Creekside Chatter

DocScanner iPhone is an existing app that turns your iPhone into an OCR scanner. You simply snap a photograph of a document, and the app uses built-in OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology to extract the text from the document. The app then lets you save the text as a PDF for emailing or sharing with Evernote.

DocScanner Mac is the OS X version of the iPhone app that works just as well and offers added functionality because it allows you to turn any camera into an OCR scanner. Simply snap a picture, import it to your Mac then drag it to DocScanner Mac's interface. You'll then be presented with a PDF version of the text that you can copy and paste into any editable document. The logic for bringing DocScanner from the iPhone to the Mac doesn't end with simply allowing you to use any camera as an OCR scanner. Porting the iOS app to Mac OS X allows DocScanner to take advantage of the OpenGL 3D accelerated graphics on your Mac. The results are much faster image processing and OCR extraction than you could ever hope to get on your iPhone.

More justification to upgrade to a new iPod Touch!

The app is $0.99 for the iPhone and $14.99 for Mac - but you can only buy it in the new Mac App store.

By adding the option of sending your photos to an iPhone or iPad instead of directly to social networks, your iOS device may be able to become a sort of on-the-go backup for your photography, or an intermediary for touching up photos before sharing them.

When it arrives, the update will be free for the Eye-Fi X2 card line, as well as the company’s iOS app.

Isn't living in the future awesome? Right now, I'm writing this blog post on my phone while using an elliptical machine at my local gym. When I get back to my desk, this draft will be waiting for me in Google Docs, where I can edit it, add links and get it ready to publish. If I want to grab coffee later, I could bring my iPad with me and make some last minute fixes from the cafe. Everything will be saved automatically in the cloud.

As we reported in November, the ability edit, save and delete Google Docs was recently made available to iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users. While third parties have already developed mobile apps for managing Google Docs, this marks the first time Google itself has enabled mobile editing in the Web app for its popular cloud-based office suite.

So how does it stack up? In a nutshell, the experience of editing and managing Google Docs from iOS devices is pretty good. But like many brand new features, it could go further, and hopefully we'll see improvements over time.

Interesting article. Good review.

As previously shared, eBook checkout activity exceeded all expectations over the holidays, and as we head into the new year, high traffic and usage will likely continue.

With the new mobile apps for eBooks on iPhone and Android, and many patrons trying out their new eBook reader, it’s important that your library staff stay up to speed. We encourage you to download our updated eBook Devices Cheat Sheet, featuring new devices and updated information on how to download the free OverDrive app for eBooks to iPhone and Android. Feel free to share this sheet with your customers too!

Stay tuned for an updated version as new devices become compatible and apps are released.

In a recent presentation to the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, security researcher Julia Wolf highlighted a number of “features” of the PDF format that could lead to serious security issues. Wolf showed that a PDF could contain a database scanner that could “scan a network when the document is printed on a network printer,” and that PDFs could “blindly trigger the execution of arbitrary programs in Acrobat Reader.” PDFs also support “inherently insecure script languages such as JavaScript, formats such as XML, RFID tags and digital rights management (DRM) technologies.”

Read the entire article.

To help the multitude of new owners with eBook reading devices, Kaplan Publishing is offering more than 130 Free eBooks in a promotion that runs from January 4 -10th. Owners of the Nook, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, and Sony eReader can find select Kaplan titles absolutely free by visiting: www.FreeKaplaneBooks.com.

Starting today, high school students; college students; those wanting GRE, GMAT or SAT practice tests; future doctors, lawyers, MBA’s and nurses and many more will find a variety of valuable Kaplan test prep guides, practice tests, practice questions, study aids, and related titles that would normally cost hundreds of dollars for free.

Merriam-Webster launched a free, ad-supported iPhone dictionary app in mid-December. The dictionary app can pronounce words by pressing the speaker icon in the red button but did you know that you can speak a word for it to search for too? A few weeks ago, they updated it with voice search, first for a free iPhone dictionary app. Just press the microphone in the blue button next to the search text box and it activates the new voice search.

This is a serious problem because a regular user understands Facebook and Twitter better than they understand RSS, and when browser vendors push RSS so far to the sidelines, companies will respond by replacing RSS with Twitter and Facebook accounts.

If RSS isn’t saved now, if browser vendors don’t realise the potential of RSS to save users a whole bunch of time and make the web better for them, then the alternative is that I will have to have a Facebook account, or a Twitter account, or some such corporate-controlled identity, where I have to “Like” or “Follow” every website’s partner account that I’m interested in, and then have to deal with the privacy violations and problems related with corporate owned identity owning a list of every website I’m interested in (and wanting to monetise that list), and they, and every website I’m interested in, knowing every other website I’m interested in following, and then I have to log in and check this corporate owned identity every day in order to find out what’s new on other websites, whilst I’m advertised to, because they are only interested in making the biggest and the best walled garden that I can’t leave.

After suffering a massive outage last week, Skype CIO Lars Rabbe has now detailed what went wrong.

One of the root causes? A bug in the Skype for Windows client (version 5.0.0152).

Rabbe kicks off by explaining that a cluster of support servers responsible for offline instant messaging became overheated on Wednesday, December 22.

A number of Skype clients subsequently started receiving delayed responses from said overloaded servers, which weren’t properly processed by the Windows client in question. This ultimately caused the affected version to malfunction.

Initially, users of Skype’s newer and older Windows software, as well as those using the service on Mac, iPhone and their television sets, were unaffected.

Nevertheless, the whole system collapsed as the faulty version of the Windows client, 5.0.0.152, is by far the most popular – Rabbe says 50% of all Skype users globally were running it, and the crashes caused approximately 40% of those clients to fail.

The clients included roughly a third of all publicly available supernodes, which also failed as a result of this issue.

From the blog post:

A supernode is important to the P2P network because it takes on additional responsibilities compared to regular nodes, acting like a directory, supporting other Skype clients and establishing connections between them by creating local clusters of several hundred peer nodes per each supernode.

Once a supernode has failed, even when restarted, it takes some time to become available as a resource to the P2P network again. As a result, the P2P network was left with 25–30% fewer supernodes than normal. This caused a disproportionate load on the remaining available supernodes.

Rabbe goes on to explain a lot of people who experienced crashing Windows clients started rebooting the software, which caused a huge increase in the load on Skype’s P2P cloud network. He adds that traffic to the supernodes was about 100 times what would normally be expected at the time of day the failure occurred.

A perfect storm in the P2P clouds, so to speak.

To learn how Skype supported the recovery of its supernode network, and what they’ll be doing to prevent this from happening again, I suggest you go read the full blog post.

And major kudos to the company for being so prolific in explaining what happened.

CrunchBase Information

Skype

Information provided by CrunchBase

If you aren't running the most recent production (not beta) version of Skype, you should update as soon as possible.

By Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords

It’s annual prognostication time when folks like me stick out their necks and try to predict the future. I invite you to join in the fun. Brush up your crystal ball and share your publishing predictions for 2011 in the comments field below.

Earlier today, Jeff Rivera over at MediaBistro interviewed me for my ten book publishing predictions for 2011.

I’ll list five below, and then I encourage you to click over to Mediabistro for the full ten in his interview, Publishing Predictions for 2011 from Smashwords.

If 2010 was the year ebooks went mainstream in the U.S., 2011 will be the year indie ebook authors go mainstream. We’ve already seen this start to happen with some tremendous indie ebook author breakouts in 2010. I wrote about Smashwords author Brian S. Pratt a few weeks ago.

So here are five predictions for 2011:

1. Ebook sales rise, unit consumption surprises – Ebooks sales will approach 20% of trade book revenues on a monthly basis by the end of 2011 in the US, yet the bigger surprise is that ebooks will account for one third or more of unit consumption. Why? Ebooks cost less and early ebook adopters read more.

2. Agents write the next chapter of the ebook revolution – Agents, serving the economic best interests of the best-selling authors, will bring new credibility to self publishing by encouraging authors to proactively bypass publishers and work directly with ebook distribution platforms. Agents will use these publishing platforms for negotiating leverage against large publishers. The conversation will go something like this: “You’re offering my author only 15-20% list on ebooks when I can get them 60-70% list working direct with an ebook distributor likeSmashwords or a retailer like Amazon?”

3. More big authors reluctant to part with digital rights – Indie ebook publishing offers compelling advantages to the author. The economics are better (see #2) and the publishing cycle times are faster (an ebook manuscript can be uploaded today and achieve worldwide distribution in minutes or days, not years). Ebooks also offer greater publishing flexibility (shorts, full length, bundles, free books), and the opportunity to reach more readers with lower cost (yet still higher-profit) books. The advantages will entice more professional authors to self-publish some or all of their future catalog, and all of their reverted-rights catalog.

4. Self Publishing goes from option of last resort to option of first resort among unpublished authors – Most unpublished authors today still aspire to achieve the perceived credibility and blessing that comes with a professional book deal. Yet the cachet of traditional publishing is fading fast. Authors with finished manuscripts will grow impatient and resentful as they wait to be discovered by big publishers otherwise preoccupied with publishing celebrity drivel from Snooki, Justin Bieber and the Kardashians. Meanwhile, the break-out success of multiple indie author stars will grab headlines in 2011, forcing many unpublished authors off the sidelines. As unpublished authors bypass the slush pile, publishers lose first dibs on tomorrow’s future stars.

5. Ebook prices to fall – It’s all about supply and demand. Demand is surging, but supply will overwhelm demand. Average ebook prices will decline, despite attempts by Agency 5 publishers to hold the line. The drop will be fueled by the oversupply of books, abundance of low-cost or free non-book content, influx of ultra-price-sensitive readers who read free first, fierce competition for readership, and digitization of reverted-rights and out-of-print books. Indie authors, since they earn 60-70% retail price, can compete at price points big publishers can’t touch.

Read all ten of my predictions in the full interview over at Mediabistro, and please share your own predictions in the comments below.

Via the Smashwords blog

Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Print Friendly