Bookshare Reaches 200,000 Accessible Downloadable Titles

Recently Bookshare's downloadable library of accessible ebooks reached 200,000 titles. The 200,000 mark comes just months after the 11th anniversary of the service. Bookshare books contain digital text and can be read with text-to-speech and synchronized highlighting. Text-to-speech paired with synchronized highlighting can help dyslexics with comprehension. Members can also read books on a refreshable braille display. As a result of funding from the United States Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) Bookshare is able to provide its services free to qualified U.S. students. For information on membership click here. Members are provided with software to read Bookshare books on their Mac or PC but Bookshare books can also be read on many other devices including iOS devices using the Read2Go or Voice Dream Reader app. An Android app called Go Read is also available.

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Emergent Cloud Computing Business Models

The last year I wrote quite a few posts on the business models around SaaS and cloud computing including SaaS 2.0 , disruptive early stage cloud computing start-ups , and branding on the cloud . This year people have started asking me – well, we have seen PaaS, IaaS, and SaaS but what do you think are some of the emergent cloud computing business models that are likely to go mainstream in coming years. I spent some time thinking about it and here they are: Computing arbitrage: I have seen quite a few impressive business models around broadband bandwidth arbitrage where companies such as broadband.com buys bandwidth at Costco-style wholesale rate and resells it to the companies to meet their specific needs. PeekFon solved the problem of expensive roaming for the consumers in Eurpoe by buying data bandwidth in bulk and slice-it-and-dice-it to sell it to the customers. They could negotiate with the operators to buy data bandwidth in bulk because they made a conscious decision not to st...

A Data Scientist's View On Skills, Tools, And Attitude

I recently came across this interview (thanks Dharini for the link!) with Nick Chamandy, a statistician a.k.a a data scientist at Google. I would encourage you to read it; it does have some great points. I found the following snippets interesting: Recruiting data scientists: When posting job opportunities, we are cognizant that people from different academic fields tend to use different language, and we don’t want to miss out on a great candidate because he or she comes from a non-statistics background and doesn’t search for the right keyword. On my team alone, we have had successful “statisticians” with degrees in statistics, electrical engineering, econometrics, mathematics, computer science, and even physics. All are passionate about data and about tackling challenging inference problems. I share the same view. The best scientists I have met are not statisticians by academic training. They are domain experts and design thinkers and they all share one common trait: they love data!...

Reveiw: Celluon Epic Laser Keyboard

The Celluon Epic is a Bluetooth laser keyboard. The compact device projects a QWERTY keyboard onto most flat surfaces. (Glass tabletops being the exception) You can connect the Epic to vertically any device that supports Bluetooth keyboards including devices running iOS , Android , Windows Phone, and Blackberry 10. On the back of the device there is a charging port and pairing button. Once you have the Epic paired with your device it acts the same as any other keyboard. For any keyboard the most important consideration is the typing experience that it provides. The virtual keyboard brightness is adjustable and is easy to see in most lighting conditions. Unfortunately the brightness does not automatically adjust based on ambient light. With each keystroke a beeping sound is played which can be turned down. The typing experience on the Epic is mediocre at best. Inadvertently activating the wrong key can make typing frustrating and tiring. Even if you are a touch typist you'll still ...

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