Kara Tointon and dyslexia: a BBC documentary on dyslexia – Kara Tointon: Don’t Call Me Stupid

Actress Kara Tointon presents a documentary (Kara Tointon: Don’t Call Me Stupid) about dyslexia and meets other dyslexics whose moving stories reveal the impact it can have on young lives without the right support. Interesting story and they offer her a simple solution of wearing coloured glasses for reading which help.

Concentration point for dyslexics – it helps with reading
There are many other ways to help this spectrum of difficulties with  reading – for example a concentration point that seems to help with concentration when reading. This point was originally discovered by John Duns Scotus, a 13th century Franciscan monk and philosopher. He developed the ‘duns cap’ which was worn by children who needed something to help them focus. Later a ‘dunce’s cap’ was used to stigmatise ‘stupid’ children. The concentration point was a key feature of the system developed by Ron Davis (see his book ‘The Gift of Dyslexia’) to help children with dyslexia to read. Focusing on the point of concentration can also open your peripheral vision.

This is how to do it: the point of concentration is about 30 cms above and slightly behind your head (the point of a wizard’s hat).
• touch the top of your head and move your hand back to the concentration point – get a sense of the space, and keep your attention on the point when you take your hand away
• imagine an orange, a melon, a balloon on that point
• focus on your left foot, right knee, left hip, right palm, left elbow, right shoulder – and then the concentration point
Once you have focused on the point, relax and focus on the reading material (you do not have to keep your attention on the point).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DQFbQWyOdw

Test for dyslexia – if you can read this – you probably don’t have dyslexia (or certain type of dyslexia).
WEIRD: How cmoe yuor bairn is albe to undnertsnad tihs snetence eevn tghouh olny the frist and lsat ltetres of ecah wrod are crreoct? Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, But the wrod as a wlohe. And you touhhgt taht sepllnig was iprmoetnt!

Spd Rdng – The Speed Reading Bible – The Speed Reading Book which Gives Speed Reading Techniques, Tips & Strategies For Ultra Fast Reading By Susan Norman and Jan Cisek

Spd Rdng-The Speed Reading Bible: Speed Reading Book with 37 Techniques, Tips and Strategies For Ultra Fast Reading (Speed Reading, Study Skills, Memory And Accelerated Learning) by Susan Norman & Jan Cisek

Available on Kindle and paperback

The Speed Reading Bible: easy speed reading skills with proven results for you to apply immediately to any reading material (books, reports, journals, manuals, textbooks, online texts, ebooks, etc) so you can read more, more quickly, more effectively, whether you are a professional, an entrepreneur, a student or teacher, a home educator, or simply interested in your own learning and personal development, in any subject (including business, medicine, law, IT, acting and languages), by showing you, among other things, how to use your eyes more efficiently, remember more, access your learning intelligence, take meaning from the minimum of input, focus on your purpose, find the hot spots of information you need, and put it all into practice, with the result that you free up time and save money as you become more successful in business and in life

Copyright ©2010 and 2012 Susan Norman & Jan Cisek
Susan Norman & Jan Cisek assert their legal and moral right to be identified as the authors of this ebook.

All rights reserved. Prior written permission required of the publisher to use, post or reproduce any part of this ebook in whole or in part in any form on- or off-line, except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles. This ebook is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form other than that in which it is published.

First published as an ebook October 2010
This is an updated edition 4.0 – published in August 2018 by

Contact authors
www.spdrdng.com
ISBN9781901564143

Get Spd Rdng-The Speed Reading Bible: Speed Reading Book with 37 Techniques, Tips and Strategies For Ultra Fast Reading (Speed Reading, Study Skills, Memory And Accelerated Learning) by Susan Norman & Jan Cisek on KINDLE or paperback

Read the free sample of the Spd Rdng-The Speed Reading Bible: Speed Reading Book with 37 Techniques, Tips and Strategies For Ultra Fast Reading (Speed Reading, Study Skills, Memory And Accelerated Learning) below

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The future of books?


Meet Nelson, Coupland, and Alice — the faces of tomorrow’s book. Watch global design and innovation consultancy IDEO’s vision for the future of the book. What new experiences might be created by linking diverse discussions, what additional value could be created by connected readers to one another, and what innovative ways we might use to tell our favorite stories and build community around books?

Read more for (almost) free

Low-cost tips to get books cheaper:
1) Swap your old books – readitswapit.co.uk – a free online second-hand book exchange where you can recycle your old books and pick up someone else’s cast-offs, for just the price of postage.
2) Get free extras – iPhone users can read exclusive unseen chapters for free
3) Buy second-hand – worldofbooks.com – a wide range of second hand books and novels to choose from, including best selling books, fiction, biography, children’s, thrillers and mystery, food and drink, text books and much more.

Save Wikipedia pages as PDFs and create ebooks of the pages

Wikipeda allows to export pages in PDF format for saving, reading and sharing offline. You can also bundle different pages into one ebook. Open the relevant page on Wikipedia – go to Print/export tab on the left-hand navigation column. To make ebook click on Create a book. Very handy – remember though that Wikipedia content might not be always totally reliable or accurate. Still it’s one of the best ways to get an overview of the subject which is one of the key aspects of speed reading.

NLP Conference – Reader to Speed Reader to Spd Rdr – London 14 November 2010

NLP CONFERENCE
We’re giving a short presentation at the NLP Conference in London on Sunday 14th November, 2010 at 1330 – 1415.  Reader to Speed Reader to Spd Rdr
Many people perceive themselves as slow readers. But becoming a speed reader is not just about reading more quickly. As Einstein said, you can’t solve the problem on the level at which it’s been created. When we shift to a new level of identity the appropriate behaviours will follow. This session will give you some of the skills required to become a speed reader. When you leave the session, you can expect to be reading about twice as fast as when you came in, but more importantly, you should be getting through up to 10 times more material in the time you have available.

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Further education online (free) – top websites

“Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world,” Gates said at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA today. “It will be better than any single university,” he continued. Why wait, start now with top websties offering free lectures, lecture notes, audio and video presentations, etc
iTunesU
– some 200 000 free audio and video lectures from universities worldwide (and US institutions such as Yale and Standford)
MIT OpenCourseWave – The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has free lecture notes, tests an audio and video of its professors
YouTube – is used by many universities (such as the University of California in Berkley) to upload their fee stuff
Open Culture – links to more than 250 free online courses offered by universities around the world + daily updates of interesting academic, cultural and scientific information

Get your ebooks for FREE – top free book websites

While ebooks are now outselling hardbacks 2:1 you can get lots of free ebooks online. Here’s a list of the top free book websites.

1) gutenberg.org – download over 33,000 free ebooks to read on your PC, iPad, Kindle, Sony Reader, iPhone, Android or other portable device –  and the competitor manybooks.net
2) booksinmyphone.com – read ebooks on your mobile phone
3) worldlibrary.net – shelves more than 750,000+ PDF eBooks in 100+ languages
4) freecomputerbooks.com – links to thousands of free IT books and manuals, free computer, mathematics, technical books and lecture notes
5) mangafox.com – read hundreds of foreign comic books (with English translations)

Stress damages memory

Stress damages memory according to research by the University of California. Cortisol has been shown to damage and kill cells in the hippocampus (the area of the brain that is responsible for memory) and there is evidence that chronic stress causes premature brain aging. It has shown that even short-term stress can affect memory by activating ‘corticotropin-releasing hormones’, which disrupt the process by which the brain collects and stores memories. On the other hand, recent research by scientists in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science shows that acute stress can benefit the brain: it causes it to produce hormones that boosts its ability to learn and remember.

When we’re anxious our adrenal glands release the stress hormones adrenalin and cortisol. This response helps our bodies to deal with the immediate crisis we’re facing by increasing heart rate and blood glucose levels to give us energy and also dampening our digestive and and immune system and ability to rest.  Prof Robert Sapolsky, a pioneer in the field of stress, established  that problems can occur if our exposure to the hormones is prolonged. Other research suggests that 80% problems with learning are to do with stress. So learn how to manage stress (some tips from prof Sapolsky). Breathing, meditation, smiling (helps to release endorphines – happy hormones), NLP and EFT (emotional freedom technique)/tapping help to combat stress.

130 million books in the world in total – Google’s estimate

130 million books: Google’s estimate for the number of unique books ever published – based on its efforts to digitalise them all (to be precise 129,864,880 books in the world). We suggest to learn speed reading fast to catch up with all this reading and read as many summaries as possible. Reading summaries not only saves times but research suggests that we remember more from reading summaries than from reading the whole books. Start with we recommend Passing Time in the Loo: Vol 3 – summaries of all-time great books (over 130 books summaries). Available as an ebook from Amazon Kindle Store (US) and Amazon Kindle Store (UK)

1200 new words entered into the new Oxford Dictionary of English (3rd edition)

The latest edition of Oxford Dictionary of English will have 1200 new words. Words such as bromance, chillax, freemium, quantitative easing, deleveraging, spot-buy, paywell, vuvuzela, waterboarding, exit strategy, surge, rogue estate, and so on. Some old words will be see the exit – cassette deck, flashcube, internaut, cyberslacker. More on new entries read…
Related blogs: The words that tell the story how we live – top words of the decade

Ebooks outsell hardbacks on Amazon’s Kindle

More people buy ebooks than hardbacks.
The pace of change in publishing is accelerating. Over the past few weeks the sales rate of ebooks had reached 180 for every 100 hardbacks sold. Stieg Larsson (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and Stephenie Meyer (The Twilight saga) each selling more than 500 000 digital versions. James Patterson has sold 1.1m ebooks.

NLP CONFERENCE, London 12-14 November 2010, Reader to Speed Reader to Spd Rdr

We’re giving a short presentation at the NLP Conference in London on Sunday 14th November, 2010 at 1330 – 1415.
Reader to Speed Reader to Spd Rdr

Many people perceive themselves as slow readers. But becoming a speed reader is not just about reading more quickly. As Einstein said, you can’t solve the problem on the level at which it’s been created. When we shift to a new level of identity the appropriate behaviours will follow. This session will give you some of the skills required to become a speed reader. When you leave the session, you can expect to be reading about twice as fast as when you came in, but more importantly, you should be getting through up to 10 times more material in the time you have available.

Hot tips for e-readers: use heatmap map of passages or collective wisdom

Kindle ebooks allow to share individual insights into the ebooks. E-readers can aggregate their experience of a text, so that anyone can identify those passages that collective wisdom had identified as particularly pertinent. Enough ereaders need to highlight a passage to be visible to others as an aggregate or a reading heat map. It’s a great idea to save time reading ebooks by showing key passages illuminated by layering all readers’ highlights for the same text. More insights into ebooks, e-reading, etc

Amazone’s new Kindle e-book reader

The new Amazon’s device for reading ebooks costs £100 and is a size of of a paperback book. Will it change the way we read ebook? It can store up to 3500 ebooks and one can download new titles in seconds from the online catalogue of more than 400 000 ebooks. Amazon is already selling most of ebooks for $9.99 (£7.53) and promises to undercut prices of paper books and ebooks rivals such as Apple and Sony. “In the US we now sell more electronic books than physical ones and we are happy to bring this to the UK,” said Steve Kessel, Amazon Kindle’s senior vice president. (To be exact, it had sold 143 ebooks for every 100 hardbacks). I’ve been using Kindle on my iPhone and iPad (and on my Mac) for some time now and I love it. Download Kindle for FREE to your mobile, iPad or PC/Mac and start ereading. To save time on reading start with book summaries. We recommend: Passing Time in the Loo: Vol 3 – Book Summaries (Summaries of Classics, Novels, Plays, Short Stories, Children’s Classics and Operas) [Kindle Edition] –  more than 150 books summarised. And to brush on Shakespeare: Passing Time in the Loo: Shakespeare – Summaries of Shakespeare’s Greatest Sonnets and Plays (Comedies, Tragedies, Histories) (Passing Time in the Loo: … Glimpse Of His World And Greatest Plays) [Kindle Edition]

Do people read slower on Kindle and iPad?

Recent research by the Nielsen Norman Group found that it takes longer to read books on a Kindle or an iPad than in print. On average reading speeds declined by 6.2% on the iPad and 10.7 on the Kindle compared with print versions.  I personally think I’m reading much more in volume on my iPad and iPhone, simply because it’s more convenient and accessible way of processing information. I believe once we read more on portable devices such as iPad and iPhone we’ll develop our ability to read ebooks faster than print books.  The sales of ebooks on Amazon overtook the print sales for the first time last Christmas. Read more on this study

Smell and sound to help with concentration and memory

An English primary school is releasing peppermint aroma into its classrooms in an attempt to boost pupils’ concentration. All Saints Roman Catholic primary school in Anfield, Liverpool, is also playing sounds of running water and rustling leaves in lessons as part of a study into ways to improve the teaching environment. Full story

World Book Day – 23 April 2010

Koichiro Matsuura, Director General of UNESCO speaks on World Book Day: “The future of books and copyright is a question that concerns us all. It concerns all those who dream of a world in which knowledge is shared and the values of tolerance, solidarity, and dialogue can flourish. Whatever form they may take, form the most traditional to the most innovative, books offer, now more than ever, an irreplaceable medium of information, reflection and education.” More on World Book Day

Mac version of Amazon’s Kindle launched – get all your ebooks on your Mac and iPhone

Finally, Mac version of Amazon’s Kindle was launched – so you can read all your ebooks on your Mac and iPhone (without buying the Kindle device). It’s available as a free download Kindle for Mac (for PC click here) and iPhone. To read ebooks on iPhone you need to download Kindle App for iPhone. To buy ebooks for Kindle you’d need to have Amazon.com account – which you can set up with your UK address. And if you still love buying hard copies of books – you can do it with just one click with Kindle Mobile App UK – I love it. Be warned it’s very addictive and can be expensive. In spd rdng we recommend to preview the books before you buy them – this is not possible with most books bought online. More on Kindle on iPad

Great browser productivity enhancer, hugely powerful plug-in and FREE

Hyperwords browser plugin has a hugely powerful range of context-sensitive text tools. It can translate words and figures directly on the web page. It’s highly customisable. Hyperwords makes surfing the web better experience by performing common tasks with great ease than ever before. (No Safari version and it doesn’t automatically recognise currencies. Get it now.
Hyperwords – Browser productivity plug-in for  Google Chrome and Firefox

Interactive reading – the future of reading

The release of iPad and iBooks Store next month signals the new area for reading – interactive reading. Although reading on screen is nothing new (Google has been digitalising the world’s libraries since 2004) the publishing industry is ready to reinvent the book. The new platforms will allow readers to interact with one another in a social networks, travel books will let users send e-postcards, and kids will digitally paint-in their colouring books via the iPad’s touchscreen, among other things. “What was once a liner activity is an interactive experience. The iPad – it’s where the future is” says Anna Rafferty, the managing director of Penguin Digital.
Watch this video about the amazing new possibilities of interactive books of ‘iMagineering’ by Britain’s Penguin Books

Read more about interactive 3D books

Sleep lessons – why sleep is such a winner

A new study suggests that teenagers get only four hours of sleep a night and as a result of that their school performance is suffering. So pupils are offered sleep lessons. (Read more on the role of sleep in learning) Poor sleep impacts health in many ways from ill health to behavioural problems. Sleep is very important to maintain many normal skills such as speech, memory, innovative and flexible thinking. Lack of sleep is said to have contributed to a number of disasters such as Chernobyl and Exxon Valdez. Not enough of sleep has a huge impact on emotional and physical well being including stress, depression, blood pressure, weight problems, diabetes, and risk of heart disease. Also studies suggest that when you lack sleep you’re more likely to make bad decisions. Read more about the importance of napping.

Be smart – start school at 10am
For all sleepy teenagers it could be the perfect excuse. One school thought it’s taking this seriously. At Monkseaton school, a Tyneside comprehensive lessons will start now at 10am rather than 9am. This project is overseen by three scientists including an Oxfrord neuro-science professor. The results look promising: lateness has dropped 8%, long-term absence 27% and GCSE results i maths and English in January are significantly improved compared to the last year. So it looks that starting the school later is good for teenagers’ unusual body clocks with the good results to follow. Read the full story

Accelerated Learning Resources and Books

The brain and learning
Caine, Renate Nummela and Geoffrey Caine. Making Connections: Teaching and the Human Brain, Addison-Wesley, 1994.
Caine, Renate Nummela and Geoffrey Caine. Unleashing the Power of Perpetual Change: The Potential of Brain-Based Teaching, ASCD, 1997.
Diamond, Marian. Enriching Heredity: The Impact of the Environment on the Brain, Free Press, 1988.
Diamond, Marian. Magic Trees of the Mind, E.P. Dutton, 1998.
Golden, Daniel. “Building a Better Brain,” National Geographic, June 1994.
Hart, Leslie. Human Brain and Human Learning, Longman Publishing, 1983.
Herrmann, Ned. The Creative Brain, Ned Herrmann Group, 1995.
Jensen, Eric. Brain Based Learning, Turning Point Publishing, 1996.
Jensen, Eric. Introduction to Brain-Compatible Learning, The Brain Store, 1988.
Jensen, Eric. Teaching With the Brain in Mind, ASCD, 1998.
LeDoux, Joseph. The Emotional Brain, Simon & Schuster, 1996.
Russell, Peter. The Brain Book, Plume, 1979.
Short, Cynthia. Dendrites Are Forever (workbook with exercises for maintaining and growing brain capacity into old age), self-published (406) 862-1095.
Sylwester, Robert. A Celebration of Neurons: An Educator’s Guide to the Human Brain, ASCD, 1995.

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Read summaries – save time

I’ve just read 6 books in an hour – thanks to the best collection of book summaries.

Read summaries - remember more. Passing Time in The Loo - the best of collection of 150+ books summaries

Passing Time in The Loo – the best of collection of 150+ books summaries

Not just easy peasy books, but Anna Karenina (Tolstoy), For whom the bell tolls (Hemingway), Don Quixote, Das Kapital (Marx), The Origin of Species (Darwin) and – by way of light relief – Shakespeare’s King Lear. All books I ‘wanted to have read’ but didn’t think I’d ever get round to reading and. To be honest, wasn’t really looking forward to reading). How did I do it? I read brilliant two-page summaries in ‘Passing Time in the Loo’. I got the stories, a flavour of the books and some info on their relevance. And I didn’t feel bad about it because research shows that people remember more from summaries than from reading the books. And loads more goodies to choose from tomorrow. Just checked out the publisher’s website (Passing Time in The Loo – 150+ classic books summaries) and they’re doing a deal – buy Passing Time in the Loo vol I or vol II and get the best of Shakespeare’s summaries free. Better than Amazon! But watch out – don’t be tempted to get ‘The Great American Bathroom Book’ or ‘Touch of Classics’ as well – they’re just the ‘loo’ books under different titles.  Read more about the importance of summaries and how they help with remembering information

Knowing top plots in fiction helps with speed reading novels too.

Sleep more. Researchers say an afternoon nap prepares the brain to learn better and remember more

How siestas help you remember more

Sleep Pods devised by MetroNap

Sleep Pods devised by MetroNap

“It has already been established that those who siesta are less likely to die of heart disease (people who siesta for 20-30 minutes each day are 30% less likely to suffer from heart disease as sleep lowers stress on the heart). Now, Matthew Walker and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that they probably have better memory, too. A post-prandial snooze, Dr Walker has discovered, sets the brain up for learning. The ideal nap, follows a cycle of between 90 and 100 minutes (according the research, napping for 90 minutes after lunch can improve your productivity by up to 10%). The benefits to memory of a nap, says Dr Walker, are so great that they can equal an entire night’s sleep. He warns, however, that napping must not be done too late in the day or it will interfere with night-time sleep. Moreover, not everyone awakens refreshed from a siesta. The grogginess that results from an unrefreshing siesta is termed “sleep inertia”. This happens when the brain is woken from a deep sleep with its cells still firing at a slow rhythm and its temperature and blood flow decreased. Sara Mednick, from the University of California, San Diego, suggests that non-habitual nappers suffer from this more often than those who siesta regularly. It may be that those who have a tendency to wake up groggy are choosing not to siesta in the first place. Perhaps, though, as in so many things, it is practice that makes perfect.” Read the full story in Economist

Read more on the role of sleep in learning

Cool bookshelves fighting back – for the love of books

speedreadingshelves

Puntmobles Perec Wall-hung Shelf – click on the image to buy it

With iPad and Kindle paving the way for the virtual bookland on one hand and bookless world on the other, designers are turning humble book storage into a work of art. See our selection of cool bookshelves see our Links/Reading resources page. “There’s been a bibliophile backlash. Books have morphed from being ‘stuff to store’ into a decorating opportunity.”
Read the full article with all the links to the top bookshelves designers.

Memory control discovered in forgetful flies

You may not like forgetting things but a new research suggests that any healthy brain need to be able to loose old memories. A  protein has been discovered in flies that is the key to forgetting. At this time the scientists don’t know if this protein has the same role in people. If people forget in similar fashion as flies do, this could pave the way to new ways to enhance memories or erase unwanted ones. Read the whole story in the NewScientist

Competition for the iPad – the Bonnier Mag+ project

Watch this video prototype of the Mag+ project. It could be a serious competitor to the iPad that Apple recently announced. You want to curl up with a book or magazine and lose yourself in. Can Mag+ project portable tablet e-reader deliver that experience?

Read how mobile tablet devices will change the world of computing.

How design can save newspapers – watch this video of Jacek Utko, the award-winning, the world’s best newspaper and magazine designer talking at TED

How do you store 35 million books?

35 million books could be stored on a single cartridge made using a new type of storage tape developed by IBM and Fujitsu. Can iPad beat that? Not for some time. This new cartridge has the capacity to hold up to 35TB of uncompressed data. This is about 44 times the capacity of today’s IBM LTO Generation 4 cartridge. A capacity of 35TB of data is sufficient to store the text of 35 million books, which would require 248 miles (399 km) of bookshelves. The biggest bookshop in Europe – Waterstones in Piccadilly, London UK SW1Y 6WW (tel 020 7851 2400) stores about 250 000 books on four floors in over eight and a half miles of shelving.

Read about the importance of summaries

The best book summaries

The books that change the world: The Checklist Manifesto – How To Get Things Right

In The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right (Profile), a surgeon Atul Gawande proposes how simple procedural checklists have a fundamental effect on the number of patients who recovered after operations (up to 47% more people survived in hospitals where checklist were used – next time you have an operation make sure to request that they use a checklist!). The book offers amazing insights into the power of simple to-do lists. The applications and implications are tremendous. This book is changing and improving the lives of thousands of people while you’re reading this. Read it to improve yours.

Speed reading made easy on the iPad via iBook Store – revolution in ebook reading

Amazon Kindle tried to do it and Apple just did it! Apple revolutionised listening to music and now they’ve revolutionised ebook reading with the iPad via iBook Store. Five big partners… Penguin, Harper Collins, Macmillion, Simon & Shuster, Hachette Book Group… and more will sell their ebooks via iBook Store to be read on the iPad.

“It has a bookshelf. In addition there’s a button which is the store — we’ve created the new iBook Store. You can download right onto your iPad.” The store is very similar to iTunes. Same modal pop-overs. Pricing doesn’t look too bad. The book page display is nice. You can turn pages slowly or fast for speed reading. “You can change the font… whatever you want. And that is iBooks.” “So iBooks again, a great reader, a great online bookstore. All in one really great app. We use the ePub format. We’re very excited about this.” said Steve Jobs at the launch of the iPad and iBooks Store today in San Francisco (6pm London time). Read how mobile tablet devices will change the world of computing.

iBooks Store on iPod - speed reading ebooks on the go

iBooks Store on the iPod – speed reading ebooks on the go

Watch Apple video on the iPad below (if you want to just watch the iBook Store and the ebook reader skip to minute 4)
For more info go to the iPad, iBooks Store and ebook reading

Read more on speed reading on Stanza free ebook reader for iPhone

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2Hz8dhQw8Q

3D Books – Embedded electronics bring pop-up books to life

Move over Kindle, there’s a new type of electronic book on the scene – and this one’s got pop-ups. The interactive pages come alive with LED lights, sounds and even vibrate in response to touch.

The Electronic Popable book, developed by the High-Low Tech group at the MIT Media Lab, has electronic circuitry embedded in its pages that turns the tabs, flaps and wheels of a traditional pop-up into switches and a variety of sensors. The interactive pages come alive with LED lights, sounds and even vibrate in response to touch.

Watch the Electronic Popable book in action

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI-6wMlaVTc&feature=player_embedded#

Venus fly traps spring up invitingly from one page; sensors in the trap’s jaws respond to the user’s touch, gently closing around the probing finger as it withdraws. The sensors control the amount of electric current flowing through springs in the leaf. The springs are made of the shape memory alloy nickel-titanium and contract to close the leaf shut as their coils are heated by the current. The leaves reopen as the wire cools.

To create the pages for the book, mechanical engineer Jie Qi and Lab director Leah Buechley used off-the-shelf electrically conductive paints and fabrics, adding custom-made magnetic components programmed using a standard integrated circuit. “The innovation was in finding new uses for these easily available materials,” Qi says.

This battery-operated pop-up book will be presented at the Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interfaces conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, next week.
Source: NewScientist

Reading reduces stress.

Just 6 minutes of reading a book reduces stress by 68%.

A study at the University of Sussex last year indicated that reading for even just six minutes reduced stress levels in study subjects by 68%. Reading was the most prefered method for reducing stress when compared to other typical stress reducing activities like listening to music or going for a walk. Losing yourself in a book causes all of your muscles, including the heart, to relax.

Listening to music reduced the levels by 61%, having a cup of tea or coffee lowered them by 54% and taking a walk by 42%. Playing video games brought them down by 21% from their highest level but still left the volunteers with heart rates above their starting point. Dr Lewis, cognitive neuropsychologist said: “Losing yourself in a book is the ultimate relaxation. This is particularly poignant in uncertain economic times when we are all craving a certain amount of escapism. It really doesn’t matter what book you read, by losing yourself in a thoroughly engrossing book you can escape from the worries and stresses of the everyday world and spend a while exploring the domain of the author’s imagination. This is more than merely a distraction but an active engaging of the imagination as the words on the printed page stimulate your creativity and cause you to enter what is essentially an altered state of consciousness.”

If you can’t get into a story in just six minutes to achieve relaxation? Make sure to keep a book with you at your work desk, on a trip or best on your iPod or iPhone. Just read a chapter while waiting for the kettle to boil or while waiting in a queue.

Soon librarians, like doctors will be prescribing a good book alongside exercise and a healthy diet.

Interactive books – the future of publishing now

There are at the moment four interactive book formats on the market. Here are the examples:
Slice
(free) Penguin’s wetellstories.co.uk plays with narrative forms and is a pointer to the sort of books apps to come. slice is made up of a blog by a young girl (in reality, novelist Toby Litt), with councurrent entries by her parents as well as messages on Twitter. Be sure to click on them in the right order.
Fighting Fantasy (£1.79 each) These role-playing books, first published in 1982, are being turned into iPhone apps. The gameplay is unaltered: construct a character by rolling dice, then pick your way through a quest, turn by turn. Search for Fighting Fantasy in the iTunes App Store.
Dr Seuss’ ABC (£1.79) The 1963 chldren’s primer is also an iPhone app. Listen to the narration as the text light up. The American accent grates, however – especially when you come to the letter ‘zee’.
The Death of Bunny Munro (£9.99) Move over, audiobooks – here’s the videobook. This iPhone features footage of Nick Cave, the musician and author, reading his story aloud, complete with mood-setting music. But at nearly 1GB in size, you might need to delete some of his albums to make room for it. Try a free taster of The Death of Bunny Munro as the iPhone app