Writers Retreat Series Available For Preorder

PRLog (Press Release) - Mar 22, 2012 -
The entire Writer’s Retreat series is now available for pre-order through their Kickstarter campaign, lasting through April 6th. Written by IndieReader.com book reviewer and Reader’s Retreat columnist Juliet C. Obodo, the series includes writer’s guides to cafes, restaurants, and coffee shops in 10 major cities across the country. Included cities are Austin, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York, Portland, San Francisco & Seattle.

The New York edition is already available online through several major booksellers where it’s being well received, making #11 on Kindle’s Travel & Dining guides. It’s also available at McNally Jackson Bookstore in Soho.

Listing over a hundred establishments throughout New York’s various neighborhoods, the New York edition is “a fantastic read” that “many authors, college and university students will be rushing out to get,” according to one review.

Juliet chose to raise funds for the remaining books through Kick Starter because it’s the beginning of a new trend in self-publishing: crowd-funding. The ability to determine how well a book will sell before it’s even published. Those who appreciate the project can back it to receive the rewards.

The Kickstarter campaign for the Writer’s Retreat series seeks to raise $2500 in Kickstarter pre-orders to cover design and printing costs. If the $2500 can be raised by the deadline of April 6th, the project will proceed and those who donated will be given rewards based on their levels of donation.
For a donation of only $5, backers receive e-copies of their choice of 6 the 10 cities from the series.
For $10, backers receive e-copies of all 10 books!
For a pledge of only $25, backers receive e-copies of all books, and their choice of print copies of any 4 of the books.
For a pledge of $50, backers receive print and e-copies of all 10 books in the series.

There are also several donation levels intended primarily for businesses.
A pledge of $100 receives not only print and e-copies of all books in the series, but also a sponsor page at the back of the Writer’s Retreat guide to the city of their choice!
A pledge of $250 will receive the print and e-copies of all books, and a sponsor page at the back of all city guides!

If you'd like to know more, or schedule an interview with Juliet C. Obodo, please call GiGi Robertson at (848) 203-0041 or email contact@julietobodo.com.

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BBC iPlayer now available on Xbox

20 March 2012 Last updated at 12:24 GMT How does it work? The BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones demonstrates

People can now view the BBC's iPlayer via Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, making the popular on-demand TV service available on all the UK's major gaming platforms.

The deal took three years to be agreed after Microsoft initially tried to limit it to its paying subscribers.

The iPlayer, launched in 2007, is credited with kickstarting catch-up TV.

Xbox 360 users with Kinect will be able to control the iPlayer using hand gestures and voice recognition.

TV move Dave Price, head of BBC iPlayer, said the move represented another stage in the platform's move from PC to TV.

"In 2011 we saw huge growth for BBC iPlayer on connected TVs - either through smart TVs, operator platforms or hooking up games consoles," he said in his blog.

According to the BBC, the iPlayer was viewed 433 million times on TV devices in 2011, which represents one in four requests.  Mr Price estimates that by 2015, more than 50% of requests will be via TV devices, with gaming consoles an important part of that.

"We know the majority of games consoles are in the living room and connected to the TV... with the launch of BBC iPlayer on Xbox, we're excited to be unlocking a new audience... I can tell you the fight is already happening in my home for control of the Xbox! And my wife has never been interested in Call of Duty," he wrote.

Stephen McGill, director of Xbox and entertainment for Microsoft, said gaining iPlayer took its Xbox Live platform "to the next level".

It already carries content from Channel 4, Channel 5, Netflix, Love Film and Sky.

Sky next

The next announced platform for iPlayer is Sky's Anytime+ service. Sky has said that it will add the catch-up facility before the end of the year, but has not given a specific date.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has confirmed that it will not unveil details of the successor to the Xbox 360 in June.

Some gaming rumour sites had suggested that the firm would provide details of the upgrade at the E3 Expo in Los Angeles. Its rival Nintendo has already said it will show off its forthcoming Wii U at the gaming conference.

But Microsoft said it would not be discussing new hardware, and would instead focus on games, music and other entertainment for its current console.

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PrintEco's streamlined print jobs available in Firefox

Illinois-based start-up PrintEco Software is now offering a version of its paper-saving software for Firefox.

The company, started by Arpan Shah and Tom Patterson, has received kudos in the media over the last couple of months for developing plug-ins for Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Internet Explorer that format print jobs to remove wasted space and reduce them to as few pages as possible.

Shah and Patterson developed the software while students at the University of Illinois after they noticed all the waste paper that was generated from school and work computer print jobs. Illinois Ventures is now an investor in the company.

After installing PrintEco software, users are offered a PrintEco option in their File menu alongside the regular Print option. PrintEco's professional version also offers analytics software to show just how much paper the extension is saving for a given organization.

The extension is especially useful when printing directly from the Web, which often requires a few extra steps (or a quick cut and paste into Word) if you want a streamlined print job free of ancillary information and odd formatting.

"How many times have you printed a Web page out only to find ad images or mostly blank pages? Or, how about Excel spreadsheets where you have a little bit of content left over? E-mails with a dozen threads when you only need the last one? PrintEco solves that problem through a set of plug-ins for Microsoft Office, IE, and Firefox," Shah said in an e-mail.

A caveat has been that PrintEco did not offer plug-ins for Mac OS users or an extension for one of the most popular Web browsers in the world.

This week, at least that browser issue was taken care of.

PrintEco came out with an extension that works with the 4.0-5 versions of Firefox. Keep in mind, however, that at this point PrintEco is still in beta testing and is an unreviewed add-on at Firefox.

A personal test using the Firefox extension resulted in saving two pages on a Web print job. Printing a recent CNET article on the new Most Efficient Energy Star rating resulted in a three-page print job with odd formatting and a lot of white space. Using PrintEco it was down to one page, two if I opted to include the article image.

PrintEco is also sharing a limited number of free versions of its next-generation PrintEco Office suite in beta testing. Click here to apply for an invite.

PrintEco plans to go into full launch mode at Tech Week in Chicago. A plug-in for Outlook is also in the works, according to Shah.

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