Tablet buying guide 2013 | How to pick the right tablet

You might be looking to snag a tablet for yourself or for your loved one. But before you venture out to a brick and mortar store or get lost scouring for websites and looking for deals, take a step back. Like everything else in life, tablet shopping is easier if you have a plan.

You might be looking to snag a tablet for yourself or for your loved one. But before you venture out to a brick and mortar store or get lost scouring for websites and looking for deals, take a step back. Like everything else in life, tablet shopping is easier if you have a plan.

There are so many tablet options available, it's easy to be overwhelmed by all the possible criteria. You'll have to consider size and weight, how long the battery lasts, and which platform offers the apps and services you use the most. Let us help you with our guide on what to look for when you're in the market for a tablet, and what to avoid so that you don't needlessly spend money on something that turns out to be a dud.

Choose a platform

Most tablets will let you do common tasks like read books, browse the Web, play music and games, or watch movies and videos. But not all of the platform ecosystems are built the same.

One of the easiest ways to consider which platform best suits you is by looking at the devices you already have. For instance, do you have an iPhone that hooks up to a MacBook or a massive iTunes media library? Then you might want consider the iPad to help seal the circle and keep things easily synced across devices. Or, maybe you're platform agnostic and wouldn't mind a tablet with a bit more malleability? Google's Android-powered Nexus 7 is a worthy choice. Alternatively, if you're a member of Amazon Prime and find yourself pooling money into the site on a constant basis, then consider hooking yourself into its vast array of movies and e-books by bringing home a 7- or 8-inch Kindle Fire HDX.

Bear in mind that not all Android tablets are created equal: many of them either run older versions of Android or the manufacturer will offer up their own version with a customized interface that requires its own learning curve. Companies like Samsung and LG are notorious for this, and they package up the devices with their own bundle of applications--many of which you can't remove.

What will you use it for?

Those of you aching to be productive with a tablet that's easier on your back than a laptop might want to pay mind to Microsoft's Surface 2, which uses a touch-friendly version of Windows 8.1. However, you'll have less of an "entertainment tablet" experience with the absence of the some apps and games that are popular on other platforms. The iPad Air is also good for this reason as Apple offers its iWork productivity suite for tablet users, in addition to iCloud, which works with both your Mac and iPhone as well as your browser.

If you're e-book and movie crazy, any modern device will do, especially since Hulu, Netflix, and the official Amazon Kindle app are available on almost every device.

Go big? Stay small?

After you've determined which ecosystem to stick with, you'll have to pick a size. Tablets come in several sizes, beginning with 7-inch screens and getting as big as 10.1 inches. It's useful to think of it as two size categories: "big" tablets over 9 inches, and "small" tablets in the 7 to 8-inch range.

Smaller tablets travel better because they're lighter and more compact, but you'll also have to consider how the device fits in with the rest of your stuff. For example, the full-size iPad Air will take up almost as much space in your bag as an 11-inch MacBook Air.

The tablet size will also affect how it feels to hold the device. Devices like the second-generation Nexus 7 are comfortable to hold with one hand, but if you like to read, you'll have a better grip on a rocky transit ride with the shorter 7-inch Kindle Fire HDX. Of course, tablet size also determines the display size, which brings us to our next criteria...

Resolution matters

Remember that the bigger the tablet, the bigger the screen size, and the heavier the weight. If multitasking is your main concern and you want a tablet for both productivity and entertainment, a larger screen-size will make everything look better and give you more space to work with, but you'll be carrying more weight around.

A really high-res display like the Retina display in the latest iPad mini from Apple, makes text look crisp and reduces fatigue when reading for long periods. For watching videos and movies or for a tablet that will entertain the kids, it's more important that the screen be large than especially hi-res.

Processor performance

You may not be concerned with having the latest processor--you may not even be familiar with which tablet processors are new and fast and which are old and slow. But going with an older tablet because of its low price point may end up costing you in the long run. As apps and games are updated, they'll require more hardware resources, thus making them incompatible with the hardware you have inside your tablet.

The current processor landscape looks like this: quad-core processors from companies like Qualcomm are all the rage these days and help make for some very speedy devices. They're usually coupled with about 2GB of RAM and can be found in most Android devices, including Samsung's Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition. Nvidia hasn't been too successful in the system-on-a-chip (SoC) wars in the last year, but the initial reviews of the Tegra Note 7 and Microsoft Surface 2 seem to suggest that a revival is on the horizon. Apple makes its own chips, and its latest, the iPad Air, features a very fast 64-bit A7 processor.

Ports

If you're looking for external connectivity, the Surface Pro 2 has the most to offer with both a USB 3.0 port and microHDMI to hook up to your TV. The iPad has one sole proprietary port with a selection of attachable dongles for things like SD cards and USB cameras--all sold separately--while some Android tablets come with either an HDMI or USB port, in addition to a MicroUSB port that sometimes supports Miracast, which tethers the tablet to your TV.

Penning with a stylus

If you like drawing, sketching, or just scratching out ideas, the Android-powered Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition comes with its own dockable stylus called the S-Pen. It features a button you can press with your index finger to bring up additional apps to help you get all of it out on virtual paper. Many Windows 8-based tablets also come with styluses to enable you to take advantage of the built-in digitizer, like the Surface Pro 2, which features Wacom tablet technology.

If you're really keen on the iPad though, you could always look at the vast array of third-party styluses, but the iPad's capacitive screen is not really optimized for stylus input.

Buying a tablet for everyone

It's likely that the tablet you're considering isn't just going to be used by you, but by other members of your family, too. Apple's iPad only offers password-protected restrictions, while both the Kindle Fire HDX andNook HD+ offer special kid-friendly modes. Amazon calls its feature FreeTime, which lets you control your child's access to content on the device; the Nook offers up to six password-protected profiles with parental controls. Windows 8.1 allows you to set up multiple accounts and set restrictions on them, too.

Android features a better implementation for multi-user accounts by offering restricted profiles in tablets running Android 4.2.2 and later. You can allow each member of your family to have their own profile complete with their own customized Home screen and apps. The restricted profile just ensures that only the main user of the device will have complete access to things like apps and system settings. You can also set it up to keep your kids from going trigger happy in the Google Play store or downloading apps with mature content.

You're ready to buy

Now that you've got your list of things to look for and money burning a hole in your pocket, it's time to finally pick up that tablet.

First and foremost, look for any deals on tablets from your favorite stores. Some previous-generation models may be offered for less, but consider whether their aging processors will outlast the constant barrage of software and app updates. You might find clearance deals on older models of once-popular tablets, and while they'll work fine for sending emails, reading books, and surfing the Web, the buck stops there. If that's really your only interest, grab a device like the last-generation Nexus 7, which is currently going for $99. It won't receive any other Android updates after the current version of KitKat, however. Also, Apple is usually better about keeping older versions of its hardware updated for as long as feasibly possible, and its refurbished iPads and iPad minis aren't a bad idea either.

Don't immediately run to your carrier looking for a deal on a 4G-connected tablet. Many mobile carriers will offer a tablet at a subsidized price, but tablet technology advances so fast that you'll likely either still be paying off that tablet when the new one comes out, or get stuck on contract with something that's in danger of becoming outdated.

Source | http://news.idg.no/

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The Evolution of e-publishing: Why India has lagged behind in adapting eBooks

The Evolution of e-publishing: Why India has lagged behind in adapting eBooks

Despite its success the world over, India is yet to adapt to eBooks. Gargi Gupta dives into the narrow pool of e-publishing in the country to find out why it comes up short.

Rasana Atreya was an IT professional...and then she wrote a novel. It was good, too, for the manuscript made it to the shortlist of the 2012 Tibor Jones South Asia prize for best unpublished novel by a writer unrepresented by a literary agent. Soon, a publisher offered a contract, but Atreya decided to do something adventurous — self-publish her book, using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) service. Nearly a year after its publication, her eBook Tell A Thousand Lies gets around 1,000 downloads a month.

Of these, only a few are from India. “Mostly it is from the UK, US and, amazingly, Mexico, from where I get a lot of fan mail telling me that my book about two sisters in a small south-Indian village could have been set in their country,” says Atreya. With 70% royalties coming her way (print publishers pay their authors a fraction of this), Atreya today makes more money each month from the sales of her book than the entire advance that the print publisher had offered her. No wonder then that Atreya has resigned from her job to become a full-time writer and says her decision to self-publish was one of the best things she’s done.

Atreya’s is undoubtedly a success story, but it is the only significant success in the e-publishing/ebooks space in India. For unlike in the West, where as a recent PwC report reveals, ebooks have garnered 9% of the publishing market, and will grow to 22% by 2017, eBooks in India account for a paltry 1% or less. The main barrier, says Random House India spokesperson Caroline Newbury, is the lack of awareness in India about ebooks, how to download them and the ereader devices available. “But this is changing rapidly,” she says. If eBook sales are higher in the US or UK, Newbury feels it is because these places have had dedicated e-reading devices and eBooks for much longer.

So how close is India to this inflection point from where the local market for eBooks can be expected to really take off? Around 18-24 months, feels Santanu Chowdhury, CEO of Swiftboox, a store that specialises in ebooks in Indian regional languages. VK Karthika, publisher and chief editor, HarperCollins India, agrees: “When eBooks first started to come in, I had thought they would take 10 years to reach India; then last year, when we started working on our ebooks programme, I thought it would be five years. Now I think it will take about two years.”

That India has a lot of potential is something everyone in publishing  agrees upon. “India is the third largest market for English books,” says Amazon India’s spokesperson. “A high propensity for reading, coupled with growth in literacy, increasing Internet penetration, Internet-enabled devices and a rapid growth of middle class population with increasing disposable income make it a very promising market.” No wonder then that everyone — publishers, stores (both online and brick-and-mortar) and manufacturers of eBook reader devices and apps — is hurrying to grab an early-mover advantage in the eBooks space.

The last 12 months or so, especially, have seen a lot of new launches and activity. Swiftboox, for example, is tying up with small and medium publishers in Bengali, Marathi, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, etc and offering to digitise their backlists using a technology that works with Indian vernacular languages. In October this year, HarperCollins launched an e-imprint, Harper21, with a series of 21 e-singles by 21 authors at a “token cost” of Rs21 each. “We decided to introduce readers with a format that was not too long or complicated to read by known authors, and could be finished while travelling on the Metro, for instance. We are not really looking at it as a revenue earner now,” says Karthika. In the last year or so, leading English-language publishers such as HarperCollins, Random House and Aleph have started to release new titles in both print and eformats.

Regional language publishers, however, still remain largely out of the ebook revolution, says Chowdhury, of Swiftboox. The market is also being flooded with ereaders and ebook apps of late — GooglePlay Books launched in India in February this year; in June, Amazon launched its Kindle range of e-readers and the Kindle Store; Flipkart, the leading books retailer, came out with its eBooks app in August; and last month, Kobo, a popular brand of ebook readers globally, unveiled its range in India. Even brick-and-mortar stores like Landmark have jumped onto the bandwagon with online ebook stores.

Why, these days, even highend smartphones come preloaded with Blio, a free-to-download ereader software! Clearly, there’re all waiting for the eBook revolution to happen.

The top shelf

Oxforddictionaries.com describes electronic publishing as “the issuing of books and other material in machine-readable form rather than on paper”.

E-publishing, short for electronic publishing, refers to work published online, on a compact disk, emailed, or provided in a format compatible with handheld electronic readers. Amazon Kindle and Kobo are two eBook readers popular amongst bibliophiles.

Source | Daily News Analysis | 25 November 2013

Maths Olympiad Papers Question Bank 1

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16 Reasons Why Libraries and Librarians are Still Extremely Important

                       Many predict that the digital age will wipe public bookshelves clean, and permanently end the centuries-old era of libraries. As libraries' relevance comes into question, librarians face an existential crisis at a time when students need them the most. Despite their perceived obsolescence in the digital age, both libraries and librarians are irreplaceable for many reasons. Nearly twenty reasons, in fact. We've listed them here:

1. Not Everything is Available on the Internet: The amazing amount of useful information on the web has, for some, engendered the false assumption everything can be found online. It's simply not true.

Google Books recognizes this. That's why they take on the monolith task of digitizing millions of books from the world's largest libraries. But even if Google does successfully digitize the sum of human knowledge, it is unlikely that the sum of contemporary authors and publishers will not allow their works to be freely accessible over the internet. It is already prohibited by law to make copyrighted books fully accessible through Google Book search.

2. Digital Libraries are not the Internet: A fundamental understanding of what the internet is and isn't can help clearly define the role of a library, and why libraries are still extremely important. Online library collections, however, are different. They typically include materials that have been published via rigorous editorial processes and are riddled with quantitative anaysis, instead of opinion.Types of materials include books, journals, documents, newspapers, magazines and reports which are digitized, stored and indexed through a limited-access database.

While one might use the internet or a search engine to find these databases, deeper access to them requires registration. You are still online, but you are no longer on the internet. You are in a library.

3. The Internet isn't Free: Numerous academic research papers, journals, and other important materials are virtually inaccessible to someone seeking to pull them off the web for free. Rather, access is restricted to expensive subscription accounts, which are typically paid for by college libraries. Visiting a college library in person or logging in to the library through your school account, is therefore the only way to affordably access necessary archived resources.

4. The Internet Compliments Libraries, but Doesn't Replace Them: The internet is clearly a great resource to finding information, but it's not a replacement for a library. There are clear advantages of libraries over the internet for research, however the benefits of the internet, includes "sampling public opinion", gathering "quick facts" and  pooling a wide range of ideas. Overall, the point is this: libraries are completely different than the web. In this light, to talk about one replacing the other begins to seem absurd.

5. School Libraries and Librarians Improve Student Test Scores: A 2005 study of the Illinois School Libraries shows that students who frequently visit well-stocked and well-staffed school libraries end up with higher ACT scores and perform better on reading and writing exams. Interestingly, the study points out that access digital technology plays a strong role in test results, noting that "high schools with computers that connect to library catalogs and databases average 6.2 percent improvement on ACT scores".

6. Libraries Aren't Just Books: Technology is integrating itself into the library system, not bulldozing it. Pushing this trend to its logical extreme (although it's likely not to happen), we could eventually see libraries' entire stacks relegated to databases, and have books only accessible digitally. So where does that leave librarians? Are they being overtaken by technology, the timeless enemy of labor?

Technology is integrating itself into the library system, not bulldozing it. Pushing this trend to its logical extreme (although it's likely not go this far), we could eventually see libraries' entire stacks relegated to databases, and only be able to access books digitally.

7. Mobile Devices are not the End of Books or Libraries: Predictions of the "end of the book" are a predictable response to digitization and other technologies, and the crystal ball of some in the pro-paper crowd seems to also reveal a concomitant crumbling of civilization. One of the latest dark threats to paper is e-books downloadable to mobile devices.

But e-books are not an all-consuming transition for readers. Radio lives on despite TV, film is still in high demand despite video, people still talk on the telephone despite email. People who like paper books will continue to read paper books even if mobile downloads prompt the majority of publishers to release e-books instead of paper. After all, an immense backlog of printed books will still be accessible to readers. The presence of the digital library will continue to be extremely important role for college students in their research, whether it's paper or electronically based.

8. Library Attendance isn't Falling, it's Just More Virtual: With approximately 50,000 visitors a year, attendance at the American History Archives at Wisconsin Historical Society has dropped 40% since 1987. This statistic, when set alone, may prove sufficient for anybody casually predicting the Collapse of the Library. But it is only half the story. The archives have also been digitized and placed online. Every year the library receives 85,000 unique online visitors. The number of schools offering online degrees is constantly on the rise as well. Many of these schools are improving their virtual libraries by the day.

9. Physical Libraries are Adapting to Cultural Change: Anyone subscribing to the theories of 20th Century thinker Marshal McLuhan might say that along with changed life patterns brought on by electronic technology, knowledge that was once encased in books and compartmentalized by subject area is now being liberally disseminated in an explosion of democracy, rendering obsolete the austerity of the lonely, echoing corridors of the Library. Interestingly McLuhan, who died in 1980, once even said: "the future of the book is the blurb".

Indeed, this cultural change predates widespread use of the internet. For decades society has been seeking a more holistic understanding of the world, and increased access to information. The search for new methods of organizing educational structures (including libraries) has long been active. And while libraries might not be on many peoples' "top ten cutting edge list", they have been adapting. 

Washington State University director of libraries Virginia Steel, for example, is a proponent of maximizing the social and interactive nature of physical library space. Group study, art exhibits, food and coffee talking, not whispering; this is the new library. It's not obsolete, it's just changing.

10. Eliminating Libraries would Cut Short an Important Process of Cultural Evolution: The library that we are most familiar with today a public or academic institution that lends out books for free is a product of the democratization of knowledge. In the old days, books weren't always so affordable, and private libraries, or book clubs, were a privilege of the rich. This started changing during the 1800's, with more public libraries popping up as a result of government initiatives.

Libraries began blossoming under the watch of President Franklin Roosevelt, in part as a tool to differentiate the United States from book-burning Nazis. This increased interest in building a more perfect, liberal society culminated in 1956 with the Library Services Act, which introduced federal funding for the first time.Today there are tens of thousands public libraries in the United States.

The notion that libraries are a thing of the past and that humankind has sprouted wings and flown into a new era of self-guided. Unfortunately, it's this same notion that could lead to the notion of libraries as stuffy and out-of-date. In reality, the quality of the web depends on guidance from the library model. While moderators do have brush to clear in the new and savage cyber-scape, librarians have trail blazed significant parts of the journey.

11. Wisdom of Crowds is Untrustworthy, Because of the Tipping Point: The high visibility of certain viewpoints, analysis and even facts found online through social networking sites and wikis is engineered ideally to be the result of objective group consensus. Google's algorithm also hinges on this collective principle: rather than an in-house "expert" arbitrarily deciding what resource is the most authoritative, let the web decide. Sites with higher link popularity tend to rank higher in the search engines. The algorithm is based on the principle that group consensus reveals a better, more accurate analysis of reality than a single expert ever could. Writer James Surowiecki calls this phenomenon "the wisdom of crowds."

In a vacuum, crowds probably are very wise. But all too often we see the caveat to James Surowiecki's crowd wisdom in Malcom Gladwell's "tipping point", which, in this context, explains that groups are easily influenced by their vanguard those who are the first to do something and who automatically have extra influence, even if what they are doing is not necessarily the best idea.

The highly social nature of the web therefore makes it highly susceptible to, for example, sensationalized, low-quality information with the sole merit of being popular. Libraries, in contrast, provide quality control in the form of a stopgap. Only information that is carefully vetted is allowed in. Libraries are likely to stay separate from the internet, even if they can be found online. Therefore, it is extremely important that libraries remain alive and well, as a counterpoint to the fragile populism of the web.

12. Librarians are the Irreplaceable Counterparts to Web Moderators: Individuals who voluntarily devote their time to moderating online forums and wikis are playing a similar role to librarians who oversee the stacks and those who visit the stacks, minus the Master's degree in library sciences. The chief difference between librarians and moderators is that while the former guides users through a collection of highly authoritative, published works, the moderator is responsible for taking the helm as consensus is created. While the roles are distinct, each is evolving along with the fast paced growth of the internet and the evolving nature of libraries. Both moderators and librarians will have a lot to learn from each other, so it is important that they both stick around.

13. Unlike Moderators, Librarians must Straddle the Line between Libraries and the Internet: Admittedly, libraries are no longer both the beginning and ending point of all scholarly research. The internet is effectively pulling students away from the stacks and revealing a wealth of information, especially to one who is equipped with the tools to find it. Indeed, the dream of cutting out the middleman is possible to attain. But at what price?

Media literacy, although an extremely important asset for scholars and researchers, is far from universal. Who is going to teach media literacy? Many argue that librarians are the best fit to educate people about the web. After all, web moderators are concerned primarily with the environment which they oversee and less so with teaching web skills to strangers. Teachers and professors are busy with their subjects and specializations. Librarians, therefore, must be the ones who cross over into the internet to make information more easily accessible. Instead of eliminating the need for librarians, technology is reinforcing their validity.

14. Library Collections Employ a Well-formulated Citation System: Books and journals found in libraries will have been published under rigorous guidelines of citation and accuracy and are thereby allowed into libraries' collections. These standards are simply not imposed on websites.They can show up in search results whether or not they provide citation. With enough research, the accuracy of web resources often can be determined. But it's very time consuming. Libraries make research much more efficient.

15. Libraries can Preserve the Book Experience: Consuming 900 pages on the intellectual history of Russia is an experience unique to the book. In general, the book provides a focused, yet comprehensive study that summarizes years of research by an author or team of authors who have devoted their academic to a particular subject area.

But, even when the internet does provide actual content, the information is often snack-sized or the overall experience cursory a sort of quick-reference browsing. Knowledge can be found, but the experience of delving into a book for hundreds of pages just doesn't happen online. The preservation of stacks, therefore, will help preserve access to this approach to learning and the more traditional form of scholarship can continue alongside the new.

16. Libraries are Helpful for News Archives: Libraries continue to subscribe to and stock a vast list of newspapers, academic journals, and trade publications, and archive the back issues. This effort may seem humble alongside the lengthy lists of online news aggregators and instantaneous access to articles published within the minute. 

This news cataloging can provide a number of advantages. For starters, many publications continue to exist offline. For someone seeking a specific article by a specific journalist, a library could yield better results even if the publication had to be tracked down through inter-library loan.

Libraries often provide freely accessible issues of major periodicals that would otherwise require online subscription, like many sections of The New York Times. In addition, archives often disappear offline, or become increasingly expensive online. This can leave libraries with the only accessible copies.

Society is not ready to abandon the library, and it probably won't ever be. Libraries can adapt to social and technological changes, but they can't be replaced. While libraries are distinct from the internet, librarians are the most suited professionals to guide scholars and citizens toward a better understanding of how to find valuable information online. Indeed, a lot of information is online. But a lot is still on paper. Instead of regarding libraries as obsolete, state and federal governments should increase funding for improved staffing and technology. Rather than lope blindly through the digital age, guided only by the corporate interests of web economics, society should foster a culture of guides and guideposts. Today, more than ever, libraries and librarians are extremely important for the preservation and improvement of our culture

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