ipad Archives - All Star Press

New Quark Xpress is ebook Friendly

Quark announced this month the availability of QuarkXPress 9.2, the new update to QuarkXPress 9 that is free to all QuarkXPress 9 customers. QuarkXPress 9 is award-winning design software that enables millions of creative professionals to publish across digital devices as well as to print and the Web. The best part for authors is that version 9.2 adds new ePUB features, ePUB 3 audio and video support .

QuarkXPress 9.2 and ePUB

QuarkXPress 9 introduced the ability for designers to easily export print layouts to ePUB to create traditional e-books. With QuarkXPress 9.2 designers can now, in addition to converting a print layout to ePUB, create a new project specifically for ePUB export. With the new update, it’s now also possible to:

* Add audio, videos, and hyperlinks to an ePUB e-book

* Create hierarchical tables of content
* Control the format and resolution of pictures on a global or
picture-by-picture basis
* Create new articles, visually crop pictures, and split text
components in a reflow article
* Re-order components by dragging-and-dropping within the Reflow
Tagging Palette
* Specify the default story direction for East Asian ePUB e-books

Along with the new ePUB functionality, QuarkXPress 9.2 also supports audio and video for ePUB 3, the new version of the standard that supports rich media. Read more about QuarkXPress 9 and ePUB here.

QuarkXPress 9.2 and iPad Publishing

A key component of QuarkXPress 9 is App Studio, which offers designers a cost-effective way to create and publish enriched, interactive content to digital devices, such as the iPad. With QuarkXPress 9.2, App Studio templates support iOS 5 Newsstand and meet new Apple guidelines for iCloud storage. In addition to the many enrichment options already available with QuarkXPress 9, QuarkXPress 9.2 and App Studio now include:

* New Play/Pause/Stop/Toggle play actions that allow designers to
build buttons that control other media elements such as sound and
video
* A Hide Controls option for sound and video that allows designers
to make the control bar for a media player invisible
* A Loop option that designers can use to specify that a sound or
video element should loop its playback

Publishing Push coming from Apple

Apple could be hosting a special media event in New York City this month. The event won’t be about Apple’s next iPad if reports are believed to be correct. Instead, Apple will be talking directly to the publishing industry.

The theme of the event will be publishing and e-books. Considering reports indicate Eddy Cue will be prominently involved, it’s a focus area that makes a lot of sense.

Apple SVP of Internet Software and Services, Mr. Cue is in charge of the iBookstore, as well as the iTunes and App Stores, iAd and iCloud. Cue is the one who took the stage the last time the company had a publishing event, when it unveiled News Corp.’s publication The Daily.

READ THE FULL STORY

InnoTab, an iPad for children

Recently, Leapfrog introduced its LeapPad tablet for children. A company called VTech has now entered the market with the InnoTab, an inexpensive iPad-like device for kids that plays games, music and ebooks, and offers downloadable apps for the device. USA Today takes a closer look at this second kiddie tablet, which is to hit the market in the next few weeks.

The e-reader lets kids listen to books as the words are read aloud and highlighted. Each page offers interactivity when kids tap the screen. And words appearing in a different color ink can be tapped to be defined.

Keeneland Handicapping Book from All Star Press

Horse racing fans and handicappers who want to profit at the Keeneland 2011 fall meet need to know the tendencies of the trainers that win year-in and year-out at the Lexington racetrack. “Keeneland Winning Trainer Patterns” analyzes the horsemen and how they have won at Keeneland.

Learn more about a new handicapping book released this year from All Star Press – available for the Kindle and all mobile book formats & just in time for the opening of the new meeting this Friday.

Unflattering Review of the Amazon Tablet, aka Kindle Fire

Amazon Kindle Fire tablet — ETC@USC/flickr

Tomorrow Amazon will unveil its answer to the iPad, says TechCrunch’s MG Seigler. “On Wednesday morning in New York City, Amazon will unveil the Kindle Fire, which is expected to retail for around $250.

It is designed for two fingers, instead of ten. It is described as “like the BlackBerry Playbook, but not in a good way.”

The Birds of America released as an e-book

The Natural History Museum in the UK has launched its first e-book for the iPad, created from the most expensive book ever sold, John James Audubon’s The Birds of America.

The e-book features all 435 illustration plates of the original. The NHM will release a resized printed edition of the 19th-century classic in October, bound in linen and presented in a slipcase, with an introduction by bird artist and author David Allen Sibley.

The complete e-book will be priced £9.99, with the digital Highlights edition, featuring only 85 plates, priced at only £3.99.

NY Times Writer analyzes various e-readers

Here is the critical question for us avid readers: Which e-reader or tablet is the best for reading books?

“So I set out to try them all, reading a chapter on each: the Amazon Kindle, the first- and second-generation Apple iPads, the Barnes & Noble Nook, an iPhone, a Windows Phone, a Google Android phone, a Google Android tablet and a laptop computer. To be fair, I also read a chapter in that old-fashioned form — a crumply old print paperback.”

READ THE ANALYSIS

Amazon Tablet to debut in October

ipad_offgoogle — Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Currently not much is known about Amazon’s tablet. What is known is that it will feature a 9” – 10” touch-screen, a powerful application processor and will be based on Google Android operating system. It is expected to be released in two months.

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, the device will be designed by one of the contract manufacturers of electronics, but its successor due in 2012 will be developed by Amazon itself.

[More details here]

A Look at the Classroom of the Future

Surprise. Textbooks, notebooks, pencils and pens may soon be obsolete in most classrooms around the country.

Some schools are downloading all of their texts for each student into E – books and in Fairfax County, VA school leaders are opting for online Social Studies textbooks starting next year.

“More futuristically speaking my expectation is… [READ MORE]

Amazon Rumored to Develop a Tablet

Amazon is slated to enter the tablet market with its own Android-based tablet PC as soon as this fall or late summer, reported Digitimes.com. The article reports that Taiwan-based component makers have said the online retail giant is targeting global sales of 4 million units in 2011.

“Amazon adopts processors developed by… [READ THE FULL STORY]