E-books And The Amazon Kindle

Industry Eco-Footprint Stats

• From Business Week:– 8.9 pounds of emissions per book.– 30 million trees consumed per year by the

industry.– Recycled paper is now used for 13% of

book pages.

An Industry in Transition• From Yahoo News:

– New annual releases keep increasing (more than 276,000, according to researchers R.R. Bowker)

– While the number of books purchased is expected to drop, according to a report by the Book Industry Study Group, an industry-supported organization.

– In addition, core American Booksellers Association (ABA) membership dropped to 1,524 as of this spring, 56 fewer than the year before, and booksellers filled less than half of the roughly 500 chairs set up for a meeting at the Expo.

Concerns: Kids and Books

The Amazon Kindle

• 6" diagonal, 4-level grayscale electrophoretic display (E Ink material) with a resolution of 600×800 pixels (167 ppi), although the largest graphic image that can be displayed without being resized in a publication is 450x550 pixels.

• It measures 5.3 inches × 7.5 inches × 0.7 inches (134.5 mm × 190 mm × 19 mm) and weighs 10.3 ounces (295 grams).

• The Kindle has 256 MB of internal storage, of which 180 MB is available on a new device.

External storage, battery life, ports and connectors

• An SD memory card expansion slot is present, officially supporting cards up to 4 GB in size.

• It has 64 MB of RAM. The battery lasts roughly two days with wireless on, and one week with wireless off.

• The battery charges in about two hours.• A USB 2.0 port (mini-B connector) is available for

connecting to a computer (where it acts as a USB flash drive).

• The device runs on a modified version of Linux based on the 2.6.10 kernel.

• The Kindle features a headphone jack and one-year warranty.

How do you use it?• On startup you go to the Home menu. The

Home menu lists all the books, magazines, and newspapers you've bought or transferred to your Kindle.

• To read a book, use the select wheel to move the silver selection next to the book's name, and press the select wheel. You can return to your Home menu at any time by pressing the Home key.

• Use the Next Page and Previous Page on the sides of the Kindle.

Navigation• If you want to move forward (or backward) in

larger steps than a page, hold down the Alt key while you press the Next Page or Previous Page buttons to move 5% of the way forward or back in the book.

• On the bottom of the screen, just below the last line of text, is a line of dots. This is the ruler, which shows you how far along you are in the book.

• You can bookmark a page (to return to it quickly later) by scrolling up to the top of the page and pressing the select wheel (or by pressing Alt B). You can also do this using the menu.

Whispernet

• Whispernet is the Kindles wireless network, which uses the Sprint EVDO cellular network. This means that the Kindle can be used as a stand alone without a computer. Whispernet is accessible through Kindle without any fee.

Content on the Kindle

• The easiest way to get books onto your Kindle is to buy them directly from Amazon.com and have them transferred wirelessly. New content is being added each day.

• You can also get books from one of the many websites that offer ebooks.

Some Other Places to Get Books• Some of the most popular among Kindle owners are:

– http://www.manybooks.net– http://www.feedbooks.com/– http://www.wowio.com/– http://www.gutenberg.org/

• Example: Feedbooks offers a book catalog that you can put directly onto your Kindle, from which you can immediately download books.

• You can also transfer books using the USB cable.– Find your book files and drag them to the “documents”

folder.– This will work for .azw, .txt, .prc, and .mobi files.

DOCs and PDFs• If you want to read .doc or .pdf files, you can email

them as attachments to <your Kindle name>@free.kindle.com and you'll get a reply with the document file converted into .azw format. The .azw format is proprietary from Amazon.

• If you want the converted file sent directly to your Kindle, email it as an attachment to <your Kindle name>@kindle.com (note the absence of “free”).

• Your Amazon account will be charged 10 cents and the converted file will be sent wirelessly to your Kindle.

What else can you do?• You can highlight text on your Kindle—which

really just draws a box around it.– Select a line that you want to use as the beginning

or end of your highlighted section. – On the menu, select Add Highlight. Select any

other line on the page, and a box will be drawn around the text starting at the first line you selected.

• Selecting the same line will just draw a box around that line.

• To delete a highlight, just select any line in the box, then from the menu, select Delete Highlight.

Adding Notes• You can also add your own notes to any

book, creating your own personal footnotes and information scribbled in the margins.– Using the select wheel, select a line, then from the

menu, select Add Note. Type in your note, and select Done.

– A small note icon will appear to the right of that line. If you select that line again, you can Edit the Note (thus seeing what you wrote), or Delete it.

• You can also see your notes by selecting the Menu on a page, then selecting My Notes & Marks.

Saving Text

• You can also save a piece of text to use it outside the Kindle. – On any page, select Menu, then select Save Page

as Clipping at the end. – This will save a plain-text document called My

Clippings in your Home menu.

• The next time you connect your Kindle to your computer with the USB cable, check out the clippings folder and you'll see text files with the pages you saved. Unfortunately, you can only save one page at a time.

Searching• You can also search through your Kindles

library. – Just press the SEARCH button at the bottom of

the keyboard, type anything, and select Go. – You'll be presented with a list of every document

on your Kindle that contains the exact phrase you typed in.

• If you select a document, your Kindle will display all the places in that document where the phrase shows up; selecting any of the matches will jump to that place in the document.

Dictionary

• The Kindle comes with the New Oxford American Dictionary and you can buy others.– While reading, select a line of text. In the

menu that appears, select Lookup. – Each uncommon word on that line will be

displayed with a brief definition.

• Select a brief definition, and a full definition will be displayed.

Experimental Extras

• The Kindle comes with several bonus experimental features - the experimental menu has three items in the current edition of the Kindle:– Basic Web provides you with a simple web

browser (NetFront 3.3, which is designed for mobile devices like phones and PDAs).

– You can use Basic Web to browse the world wide web as long as wireless is switched on and you have a signal.

Ask Kindle NowNow

• Question ask and answer feature• With Ask Kindle NowNow, you type in a

question, and it's sent to a network of people who compete to answer your questions.

• You'll get up to three answers, usually within ten minutes. You can ask them anything.

Playing Music/Podcasts

• If you've loaded music files onto your Kindle (using the USB cable), Play Music will play your music.

• You can also hold the ALT key and press the P key to play or pause the music no matter what you're doing on the Kindle. Press ALT F to skip to the next song.

Other Goodies

• The Kindle has GPS– Google Maps, show current location (Alt-1 while in

the browser)– Alt-2 find gas station nearby– Alt-3 find restaurants nearby– Alt-5 find custom keyword nearby

• Play Minesweeper (Alt-M)• Make a screenshot (Alt-Shift-G)• show time from the home screen (Alt-T)

Using With Other Devices

Using With Other Devices

The Sony Reader

Reference:

The Kindle Fan Guide - An unofficial handbook for Amazon's awesome e-book reader

by Brent P. Newhall under a Creative Commons Attribution (by) license.

The iPhone and the SDK

What is the iPhone• Apple’s Smartphone• More than a Phone?

• Built in Accelerometer• GPS or Position Triangulation • Multi Touch Interface• Sensors• Keyboard• Safari• Mail• Calendar• Wide Screen Display

iPhone Overview• Smart Phone +

– iPod (Widescreen) – Wireless Internet Communication Device

– Wifi 802.11 b/g

– PDA – Computer (OS X)– Camera – App Store

iPhone Development• Development done with the help of

iPhone SDK (requires an Intel MAC)– Uses Objective-C– XCODE + Other tools– Can submit your application to App Store

– $99 membership– Review your application + code

– Revenue model– You set your price (free, 99cents, $9.99m etc)– 70% developer (you) and 30% Apple.

iPhone SDKiPhone SDK includes five powerful iPhone programming tools

1.XCODE• Professional text editor• Debugger• GCC compiler

2.Interface Builder• For creating user interface

3.Instruments• For optimizing application

iPhone SDK

4. Dash Code• For creating web applications for Safari

5. iPhone Simulator

iPhone OS can be viewed as set of layers

Cocoa Touch Layer– Application management– Graphics and windowing support– Event-handling support– User interface management– Objects representing the standard

system views and controls– Support for text and web content– Accelerometer data– The built-in camera– The photo library– Device-specific information

the basic tools to implement graphical, event-driven applications

Media Layer

– Graphics Technologies– Core Audio– OpenAL– Video Technologies

provides graphics and media technologies for creating advanced multimedia experiences

Core Services

– Address Book– Core Location– CFNetwork– Security– SQLite

Provides fundamental or core system services that all applications use

Core OS

– Threading (POSIX threads)

– Networking (BSD sockets)

– File-system access– Standard I/O– Bonjour and DNS

services– Location information– Memory allocation

• encompasses the kernel environment, drivers, and basic interfaces of the operating system

• Provides access to low-level features of the operating system

iPhone Hardware and Software features available to applications

• Accelerometer– iPhone and iPod touch have 3 accelerometers to

measure/detect movement along each of the primary (x, y, and z) axes in three-dimensional space

– The system uses the accelerometers to monitor a device’s current orientation and to notify applications when that orientation changes

– Applications can access accelerometer data directly

iPhone Hardware and Software features available to applications

• Core Location– Core Location monitors signals from cell towers

and Wi-Fi hotspots to triangulate the user’s current position

– Accuracy of location information and threshold for reporting location changes can be specified

– Use sparingly – drains battery

iPhone Hardware and Software features available to applications

• Contacts– The Phone, Mail, and SMS Text applications use

contact list to identify contacts and to facilitate basic interactions such as starting a phone call, email, or text message

– Your applications can access contacts for similar purposes or to get other information relevant to your application

iPhone Hardware and Software features available to applications

• The Camera and Photo Library– iPhone has a camera and photo library -- iPod

Touch has no camera– iPhone OS provides access to both of these

features– You can incorporate system-provided picker

interfaces into your application– These interfaces provide standard system views

for selecting a photo from the user’s photo library or taking a picture using the camera

41

App DistributionThree methods of distribution:

– App Store

• Wi-Fi/EDGE/HSDPA on iPhone

• Desktop syncing via iTunes

– Enterprise

• Proprietary in-house apps

• Requires 500+ employees

– Ad-hoc

• Provide users with app via email/website

• Requires users to register their device ID with the developer

• 100 device limit per app

42

Downloading Apps

App Store distribution method determined by size:

– Apps < 10 MB can be downloaded over the cellular network

– Apps > 10 MB require WiFi connectivity or side loading via iTunes

Classes of iPhone Applications

• We can define three types of iPhone applications:– Productivity– Utility– Immersive

iPhone Developer University Program

a free program designed for higher education institutions looking to introduce curriculum for developing iPhone or iPod touch applications. The University Program provides a wealth of development resources, sophisticated tools for testing and debugging, and the ability to share applications within the same development team. Institutions can also submit applications for distribution in the App Store.

iPhone Developer University Program

Student Development Team

The iPhone Developer University Program allows instructors and professors to create a development team with up to 200 students.

iPhone Developer University Program

The iPhone Developer University Program includes:

• iPhone SDK

• iPhone Dev Center Resources

iPhone Developer University Program

• Testing on iPhone and iPod touch

iPhone Developer University Program

• Internal or App Store distribution

iPhone/SDK Recommendations

– Optimize Web Site for Mobile Devices– Computer Science iPhone University Developer

Program– Create iPhone App for Marketing– Create iPhone App for Registration/Student

Services– Integrate iPhone into Classroom Activities– Also Investigate Google’s Android App Store and

RIM’s Blackberry App Store

Invitation and Call for Presentations  

 National and Mid-Pacific ICT Centers

 

Winter 2009 ICT Educator Conference

San FranciscoJanuary 8-9, 2009

Presentation Tracks On:

–ICT Industry Educational Programs

–ICT Educator Successes

–MPICT Center Efforts

Register at www.ictcenter.org

Join us Summer 2009 in Phoenix

watch ate-con.org for details