Children’s Ebooks up 89% in July, Adult up 48%

dwb reporting:
Growth in children’s ebook publishing revenues in the U.S. showed signs of slowing from a stupendous rate earlier in the year, perhaps affected by the Hunger Games ebook sales tapering off. Adult trade ebook growth in July was in line with figures from the rest of the year which show a steep drop-off from triple-digit growth rates of the past few years, according to new figures from the Association of American Publishers.
Children’s ebooks grew by 89% in July 2012 versus the same period last year — a fast growth rate, to be sure, but much slower than in early 2012 when children’s ebooks saw monthly growth rates of 475.1% in January and 177.8% in February.
The slowdown is likely due to tapering sales for Scholastic’s smash hit The Hunger Games...
Meanwhile, adult ebook sales were up 48% in July versus the same period last year. From 2007 through 2011, e-book sales doubled or more every year. This year, ebook growth has slowed to a still-breakneck speed of about 30% to 50%. According to Publishers Lunch, ebook revenues are at about 26% of overall trade publishing revenues...http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2012/childrens-ebooks-up-89-in-july-adult-up-48/

Starbucks Mobile Payments Coming to Android & 1,000 Safeway Locations

Mashable reporting:
Starbucks is extending its popular mobile payment system to Android device owners, and introducing the alternative payment option at 1,000 Starbucks locations inside Safeway supermarkets — Vons, Pavilions, Dominick’s, Randalls, Tom Thumb and Genuardi’s stores included — this coming July.
By July, the coffee retailer and crossover consumer packaged goods company will be accepting mobile payments at roughly 9,000 Starbucks locations in the U.S.
Starbucks for Android will be available exclusively on the Android Market beginning Wednesday, June 15. The application has been optimized specifically for Android, and offers device owners — running version 2.1 or above of the OS — the same pay-by-phone barcode-scanning experience as those on the iPhone or BlackBerry.
The application also allows the user to manage his Starbucks Card balance, reload his card, view his My Starbucks Rewards status and find nearby stores.
“With the addition of Starbucks for Android to the Starbucks app line-up, a Starbucks mobile payment app may now be used on approximately 90% of smartphones currently in use,” said Adam Brotman, Starbucks’s vice president and general manager of digital ventures.
January marked the nationwide rollout of Starbucks’s mobile payment system. By the end of March — just nine weeks later — Starbucks told its shareholders that it had processed more than 3 million mobile payments via its Starbucks Card Mobile application for iPhone and BlackBerry.
http://mashable.com/2011/06/14/starbucks-mobile-payments-android/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29

House Hunters: Meet Curbwise, the Omaha World-Herald’s real-estate news app

NiemanJournalismLab reporting:
The Omaha World-Herald wasn’t looking for blockbuster traffic and wave upon wave of pageviews with the launch of Curbwise. Rather, they were looking for a sustained audience, which would justify their investment in the project just as well as any rush of clicks.
That’s because Curbwise is an evergreen news app, a site that uses public data to give homeowners in the greater Omaha area (Douglas County, to be exact) valuations on their homes and neighborhoods, as well as historical data on property values and taxes. And since the app also offers homeowners custom reports on property values in their neighborhoods, Curbwise is also a potential revenue stream. Which makes the investment — basically part-time hours from three staffers — well worth the while.

 And that’s where Curbwise is instructive to other newspapers, particularly those that may have more in common, either in circulation size or staff, with the World-Herald than with, say, The New York Times or the Chicago Tribune.
“We had three guys working part-time on this for a couple of weeks. This is doable, it’s possible,” said Matt Wynn, a developer/reporter for the World-Herald. “You can do this without having to turn to consultants or IT guys. You can build these products.”

http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/06/house-hunters-data-edition-meet-curbwise-the-omaha-world-heralds-real-estate-news-app/?utm_source=Daily+Lab+email+list&utm_campaign=cab37b8956-DAILY_EMAIL&utm_medium=email