Thursday News: Will Apple introduce the iWatch in September, OverDrive’s new and enhanced app, NYPL book recs, and Sanrio’s “cruel trick”
Publishing NewsAdobe / Apple / Hello Kitty / iPhone / iWatch / Libraries / Overdrive / recommendations / Sanrio / smart watch / Smartphone13 Comments
Will Apple unveil the iWatch at the same time as the iPhone 6? – Gigaom picks up on the Re/Code story that claims a September 9th release of the new iWatch, along with the new Apple iPhone models. Gigaom is not so convinced, but it’s an interesting rumor and one that will likely give Apple watchers a lot to speculate about for the next two weeks or so.
There are two ways to look at this new tidbit: First of all, the iPhone is the most profitable consumer product in the world and is more than deserving of its very own dog-and-pony show. On the other hand, if Apple is going to break into a new product category, what better time than when the world’s rapt attention is focused on the latest iPhone? –Gigaom & Re/Code
Coming Soon: New Version of OverDrive’s Mobile App Will Not Require Adobe Authorization – So the new version of OverDrive is releasing in the middle of September, and it comes with a pretty exciting bonus: NO ADOBE AUTHORIZATION!!! Do we dare hope that Adobe’s increasingly intrusive DRM is finally being abandoned? Anyway, from OverDrive’s email announcement:
This update features the long-awaited elimination of the Adobe Authorization step from the app installation process — one of your most frequently requested enhancements! To continue to fulfill the requirement for copyrighted materials, users will register for an OverDrive account instead. We expect this change will significantly reduce library support questions and provide excellent benefits to users like syncing reading progress across multiple devices and saving libraries and common searches. –Library Journal infoDOCKET
Sanrio’s Shocking Reveal: Hello Kitty Is NOT A Cat – WHAT DO YOU MEAN HELLO KITTY IS NOT A CAT??????!!!! A “cruel trick,” indeed.
“Hello Kitty is not a cat. She’s a cartoon character. She is a little girl. She is a friend. But she is not a cat. She’s never depicted on all fours. She walks and sits like a two-legged creature. She does have a pet cat of her own, however, and it’s called Charmmy Kitty.” –laist
New York Public Library – Explore – Looking for something to read, or something for your kids to read? Check out the New York Public Library’s “Explore” section for reading lists, book reviews, and recommendations. A few months ago, for example, there was a great blog post on “Girl Power: Books for Bold Women.” A very good resource for all sorts of books. –NYPL
I don’t really understand the outcry about Hello Kitty. To me, she never, ever made any sense at all. What sort of name is HELLO, for a start? And is she saying Hello to a Kitty? In which case where is that kitty? Or am I saying Hello to her? Cat/not cat, I think she has far bigger issues. People should stick with Miffy.
Heh, they can say whatever they want, that’s a cat/kitty.
She’s got ears, a tail and whiskers. It’s a cat.
Thanks to all the Hello Kitty kerfuffle, I found out there’s a Hello Kitty retrospective at Japanese American museum. Hello L.A.!
I wonder if non-OverDrive Adobe authorized reading apps will still work for OverDrive books? In the past, I’ve almost always used Mantano Reader to read OverDrive books, not the OverDrive app.
That said, the library I work at has been considering OverDrive, and I think this change would be a relief to a lot of our staff. One less thing to explain to our users when trying to help them download and read our e-books.
I guess Mickey isn’t really a mouse either …
And what the hell is Goofy?
@Karenmc: Has anyone ever actually know the answer to that one, though?
Kitty? Micky? Why must we pin them down? (I wanted to write “pigeonhole,” but in the context, that seemed wrong.)
Can’t we accept trans-species identification? We fans of shape-shifters, especially!
@Mzcue: If any character fits “trans-species,” it’s probably Goofy.
@ROS
Hello Kitty is Japanese, it probably didn’t need to make sense to them. The one that made me laugh was a cheap Chinese knock-off found in Russia. It was a toddler outfit featuring a picture of Hello Kitty and the words, “Hecko Pity”.
As pure speculation I wonder if, with the Japanese difficulty with Rs and Ls, they might have originally planned her to be Hero Kitty, but changed it to avoid Heroine, which is both far less well known among foreigners than Hero and sounds like heroin. The chances are that the Japanese would hear the reference to Hero that we don’t hear at all.
I knew a cleaner once who complained about Sheep and Ship sounding almost identical and how difficult if was to use the right one. A little thought made me realize her discomfort was with Sheet, a word she probably used frequently. And indeed, as she pronounced Sheep and Ship, there wasn’t much of a difference.
@SAO: Oh, the sheep/ship one can definitely be an issue for us Spanish speakers. We don’t really have the distinction between the 2 sounds. I can hear the difference fine, but even after living in England for years, the wrong one occasionally slips out… usually when talking about going to the beach, or washing the sheets ;)
@Karenmc: Goofy was the subject of a long discussion yesterday, in the course of which the Disney Wiki was consulted. According to that, Goofy is a dog (which is how I always perceived him, but apparently that is not the norm): http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Goofy