Monday News: Penguin’s last quarter was stellar; Apple updated product launch rumored for September; Google’s Chromecast might be the next killer device at $35

JaneUncategorizedApple / book-sales / Google / Misogyny / Penguin5 Comments

Independent Penguin Goes Out on High Note – Penguin had a stellar last quarter with a 16% gain in sales and a 27% gain in operating profit internationally. In the US, Penguin saw an increase of 10% in sales in every area – frontlist, backlist, digital, and print. Digital sales accounted for 33% of sales in the last 6 months which was an increase of about 1/3 over last year. In order to increase print sales, Penguin has been supporting a program called Indie Partnership and it currently includes 238 indie booksellers. Publishers Weekly

Chromecast – Chromecast has the tech world a flutter and it was the topic of a dinner conversation when my family got together last week. Basically, you stick this $35 device in the back of your HDTV and then using your mobile device such as an Android phone or tablet or a iPhone, you can send pictures, music, and videos to your TV. The wifi connector is inside the Chromecast stick. Netflix, Youtube, and Pandora are Chromecast enabled.

The problem is that the quality of the Chromecast streamed video depends on whether it has partnered with Google. Video playing on your laptop can be streamed via Chromecast, but Tech Crunch says that the video isn’t always that great.

Video streaming quality is quite good (on par with what I get on my Xbox 360 or my Apple TV, at least) particularly when pulling from an app or website that’s been tailored for compatibility — so Netflix, Youtube, or Google Play, at the moment. If you’re using the Chromecast extension for Chrome on your laptop to project an otherwise incompatible video site (like Hulu or HBOGO), however, video quality can dump quite a bit depending on your setup. It’s using your laptop as a middle man to encode the video signal and broadcast it to the Chromecast, whereas the aforementioned compatible sites just send video straight to the dongle, mostly removing your laptop from the mix. When casting video tabs on a 2012 MacBook Air running on an 802.11n network, the framerate was noticeably lower and there were occasional audio syncing issues.

Delays reportedly push ‘iPhone 5S’ launch to late Sept.; ‘iPhone Lite,’ ‘iPad 5? & Haswell Macs expected earlier – If you are wondering whether Apple is going to have a product launch this year, rumors say that an event will take place in early September with a late September launch. The line up is supposed to include a broader range of iPhones from a cheaper plastic model to a larger one and possibly a larger iPad. Apple Insider

Man held after banknote campaigner receives rape threats on Twitter – The common response to a woman doing something on the internet is apparently threats of rape. Caroline Criado-Perez campaigned to get a woman on the banknote and she was successful. We reported on the impending 10 pound note featuring Jane Austen last week. Since the news has been released about this, Criado-Perez has been deluged with hate tweets and emails full of threats to rape and maim her. Criado-Perez called for Twitter to suspend the accounts of those engaging in that type of behavior but Twitter, despite type of action being against its terms of service, hasn’t really done much. Why a woman on a banknote is the cause of such vitriol, I guess I’ll never understand. UK news | The Guardian

Jane

Jane Litte is the founder of Dear Author, a lawyer, and a lover of pencil skirts. She self publishes NA and contemporaries (and publishes with Berkley and Montlake) and spends her downtime reading romances and writing about them. Her TBR pile is much larger than the one shown in the picture and not as pretty. You can reach Jane by email at jane @ dearauthor dot com

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