Archive for the ‘eBook Readers & Textbooks’ Category
CourseSmart launches etextbook app for Android no comments
CourseSmart has announced the release of CourseSmart for Android 1.0, a mobile app that gives students access to their etextbooks from CourseSmart on their Android-powered smartphones, netbooks and tablets.
Some of the features the new app provides:
- Search for a topic within a single book or across an entire eTextbook stack and access the table of contents;
- Zoom in on text and graphs;
- Scroll through or jump to individual pages;
- Read eTextbooks in landscape or portrait mode;
- View, add and edit text notes.
- Enjoy anytime, anywhere access to 90 percent of all core higher education textbooks in use today; and
- Shop for additional books at up to 60 percent off using a specialized AOS version of CourseSmart’s website
The app is available at the Android Market or at CourseSmart.
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Intel invests in Kno no comments
It had seemed that the interesting but expensive Kno tablets were
DOA, confirming the skepticism they were frequently met with. Now it seems that Intel Capital has made a $20 million investment in the startup. So apparently Kno, the company, will live on in some form. While the Kno tablets looked quite good, especially for the educational market they were aimed at, it always seemed doubtful they could compete at the announced prices.
There were reports a couple of months ago that Kno was planning to sell its tablet hardware business and to then concentrate on its software. The press release below from Intel Capital appears to confirm this. The Kno website has been replaced with a simple page proclaiming “We’re unveiling something new.”
The Kno Blog has not been updated for almost three months.
The press release:
Intel Capital invests $20 million in Kno.
- Intel and Kno to work together to optimize Kno’s touch-based applications for Intel’s educational platforms.
- Intel continues strong support of 1:1 eLearning environments.
SANTA CLARA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Intel Capital, Intel Corporation’s global investment organization, today announced a $20 million investment in Kno Inc., an education software company. The investment is part of a $30 million Series-C round led by Intel Capital, which includes participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Advance Publications, First Round Capital, FLOODGATE and SV Angels. Kno will use the funding to develop its innovative educational software solutions for multiple platforms, including Intel® architecture.
“Intel® AtomTM processors and the underlying technologies are well-suited for Kno’s touch-based applications, and provide the power-efficient performance and responsiveness today’s students have come to expect from tablets.”
Kno, short for knowledge, is an education software company on a mission to make learning engaging, effective and social for students. The companies will work together to address the growing interactive and 1:1 student learning environments by exploring opportunities to make Kno’s touch-based applications available for Intel’s educational platforms.
“The increasing consumption of digital content has primed the textbook market for disruption, creating an exciting opportunity for technology innovation to fundamentally change the way 1.4 billion students globally learn,” said Arvind Sodhani, president of Intel Capital and Intel executive vice president. “Kno’s purpose-built education tablet, along with its unique software solution, delivers a learning experience that directly supports Intel’s 1:1 eLearning vision.”
"Intel and Kno have a shared goal of accelerating the global education technology market so we are very pleased to have Intel Capital’s support," said Osman Rashid, CEO and co-founder, Kno Inc. "Kno’s software makes learning more engaging, effective and social for students, which we believe has the power to transform how students learn."
“Intel technology is increasingly becoming a favorite in devices for consumers as well as vertical industries like education,” said Bill Kircos, marketing general manager, Intel Netbook and Tablet Group. “Intel® AtomTM processors and the underlying technologies are well-suited for Kno’s touch-based applications, and provide the power-efficient performance and responsiveness today’s students have come to expect from tablets.”
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Kno tablets get price tags no comments
Kno has released the prices on its 14-inch tablets and, like the tablets themselves, the price tags are sizeable. Kno claims that if you do the math, the average student can pay for the Kno and save another $1300 by using it to study digital textbooks rather than using printed textbooks.
There are currently four configurations listed:
- Single screen 16GB — $599
- Single screen 32GB — $699
- Dual screen 16GB — $899
- Dual screen 32GB — $999
Actually, the prices are not that much different than the iPad, if you consider the size of the screen. Of course the Kno doesn’t have the Apple App Store behind it; instead it is relying on the developer community to come forward and make apps for it. How successful that will be no doubt depends on how many of the tablets are sold. The Kno is designed primarily for students to study digital textbooks on, and it does appear to come with a nice suite of study tools.
Some of the specs:
- Single or dual 14.1-inch LED multitouch display.
- Weight: Single screen 2.6 lbs; dual screen 5.6 lbs.
- Size: Single screen 13.8 x 9.1 x .55 inches; dual screen 13.8 x 18.3 x 1.14 inches.
- Nvidia Tegra T200 CPU; CPU speed up to 1GHz.
- 512 MB internal memory.
- Micro USB; microphone with noise cancellation (feature to be added with a future software update); 3.5mm stereo headphone jack.
- Battery life up to six hours.
- Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
- Accelerometer and ambient light sensor.
- Flash support.
- Audio and video playback supporting common formats will be added with a software update after the tablet’s release.
Kno expects to start shipping on Dec 20, 2010.
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McGraw-Hill Launches Custom Publishing Platform for Educators no comments
McGraw-Hill has announced the launch of a custom publishing platform for higher education teachers. The new program, named Create, enables professors to design custom classroom content from a library of almost 50,000 sources and receive ebooks within hours.
From the press release:
McGraw-Hill Education has brought custom publishing into the 21st century with McGraw-Hill Create (www.mcgrawhillcreate.com), an innovative platform that gives instructors unprecedented control over and customization of higher education classroom content. Gone are the days when professors had no choice in how to assemble content for classroom instruction, or had to wait weeks to receive a customized text. With Create, instructors can produce their own e-books or printed texts by selecting content from a vast library of resources – and receive a digital proof in under an hour.
Increasingly, instructors are demanding content solutions that are tailored to the way they teach. Custom publishing is one of the fastest growing areas in the higher education market, rising by 25 percent on a yearly basis. But not all custom content is created equal: results of a recent McGraw-Hill survey show that instructors are looking for low-cost solutions that offer the ability to integrate content from multiple disciplines, allow them to seamlessly incorporate their own material, contain enhanced search functions and promise faster delivery times. It is with these needs in mind that McGraw-Hill developed Create.
At Create’s core is a Google-like search engine functionality that enables professors to immediately pull from a wide range of quality content, including 4,000 McGraw-Hill textbooks, 5,500 articles, 11,000 literature, philosophy and humanities readings, and 25,000 business case studies from prominent providers such as the Harvard Business School. This powerful search tool allows professors to view content across the library, or limit their search by category, such as discipline or copyright year. Through a recently announced partnership with Blackboard Inc., teachers will have access to the full suite of McGraw-Hill Create content through their Blackboard account, seamlessly integrating Create with their established and familiar classroom tools. Professors can also easily upload and incorporate self-produced content into their Create project.
Once a Create text has been fully customized, the instructor receives a digital review copy in under an hour or a print review copy in three to five days. This represents a marked improvement over existing platforms, which often take up to three weeks to deliver review copies. Once a professor finalizes the book in Create, he or she can make it available for student purchase. Students may purchase Create e-books through the McGraw-Hill ebookstore or purchase Create print books through their campus bookstore.
To simplify and streamline the custom publishing process, an index and table of contents is automatically generated for each Create project. Create allows professors to easily save and archive projects to work on at another time or edit for future semesters. Professors can customize the look and feel of their Create project by selecting a cover design and adding their name and course information. Additionally, instructors can share Create projects with colleagues for review, making content customization a collaborative experience.
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Kno to Launch Single Screen Tablet no comments
It’s raining tablets! Today at the 
TechCrunch Disrupt Conference, Kno announced that it would be introducing a single screen textbook tablet as well as the dual screen tablet already planned.
Kno plans to ship both the single and dual screen tablets by the end of the year. Presumably the single display model will also have the large 14-inch screen.
Pricing has not been disclosed yet for either Kno tablet, although the dual screened model is expected to be under $1000. How much under we don’t know yet.
Cost is no doubt why Kno is taking this step. Kno CEO and co-founder Osman Rashid said that, ‘’Even though the Kno pays for itself in 13 months, the smaller up front investment of the single screen version will allow more students to use our learning platform.”
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VitalSource Launches Bookshelf App for iPad & iPhone 1 comment
Leading etextbook provider VitalSource has announced a free app that lets students and faculty access their full etextbook content as well as notes and annotations from their iDevices.
The VitalSource Bookshelf app is now available for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. Notes and highlights made on other Bookshelf platforms are synced with the new iOS app.
Using the new VitalSource Bookshelf® iOS app, the full e-textbook, student notes and highlights are downloaded to the device, making it unnecessary to be connected to the Internet to access the full content. VitalSource Bookshelf is the only digital textbook platform providing synchronization across download, online and mobile delivery methods.
The VitalSource Bookshelf e-textbook app supports the full VitalSource library of titles, including popular higher education textbooks, study guides and classics on Apple’s popular iPad™, iPhone®, and iPod Touch® and other mobile devices.
VitalSource currently offers over 60,000 titles from top textbook publishers. The Bookshelf app is free at iTunes.
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Follett Patents Annotation Sharing Feature no comments
Fourteen40, Inc., a subsidiary of Follett Higher Education Group, has received a patent for certain features of its BestNotes. This is the annotation sharing feature used by Follett’s CafeScribe digital textbook platform.
The patent (number 7,779,347 B2) covers the CafeScribe platform’s methods of indicating frequently annotated portions of an e-textbook and displaying frequently used words in annotations. These features make it easy for readers to locate the notes most useful to them among the notes of classmates, professors and any readers of the book who choose to share notes. Users subscribe to other readers with a single click, just like you’d add a friend on Facebook or follow someone on Twitter. Other innovative proprietary note-search features of the BestNotes functionality are patent pending.
I’m not an attorney, but this patent looks pretty comprehensive to me and according to the press release quoted above more are pending. Not sure how this will affect other platforms that want to share annotations; is there any wiggle room left around this? Will this have any impact on the shared popular highlights feature that Amazon recently added to the Kindle?
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Kno Secures New Financing no comments
A few months ago Kno, Inc., a startup based in Santa Clara, announced a rather improbable new tablet computer
that it plans to launch before the end of the year.
I say improbable because of the size and weight of the Kno. In fact the specs of the Kno look quite good and this should prove to be a very capable device. The thing is, the Kno will need to displace over five pounds of textbooks in your book bag to reach equilibrium. This is a device that would definitely benefit from plastic-based displays.
Today Kno announced that it has secured $46 million in its latest round of financing. Andreessen Horowitz (Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz’ VC firm) is the lead investor.
The Kno will have twin 14-inch multitouch screens, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and the support of the major textbook publishers. The tablet will run Linux with a Webkit browser. Each screen has its own battery, so battery life is expected to be six to eight hours. The Kno is expected to have a Tegra 2 graphics chip from Nvidia. With its large 14-inch screens textbook pages can be displayed full size.
If all goes well, Kno should begin accepting pre-orders in October or November and start shipping by the holiday season 2010. Pricing hasn’t been announced yet, but should be below $1000.
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Free Books from Kaplan at the iBookstore no comments
Kaplan Publishing is letting students try some of its books for free until September 6, 2010. There are 21 free prep guides and study aids offered through the program at the iBookstore:
- Kaplan ACT Strategies for Super Busy Students
- Kaplan SAT Score-Raising Dictionary
- Sharp Vocab
- Sharp Writing
- Kaplan Portable GMAT
- Kaplan Portable GRE Exam
- Kaplan PMBR: Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam (MPRE)
- Kaplan PMBR Finals: Constitutional Law
- Kaplan MCAT Organic Chemistry Review
- Kaplan MCAT Biology Review
- Kaplan NCLEX-RN 2010 -2011 Edition
- Kaplan CCRN
- Kaplan101 Algebra Practice Questions
- Kaplan 101 ASVAB Practice Questions
- Kaplan101 GRE Quantitative Practice Questions
- Kaplan 101 GRE Verbal Practice Questions
- Kaplan 101 MAT Practice Questions
- Kaplan 101 PSAT/SAT Critical Reading Practice Questions
- Kaplan101 Biology Practice Questions
- Kaplan 101 SAT/PSAT Writing Practice Questions
- Kaplan 101 GMAT Verbal Practice Question
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Take an eTextbook for a Test Drive no comments
Follett Higher Education Group announced today that it is extending its popular Try Now, Buy Later program through the fall 2010 semester. The program lets students and professors download and use eligible etextbooks for seven days before deciding whether or not to buy the title. Currently more than 10,000 titles at Follett’s CafeScribe online digital textbook shop are eligible for the Try Now, Buy Later program.
All notes and annotations made in an etextbook during the trial period will remain intact if the title is purchased.
