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Cell Phone as e-Book Reader (in Japan)
aussie_a writes "Reading books on your cell phone has become the latest feature in Japan. With games, e-mails and the news already standard features, the Japanese cell-phone is more then just a phone. Novels are downloaded in segments and are run as Java-based applications on the phone. But users can do much more then just read the book, they are able to search for books, write reviews and send fan mail to the authors."
This is how the story lead would appear on a cell phone. Is it good for anything but Haiku?
Man, that would take forever to read on my little old Nokia 3390. I can see like 10 letters per line, and a whopping 5 lines of text per screen.
Maybe good for a Haiku, but that's it...
Ocean is land, covered with water.
I know that some day the paid editors will edit, but until then:
"the Japanese cell-phone is more then just a phone" -- should be than
In any case, that's lame that it runs as a J2ME app. I read stuff right now on my phone, and it's straight html and you can actually work with it, where the Jap J2ME apps are probably drm'ed to hell and back.
I'll stick with my html, and there are plenty of PDF to html converters.
...have I seen this before?
Or: "The Japanese cell phone is more! Then: just a phone"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
How would i read anime on a cellphone? turn it upside down?
Story dated March 18. They're using Tamagotchi now.
I think that a mobile phone will have far to small screen. Even if you have a 7" screen, you can't display more than a few lines of text at once! A book has superior resolution, no expiry date, can lend it away and such. I see none of those features on a mobile phone.
The day we can have a a5-sized sheet of e-paper, with a small 20g heavy data module, then maybe can e-books take off. But a book is something everyone know, it's universally, needs nothing but light, and works fine.
Assembling etherkillers for fun an profit
You are on screen 3 of 1,490,548,734 of the Great Gatsby.
*previous page* *next page*
But this is seriously ridiculous.
I've read e-books on a palmtop, and that was okay although not especially nice. Feels better with a book, but since it was easier and more convenent, I figured I could get used to e-books on a palm.
But on a cellphone?
Okay... but WHAT cellphone? Are we talking a cellphone/pda size here or are we talking a five lines of twenty letters kinda thing? Because if so, I'd rather stick to analog media, thankyaverymuch...
I will not buy this thing. I am still waiting for the phone with one touch button full capuccino control.
No sig for now.
Phones also make poor anal sextoys.
m enu=news.quirkies
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_207728.html?
I like muppets.
"In a ho"
le in the gr
(then I thumb the arrow button)
ound lived a "
hobbit.
I figure my thumb will implode by the time the poor dwarves get taunted at Rivendell.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
...Slashdot editors do cliché posts too?
(Although it should probably be "Cell Phone as e-Book Reader...in Japan!")
Seriously, are these e-Books PDFs? If so I can probably write mine in XSL-FO, use FOP to make one of these, and then see my work on cellphones. That'd be sweet.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Techie that I am, I still can't bring myself to read books on a computer screen. This sounds like a good idea, but there's something better about a paper book. The battery never needs to be charged, you don't have to squint to look at a tiny cell phone screen, and you don't need any expensive equipment to read it.
I am shocked this has not been done before , i think it is the definition of ingenius ,, so simple yet so brilliant. .The way mobile phones are heading with increased screen size and memory not to forget the dropping costs it is only natural that it swallows the Ebook market.The only problem i would have with this would be if i were not able to back up the books to my computer , though that may not be an issue if it has open librarys
an online serachable library that you can pick and choose from on the train or in the park
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
I still prefer books of paper becuase they are a) portable, b) compact, c) made out of recyclable materials, and d) never need to recharge at an outlet. Best of all, they're availible free at your local library, and you won't have to pay fines if you take a book out of it's local coverage area.
Of course, millions of people will end up getting these book-phones anyway if only for the sake of looking cool and impressing their friends (designer nike shoes,anyone?).
... this is news.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Treo 650.
Still might be nice to have for when standing in line somewhere and you've forgotten to bring a novel or magazine.
I assume someday soon cell-phones will be powerful enough to transcribe voice accurately enough that you could navigate around on the net reasonably enough or even get some work done.
This does give me an idea for making a cell-phone friendly version for people reading my Blogs.
Letter To Iran
I'm really not sure I could put up with reading on a cell phone sized screen, but I did fulfil a longstanding promise to a friend to read the Book of John, and I managed it on the bus, on the train etc., using my Palm Vx.
The essentials are a decent legible font and the ability to save plenty of bookmarks.
In this case, the Vx made it easier to find time to read in traveling or other situations when I wouldn't normally be carrying an actual book.
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
I would imagine that anyone with a Smartphone or Treo does this already.
I've got an iPaq 6315, and one of the reasons I purchased it was to read E-books on my way to work. I used to use a old Palm to do the same thing, but I like the screen on the iPaq more, and it's one less gadget to carry around.
Karma: Can only be portioned out by the Cosmos.
It is better to have a reader, a light one like flite, read the text to you. Unfortunately the voice quality sucks.
Never thought of that. How Alphabet minded we are!
Nothing to see here
unlike the dumb Americans who only watch TV
What's the freaking news?
Cell phones can do just about anything now, and a little more. They should rather explain why they still call them "phones"...
...in Japan, only old people use their cellphones to read eBooks!
Hmm ive been doing this since 2002 on my old Nokia 7650. I mostly use eBook reader eBook reader for Symbian phones now on a 6600. There are loads of document readers/editors available from .pdf to MS word. I guess as the article says "Such times could be just around the corner in the United States, where cell phones are become increasingly used for relaying data, including video, digital photos and music.". Oh wait this is already available worldwide.
You'll forgive me if I avoid being a pedestrian in Tokyo any time soon...
Instead of relying on a screen to visually read the eBook, you already have a built-in private speaker in the earpiece, and could give voice commands to the software to read the next page, resume, go-back, or pause. The only concern then is not to interfere with the phone's ability to take a call, and battery life might be impacted more, but a text-to-speech eBook phone could be the next big thing.
Handsfree would be an asset, as holding the phone up to your ear for that long might be tiring, or if you're stupid enough to drive and use one, cause accidents.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Korean characters are not ideograms, except when they borrow chinese ones for names and hard words. They're phonetic, and a very elegant system it is -- or was, until the inevitable blurring and decay.
They were founded on Confucian principles -- 'male' sounds stick up and 'female' sounds lie passively underneath them. Gotta love that Confucianism @_@
Japanese characters are often ideograms, but to be honest the text is no more than maybe 1.5 times the density of English, for colloquial dialog. I think the key might be that the users are train passengers reading pulp novels, so that:
1 -- there isn't room to open a book
2 -- you don't really need to backtrack and appreciate the structure and rhythm
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Good to know that i am ahead of Japanese :D I read e-books on my SonyEricsson P900 since purchasing it last year.
"We notice things that don't work. We don't notice things that do. We notice computers, we don't notices pennies. We notice e-book readers, we don't notice books." - Douglas Adams
It's a good feeling when you've been doing something for 2 years and now it's finally becoming the 'latest' thing in Japan. I've had my Nokia 3650 since when it first came out in the spring of 2003 and have read many novel-sized books on it using the excellent ReadM software for symbian. It supports several formats but my most favorite is txt.gz. At about 1k per page, you can fit a lot of books even on the standard 16MB card.
All Series 60 phones have 176x208 screen which fits about 70-80 English words - no need for Kanji like other people here are saying. There are several great advantages to reading a book on the cell phone:
* It's with you all the time and anywhere
* No need for ambient lighting (a big deal for late-night readers with female SO's)
* Much more convenient to read in bed.
Perhaps people who object to reading books on anything other than paper should have their morning slashdot printed out for them as well.
You are on screen 3 of 1,490,548,734 of the Great Gatsby.
CONTENT:
vulnerable years my
*previous page* *next page*
This technology has been around for a while:
p ?Origine=PAGE_P800
http://www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/p800.as
I read both the Lord of the Rings trilogy and several of the Harry Potter books on my Siemens SX1 handset using the readm http://zavorine.net/symbian/readm.htm ebook reader (and yes I bought the books first to pay licenses). The screen is definitely big enough and if the story is good enough who cares that it's not on paper? Especially with a decent auto-scroll.
Why did I do this? Because it lets me store and read when I'm travelling, at airports, train stations, everywhere I'm hanging around. And no bulgy pockets!
Downloading entire books read by a human in an audio format isn't practical either, as audio files that long tend to be several hundred megabytes, and flash media isn't exactly cheap either.
Traffic moves so slow in Tokyo you'll have plenty of time to walk out of the way if someone is about to hit you.
I happen to have a few phone catalogs here. I have just scanned a page on a DoCoMo catalog showing the screens (and font sizes) on the latest phone models.
The image is here. This is a 1Mbyte JPEG file, be warned.
As you can see, this is more than enough to read a book, specially if it's written in Japanese.
My site
I don't wanna get blind, my CRT is doing a good enough job making sure that'll happen soon anyway.
The following statement is true
The preceding statement is false
Here in the United States, people seem more content to haul around laptops, like this Powerbook I'm using right now, and read novels or access enterprise data from Internet cafes with wireless access. By the way, I ain't Japanese, but I have several friends who are.
I routinely read books on my Nokia 6600, while on the bus, or waiting etc. I convert them into txt and read with ReadM - free text reader.
Well, reading books off the cell phone became quite widespread in Russia, too. Especially, given the fact that there is a *tons* of russian books on the internet.
Have a look at http://bookshelf.sourceforge.net/ if you need a book reader for your cell phone.
I didnt the scoop, darn! Anyways... I was thinking the same thing, how the hell could read all of that, that's impossible for me. But also, wouldn't this lead to alot of accidents. I mean the women looks like she's walking while reading. What would happen if you all the sudden were walking in a crosswalk when it turned green. It seems more like a safety hazard. Don't make me get started on cars. I expect major pileups someday if this is ever deployed in the US.
In America, you spam computers In Soviet Russia, computers spam you!
Well I have a Nokia 6600 and a Motorola V600 and I have been reading books on them for ages. I guess Im ahead of the Japanese on this one.
With Symbian phones, like the Nokia 6600 there is ReadM. With my V600 I use Tequilacat BookReader. I currently have all the Harry Potter books and all the Hitchhiker's Guide books on my V600, and I really do use it to read, quite often.
That girls who date Asian men will have a second use for their magnifying glass now! (sorry, couldn't resist :)
Jimmy
I suppose it's kinda neat that non-PDA phones can read books this way, but downloading bits at a time? The way American phone companies gouge you for data usage, fees would pile up quick.
Symbian or Java phones have had ebook readers for a while. We published a few posts on the topic (in italian, use babelfish or follow urls) here, here, and here.
The W21CA has a 2.6 inch widescreen...
http://www.casio.co.jp/k-tai/w21ca/
I already use programs like TiBR to read textfile novels on my Treo 600. It's a little scrunched, but I don't really notice it; things are probably considerably better on the Treo 650.
Project Gutenberg has plenty of textfile novels ripe for reading. Cory Doctorow's stuff is also pretty good. I read his Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom entirely on my cell.
Another handy resource is the University of Virginia Library's Etext Center, which has 1800 freely-available eBooks.
The last seven or eight books I've read have been e-books on my phone (Treo 650). And I didn't have to pay per page for it, either: Plucker plus Project Gutenberg plus stuff like the Baen Free Library for more recent titles equals a big bookshelf's worth of free-of-charge books in my pocket wherever I go.
OMG, finally the industry has found the trend. I read Ebooks in on mobiles in 2nd Generation. I even read Slashdot an my Weather and TV newspapers on my mobile phone or should I say PDA ? This gadgets are really nice and only lack touchpads but you can buy a SonyEricsson P900i and you have that too. Tell me something this PDA can't do. J2ME is cool because it works on almost all phones but Symbian phones have neat features. Motorola should implement an Ebook reader in their Linux mobiles. Bye PS: I could have written this in Opera from my Mobile Phone. but i save my thumbs.
I have read a couple of books with the free bookreader from Tequilacat:
http://tequilacat.nm.ru/dev/br/index-en.html
Tha small screen makes the reading quite a bit slower than usual. On the other hand it's very handy to have a good book with you anytime you get bored. And there is a lot of free books availible for download on the p2p networks.
I dunno about e-book reading, but small screens are perfect for newspapers.
Think about it: newspapers (printed ones) have narrow columns and short paragraphs. All the important info is at the top of the story. That's the perfect thing to be reading on your cell phone. In fact, that's what I do on my Treo... the first thing I do every morning is sync a copy of the Sydney Morning Herald.
I reckon that a forward-looking newspaper could sell versions of their newspapers especially for cell phones. However, it would require a lot more foresight than I've ever seen from a big media company.
- The hardware is amazing. I'm using a Sanyo device with an amazing range of features. Latest ones I just discovered are the zoom for the camera and the quick switch for image size.
- Some models (like Kyocera's) can work as a kind of high speed modem for your computer.
- Some companies, such as KDDI, don't want you to do that.
- KDDI also makes a profit by delivering spam email. I dislike that so much I'm probably going to cancel my contract even though the phone is so amazing.
- Cancelling the contract in the first year charges about an extra month as a penalty.
- More directly on the topic of this article, none of the systems I've looked at includes the e-book software, and the USB cable is also extra. You might be able to live through the infrared port without the cable, but you'd still need software.
- KDDI recommends two packages, a minimal function one for 1,050 yen, and a medium-high function package that runs almost 5,000 yen.
- The best package is called Keitai Bannou, and it's the only one that seems to include the modem functions for those phones which support it.
- The most popular package is Keitai Denwa from SourceNext, with various versions and medium-high functionality.
- There are also data-centric networks like Air Edge, where the phone service is the minor part of it.
- English support is spotty (as was to be expected).
In conclusion, I'd really like to hear from someone who knows more about what is going on here...Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I have a Sharp v402SH phone
.pdf) onto my mini-SD card and read it on my phone, and that is GOOD, particularly since when on a bus or train it's utterly embarrassing a impractical to use my Sony VAIO PCG-FX215 as the battery lasts only 3 (THREE) minutes now once KDE is up, and that is even with CPU throttling turned on. Even at a black screen before selecting a kernel, if I forget to plug in the laptop, I get maybe 4 minutes before the battery dies. (Yes, I try to discharge it by running the l/t, but when I plug in, it begins charging at some 85%, then takes an hour or so to get to 100%...)
.txt reading via cell phones (assuming the phone has an SD/mini-SD card slot), this might tick off the PDA and content providers, especially since the content providers might feeel "screwed out of" being able to charge by the kilobyte for downloading text. But, that would be a screwed up argument in itself, as Bluetooth-enabled phones would probably permit inbound text transfers to a phone (well, unless the provider specifically asks the phone manufacturer to block it in the circuitry...)
http://www.vodafone.jp/english/products/kisyu/v402 sh/index.html
distributed by Vodafone. My phone allows reading of e-books. I just recently figured out how to find the hidden folder (it's on the mini SD card in Kanji, so I had to sprinkle files here and there and put the card back into my phone and then drill into e-Books until the file showed up in a list.
Here is how my text appears, 7 words across 13 lines down.
----------
Perhaps if the whole DVD region encoding
scheme were to be stricken or banished,
and movies released world-wide to many
regions versus by region coode (1), then
piracy and shoddy translations would be
reduced, maybe a lot. (Diisclaimer, I
have only ONE non-paid DVD in my
collection and iit's not US-produced, but
ALL my others are paidd-for, usually
from Fry's Electronics or as Blockbuster
or Hollywood used video sell-offs, and
I have spent HUNDREDSs on over 50 DVDs
and maybe 80 or more VHS cassettes. (2)
---------
That is on a CG Silicon screen READIN AREA (black border lines) measuring 1-11/32 inches wide by 1-14/32 (or, 1-7/16) inches. Using the scrool ring makes reading faster, and I can save to the bookmark, move to the bookmark, Home, End, % Shift, and Copy, a the page in percentages and save the bookmark. Also, I can change the text direction from horizontal to lateral. In lateral orientation/direction, I get 12 lines of text to read, vs 13. But, that is not a problem because I can flip and twist the screen and read it as a reader rather than as a phone, in appearance. *
The average paperback has 10 to 15 words across and 40-45 words down. Also, I can adjust the font to 3 (THREE) different sizes, but only one is useful to me, as my vision permits me to read small fonts (for now...).
The cool thing is I can write materiaal and save it in TEXT format (.txt, not
Now, if the US markets offer
Now, when I run my phone's Analog TV (picks up Bay Area broadcasts, and when close enough to a tower like CH11 it is mouth watering. The Spanish and a few others are astoundinggly clear/sharp, and all run at 30-fps) or the FM radio (tunes from 76 MHz to 90 MHz... fortunately, I can pick up NPR/88.5), I get only about 1 hour of time on the battery. That is not bad, as it permits about 25% of juice to remain to take calls, e-mail, play scheduled alarms, etc. But, as long as the phone is plugged into AC, all I have to do hit the power button every 30 or every 60 minutes, depending on which I chose for battery conservation...
* (The screen measures 1-14/32 by 1-28/32 vertically, or 1-7/16 by 1-7/8 inches, while the lid itself, above the swivel point measures: 1-31/32 wide by 2-26/32. It's is a helluva cool phone, and I wish Vodafone or a US carrier would put this phone in t
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I have been doing this for over a year and a half on both my P800 and my A780. They both have Opera, and I just strip Project Gutenberg eTexts or other books down and break them into chapters. As long as the HTML formatting does not specify width, the page should display fine on any small screen. (The script I use is at SourceForge).
This can be done on any phone or PDA that has any kind of web browser. Even PocketIE can handle simple pages (although it cannot use CSS and it loads pages slowly). This is not a technological advancement. Practically every cell phone with a color screen and web access can do this.
It is nice to be able to carry a library of 10 or more books in one's pocket, as well. It is too bad copyright limits the books one can carry to approximately 100 years old or older.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
your celliphone doesn't have a screen???
Get your torrents...
This is happening here in Sweden to. A company called elib has monopolized the emerging ebook market.
Their businessmodel is quite interesting. They provied ebooks to public libraries. Patrons can download the books for free and the library foots the bill.Elib made a user poll and it turned out that 4% (IIRC) of the users were reading the books on their cell phones.
Here's an article (in swedish) I wrote a while back on the ebook situation over here.
http://flosspick.org finding the right open sour
I have a big library (~3 bookcases' worth of novels, short stories, &c) on my Psion 5mx, and even on its 640x240, 5.5"x2" screen, I find reading novels perfectly comfortable. It's true you need to 'turn the page' more often than a dead-tree book, but when that just involves pressing the space bar or tapping the screen, it's really not an issue. You can choose font and size, of course, and with the backlight you can read in bed with the lights off!
Of course, a very small screen, such as on my current mobile (Siemens S45, about 1" square) would make reading an extremely tedious experience, but when you reach the 5mx's sort of size, once you get engrossed in a story you really don't notice the screen. Or at least, I don't!
It's a matter of personal taste, I'm sure. But don't knock it until you've tried it!
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.