Slickdeals’ best in tech for May 8th: Samsung NX1000 mirrorless camera and Amazon Kindle Fire

Looking to save some coin on your tech purchases? Of course you are! In this roundup, we’ll run down a list of the freshest frugal buys, hand-picked with the help of the folks at Slickdeals. You’ll want to act fast, though, as many of these offerings won’t stick around long.

Slickdeals' best in tech for May 8th: Samsung NX1000 mirrorless camera and Amazon Kindle Fire

Sure, tablets and cameras discounted on the regular in our twice weekly roundup, but today an A/V system sees the big price drop. A Denon AVR-1613 receiver and Harmon Kardon HKTS 16 speaker bundle is reduced by over 50% with the aid of a simple discount code. All of the particulars, and the rest of the list, await on the other side of the break.

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Source: Slickdeals

Slickdeals’ best in tech for May 6th: Barnes & Noble Nook HD+ and 55-inch LG 3D HDTV

Looking to save some coin on your tech purchases? Of course you are! In this roundup, we’ll run down a list of the freshest frugal buys, hand-picked with the help of the folks at Slickdeals. You’ll want to act fast, though, as many of these offerings won’t stick around long.

Slickdeals' best in tech for May 6th: Barnes & Noble Nook HD+ and 55-inch LG 3D HDTV

Today’s collection of discounted tech links runs the gamut from home entertainment wares to Ultrabooks and ends up at Barnes & Noble’s tablet. A 55-inch 3D HDTV from LG and that Nook HD+ are tempting options on their own, but there’s a whole lot more to peruse on the other side of the jump.

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Source: Slickdeals

B&N cuts Nook HD, HD+ prices this week, hopes you’ll gift mom poetry and prose May 12

As if bringing the Nook HD and HD+ access to Google Play this week wasn’t already a sweet deal, Barnes & Noble is temporarily slashing the prices for its two reading-focused tablets. The reductions will last until the end of Mother’s Day, putting the 7-inch Nook HD 8GB at $149 and the 16GB at $179 (a $50 discount), with the 9-inch HD+ set at $179 for 16GB and $209 for 32GB (with $90 off). Compared to other options like the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7 tablets, the deal may be enough to make up for lack of cameras and UI shortcomings on the Nooks. If your interest is piqued, you check out our reviews of both the HD and HD+, and hit up the source link if you’d like to snag one.

Update: We’d also like to remind our UK readers that a similar limited-time offer was put in place a few days ago, dropping the price of the Nook HD from £159 to £129 and the Nook HD+ from £229 to £179.

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Source: Barnes & Noble

Barnes & Noble intros buy-one-get-one Nook book offer, only valid in stores

Barnes & Noble intros buyonegetone Nook book offer, valid only if you visit a store

Well, this process seems a bit counterintuitive, eh? This morning, Barnes & Noble introduced a new scheme for getting Nook customers to visit the company’s retail stores. The promotion nets you one free e-book when you purchase another, but — and this is where the offer tripped us up a bit — you can only make your electronic purchase with a cashier in a physical store. The deal will be up for grabs every weekend, and titles are set to change. There are currently 20 books on offer (available this Saturday and Sunday only), including hits like Along Came a Spider by James Patterson and Bossypants by Tina Fey. Once you make your selections, you’ll receive an email with access codes (assuming the rep managed to input your data correctly), at which point you’ll need to visit a dedicated Barnes & Noble site to receive your books. Easy peasy.

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Via: ZDNet

Source: Barnes & Noble

Printed books are still favored by Brits, but digital sales are rising

Printed books are heavily preferred among Brits, but digital sales are rapidly increasing

For many, there’s nothing quite so comforting as cracking open a good book. The texture of the pages combine with the smell of ink and paper, as the writer pours their imagination and soul into a world that’s apart from your own. While e-books have won over a number of people, the latest stats from The Publishers Association suggest that the majority of Brits still prefer the printed form, which accounted for 88 percent of all book sales during 2012. The winds of change are working in the background, however, as digital sales — consisting of e-books, audio downloads and digital subscriptions — now account for 12 percent of the pie; an increase from 8 percent just one year ago.

As a whole, the UK publishing industry shows modest signs of growth, with combined physical and digital sales rising by 4 percent to reach £3.3 billion ($5.1b). Meanwhile, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, but e-books continue to gain popularity and show tremendous promise. Here, consumer e-book sales have risen 134 percent in 2012, which now account for a £216 million ($336m) share of the UK publishing industry. Regardless of whether you prefer print or digital formats, we reckon that all readers deserve a hearty slap on the back. Here’s to keeping the story-telling alive.

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Via: The Telegraph

Source: The Publishers Association

E-Reading Rainbow: Hachette to bring entire e-book catalog to public libraries

EReading Rainbow Hachette to bring entire ebook catalog to public libraries next week

If you’re still balking at the cost of download-to-own e-books, and would rather stick to the tried-and-true library lending system, then this Hachette news is for you. Come next Wednesday, the entirety of Hachette’s ebook catalog — over 5,000 titles — will be made available to nonprofit libraries throughout the US. The announcement and finalized pricing model follows two years worth of pilot testing, during which the publisher examined ebook consumption and lending habits at select libraries. Under the currently set terms of sale, e-books that bow in tandem with print editions will run three times the price of their physical counterparts for “single-user-at-a-time circulations, ” with prices falling to just one and a half that of the hard copy one year later. By Hachette’s own admission, this pricing scheme is not entirely set in stone — the company plans to continually reevaluate the model on a per-year basis. So, there’s hope yet the publisher will gouge libraries a bit less for the perks of e-borrowing.

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Apple Fined $118K In Chinese Court Due To E-Book Copyright Violations

Apple Fined $118K In Chinese Court Due To E Book Copyright ViolationsIt looks like Apple is not the first company to get fined this week, as Google was hit with a fine by the German authorities for being guilty of Wi-Fi data snooping when their Street View cars were going around in parts of the Old World under Germany’s borders, snapping photos and in some cases, picking up unwarranted information. Well, a Chinese court this week has issued an order for Apple to compensate a trio of Chinese writers to the tune of $118,000. The reason for this fine? Apple was ruled to have violated the copyright of these three Chinese writers’ works.

Judge Feng Gang of Beijing’s No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court ruled this week that Apple did not manage to obtain the necessary and proper permissions from all three writers prior to selling their books in Apple’s App Store. These books were first uploaded by a third party, followed by being sold sans a single penny going to the authors or their publishers. Feng ruled that the onus was on Apple to follow up on the books uploaded to its store so that no copyrights are violated in the process, and rightly so. I guess this is a drop in the ocean for a cash rich company like Apple, but more importantly, it has caused another dent in Apple’s reputation in China.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: iPhone Leads All Other Smartphones In First U.S. 2013 Quarter, WWDC 2013 Tickets Sell Out In Less Than Three Minutes,

    

Apple docked $118,000 by Chinese court for violating authors’ copyrights

Apple docked $118,000 by China court for violating authors' copyrights

Apple will have to pay three Chinese authors a total of $118,000 for stocking their books in its App Store without a proper say-so, according to China Daily. A court ruled that it was Apple’s job to verify that third-party uploads met copyright requirements and that it had the means to do so since all the books in question were best-sellers. Apple’s attorney declined to comment, but the court also suggested that similar online retailers should learn from the case “and improve their verification system” — bringing perhaps another headache to would-be e-book stores in that nation.

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Via: ZDNet

Source: China Daily

Kobo Aura HD review: a high-end e-reader with ‘niche’ written all over it

Kobo Aura HD review: a high-end e-reader with 'niche' written all over it

What do you get when you ask 10,000 rabid bookworms to help build a better Kobo? The Cadillac of e-readers, naturally: a bigger, beefier and generally higher-end device than we’re used to. The Aura HD is a rare thing in this space, built specifically with power users in mind. And for those very reasons, this 6.8-inch, $169 slate isn’t long for this world. Announced roughly half a year after the company’s flagship Glo (and, it turns out, just in time for Mother’s Day), the Aura HD isn’t slated to make it beyond the end of the year. “This is something that is designed for this most passionate, voracious reader,” the company’s CEO Mike Serbinis told us in an interview conducted around the announcement, “and as much as I wish everyone was like that — it would make us a lot bigger business right away — that is not the case.”

It’s a strange move for a relatively small company that’s currently offering up two 6-inch readers, a 5-inch model and 7-inch tablet. That, and company is convinced such a product isn’t destined to ever become anything but a niche device, particularly in a race dominated by two main players. But is there a chance devoted fans might pay the premium? Let’s find out.

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Amazon reportedly launching in Russia, goes on Kindle-related hiring spree

Amazon reportedly launching in Russia, goes on Kindlerelated hiring spree

Amazon is fleshing out its international empire. The company has already conquered the US, Japan, UK and Canada, and has even launched an ebook assault on the Chinese mainland. Now it looks like the online giant has settled on its next target: Russia. According to a report in the Russian edition of Forbes, the Goodreads purchaser has just set up shop in the former Soviet heartland and brought on Arkady Vitrouk (former CEO of ABC-Atticus) as director of Kindle Content for the region. Amazon hasn’t officially confirmed the move, but Vitrouk has updated his LinkedIn profile to reflect his new ebook-focused title. Scouring the professional social network reveals listings for a few other Kindle-related positions in the country, including a number of jobs focused on content acquisition — an important step in the lead up to launch. There’s no indication that free two-day shipping or streaming video will be coming to Russia anytime soon, but the ereader market seems as good a place as any to start a quest for dominance.

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Via: TechCrunch

Source: Forbes, Arkady Vitrouk (LinkedIn)