LeVar Burton talks Reading Rainbow, the app

"I genuinely believe we have an opportunity to revolutionize how we educate our children," LeVar Burton says. "We just have to marshal the will to get it done."

Burton, of course, is the actor who hosted and produced "Reading Rainbow," the PBS television series geared toward early readers. With a 23-year run, the show was PBS' third-longest series, but it's been off the air since 2006. Now it's coming back as -- what else? -- an iPad app.

The Times' Michelle Maltais talked to Burton about the Reading Rainbow app.

[I]n June, Burton and business partner Mark Wolfe launched the multimedia-infused "reading adventure" app. "Educational technology is what we need to get it done," he said, noting that paper's days as a storytelling medium are likely numbered. "And if we marry educational technology with quality, enriching content, that's a circle of win."...

The app currently offers 150 books, curated to appeal to children ages 3 to 9 -- kids who are "on the cusp of cracking the code and [who] just cracked the code, setting the lifelong pattern for whether they will be a reader or not," Burton said.

As a nostalgic nod to those of us who still harbor an emotional connection to the show, Burton said they spent months producing 16 video field trips, with more to come soon.

Burton has legions of book-loving fans who remember "Reading Rainbow," but that's not his only iconic role. He also played Lt. Commander Geordi LaForge, the blind navigator on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, and was Kunta Kinte, the star role in the award-winning 1977 miniseries "Roots." These days, Burton -- who describes himself as actor-director-educator-student -- shares his thoughts on Twitter with 1.7 million followers.

The Reading Rainbow app is free to download and provides limited access to its content. Subscriptions allow kids unlimited access to the books, using a vibrant interface to create engaging storytelling; young readers earn rewards for their progress. A monthly subscription is $9.99, or $29.99 covers six months.

ALSO:

Happy birthday to the creator of 'The Little Prince'

Not writing? There's an app for that: Write or Die

Festival of Books: Are you there Judy Blume? It's us, your fan base

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Image: Screenshot of the iTunes app page for Reading Rainbow.

Not writing? There's an app for that: Write or Die

For writers, procrastination is an eternal enemy. It has classically waited in the pauses between words, in that argument outside the window, in being thirsty and needing a glass of water, in having to run to the bathroom. Now, with the Internet, it's also lurking there on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram and Path, and wait, did the London Review of Books just post a new issue online?

In other words, procrastination is everywhere.

Avoiding the procrastination temptation can be too much to ask. But hey, there's an app for that.

Write or Die is made specifically to keep writers on task. It comes with the tag line, "Putting the 'prod' in productivity."

How the app works: Writers begin typing in the app's window. When the typing slows to a stop, there are consequences. The writer can set how severe those consequences will be. In "gentle" mode, a notice pops up with a kind reminder that it's time to start writing. In "normal" mode, the app begins to emit an unpleasant sound, which only stops once the typing begins again. In "kamikaze" mode, the app is set to destroy: when the writing has stopped for too long, the words begin to erase themselves. There is also a "nyan cat" mode, turning an Internet meme into a destructive force.

The message is clear: Keep writing, or else.

Write or Die started out in a desktop version, created by a "Dr. Wicked," and became available as an app for the iPad last fall. Why pay attention now? Turns out, its system of possibly disastrous punishments actually works.

That's according to Helen Oyeyemi, a British writer whose novel "Mr. Fox" just came out in paperback in the U.K. When asked for writing advice this week by The Guardian, Oyeyemi recommended Write or Die, saying, "Because, sometimes, fear is the only motivator."

The app version of Write or Die includes some rewards to go with its punishments, such as stats that tally progress toward writing goals. But the tone can still be intimidating: There is also a deadline countdown, keeping the hammer of doom looming.

The Write or Die app is $9.99. Such is the price of writing progress.

RELATED:

What it takes to get writers writing

"Pride & Prejudice & Zombies," the app

How writers can be Emerging Voices in Los Angeles

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Image: Screenshot of the website for Write or Die

'Pride & Prejudice & Zombies' — there's an app for that

The people who brought you "Pride & Prejudice & Zombies" have launched "Pride & Prejudice & Zombies: The Interactive Book App" just in time for Halloween.

The download is available for iPads and iPhones at an introductory price of $4.99. A version for Android tablets is expected soon.

Quirk Books kicked off the classic literature mashup bonanza in 2009 with "Pride & Prejudice & Zombies," which became a surprise bestseller. The publisher followed up with more of the same, with "Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters," "Android Karenina" and "The Meowmorphosis." What would Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy and Fanz Kafka think? Their books and others in the public domain are fair game, so the market was soon flooded with books like the "The Undead World of Oz" and  "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim."

But "Pride & Prejudice & Zombies" started it all. Its interactive edition has Jane Austen's original version when your device is facing one way; flip it around and it's zombified. "The people in Austen's books are kind of like zombies," zombify-ing co-author Seth Grahame-Smith told The Times the day of the book's release. "No matter what's going on around them in the world, they live in this bubble of privilege. The same thing is true of the people in this book, although it's much more absurd."

The app's zombie elements include hundreds of illustrations, motion graphics, music and sound effects (squish). It was created by PadWorx Digital Media, which won a 2010 Publishing Innovations award for its ebook version of Bram Stoker's "Dracula." A trailer for "Pride & Prejudice & Zombies: The Interactive Book App" is after the jump.

The Reading Life: The New Yorker's grand old game

This is part of the occasional series "The Reading Life" by book critic David L. Ulin.

Over the weekend, as the Yankees-Red Sox series at Fenway Park became increasingly excruciating, I found myself turning off the TV and picking up my iPad, where I had downloaded a digital-only collection of baseball writings, "At the Ballpark," via the New Yorker's app.

Featuring an introduction by Adam Gopnik, "At the Ballpark" showcases 13 pieces, as well as a suite of comics, spanning the nearly nine decades of the magazine's life.

Among the most striking is "The Little Heine," Niven Busch Jr.'s 1929 profile of Lou Gehrig -- not because it is particularly incisive (it isn't), but because of the easy way it recycles all the cliches about Gehrig's relationship with his mother, or, for that matter, with Babe Ruth, proving that even the New Yorker was once susceptible to the most sentimental of baseball myths.

It felt fitting to read "At the Ballpark" during a Yankees-Red Sox series, since eight of the 13 pieces here deal with one or the other of the two teams. Of these, the two finest fall to Boston: John Updike's epic "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu," about Ted Williams' final game at Fenway ("Gods do not answer letters," Updike tells us, by way of explaining Williams' legendary diffidence), and Ben McGrath's "Waiting for Manny," a portrait of Manny Ramirez as a gifted headcase, in the twilight of his Red Sox run.

Here's McGrath on Manny:

According to lore, Ramirez has, or had, two Social Security numbers and five active driver's licenses -- none of which he managed to present to the officer who pulled him over in 1997 for driving with illegally tinted windows and the stereo blasting at earsplitting volume. "The cop knew who he was," as Sheldon Ocker, the Indians beat reporter for the Akron Beacon Journal, tells it. "He said, 'Manny, I'm going to give you a ticket.' Manny says, 'I don't need tickets, I can give you tickets,' and reaches for the glove compartment. Then he leaves the scene by making an illegal U-turn and he gets another ticket.

It's a great story, although for all its charms, not the best thing in the collection. That title goes to "Distance," Roger Angell's 1980 portrait of Bob Gibson, written five years after the St. Louis Cardinals' ace retired.

AOL's Editions wants to bring you the Web -- from AOL's universe [Updated]

AOL is getting into the Flipboard/Pulse/Zite business -- that is, it's built an app that turns Web pages you select into a more comprehensible magazine format. It works on Apple's iPad and other tablets, and it's called Editions.

To stand out from the crowd of content customizers, Editions is being even more user-focused. Our Technology blog reports:

AOL is employing algorithms in Editions that decide where to place stories inside the app by what it deems as important to each specific reader, essentially building a magazine of stories each day from online news sources.

Using what a reader self-identifies as their interests, as well as outside trends such as what is rising to the top of the froth on Twitter that day, stories will appear toward the front of the app's digital magazine, or rear, and be given more, or less, page real estate.

The idea is to sort of re-create the work done by editors and designers at newspapers and magazines, who lay out a publication and place stories to communicate to the reader what's most important in any given printed issue. It's just that Editions is using software to do this, not human editors.

Each Editions reader will get a 30-to-40-page magazine every morning, AOL says, tailored to the interests he or she has identified. There are 15 categories -- "sports," "business," etc., plus a daily top-news category -- but "books" is not among them. There's a category for "art & photography," one for "design," and one for "lifestyle" -- which warns it may have racy content -- but no books content to speak of. Unless you count the entertainment story about the movie adaptation of Milton's "Paradise Lost" that's got Bradley Cooper lined up to play the devil.

The real issue is that Editions is not scraping the Web but using AOL's Web content. That makes sense from a corporate perspective -- it's an AOL operation, after all. The onetime Internet giant has struggled to find a place in the contemporary online world, at one time making content king. But a read through Editions shows just how much wider and richer the Web is than the version of it that AOL can provide. Do I really need a Patch writer from Pacific Palisades writing about taking a trip all the way to downtown Los Angeles to go to MOCA and have lunch, when I work downtown and know not to refer to the museum as "MOMA"? I'd rather get updates from my favorite neighborhood blog, Eastsider LA -- but I can't in Editions, because it's not part of AOL. 

The stories seem to somehow lack the basics, failing to deliver either authority or voice. That's despite the acquisition of the Huffington Post, which seems to mostly be providing access to Associated Press stories.

The magazine-style -- or, dare I say it, newspaper-style -- morning delivery of daily news seems like a good idea, but until AOL remembers that it doesn't have to keep users within its own subset of the internet, Editions will have a hard time keeping pace.

Downloading the Editions app is free.

[Updated  11 a.m., Aug. 5: AOL says that Editions' content is not limited to AOL-affiliated sources, saying that its stories come "from thousands of news sources," and that additional sources of content are being added to the app.]

RELATED:

Murdoch's The Daily launches, for your iPad only

Jack Kerouac on the app road

Reports of the death of magazines on the iPad are greatly exaggerated

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Images: Screenshots of Editions by AOL for Apple's iPad. Credit: AOL / Apple

Dr. Seuss and new e-book apps for kids

This week e-book publisher Oceanhouse Media released its 22nd Dr. Seuss app for kids. It's a lesser-known title from the Seuss canon, "Oh, the Thinks You Can Think," and marks the first time the company has incorporated animated images and interactive scenes into its ebooks. 

I'm sure my 3-year-old son will love it, but to me it still feels like the precursor to something awesome. The animation is generally static images of Seuss' wacky creatures sliding across the screen, and the interactivity mostly involves tapping on floating question marks to see the next image. One plus for budding readers — touching the sky or hill or tree or city in the scene and the word itself comes floating out. It could be helpful in strengthening word recognition (or something like that).

For those who want to taste the future of children book apps now, check out "The Monster at the End of This Book" starring lovable, furry old Grover (my favorite "Sesame Street" character). The animation actually helps the story move forward rather than getting in the way of it. And for those who fear that exposing your children to books on the iPad may lessen the appeal of regular-old paper books, I say don't worry. My son likes to read both versions at the same time.

RELATED:

The 1970s classic 'Once Upon A Potty' goes digital

Apple App Store policty change is good news for publishers

Is Richard Branson's Project magazine the future?

-- Deborah Netburn

Photo credits: Oceanhouse Media and Deborah Netburn

Jack Kerouac on the app road

There's a certain poetic justice in the fact that "On the Road" is one of Apple's top grossing book apps. Released on Saturday, the iPad app for Jack Kerouac's landmark novel -- featuring a variety of enriched content, including commentary, maps, audio recordings and other ephemera -- hit No. 4 four on Apple's list on Tuesday, ahead of Bible and T. S. Eliot's "The Wasteland." That's a testament to the power of the digital project, but also to the novel, which has occupied a visionary place in the culture since it was first published in 1957.

The decision to bring out "On the Road" as an app has a lot to do with this iconic status, said Stephen Morrison, editor-in-chief of Penguin Books, reached this week by phone at his Manhattan office. "We were looking for a book with enough resonance," Morrison said, "as well as enough supplemental material from which we could learn how to curate a literary app."

The key word there, of course, is "learn," which is what all of us, publishers and writers and readers, must do now as the publishing industry increasingly comes to terms with the digital age. We need to learn how to use the digital space as a vessel, as a container, how to produce and interact with apps and electronic texts that feel like books yet also reflect the possibilities of technology.

"On the Road" aspires to all of this, functioning both as an e-book and also as a source of ancillary information. Open the app, and you'll find a home screen with several subject areas: "The Book," "The Author," "The Trip," "Publication" and "The Beats."

The first, and most important, of these sections features the text of Kerouac's novel, which has been designed to match the feel of a print book.

Apple app store policy change is good news for publishers

A change in policies in Apple's App Store is good news for publishers. The policy change, which affects "in-app subscriptions," will mean that subscription-based publications -- such as magazines and, yes, newspapers -- have greater flexibility with pricing and also with the content they deliver.

Our Technology Blog reports:

According to the website MacRumors, which first reported on changes made to Apple's App Store Review Guidelines, the changes free up publishers' iOS apps to access content purchased outside of Apple and possibly not even offer subscriptions through the App Store if a company so chooses.

The new guidelines, which are made available only to developers, were quoted by MacRumors: "11.14 Apps can read or play approved content (specifically magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, and video) that is subscribed to or purchased outside of the app, as long as there is no button or external link in the app to purchase the approved content. Apple will not receive any portion of the revenues for approved content that is subscribed to or purchased outside of the app"

... Apple has also removed its rule that subscriptions offered through its App Store be the "same price or less than it is offered outside the app," MacRumors said, which would allow publishers to even charge a premium for in-app subscriptions to make up for the 30% revenue cut Apple takes.

The move undoes Apple's stance in February, when it announced Apple's App Store Subscription service saying, "all we require is that, if a publisher is making a subscription offer outside of the app, the same [or better] offer be made inside the app, so that customers can easily subscribe with one click right in the app."

Apple now has no specific guidelines on pricing.

RELATED: 

Apple's app subscription model comes under federal scrutiny

Murdoch's the Daily launches for your iPad only

Is Richard Branson's Project magazine the future?

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: The iPad 2 in March. Credit: Jeff Chiu / Associated Press

The 1970s classic 'Once Upon a Potty' goes digital

 

The 1975 potty training classic, "Once Upon a Potty" by author/illustrator Alona Frankel, has gone digital. The book, which I remember from my youth, is totally '70s fabulous with cute retro flowers on the cover and the mother character dressed in a super chic Pucci-esque maxi dress.

And now it's been turned into an iPhone and iPad app for $2.99 by Oceanhouse Media.

Frankel's original book comes in separate editions for each gender and the app does too. The girl version tells the tale of Prudence, who has been going "wee-wee" and "poo-poo" in her diaper since she was 2 days old. The boy version is the story of Joshua, who has been doing the same thing, but with different anatomy. Both children get a potty as a present from grandma, and after trying to figure out what it is (a flower pot? a hat? a milk jug for the cat?) they begin to learn how to use the potty themselves.

This morning my nearly potty-trained son (still wearing pull-ups at bedtime) and I swiped our way through the "Once Upon a Potty: Boy" app on the iPad. We had the story read itself to us in the admirably sedate voice of Joshua's mother, and then we listened to the unexpectedly jazzy potty song. (In keeping with the book's obvious 1970s influences, I was hoping for something more in the vein of "Free to Be You and Me.") My son liked the story, unfortunately seeing lots of humor in the part when Joshua accidentally poops on the floor, but he didn't think much of the Potty Song. To be fair, we'd been listening to a Bob Dylan CD earlier. Retro morning!

RELATED:

From fatherly frustration to besteller

Beverly Cleary on her 95th birthday

A new book by Maurice Sendak

-- Deborah Netburn

Images: "Once Upon a Potty," the girl edition, top, and boy edition, below. Credit: Oceanhuse Media Inc.

The Festival of Books? There's an app for that

This post has been updated. Please see the note below.

On Wednesday morning, the Los Angeles Times launched a Festival of Books app, for iPhone, iPod touch and Android. The app, which can be downloaded now, is free.

The app has a complete festival schedule, which can be sorted by location. You can click on the title of a panel to see which writers are scheduled to appear, and then select each author's name to see a biography and their most recent books. 

By clicking on the green cross, you add that event to your own schedule -- which is accessed by the "my sched" button in the top right. One thing the app doesn't do is let you know if an event has already given out all of its tickets. Although it is often possible to get in on standby, be sure to check Eventbrite to see if the panel you want has been sold out, and plan accordingly.

You can also search by author -- so if you want to know when, say, Andrew Breitbart will be at the festival, go to authors/performers and search for his name. You'll see a screen with his titles and bio, and then can continue to his panel info -- he's at the Etc. Stage on Saturday at 3:30 p.m.

Because this is the first time the Festival of Books will be held on USC's campus, the maps in the app will come in handy (at least, they will for me). There are separate maps of the festival itself, driving directions, and places to get food and drinks. The app can connect to the map on your phone and let you get directions to USC from wherever you are.

The data in the app is being updated in the last days before the Festival of Books, so be sure to let it push you new information as it becomes available.

For the Record, 11:26 a.m. April 27: An earlier version of this post listed a different location and time for Andrew Breitbart's appearance. Breitbart will be at the Etc. Stage on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. The location and time, which were changed late Wednesday morning, have also been updated in the Festival of Books app.

-- Carolyn Kellogg