From TeleRead:

A daily Japanese newspaper, the Tokyo Shimbun, has recently launched an app that allows children to scan specially-marked articles with their smartphone, which then reveals various kid-friendly content related to the article. An anime character, for instance, might pop up on a child’s smartphone screen and explain the article in kid-friendly terms. Various graphics and pop-up headlines may also be revealed.

. . . .

To use the app, a child simply has to find an article that’s been surrounded by a light-blue box—that’s the indication that a story has multimedia content hidden just beneath its surface.

Link to the rest at TeleRead

The Apple Dilemma:  Marketshare or Margins

“Steve Jobs famously got Apple back on track by reducing the number of products Apple had down to a reasonable number in order to create product excellence.

“Focus, focus, focus.

“Excellence, excellence, excellence.

“That’s why it’s was a huge, huge deal when Apple finally — after Steve Jobs fought against it — launched the iPad Mini. The press and consumers went crazy for this product when Amazon had had the Kindle Fire out for 13 months and Google had had the Nexus 7 out for five. It was a big deal not because of the product itself, but because the app ecosystem was finally freed to embrace a new footprint.

“Steve was right about focus while simultaneously wrong about the smaller tablet footprint — long live cognitive dissonance and a tolerance for ambiguity!”

*****

“This week someone handed me a BlackBerry 10. It’s basically as good as the iPhone 5, in fact some would argue the finish feels better in your hand.

“Anyone who has used the Microsoft Surface will tell you that while the Microsoft app store is far behind Apple’s, the interface and the hardware are as good or better.

“Finally, a bunch of dorky friends of mine have been praising the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, an absurdly large smartphone (or tiny version of the iPad mini). After lunch with David Eun of Samsung at CES I said screw it, I’ll buy that really dorky looking phone.

“Now I love it.

“When reaching for my iPad Mini, iPhone or Note, I most frequently reach for the Note.”

Read the rest here at:  Launch

I actually love my Android.  Julia

From ZDNet:

Amazon has released a Kindle app for Windows 8, and many major PC manufacturers are preinstalling it on their new Windows devices.

The e-reader app, which will run on both Windows 8 and Windows RT, was revealed on Thursday as Microsoft officially launched the x86 and ARM-based versions of its next-generation operating system.

Manufacturers preinstalling the Kindle app on their PCs and tablets include Samsung, Dell, Lenovo, HP, Acer and Asus.

Link to the rest at ZDNet

From AppNewser:

While you probably don’t think of map apps you probably don’t think of literature, D.C.-based artist William Beutler has a new Web map app that is based on David Foster Wallace‘s book Infinite Jest. Infinite Atlas, as it is called, chronicles all of the locations mentioned in the book, both real and fictional.

Entries on the map include the page number, a description of the place and the characters involved.

Link to the rest at AppNewser

From USA Today:

Big-box retailers are developing indoor navigation tools to help shoppers find what they want. Some, including Target and Walgreens, have stored floor layout plans in smartphone apps. Walmart and Home Depot apps now can display aisle numbers for searched items.

In a store, “I can talk to an associate, but I can’t search for a two-sided tape,” says Gibu Thomas, Walmart head of mobile and digital. “Mobile brings the (online store) to the store.”

Within two weeks of Walmart’s May launch of the “In-Store” mode in its app, about 15% of page views were from shoppers in stores.

. . . .

About 20% of retail sales are lost because shoppers can’t find items, estimates Nathan Pettyjohn, CEO of Aisle411, an app with 9,000 store maps. A locator also can attract customers who need only an item or two and would avoid a big-box store, lest they waste time.

Link to the rest at USA Today

There’s no mention that Barnes & Noble or any other bookstore has an app like this to allow customers to search for books.

From the Amazon Media Room:

Amazon.com, Inc. today announced the launch of its Amazon Appstore in the U.K., Germany, France, Italy and Spain, giving European customers access to Amazon’s broad selection of quality Android apps with the convenience of shopping on Amazonfrom their Android phones and tablets.

. . . .

Amazon’s Appstore offers a great selection of games and apps, including local favorites like “Jamie Oliver’s 20 Minute Meals” and “Skyscanner,” established bestsellers like “Fruit Ninja” and “Cut the Rope,” and new apps from top-tier brands like Rovio and Glu Mobile. In addition to localized content and a localized mobile store for each specific country, European customers will have access to popular Amazon Appstore features like the “Free App of the Day,” which offers a paid app for free every day.

Link to the rest at the Amazon Media Room

This fits nicely with an upcoming Amazon press conference on September 6 at which Amazon watchers believe it will introduce a Kindle Fire 2 plus an updated Kindle Touch. There are also reports that Amazon will offer a discounted advertising-supported tablet.

Here is a leaked photo (which may or may not be accurate) of what the new Fire is supposed to look like:

Here’s more about the leaked photo from The Verge

Amazon’s press conference is scheduled shortly before an Apple press conference on September 12 at which Apple watchers expect the iPhone 5 and possibly an iPad mini will be announced.

Here’s a phony iPhone 5 commercial that’s generated a ton of views on YouTube:

If you can’t get enough of the Olympics:

The Olympics-themed gaming app [Finger Olympic] from Maura Garcia lets users participate in sporting events using their fingers.

Link to the rest at AppNewser

From ReadWriteWeb, nothing about the book biz per se, but some advice to help you on your next trip:

There are a lot of apps that help you travel smarter and, increasingly, these apps are designed to store all the information about your destination in one central place. But what we wanted, as we worked our way through a hectic summer travel schedule, was one app that would store all our travel information and make the process as easy as possible. Or at least easier than our old method of printing out travel confirmations after copying-and-pasting the details into Google Calendar.

. . . .

TripIt gave us everything we were looking for, including most of the features listed above. One of our favorite features, however, was the ability to email flight and hotel confirmations, dinner reservations and other plans straight to [email protected] and have them added to our itinerary.

. . . .

And that is TripIt’s key advantage: a lot of the planning becomes automatic. Directions from the airport to a hotel are automatically inserted into your itinerary.

Link to the rest at ReadWriteWeb

PG has used Tripit for several years for both business and pleasure travel.

For almost any travel provider that emails you a confirmation, you just forward the confirmation to [email protected] and it’s inserted on the correct day of your trip and formatted so it’s easy to read on a smartphone, complete with confirmation numbers.

If you want to share your itinerary with an assistant or family member, you just add their email address and they can see all the details of your trip. You can set Tripit to give you flight updates so you see if your flight is delayed when you pull up your itinerary.

As mentioned, Tripit can provide directions and insert a map to show you where you’re going. If you still want paper, you can print out a nicely-formatted Tripit itinerary.

You can also access Tripit through a web browser. It’s a powerful service, but requires only a very short learning curve to be useful.

From The Wall Street Journal:

From Alexandra Alter,

“It takes the average reader just seven hours to read the final book in Suzanne Collins’s “Hunger Games” trilogy on the Kobo e-reader—about 57 pages an hour. Nearly 18,000 Kindle readers have highlighted the same line from the second book in the series: “Because sometimes things happen to people and they’re not equipped to deal with them.” And on Barnes & Noble’s Nook, the first thing that most readers do upon finishing the first “Hunger Games” book is to download the next one.

Hi all,

Looks interesting.  Unfortunately I can only post the link, not the video:

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/video/7443946-google-unveils-new-tablet-at-sf-io-conference/#.T-tmvMUIvME.email

–  Julia Barrett