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There is something very satisfying about reading an entire book in one sitting. Part of the pleasure of Julian Barnes’ Booker Prizing winning novel, The Sense of an Ending, is that you can spend a deeply pleasurable and indulgent afternoon devouring the book whole. You don’t have to worry about forgetting who said what when, of losing track of the plot as you nibble your way through the pages, piecemeal, when you get a moment here or there. The book is completely with you and the reading experience all the richer for it.

Last week we launched a new series of eBooks written with this experience in mind. The Penguin Shorts can be read over a long commute or a short journey, in your lunch hour or between dinner and bedtime, these brief books provide a short escape into a fictional world or act as a primer in a particular field or provide a new angle on an old subject.

To introduce you to the series, we are going to blog our way through all nine of the launch books, as we read through the series on our way in and out of work. To kick off, I’m starting with Colm Tóibín’s A Guest at the Feast. Celebrated as one of the finest novelists and short story writers of his generation Colm Tóibín, in his Penguin Short, turns his hand to his first piece of memoir, moving from the small town of Enniscorthy to Dublin, from memories of a mother who always had a book on the go to the author's early adulthood, from a love of literature to the influences of place and family.

To Work: 388 from Victoria Park Road to Embankment (50 minutes)


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It was bitterly cold yesterday morning. It proved difficult to keep my reader still as I tried to steal away the first few pages while keeping my morning vigil for the 388 to take me into work. It’s a good journey, I always get a seat and it allows for just shy of an hour of solid reading time. A Guest at the Feast opens with

Amazon gets on the kids’ book bandwagon (buying rights to 450 Marshall Cavendish titles, but it doesn’t plan to stop there and hopes to acquire many more children’s stories. Amazon says it sees the children’s book segment as... Read the rest of this post

I downloaded these three IPhone apps recently and have been loving them. Thought I'd share the wealth:

• Stitcher Radio. If you listen to certain NPR podcasts, you already hear the ads for this app. And you probably are ignoring them like I did for several months. But finally I got my lazy self to download this FREE app and I use it almost every day. You can listen to podcasts from many sources (though I mostly listen to NPR ones), including in many cases a small library of their old episodes. That means I don't have to fill up my iPhone with podcasts or worry about syncing. But the thing I love the most is that Stitcher will suggest OTHER podcasts I'd like, based on the one I'm listening too. That's gold for someone who's addicted to podcasts.
• Pedometer FREE GPS+. I've tried a few pedometer apps now and this is my current favorite. I like that it uses the iPhones accelerometer alongside the phone's GPS to get an accurate read of how far I walked. Since I like walking on nature trails, this is the best way to get an accurate sense of how far I've gone. It also estimates calories and reports on average pace. Will run in the background and nothing seems to confuse it, except when  my battery is at 10%. Then it gets a little squirrely. I love setting a chain of podcasts to play on Stitcher, then opening this app, hitting start, and cruising onto my favorite woodsy trail.
• zulily. This is an app that gives you easy access to the bargains on the website zulily. I'm hooked on all those bargain sites--Groupon, Living Social, etc--and zulily is one of my favorites. They offer clothes and shoes for children and women, plus some housewares. Everything is cute and really a very good deal. Last weekend I scored a Hurley hoodie for Little Dude, for Christmas--half off any other prices I could find on the web.

What are some of your favorite apps? What is my iPhone missing?

We know Millennials have more relaxed views about online privacy (than do older generations, but even they might think Warner Bros. has crossed the line with its new online “social series” called “Aim High.” Starring Jackson... Read the rest of this post

Animator Ed Barrett created these animated kill scenes for the fun little iPhone game Ready Steady Bang. 

Such a perfect mix of minimalist design and good animation. It’s such a simple game — a cowboy duel — but these little animated moments are the perfect reward for winning a round.

“Animated GIFs are the web’s vinyl records,” wrote Jamie Zawinski on Twitter a few months ago. It’s a sly but accurate observation. In the face of Flash and streaming video, the animated GIF, which has been around since the 1990s, has refused to fade away. It remains a ubiquitous part of Web culture and inspires countless memes among a new generation of Web users. While the underlying technology of the animated GIF hasn’t changed, artists continue to explore new approaches to the form, such as cinemagraphs and the recent animated GIF comics trend.

There are many reasons for the extended reign of the animated GIF, prime among them the form’s emphasis on cycles (or loops). Rhythmic repetition was a staple animation technique of theatrical animation during the 1920s and 1930s before being cast aside in favor of more realistic approaches to movement. The inherent beauty of cycled movement, which was cheapened by limited TV animation in the 1960s, has enjoyed a creative rebirth with the advent of the animated GIF. The animated GIF is also a remarkably potent form, and combined with good timing, it can deliver a surprising punchline as funny as any comedian’s joke. The British animator Cyriak has perfected this type of animated GIF. Perhaps the biggest underpinning reason for the endurance of the animated GIF is its utter simplicity: it has no sound, generally last less than 10 seconds, and require no technical knowledge to create, thanks in large part to the abundance of web apps.

This brings us around to the latest development in animated GIFs: a new iPhone app (also iPad/iPhone Touch compatible) called Gif Shop. Created by Daniel Savage and Matthew Archer, the app, which costs $1.99, streamlines the GIF making process on the iPhone, and makes it easier than ever for anybody to create their own animation. While it’s possible to make any kind of animation using Gif Shop, because of the app’s integration with the iPhone camera, it lends itself particularly to the pixilation stop-motion technique.

Here’s a quick demo of how it works:

Daniel Savage, the app’s co-creator, foresees a social media component to Gif Shop as well, and believes it can become to animation what Instagram is to photos. “The concept of simply creating animated GIFs,” he writes, “evolved into a service that enables our users to share animated GIFS across their networks with no concern for hosting and file size limitations other services may impose. Since the initial concept, Gif Shop is no longer the first of its kind, but we think there is one key factor the others have missed: simplicity. It is extremely important to us that we take the tedious act of making a GIF and make it as fun and intuitive as possible.”

It’s exciting to see the emergence of easy-to-use animation software for smartphones. These apps have the potential to make the act of animating as second-nature to the general public as taking a photograph. That’s a revolutionary concept, especially when one considers that fifty years ago, there were at best a few thousand people in the entire world who could animate. Most of the people using the Gif Shop app aren’t professional animators, but then again,

Apple is on the verge of launching (its cloud music service, with a major leg up on the competition: it has contracts with three of the four major music labels and is likely to nail down the last one soon. In other Apple news, it has a pending law... Read the rest of this post

Last week we offered the Android users among you a selection of free math-related apps. If you’re an iPhone user like I am, you will be pleased to know that there are equivalent apps for your device!

Many of the specific apps for Android are not available on iPhone, but that’s not to say that there is any shortage of math-related iPhone apps. For instance, Andie Graph is not available for iPhone, nor is Graph Lite. However:

• There are TONS of graphing calculator apps that are available for free:

• Or if you don’t mind spending $1.99, check out the very nice-looking Graphing Calculator from Appcylon LLC: • Algebra 1 Lite is a different mini-interactive textbook: students read some examples and then try out some practice problems. The app also keeps track of student progress. Here’s an example of a quiz question:

• Math Genius. (Also available on Android). Practice basic arithmetic skills.

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By: Uriel Avalos, on 5/6/2011
Blog: Amsco Extra! (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:  Technology, Math, iPhone, Mathematics, Android, iPad, Add a tag