Leading provider of digital publishing solutions worldwide.
Last Wednesday, our team gathered up to hold one of our weekly learning sessions. During these sessions, we discuss components that make Active Textbook and answer the questions developers and designers might have about the product development. This week, we talked about Active Textbook servers and how they all come together, including a detailed talk […]
Apple’s rollout of iOS13 came with many problems for existing applications that are not ready for the changes. Some developers have slammed the “anticompetitive” privacy changes, some have complained about the countless bugs. In this short article, we would like to share the problems we have encountered so far, as well as how those have […]
The academic world is facing a problem but not everyone acknowledges that, including ourselves. Not until we were invited to participate in a workshop for university institutions (Columbia, NYU, MIT, University of Michigan) with press and library representatives attending as well. Representatives from NYPL, DPLA, JSTOR, Amigos Library Services, and Hathi Trust were also invited […]
We would like to congratulate our business partners Delivros on their merger with Orell Füssli Thalia AG! The new exciting venture, Delivros Orell Füssli AG, is promised to create a leading provider of Switzerland’s printed and electronic content for schools, companies and libraries, which will benefit from the combined expertise in retail and delivery of digital […]
October was a great traveling month for the EP team. One of the most memorable trips that took place was Juan Corona’s trip to Lyon, France, where he attended the W3C TPAC Conference. Juan got to participate in the Publishing Working Group, contributing his thoughts and providing feedback on the Web Publication Specifications and EPUB […]
We are excited to announce the release of Readium 0.31. Important to mention that while the work on “Readium 2” and Readium Web is continuing, “Readium 1” is now viewed to be in “maintenance mode”. This means fixing high priority bugs such as crash, data loss, etc., with no new features being developed or planned. […]
Last week, we had the pleasure of meeting up with two lovely ladies: Lenny Yun, a Langley School District Liaison and district teacher, and Susan Cairns, the executive director of the Langley School District Foundation. The reason for the interview was simple – we wanted to find ways of making the life of students better.
If you couldn’t make it to iAnnotate 2018 in the sunny San Francisco, we’ve got some good news for you! Our lead developer Juan Corona had delivered an amazing presentation and co-hosted a workshop with our partners from Hypothesis, so we are eager to share parts of it with all of you.
In the age of digital literacy, more and more authors choose several formats to publish their work in: printed and digital. If much of the copyright process is clear with printed media, it is not straightforward at all when it comes to the digital copyright laws. That’s why it is important for modern authors to […]
We are beyond excited to have Evident Point’s Lead Developer Juan Corona head over to the sunny San Francisco to assist Hypothes.is in hosting a workshop at the I Annotate 2018 conference. I Annotate 2018 provides attendees with a unique opportunity to learn about integration and customization of annotation software for various use cases in […]
We are happy to announce that Evident Point’s founder Yuri Khramov is going to participate at the Digital Publishing Summit Europe 2018. The DPub Summit is taking place in Berlin on May 16th and 17th. This event will be focused on giving participants an opportunity to share and discuss latest innovations and technological advances in […]
The W3C EPUB 3 Community Group has started work on EPUB 3.2 spec. The main goal – gracefully roll back some of the changes in EPUB 3.1 and create a specification that is fully backward compatible with EPUB 3.0.1, while still retaining most features introduced in EPUB 3.1.
We are pleased to announce that Federal Service for the Oversight of Consumer Protection and Welfare of Russian Federation (Rospotrebnadzor) launched a distant training system for its employees based on ActiveTextbook.
It is no secret that studying can be challenging: browsing through endless textbook pages, taking notes and highlighting half of the page with a yellow sharpie.“Sometimes studying is boring, just deal with it” is what students are taught to accept as an inevitable rule. But does studying actually have to be boring? Sometimes, it can […]
The Readium development community is pleased to announce the release of 0.30. This release was pushed to master and the Chrome store on 8 March 2018. This release is one significant fix for the Chrome app and some minor updates: A regression bug was fixed that caused the reader’s place in the book to be […]
Online publishing is on the rise and currently there is an abundance of digital content. Since over ninety million people are using e-books, it is absolutely essential for you to stay on top of new trends in the online publishing industry and to make sure your content doesn’t get lost in the crowd. It may […]
One of the most requested features for ActiveTextbook is the ability to fill in the blanks left in the original text. We are excited to announce that Evident Point is now working on adding this new overlay to ActiveTextbook! With the new fill in the blank overlay, your readers will be able to highlight the […]
We are pleased to announce that Evident Point has partnered with eThink Education, a world-class eLearning solutions provider, to provide adaptive and active learning capabilities to Moodle and Totara users. This partnership provides eThink clients with ActiveTextbook, an adaptive learning tool that enhances student learning, and can be seamlessly integrated within the Learning Management System […]
Datalogics, Evident Point’s distribution partner and the premier source for PDF, EdTech and eBook technologies, has released ActiveTextbook-based READynamic 3.2 – now with Sony DADC User Rights Management Solution (URMS) support for both PDF and EPUB documents. SONY’s Right Management System offers a powerful level of industry recognized security that will allow for full content […]
Readium 0.29 has been released The Readium development community is pleased to announce the release of 0.29. This release was pushed to master and the Chrome store on 22 December 2017. This release is primarily some minor updates: Additional fixes and improvements to the Hypothes.is support in the Readium CloudReader Updating the Android support in […]
The W3C Publishing Working Group has published three First Public Working Drafts (FPWD), and Evident Point is ensuring that ActiveTextbook is compliant with all three. According to W3C, the three drafts are as follows: Web Publications – A collection of information defining the structures of Web Publications in a way that user agents are able […]
We are pleased to announce that ActiveTextbook has now passed the IMS conformance testing for the LTI certification and is now guaranteed to meet IMS Global’s standards: https://www.imsglobal.org/compliance/atb
Currently, around 15-20% of the world’s population lives with some form of disability. This is the case while most websites and software products are not accessible, making it difficult or even impossible for many people to use. Web is an essential part of daily life for a lot of people and it is crucial to […]
We are pleased to announce the release of Readium 0.28. This new version of the EPUB reading system can be used in different browsers and embedded into browser apps. One of the main components of this release is the implementation of a plugin, which provides integration with the Hypothes.is framework of annotations and bookmarks. The […]
With Active Textbook, quizzes can be made available right inside the book for students to interact with and test their understanding of the concepts as they are reading. The quiz feature is an interactive overlay (an overlay is an object added to books in ActiveTextbook) that is created in a book. Interactive questions can be […]
Evident Point, together with our esteemed partners, Hypothesis, NYU Press, Readium Foundation, and EPUBjs, is pleased to announce the successful completion of Hypothesis and Readium integration to bring open source annotation support to EPUBs through Readium. Readium is a free, open source, cross-platform reading system engine that provides the best way to read EPUB, the […]
We are excited to announce that we are going to be exhibiting at the World Conference On Online Learning, the 27th edition of the International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE) World Conference. The conference takes place at the Sheraton Centre in Toronto with the theme of Teaching in The Digital Age – Re-Thinking […]
EPUB file format has been widely adopted as a format for digital books. EPUB specification is very comprehensive, it defines: EPUB Container, XHTML files in a zip container. EPUB Package, a way to relate components of an EPUB to each other. This may include various metadata, index, table of contents and spine information. EPUB Canonical […]
In this post we will be exploring media overlays and how to add them to your books. Overlays are interactive elements that can be added to the content; these interactive elements can be videos, images, text, attachments, quizzes, links, audio clips, and interactive widgets. There are two ways of adding overlays to books. The first […]
According to the Horizon Report, 2017 Higher Education Edition, the next-generation Learning Management Systems (LMS) are virtual learning spaces that support personalization, meet universal design standards, play a large role in formative learning assessment, and are more flexible than traditional LMS. A market study done by Technavio, a leading global technology research and advisory company, […]
I’d like to discuss a topic that’s not directly relevant to end users but is very important to businesses hosting and maintaining ActiveTextbook. Specifically, I’ll be talking about hosting and updating ActiveTextbook server software with Docker containers. Docker is a containerization technology that has taken off in the last few years. The original ground work […]
We are pleased to announce that Evident Point is in the process of developing a storefront in ActiveTextbook, allowing customers to monetize their books through our platform. The storefront will be available as a fully white-labelled solution, and will implement the PayPal system to allow users a safe and reliable way to purchase eBooks. Our […]
Welcome to the “Creating Groups in ActiveTextbook” blog. We are going to show you step by step how to create Contacts and Groups in ActiveTextbook, and how to assign a book to Groups. Groups A Group is a list of individual users that can be addressed in a single action, such as granting and revoking […]
Some devices don’t report precise touch point readings. This results in noisy(i.e., not smooth) scribble paths. We need to clean up the scribble data. Firstly, we use the Douglas-Peucker path simplification algorithm to reduce the number of points in a scribble. Douglas-Peucker is able to remove about 80% of points while retaining shape of scribble. […]
Has Your School Implemented ActiveTextbook Yet? 3 Reason Why You Need to Implement ActiveTextbook at Your School
One of the unique features of ActiveTextbook is that it allows users to add comment boxes to the books and initiate discussions with others. ActiveTextbook is a great addition to Learning Management Systems (LMS) since it allows comment boxes to be created inside the books, which is unlike most systems, where discussion boards are typically […]
Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) is a standard for embedding third party applications into Learning Management Systems (such as Blackboard, Moodle, canvas, etc.). LTI allows a seamless connection of web-based applications that are externally hosted or different tools to platforms that present them to users.
Evident Point has partnered with Hypothes.is to bring annotation support to Readium and ActiveTextbook. Hypothes.is is the leading online open platform for annotating the web, while Readium is the largest open source project for consuming ePUB documents. The goal of this partnership is to bring ebook annotations capabilities to the web. This is what Laurent […]
Evident Point Software has joined the Publishing Working Group, by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), to work together with other organizations on advancing traditional publishing and Web standards. Prior to joining W3C, Evident Point was a founding member of IDPF (International Digital Publishing Forum) which was integrated with W3C in January 2017.
Readium 1 is now ancient in Internet terms, and there are a number of good reasons for a rewrite. However while that is happening it’s helpful to reuse some of the functionality from Readium 1 with Readium 2. Although Evident Point was the initial contributor to Readium, there were many organizations and individuals that contributed […]
Corporate training programs are designed to bring all the employees to the same level of knowledge and skills that is consistent with the company’s standards. In the technology era, training methods such as one-sided presentations typically lead to having disengaged audiences, and therefore, are not the best solutions anymore. Nowadays, it is crucial to have […]
Online learning (eLearning) has become a global phenomenon as many educational institutions have entered the field in an effort to improve the student learning experience. While eLearning has many benefits such as cost saving and customizing learning materials, it does have a few shortcomings compared to traditional classrooms. Two of the biggest disadvantages of eLearning […]
Introduction You’re probably familiar with OAuth2 already. OAuth2 is the technology behind the “Login with Facebook” or “Login with Google” buttons (and many others). OAuth2 is the best way to create a single sign on for two disparate web applications. With single sign-on (SSO) users do not have to remember multiple passwords when logging into […]
W3C has standardized annotations which is a step towards the right direction. Evident Point is working together with NYU Libraries, NYU Press, Readium and Hypothesis to bring annotation to EPUBs. By working together, this partnership will bring collaboration and cross-platform annotation to eBooks. Which is the next step in bringing hihg quality open annotation implementation […]
At the London Book Fair, Datalogics and SONY presented an Active Textbook-based READynamic reading system with URMS (User Rights Management System). It’s a new version of Active Textbook technology branded for DataLogics that offers the same interactive functionality and benefits of the original solution; and now with the integration of Sony DADC ’s URMS. The […]
Evident Point has joined W3C community, namely W3C Publishing Business Group that will be working on development of EPUB and related Open Web Platform functionality going forward on a royalty – free (RF) basis. We also joined the EPUB Community Group, which has been as formed, the W3C / IDPF Combination was finalized, to ensure […]
W3C publishes standards (recommendations) for Web Annotations, which makes annotations first-class citizens of the web. This is an important step in making annotations available on the web, cross-applications and cross-platforms. ActiveTexbook comments are mostly inline with the spec, and plan to extend the support for application-independent annotations. See more info about the spec here
Active Textbook new version is a deep re-work of our original 1.0 platform, and includes deep architectural changes, as well as very significant changes in functionality , encompassing all components. From the user point of view, the most important changes are:
Datalogics presented the new version of ActiveTextbook under their brand name of READynamic Plus to a packed house at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Frankfurt, Germany this October. Their presentation, in partnership with SONY, presented a reader on the Active Textbook platform that supports SONY DRM for EPUB3. The integration of SONY’s User Rights Management […]
Evident Point is pleased to announce our partnership with Piron Corp for our flagship product, Active Textbook. Piron is our value-added reseller for Asia and the Middle East. Headquartered in New York, Piron is a leading provider of learning technology solutions. Evident Point and Active Textbook are a natural fit with Piron. Ankur Aggarwal, CEO […]
Did you know the largest group of users for ActiveTextbook.com are from Romania? Each month around 45% of our visitors come to ActiveTextbook from ip addresses in Romania. The top book read is from the Department of Natural History and is a textbook on biology.
Alex Khramov from Bellingham Technical College and Ching Yue from Datalogics presented their perspectives on using Active Textbook at the Learning Impact Leadership Institute in San Antonio, TX. The conference brings together educators and technology leaders to discuss the practical issues digital learning. Ching introduced Active Textbook and discussed copyright management and integration possibilities, while […]
Today, Corey Selhost with Datalogics shows you how to create quizzes right in your book. Learn how quizzes work!
Our partners at Datalogics have started a blog for everyone who is interested in learning more about Active Textbook. Whether you are just using ActiveTextbook.com, or you are interested in licensing the Active Textbook Server solution, there is some great information available for you. Check out Scott’s first post on Getting Started with Active Textbook.
Leo with Datalogics has kindly written a post on Creating and Using Groups in Active Textbook. Check out Leo’s post!
Today, Michelle Obama officially launched the Open eBooks app. Open eBooks is best described as a “library of opportunity.” Targeting youth in need, Open eBooks makes thousands of popular and award-winning titles freely accessible to children and adolescents from low-income households. As Readium experts, Evident Point began working on this project with the New York […]
Evident Point is pleased to work with the New York Public Library on the Open eBooks Initiative. The initiative seeks to make eBooks freely accessible to low-income children and adolescents. Publishers are making thousands of books available through the Open eBooks app, including classics and popular contemporary works. The Open eBooks app and the associated […]
Evident Point is pleased to announce our distribution partnership with Datalogics for our flagship product—Active Textbook. Datalogics is the premier source for PDF and eBook technologies, and we have always enjoyed working with them as a technology partner. We are very excited to have this opportunity to bring Active Textbook to new markets. For more […]
Entrepreneur John Locke released his book series “Donovan Creed”, a story about a former CIA assassin, without the help of an agent, a marketing budget or even a background in writing. However, he didn’t let those circumstances, stop him from achieving literary success. In fact, his business acumen and marketing prowess enabled him to sell […]
An integral aspect of community publishing is the need for a platform that allows the authors to create, upload and share their eBooks. A short while back, our company, Evident Point collaborated with Richmond Public Library on a project called Create [&] Learn, which we also spoke about during the annual British Columbia Libraries Association […]
When Earl finally began visiting publishers, ready with his manuscript, he was asked to leave the documents at the office with hope that he would get a reply soon. The general reply he got after few weeks was in the form of a rejection letter. A few months later, he was almost ready to give […]
It was 2 am, and Earl was at his laptop feeling a mixture of nervousness, excitement and empowerment, ready to click on the publish button. His wife was fast asleep in the bedroom and the moon was shining through his open window as if congratulating him on this momentous occasion- He was finally ready […]
As promised, here is Part II of yesterday’s article titled ‘ Jim is Facing some Real Internal Training Challenges. Are You?’. Today’s article is a continuation of that article, so In case you haven’t part I of this article series, read it here. Yesterday, I shared that Jim is facing some real problems. In […]
It happened again. Jim just received the third email in a month from the CEO criticizing the increased cost for the internal training program at his company. A cold sweat trickled down his forehead as he sank into his full grain leather chair, staring into oblivion and feeling a mixture of anxiety, confusion and […]
Active Textbook co-sponsored the Internet Marketing Mastery Conference in Vancouver. This conference attracted some of the most successful marketers, publishers and thought leaders in the internet marketing industry. Aditya and Tiffinie had a great time getting to know local entrepreneurs and professionals who were looking for a simple and easy way to share their story […]
Tiffinie, from the Active Textbook team, co-presented Create [&] Learn at BCLA Connect, the annual conference for the BC Libraries Association. In the session we discussed why Richmond Public Library decided to use Active Textbook as the basis for Create [&] Learn, and we demonstrated how the platform works. There was a lively discussion on […]
RM Education, the biggest electronic school book distributor in UK, expanded its use of Active Textbook by adopting Active Textbook apps for all mobile reading. This allows students, teachers and, parents to enjoy reflowable content from the comfort of their mobile devices whether online or offline!
Young Drivers of Canada is now using its own private Active Textbook server for driver education. A custom platform was developed for Young Drivers of Canada to expand and support YD’s Anytime, Anywhere eLearning Driver Training.
The Active Textbook landing page was re-designed to enhance our users’ experience, and become mobile friendly.
Richmond Public Library released the second phase of Create [&] Learn. C&L is based upon Active Textbook but was customized specifically for libraries to provide an easy-to-use community publishing platform.
RM Education, the biggest electronic schoolbook distributor in the UK, switched to using Active Textbook for eBook publishing and viewing. RM wanted to expand the functionality of their existing PDF reader and offer an ePUB reader as well. RM chose Active Textbook because it enabled the creation of reports that tracked reading sessions, and could […]
Evident Point designed an ePUB3 reader for Txtr, a German eReader and eBook provider.
Active Textbook reader is now used by ICBC to help prepare you to pass the learner’s (Class 7L) license. We built a reader for ICBC, which was based on Readium and Active Textbook, we also converted their driver training manuals from PDF to ePUB. The Learn to Drive Smart manual is now viewable as a […]
Active Textbook is installed as the main publishing platform for the courses and learning management system at the Corporate University of Sberbank. Sberbank is the largest Russian retail bank in Russia and Eastern Europe with 242,000 employees.
Check out our new version of Active Textbook with new user interface enhancement. Creation of quizzes is now via the same modal as hotspots was before. This new overlay feature allows authors to inlay images and text into uploaded documents. Users can now preview images and view video clips/audio clips in any media library by […]
Indigos bookstore is a first-of-a-kind source of free & paid educational materials from all around the world for students at any age. To learn more about Indigos: indigos.com
If you are looking for top rated eBooks, look no further! The CHOICE e-Collection (CeC) developed by Publishers Row, is the first collection of e-books to consist exclusively of titles reviewed by CHOICE. Soon you will be able to purchase CHOICE e-Collection (CeC) eBooks through ActiveTextbook.
Catholic International Education Office (OIEC) is using ActiveTextbook as their main publishing platform for distributing their books. OIEC, an international organization headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, delivers learning materials to 210,000 schools and 44 million pupils all over the world. See their publishing page at Tralcom ActiveTextbook.
4CIO ActiveTextbook is a collective project of the club for IT directors 4CIO and an expert view of the IT professionals at development of companies and technologies. 4CIO IT experts will be using ActiveTextbook publishing platform as their professional development. Dmitry Izmestiev, vice-president on innovations of the Group of companies LANIT: “Advantage of electronic work […]
Film Connection Institute is using ActiveTextbook for their online learning programs and interacting with students. The Recording Radio and Film Connection (RRF) provides one on one mentor/apprentice classes in film directing, film producing, screen writing, editing, and general film production. More News on RRF and their exciting projects with ActiveTextbook are coming soon!
Check out our new version of Active Textbook with new user interface enhancement and added features such as dynamic text, reading mode, and custom dynamic web content implementation. You can easily customize an interactive message by adding a dynamic markup or block of your code from any part of your website for demonstration within Active […]
Evident Point is pleased to announce its partnership with Lambda Solutions in order to enhance the teaching-learning process. Lambda Solutions is a full service Moodle integrator that provides highly customized solutions for clients across Canada and United States. This effortless integration permits instructors and learners to easily access their selected Active Textbooks within each specific […]
The North Vancouver School District has been journeying with us since our beta versions to bring Active Textbook to some of their students and teachers. A group of highly dedicated and innovative teachers, motivated to reach their students through technology, are pioneering the effort to compose and deliver their own interactive learning modules through Active […]
Last month, the B.C. government released that they will be developing open textbooks for 40 post-secondary courses to be used as early as the next school year. This is great news! From the first day of talking to our potential users, we knew that one of the most poignant issue for educators is acquiring the […]
Have you ever seen a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book? It’s a game book where the reader gets to assume the role of the protagonist in the book and make decisions. The book will direct the reader to page X for decision A or page Y for decision B and the reader gets to play […]
The Active Viewer is now fully functional on Android tablets. During our planning stage, we interviewed potential users asking them which tablet they would like to see Active Textbook on. While some were decisive in their answers, others were on the fence because they weren’t sure which devices their students and readers would use. We […]
The Lone Ranger attitude for learning was never intended in education. Classes are filled with peers and instructors working together to create an engaging learning atmosphere. So why should online learning be any different? Active Textbook is looking to bring this to the users in simple terms. Students and teachers will be able to share […]
The international e-Learning exhibition and conference, eLearnExpo, in Moscow was a smashing success! Amongst the 80 presentations made by both local and international experts, the Active Textbook team was presented with the best debut award. The features and sleek design of the new Active Textbook left the crowd thoroughly impressed. More details are available here.
A new version of Active Textbook has finally been released! With no download necessary, the new Active Textbook is now a completely web-based application utilizing HTML5 technologies. Equipped with a sleeker design, social learning tools, as well as cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility, the new Active Textbook aims to improve digital learning for students and teachers […]
Active Textbook was introduced to students taking a course on educational technology at UBC (Department of Curriculum & Pedagogy). After a short presentation, students were encouraged to create their own digital curriculum materials with Active Textbook. During a follow up survey more than 60 percent of all participants indicated that they are “Very likely” to […]
Active Textbook is about to have a new user interface which looks sleek and modern. Its elegant simplicity will make it easier for users to enhance their digital documents with interactive content. You can look forward to seeing our brand-new appearance in the near future.
The Active Textbook team will be exibiting the latest version of our software at Catalyst For Science on October 21st and 22nd. Active Textbook is proud to participate and to be a part of Catalyst For Science directive to gather information on teacher reviewed and classroom tested science-based resources.
Active Textbook was recently featured at the CUEBC and Catalyst For Science conferences. Our team demonstrated the Active Textbook platform for teachers and school district representatives. There is a strong need for technologies that enable teachers to design and distribute digital courseware. Active Textbook attracted a lot of attention for that reason! Education professionals appreciated […]