs the cost of a local call. Founded in Sweden in 2006, the company currently …
Win a Virtual Gold Medal for Learning English
By Siobhan O’Leary Foreign language dictionary publisher Langenscheidt is testing out the social media waters by offering a new free Facebook language course application. Those who sign up for the Englisch in 5 Minuten app will receive new lessons every two days which can be downloaded as PDFs and also include an audio component. The reward for finishing? A virtual …