Round up #172: new features for a Kindle app, people who haven’t read a good (or any) book lately
The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.
Today’s KDD: “Up to 80% off New York Times best sellers & more”
Today’s
Kindle Daily Deal (at AmazonSmile…benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)
has really top brand name authors and other well-known titles! I’m quite impressed…titles include:
- Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child: City of Endless Night (Agent Prendergast) | 4.3 out of 5 stars | 615 customer reviews | $4.99
- Robyn Carr: What We Find (Sullivan’s Crossing) | 4.5 stars | 512 reviews | $1.99
- James Patterson: All-American Murder | 4.1 stars | 232 reviews | $4.99
- Sara Paretsky: Fallout (V.I. Warshawaski | 4.2 stars | 242 reviews | $1.99
- David Baldacci: Guilty (Will Robie) | 4.5 stars | 4,232 reviews | $2.99
- Clive Cussler: Shock Wave (Dirk Pitt) | 4.5 stars | 868 reviews | $0.99
- Stephenie Meyer: The Chemist | 4.3 stars | 2,066 reviews | $3.99
- Now That You Mention It by Kristan Higgins:
- The Power by Naomi Alderman
- Christina Baker Kline by A Piece of the World
- Boundaries by Henry Cloud
- Capital Gaines by Chip Gaines
- Same Kind of Different As Me by Ron Hall
- The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren
- You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie
- Let Trump be Trump by Corey Lewandowski
- You Say it First by Susan Mallery
- Love Does by Bob Goff
- The Black Witch by Laurie Forest
- Wanted by Maya Blanks
- The Broken Way by Ann Voskamp
- The Daniel Plan by Rick Warren
- Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
- Walk to Beautiful by Mr. Jimmy Wayne
- Finding Gobi by Dion Leonard
- Willow Brook Road by Sherryl Woods
- Private #1 Suspect by James Patterson
iOS Kindle app updated
The iOS Kindle app (for iPhones and iPads) was recently updated (March 19) to 6.5, and there are two particularly stand-out new things to me.
One is “infinite scrolling”. That’s something people wanted even back when the Kindle was first introduced in 2007. What that means is that rather than reading it like a book, whiere you see a certain amount of text and then change to another block of text (like flipping a page on a p-book…paperbook), you can just scroll through the whole book, like one continuous webpage. I definitely see the attraction of that, even though it moves you further away from the “paper behind glass” feel.
The second one for me is that they’ve added an Arabic dictionary. There is a sense to me that Amazon may be working on an expansion into countries with a lot of Arabic-speakers, although Netflix also recently added more Arabic support. It is a top ten language in the world (I’ve seen both fifth and sixth largest cited) with hundreds of millions speaking it as their first language, so it’s worth noting that there are people outside predominantly Arabic speaking countries who also might like to read in Arabic.
The other two things they noted was swiping down in the library to refresh it, and support for split screen view on iPads.
Alexa, the protocol droid?
This was an interesting
Yahoo! Finance article by JP Mangalindan
It doesn’t surprise me that Amazon is working on Alexa doing real-time translation. It can do some minor pieces of that now through “skills”, but there are a lot of AI solutions for “universal translation” not far away (and some that work somewhat now).
What was more intriguing to me was the suggestion that Alexa would change what it gave you as a “translation” if you told it the role of the person. This can be very sticky in language (our adult kid is a linguist, and it’s an interest of mine): many people use overly familiar language, for example, when formal might be more appropriate.
This ties very much into their
Cleo skill (at AmazonSmile*)
What happens is that you have a conversation in a language of your choosing with Alexa. Alexa speaks English, you speak your language. What you are doing is teaching Alexa. It’s a crowdsourcing thing, and you actually get points. 🙂 While this should let Alexa learn about more natural language, there is also a serious risk that people will try to teach Alexa things as a joke…as Monty Python might say, “My hovercraft is full of eels.” 😉 However, I always believe the majority of people will have good intentions…so if enough people use Alexa, it should be fine.
I used to be “fluent” in Mangani, the language the “apes” speak in the Tarzan series of books. There aren’t that many words, and fortunately, the syntax is exactly the same as English. 😉 I couldn’t answer the sorts of questions Alexa will ask, though.
I have no doubt Alexa will learn Klingon…
Anyway, back to the protocol part: I assume this also means that Alexa could give you an idea of what to say in English in certain situations. “Alexa, I forgot our anniversary…” “Alexa, my boss caught me stealing…” 😉
Speaking of speaking, I really wasn’t pleased when our Alexa switch to the new “Brief Mode”. Instead of answering me with “Ok”, Alexa plays a note…a sort of muted “bing bong”; I’m fine with that being an option, but it opted me in without asking me. It told me it did it, but then it was done. I much prefer the “Ok”…it’s part of what makes Alexa special for me. I did go back into the Settings and Alexa Voice Responses to turn it off again.
I would really like Alexa to respond in a whisper when I speak to it in a whisper…I’ve been hoping with that for a while. 🙂
Does nostalgia not work for movies based on young adult novels?
While the market for movies based on young adult novels has generally cooled from the halcyon Hunger Games days, I’m wondering a certain part of it.
A Wrinkle in Time can be argued to be a box office disappointment. It has a 41% on Rotten Tomatoes, 53% on Metacritic, and 4.2 out of 10 on IMDb. This despite it being a beloved book with a cast of stars and a respected director.
That made me think of another recent movie that didn’t meet expectations for ticket sales: Ender’s Game. It was 61% on Rotten Tomatoes, 51% on Metacritic, and 6.7 on IMDb. The domestic gross was about $62 million on a reported budget of $110 million.
The Giver had a domestic gross of about $45 million on a reported budget of $25 million. It was 35% on Rotten Tomatoes, 47% on Metacritic, and 6.5 on IMDb.
I suppose we could go back to the 1939 version of the Wizard of Oz (even though that’s more of a children’s book series than a young adult series). It wasn’t a box office blockbuster when it was first released, and many readers didn’t like some of the things that had been done with it (and they especially didn’t like Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion).
Just wondering…
Almost a quarter of American adults report not having read a book in the past 12 months
There are some very interesting stats from this year’s Pew report on who hasn’t read a book:
article by Andrew Perrin
There are six categories, and the biggest disparity occurs in education. The three slots are: high school or less; some college; and college+. The difference between the highest and the lowest is 30%: 37% of people high school or lower reported not having read a book, where only 7% of “College+” say so. I’ll mention one more before leaving it to the article…adults fifty or older actually reported reading a book significantly less often (28% versus 20%) than younger people.
I’ll mention that fewer people are non-readers than was true in the past couple of years…
What do you think? Why are people reporting they are reading more? Are you going to help Alexa learn a language (or more than one)? Do you want e-books to try to emulate p-books? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.
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* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. 
Shop ’til you help!
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.
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