As developers for tablets and smartphones we like to keep abreast of the latest mobile technology developments . This is a daily digest of mobile development and related technology news gathered from the BBC, the New York Times, New Scientist and the Globe and Mail to name a few. We scour the web for articles concerning, iPhone, iPad and android development, iOS and android operating systems as well as general articles on advances in mobile technology. We hope you find this useful and that it helps to keep you up to date with the latest technology developments.
Hands on: FLIR One for Android and iOS
FLIR has introduced a new thermal-imaging accessory for mobile devices. The new FLIR One attaches via Apple’s Lightning port or to an Android device’s Micro USB port, rather than integrating the thermal camera into an iPhone 5 case. We checked out the upgraded model at CES to see how it stacks up against its predecessor.
Backup company iDrive goes local with iDrive Wi-Fi
The iDrive online backup service company today revealed a local network backup peripheral. Presented at the Consumer Electronics Show, the iDrive Wi-Fi local backup drive allows users to backup and restore up to 2 TB of their data between devices over a local connection, with data protected by encryption.
CES: Otterbox and Incipio debut out two new iPhone 6 battery cases
Otterbox and Incipio announced today at CES new cases for the iPhone 6 with built in batteries to boost up time. The new offerings, which join today’s announcement of the Mophie’s Juice Pack series are the Otterbox Resurgence and the four-model Incipio offGrid series.
Hi-tech helps cyclists stay safe
Smart pedals that warn when a bike is stolen and helmets for cyclists that spot an imminent collision have been unveiled at CES.
VIDEO: App reminds parents of baby in car
Intel has developed a “smart baby clip” at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
FTC warns on data grabbed by gadgets
A “deeply personal” picture of every consumer could be grabbed by futuristic smart gadgets, warned the chair of the US Federal Trade Commission.
Deal reached on wireless charging
A single way to wirelessly charge gadgets is a step closer as industry groups developing separate ways to wirelessly charge gadgets have reached a deal to merge their approaches.
'The Interview' Has Made $31 Million In Online & VOD Sales Thus Far
Sony announced Tuesday that “The Interview” has earned $31 million in online and on-demand sales through Sunday, Jan. 4. Including theatrical ticket sales, the Seth Rogen comedy has pulled down $36 million in total earnings thus far. (“The Interview” grossed $15 million after its first four days of availability online.)
Since its Christmas Eve on-demand release, “The Interview” has been purchased 4.3 million times across multiple platforms. The comedy, which was yanked from a wide release following terror threats made by hackers, is available on Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes, Sony’s PlayStation Network and a number of major cable providers (including Time Warner, Verizon FiOS and Cablevision).
“The Interview is Sony Pictures’ #1 online film of all time,” Sony noted in a press release obtained by CNN.
The High-Tech Future Of The Uterus
When I suffered my third consecutive miscarriage this past May, my mom said she wanted to help me out however she could, even if it meant being my surrogate. I laughed it off—a 60-year-old surrogate?—but it turned out that, as always, Mom had been on to something.
The Dumbing Down of Microsoft Outlook
Many years ago, I used a personal information management program called Echo Pro. Its ability to manage and present information in different ways was exceptional. It did not “do” email, but that did not matter to me. Of course, Microsoft Outlook crushed it, despite not having nearly the flexibility.
Fast-forward a couple of decades, I finally upgraded from Outlook 2007 to Outlook 2013 and greatly regret the change. Microsoft appears to be catering to the lowest-common denominator: the user who only does email with Outlook, rather than the serious business user who wants to use Outlook to actually manage information. Nowhere is this clearer than in the removal of the activities tab and the journal function in Outlook.
You need only visit one of Microsoft’s key competitors to understand this. Salesforce.com’s page for small businesses leads with “Work smarter with a complete view of your customers, including activity history, key contracts, customer communications, and account discussions…” These are the exact abilities that were covered by the activities tab and the journal function in Outlook. It’s as if Microsoft’s slogan is “work harder, not smarter.”
Microsoft has been dumbing down Outlook for years. First, it removed the contact field from tasks, so one could no longer link a contact with a task unless assigning it via email. But there was a registry hack to restore it, thankfully. But in 2007, searching in tasks did not look at the contact or contacts fields, a major change and reduction of the program’s abilities. And one could still use the activities tab to find all such tasks. An adequate but not completely satisfying alternative.
And, of course, in 2013, Microsoft killed the activities tab.
One has to wonder what Microsoft’s goal is in “delinking” the various modules of Outlook. If one can’t link contacts to calendar or task items, it quickly fails to provide a true picture of all of your interactions with any one contact, a major selling point of Salesforce.com.
Microsoft would probably argue that most people did not use the journal feature or activities tab. And it may be right. But most people also do not use the vast, vast majority of functions in Word or Excel, but is Microsoft removing those functions? No. For those of us in sales, marketing, and other contact-intensive businesses, the activities tab and journal were mission-critical features of the program. Microsoft needs to restore them via an immediate patch to the program or risk losing even more market share to Salesforce.com.
Man Films 1 Word Each Day For A Year To Create Poignant Time-Lapse Video
In this video, YouTuber Ben Schmidt filmed himself saying one word a day for 365 days, and strung them all together to create a beautiful reflection on time.
While the time-lapse clips, featuring different backgrounds, clothes and haircuts, is absolutely mesmerizing, Schmidt also leaves us with some profound words:
“New revelations, big and small, change our opinions, how we act and sometimes our very outlook on life. Seemingly small decisions can change our lives forever by giving us opportunities to make new friends, change career paths and maybe even fall in love.”
Watch the entire video above.
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In Defense of Reality
There was an article in The Houston Chronicle on Dec. 13, 2014 about a high school principal who challenged her students to put down their smart phones and promise to go five days without tweeting or texting and without using social-networking sites. Many could not do it. Others were in agony, like a junkie without his fix. It really seems to be an addiction.
Web MD and other sites already offer suggestions for treating “electronic addiction.” Whether or not it fits the precise medical definition of an addiction, it is hard to know what else to call it when some people check their e-mail hundreds of times a day. Something weird and unhealthy is happening when drivers cannot abstain from texting even in city traffic. I have heard of people who cannot play a round of golf without pausing at each hole to check their e-mail. I no longer like to have lunch with some friends because they are constantly interrupting our conversations to consult their wretched little boxes.
Well, so what? Other than affording me an opportunity for curmudgeonly grousing, why should I care if people want to spend time doing what they enjoy? What harm does it do me? Thomas Jefferson said that it neither picks his pocket nor breaks his leg if his neighbor has another religion or none at all. Can’t we say the same about tweeting, texting, etc.? But it might break my leg. Distracted driving is as dangerous as drunk driving. Also, it might pick my pocket. Addictions are expensive for society. When distracted drivers cause accidents, we all might have to pay higher insurance premiums.
Mostly, though, you feel sorry for anyone whose world has shrunk to the dimensions of a tiny screen. By contrast, would anyone think that the world was flat, dull, and lifeless for Aristotle, Shakespeare, or Darwin because they could not check their e-mail or use their thumbs to kill hordes of virtual zombies? Aristotle, Shakespeare, and Darwin had access to something far richer, deeper, and more fulfilling than electronic gaming, gossip, and garbage. The object of their fascination was something called “reality.”
They had real friends rather than Facebook “friends.” They enjoyed real, face-to-face conversations with actual people rather than reacting to little screens. They spoke actual languages rather than “LOL,” “BFF,” and “OMG.” They did not feel a compulsion to notify the world every time they sneezed or took a bath. They discussed ideas too deep to be communicated in 144 characters. They could enjoy real cats rather than Grumpy Cat videos.
We live in a universe of a hundred billion galaxies, a universe that contains black holes and neutron stars and stars as massive as a hundred suns that will die in spectacular supernovas that will seed the universe with the elements of future planets. The iron in your blood was generated in the cores of dying stars billions of years before our sun existed. Every object in this incomprehensible vastness is made of atoms so tiny that a hundred million could fit across the period at the end of this sentence.
Your genes encode information that is ancient beyond reckoning, and which your children’s children will carry into the indefinite future. You are the product of billions of years of organic evolution and you are, quite literally, kin to every living thing on this planet. In the depths of time there existed beasts longer than two city buses and weighing as much as a whole herd of elephants. The continents on which we live are not static, but move inexorably at the speed of a growing fingernail. Inside your skull is the greatest wonder of all, an organ with the power to save or ruin the earth.
The natural world is an object, perhaps the only object, truly commensurate with our capacity for awe. That world is lost to us when we are obsessed with endless electronic titillation. A few years ago the newspaper comic strip Zits depicted a family vacationing in the west. They tour Monument Valley, the Grand Canyon, and other marvels of the American landscape. The parents are overwhelmed, enraptured by the grandeur. Their fifteen-year-old is oblivious, absorbed with his devices. Nature is lost to the one addicted to constant electronic stimulus.
History is lost also. In his dystopian masterpiece Brave New World, Aldous Huxley imagines a future society where people are controlled by constant sensory stimulation and vapid entertainments (Sound familiar?). Who has time for the past when we are having so much good, stupid fun in the present? In one brilliant scene Huxley has one of the ruling World Controllers address a group of students on the irrelevance of history:
“He waved his hand; and it was as though, with an invisible feather whisk, he had brushed away a little dust, and the dust was Harappa, was Ur of the Chaldees, some spider-webs, and they were Thebes and Babylon and Cnossos and Mycenae. Whisk, Whisk — and where was Odysseus, where was Job, and where were Jupiter, and Gotama, and Jesus? Whisk, and those specks of antique dirt called Athens and Rome, Jerusalem and the Middle Kingdom — all were gone. Whisk — the place where Italy had been was empty. Whisk, the cathedrals; whisk, whisk, King Lear and the Thoughts of Pascal. Whisk, Passion; whisk, Requiem; whisk, Symphony, whisk…”
A world obsessed with moment-to-moment stimulation is a world adrift, alienated, and rootless; a world without nature or history. It is Brave New World. And we are almost there.
How to Spot a UX Masquerader
I’ve recently had an increasing number of conversations with other UX professionals about the difficulties in finding true UX talent and how they have been encountering people that are not really UX Designers. It seems these “Masqueraders” usually appear when you are interviewing for a UX Designer role. Some project managers have even been duped into making a wrong hiring decision, only finding their mistake later on when it becomes as clear as day that the applicant did not hold the skill set, or level of UX skills they had claimed to.
There also seems to be a series of common traits with these Masqueraders, but first — why are there so many of them?
Given the accessibility to a vast array of similar products UX has become a hot topic over the last few years. User Experience is now a differentiator and therefore “UX Designer” has become a role that every project leader knows they need, despite not always fully understanding what it really is. Or, even more common, they confuse it with UI. How many roles have you seen listed as UX/UI? The problem is a UX Designer has to understand every phase of the product lifecycle, from concept to design through testing and delivery, and, perhaps most importantly, how carefully designing the connection points with the end user in mind throughout will impact the user experience.
A true UX Designer is “someone who has the full range of skills to take all aspects of UX into consideration and deliver the most value to your users“. With the skillset in increasingly high demand, I have seen hundreds of resumes in which people will twist anything into a “User Experience Designer” role. What’s more, they all claim to be a User Experience Expert – whether they responded to a survey once, created some wireframes, made a website… you get the gist. The worst case is when Masqueraders have managed to get into a decision-making leadership role — yet, it is quite blatantly obvious they know very little about how to actually design experiences.
To be honest, with the industry and job description still being defined, you cannot really blame people for not knowing how to spot the correct talent. It is also worth mentioning that many people across various disciplines are genuinely trying to learn what’s needed to become true UX designers.
Here are some of the Masquerader’s most common traits and key characteristics that seemed to come up, in order to help you spot those with the skills to really add value to your business.
1. They use the words “Experience” and “User” all the time.
Masqueraders talk about “experience” without really saying anything about it at all. They use it as a buzz word, like if they say it enough people will think they know all about it. They also use the word “User” a lot, but often they really haven’t spent any time truly understanding who their User is at all.
2. They ask for supporting data when someone else’s point of view doesn’t align to their own.
Once, I remember being in a discussion with a Masquerader on the design of a solution – they had one idea and I had another. Since they were prototyped already anyway, it was suggested to observe some people using the solutions so we could actually get some real user insight and iterate from there. In response, the Masquerader emailed me a link to some internet article which supported their design decisions and stated there was no need to do any observation. RED FLAGS GALORE. 1) The link was from the 1980′s. Nothing wrong with that in itself, but much more relevant research was available that would have been more applicable to what we were designing and the times we were designing it for. The Masquerader had basically searched to find something to back up their idea. 2) “No need to do any observation”… Enough said.
Sometimes masqueraders go the other way. They want to gather data by asking questions like “Do you like this?” Then when someone says no, they change the item straight away as opposed to observing users and analyzing the true experience. They tend not to see the difference between needs and wants.
3. It is their way or no way — even though they pretend they listened to the users.
This is one of the more dangerous characteristics. They go through the motion of getting “feedback”, but then do not use it (or use it improperly) and stick with their pre-conceived idea of how they want the solution to be in their own little world.
Have you ever given feedback or questioned how a design works to a team and found the response to be “because so-and-so wants it that way”? Generally this happens when a leader assumes their opinion is the best experience.
4. They do not know when to apply which theories, at which point in the process or for what purpose.
Actually, they do not really understand the thinking process at all.
I remember once, we were thinking through how to measure experiences consistently across the total portfolio; the Masquerader said we all had to use SUS scores. Now, SUS scores absolutely have their time and place, but the masquerader had no concept of when or where these were, or the fact that SUS scores wouldn’t tell us everything because the results they give are dependent on many variables. Various types of measures have their benefits, but observing your users is extremely powerful both in analyzing your product and to innovate and spot the experience gaps.
5. They Google.. .a lot.
Have you ever noticed that these people tend to Google… a lot. Linked to the above, in fact that is exactly what happened. The Masquerader had Googled “how to measure experience”. SUS scores had come up, but since they didn’t have the knowledge on how to execute them, or when they should be used in comparison to other methods – it was all they could talk about.
That seems to be a trend. It is often painfully obvious when someone has just Googled a term or phrase without taking the time to really understand the whats and whys when it comes to implementing them.
6. They lack understanding of how experience is connected throughout the whole lifecycle.
Often, the Masquerader will operate without understanding the impact they are having on the rest of the experience for the user. For example, they may design a screen – but not be thinking where the user was, what the user is trying to do, how support is impacted etc. Instead they are just focused on making the screen look good at that point in time.
Knowing how to potentially spot a Masquerader is useful to avoid wasted time and hiring dollars, but knowing how to build a Kick Ass UX team is key. Some insights to this can be found in a previous post that you may find useful: “A-Team, Criminal Minds, Scorpion and UX?!“. It is vital to optimize the number of positions you have available to ensure you have a mix of people skilled in the right areas of UX, such as design, usability etc., plus at least one true UX Designer. Masqueraders can certainly hold key skills in a specific part of UX Design; it could just be that they are not the true UX Designer that the job or position really needs, as they can be difficult to encounter.
2014 Was the Year of Activism: Here's Why
In 2014, generations across the board came together and mobilized for change. Mothers, daughters, fathers, sons, students, immigrants — rose to stand up for justice.
It was the year when people began talking about sexual assault. Students mobilized across the nation and officials began paying attention to the startling statistics regarding sexual assault on college campuses. Emma Sulkowicz rose to national attention when she began carrying around a mattress, refusing to stop until her assailant was expelled from Columbia.
Students have risen awareness about Title IX rights. Today, more than 70 American colleges are under investigation by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights in regards to complaints about how they mishandled sexual assault cases. California passed a landmark law dubbed “Yes Means Yes,” requiring affirmative consent agreement to engage in sexual activity, which is just the first step in a movement for affirmative consent policies.
Feminism rose to prominence with the UC Santa Barbara shootings, and misogyny dominated the national conversation. Chelsea Handler made headlines for demanding Instagram to revise their community guidelines, writing, “If a man posts a photo of his nipples, it’s ok, but not a woman? Are we in 1825?”
The nation was moved by the deaths of three unarmed black men: Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and John Crawford. Race and police brutality became part of the national conversation. #BlackLivesMatter supporters and mobilizers gathered to stage protests, sit-ins, and more. As a result, agreement for police reform has sparked relatively little divide across party lines. According to a Washington Post poll, 86 percent of Americans support the use of body cameras, and 87 percent are in favor of a policy requiring an investigation by an independent, outside prosecutor whenever police kill an unarmed civilian.
Leelah Alcorn’s suicide note went viral, and was a signal that young people who identify LGBTQ are still targets for abuse, prompting a call to action by LGBTQ advocates. A petition named “Leelah’s Law” has already gathered more than 280,000 signatures, and legislation to end “conversion therapy” before age 18 will be introduced in the state Senate for the 2015 season.
What makes 2014 different?
The year marked a peak of interconnectivity around the nation through technology — from Facebook and Twitter to podcasts and news networks, injustices are able to become viral quickly through these platforms. Our lives are increasingly filled with these sources of information; the latest news fills discussion on the platforms we immerse our daily lives in. Technology enables people to become activists and part of movements by simply pressing ‘Share’ on a story they felt passionately about. Protests are able to be staged online through hashtags, or planned in-person through an online invitation that can reach thousands of people. Solidarity and support for a cause can be shown with just the attachment of a cover photo on one’s page.
Even filming a video and tagging friends on Facebook became a form of activism. The viral ALS ice bucket challenge — where participants would dump a bucket of ice on their head to raise awareness for the cause — lasted approximately one month, and led the ALS Association to receive $100 million in donations, compared to $2.8 million during the same time period in 2013.
2014 was the year when everyone became an activist. Technology is enabling activists and mobilizers to influence more people than ever. 2014 has shown us that individual voice matters –and that collectively, we have brought a shed of justice to these injustices.
2015 looks optimistic.
Eight New Exoplanets In 'Goldilocks Zone' Discovered By NASA's Kepler Spacecraft
NASA’s Kepler space telescope has found eight alien planets in the “Goldilocks zone”–that is, they orbit their stars at just the right distance to have liquid water, and maybe life.
Two of the newfound planets, dubbed Kepler-438b and Kepler-442b, are being called the most Earth-like exoplanets ever found. Both planets orbit red dwarf stars, which are slightly cooler and smaller than our sun.
“We don’t know for sure whether any of the planets in our sample are truly habitable,” Dr. David Kipping, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and one of the scientists involved in the discovery, said in a written statement. “All we can say is that they’re promising candidates.”
(Story continues below image).
Illustrations of the newfound planets pictured next to Earth. Click to enlarge.
The planets are just the latest in a long series of exoplanets found by Kepler. Since its 2009 launch, the planet-hunting spacecraft has found 1,004 confirmed planets along with 4,175 planet candidates.
Kepler-438b is located 70 light-years from Earth and orbits its star every 35 days. The CfA astronomers say its diameter is 12 percent bigger than Earth’s. They estimate it has a 70 percent chance of being a rocky (rather than gaseous) planet, and believe it gets about 40 percent more light than Earth. Its chance of being in the Goldilocks zone is about 70 percent.
Kepler-442b, 1,100 light-years away, is roughly one-third larger than Earth and has a 112-day year. Astronomers estimate it gets about two-thirds as much light as Earth and has a 60 percent chance of being rocky. Its chance of being in the habitable zone is pegged at a whopping 97 percent.
“Each result from the planet-hunting Kepler mission’s treasure trove of data takes us another step closer to answering the question of whether we are alone in the universe,” John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, said in a written statement issued by NASA.
The findings were announced Jan. 6 in Seattle at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. A paper describing the discoveries has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.
Phony Friends: The Darker Side of Smartphones
About halfway through lunch with my cousin, burger in one hand, phone in the other, he started swiping through Tinder. He continued to swipe as I restarted the conversation, absent-mindedly nodding his head in agreement with just about everything I said. At the time, I was offended that my cousin prioritized his phone over conversation with me. I felt like I was being forced to compete with my cousin’s phone for his attention, and I knew that his phone had infinitely more to offer than I ever could. In retrospect, that interaction was not all that remarkable. Smartphones have become a third party to all of our social interactions. We are always at risk of interruption by a text, a Tweet, or a Tinder match.
There is nothing becoming nearly as ubiquitous in modern day life as the smartphone. Two-thirds of all mobile subscribes in the United States now own smartphones, and the global smartphone market is fast approaching two billion users. Smartphones have rapidly become a cultural obsession. The YouTube video showing a defect in the new iPhone 6, allowing you to bend the phone with your hands, now stands at 55 million views, the amount of views you would expect to see for a music video.
Most evaluations of smartphones have emphasized the positives: connectivity, easy and immediate information, access to an infinite set tools or Apps. Amidst the explosive growth of the smartphone culture, little attention has been paid to the potential drawbacks of these devices. There is next to nothing in our society that encourages us to be cautious of how much we use our devices. We know the dangers of watching too much TV or spending too much time on the computer. We have not made the same cost-benefit analysis when it comes to our phones. Since a single interaction with a smartphone is relatively short, we see little wrong with near constant usage. But, these interactions add up. Americans now spend 34 hours per month on smartphones, as opposed to 26 hours spent on the Internet.
What differentiates a smartphone from other integrated technologies in our lives? For one, the simple mobility and accessibility of a smartphone give it immense social power and influence. It is socially acceptable to use them essentially anywhere and under almost all circumstances. No one would think to flip out their laptop or even an iPad mid-conversation, but we have no problem quickly glancing at our phones.
Part of the problem is related to our physiology. Research shows that texts, tweets, and notifications trigger our dopamine system. The constant stream of information we get from our phones causes a “dopamine loop” launching us on an endless search for one more satisfying text or tweet. While we devote more and more time on our phones interacting virtually, we spend less time physically interacting with one another. We neglect other important physiological components of socialization. Researchers have shown, for example, the importance of touch in the formation of strong personal relationships. By crowding out face-to-face contact, smartphones have made our interpersonal relations more superficial in a real and measurable way.
Even when we do interact in person, smartphones disrupt the process of social bonding by blurring the line between face-to-face socialization and screen time. How we socialize through our phones conflicts with how we have evolved to interact with one another. Psychologists have pointed out that texting and email allows us to easily edit and retouch our presentation of ourselves to one another. Conversation, on the other hand, is difficult to control. Yet, there is an important learning process in personal interaction as we see the immediate impacts of our words and our actions. We are not born with social awareness. We gain it through a long process of trial and error that spans our entire lives.
The other part of the problem represents more of a conscious choice to continuously rely on our devices. We rationalize a special relationship with our phones because modern life demands that we remain constantly connected. In a recent PEW survey, 39 percent of respondents said they received complaints that they don’t respond promptly to phone/text messages while only 12percent received complaints that they check their phone too much. The physiological effect of our connectivity is thus strongly backed by social norms pressuring us to remain connected. Phone use is backed by a system of conscious and unconscious incentives. There are no similar incentives pushing us to put our phones away.
The problems with our smartphone use reminds us of the extent to which humans are willing to adopt new technology, but are, at the same time, unable to adapt to those same technologies. In the gap between the incessant expansion of smartphones and our inability to take stock of what constant connectivity means, we are loosing what it means to be to be truly connected to one another.
Reviving a Stale Book
What if I told you that you could simply and easily revive an old or older book and start making sales on it again? Would you be game? Most of us who have been writing for a while are sitting on a lot of content and a lot of older books that are taking up virtual shelf space on Amazon.
I was at an event a few weeks ago and an author there said that he had a science-fiction/fantasy book that had been out for a few years and it hadn’t done well. “I sure wish I knew then what I know now,” he said. And I realized that for him, it’s really not too late.
This is an issue a lot of authors face: a book that’s been out for a while and you feel like you’ve really exhausted your options. Book sales are sagging and you figure it’s over. Well, it’s not. You have a ton of options now to revive, renew, and even re-release a book with minimal effort.
Release it in eBook: Let’s look at this first because this is often the easiest to do. Many authors with older titles haven’t done anything with them digitally and now is the time to do this. If you are someone who’s been published by a traditional house, see if they have the rights to your digital content. Many old contracts don’t have this provision so be sure and check. What do you need to do? Most savvy eBook folks can work with a PDF of the book, and course, a Word doc works well, too. It will need to be converted to a digital format and that’s it. It’s pretty easy. If you do this, you may also want to freshen up the book cover and add some quotes you got.
Bundle eBook: The guy I spoke to about his Sci-fi book also told me that his book was long, 330 pages to be exact, and I said: “Why not split it up and re-release it as a series and a bundle?” Even if it’s the same book it does not matter. Some folks like shorter books, we know that. And it’s also a great way to start owning the virtual shelf. A longer book can be separated out (make sure you chop it at a natural ending point in the book) and then put these separate segments up on Amazon. With a book that’s as long as his is, you could do three separate eBooks. Make sure that you have a page in the back of each book that leads the reader to the next book in the series. Also, doing this will now also revive your publication date and bring it current. This will open up new options for promotion and reviews, too.
Change up the cover: Earlier this year we had one of our authors redo a cover for her book – one that’s been out for a while. When we did that, sales started spiking again. We had another author who tried this and it worked again. I was at an event last weekend and an author told me she did this, too. It’s not an Amazon algorithm thing per se, but it’s often the newly, refreshed content that helps to spike visibility of the book because it looks new to readers, especially if your book is genre fiction. These readers are always on Amazon looking for a new book to read so it’s a great way to grab their attention.
Short is the new long: We have all heard that we should “own the shelf,” which means that you want to publish a lot, and pushing out new content to Amazon in the form of an eBook can help propel your other, older books, onto a reader’s radar screen. If you have white papers, blog content, pieces of your book that you didn’t include or cut because of length, you can package these up and release them on Amazon, An example of this is an author we’re working with who wrote the third in a series of books. The third book had a lot of content removed to keep it at a particular length. She’s going to take the content that’s been removed and release it in a “Director’s Cut” version, putting the separate segments on Amazon. If you do that, make sure that all of the books lead to all your other books with a page or link or something to direct them.
There’s a lot you can do with a book that’s been out for a while. As long as the content is still relevant there’s almost nothing you can’t do to it to revive it and give it a second chance. Keep in mind that once you do revive it, you can start to pitch it or, in some cases, repitch it, to reviewers. Sometimes authors will tell me that they’ve already pitched certain reviewers for their book and didn’t get a response the first time around, should they pitch them again? The answer is yes, you should. Once you have a new book, it’s like a clean slate. Make the most of it!
Tom Chen Creates Device He Says Can Strengthen Vagina Muscles With Video Games
Tom Chen is a man with a mission: He wants to improve the vaginal muscles of women via video games.
Chen is a Beijing-based physicist and game designer who will release something called the SKEA — which is short for “Smart Kegel Exercise Aid” — later this month.
The SKEA fits into a woman’s vagina and allows her to play video games hands-free just by tightening her kegel muscles, the pelvic floor muscles that support the uterus, bladder, small intestine and rectum.
In a Kickstarter video explaining the project, Chen said the SKEA was inspired by his wife’s urinary problems.
“Pelvic floor-related diseases are very common, affecting half of all [women]. My wife got it after giving birth,” he said on the video. “When she found herself unable to control her piss, she was really pissed off.”
The prototype game for the SKEA is called “Alice In Continent,” where players help Alice dodge obstacles by clenching their vagina. The contractions send signals to the control that go to the game.
One tester told Wired.co.uk the vagina video game was like “like playing Temple Run with Fitbit. Just that I don’t use fingers but use my pelvic muscles!”
This past summer, Chen raised $52,021 via Kickstarter and will be shipping out the products to buyers later this month.
Although the SKEA is designed strictly for women, Chen’s company is not leaving men holding their bags.
Linkcube also makes a male sex toy called Mars Gods Of War, a vibrating device that can be controlled remotely by the man’s partner.
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VIDEO: Inventors turning sci-fi into fact
A self-parking car, a plant pot that knows when it needs watering and a tracker for your pet, are just some of the highlights of the world’s biggest gadget show in Las Vegas.
Thanks for reading our digest. Opinions in the articles above are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Digital Workshed ltd.