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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."
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.
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.
Has it occrred to
anyone that
japanese characters
are ideograms and
takes up about
two english
letters on a
cell phone?
(same applys
to chinese,
korean, etc)
First - it depends on a phone, of course. Width of about ~150..200px is probably where it starts to be comfortable. Second - this is how they teach you fast reading - by using text in narrow columns so that your eyes don't need to move left-right scanning the lines. Third - they used a pretty interesting writing system there in Japan you know.
BTW - reading on Palm is a sheer pleasure for me now (I've read several rather big books in the last couple of months). Beats paper books all the time. With RTA-like auto-scrolling (screen rotation style, hard to explain - you need to see it though) with text-density/speed AI adjustments and anti-aliased fonts (copiable from Windows, for example) the latest PalmFiction releases are eBook heaven. I guess something similar should exist for smartphones too. Why not?
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.
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.
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.
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
Offers much more information, for example:
One much-repeated fallacy about the Librie is that power is used only for turning pages. While it is true that the "ink" particles stay in position without consuming power, the electronic innards do drain the juice, hence the inclusion of a standby mode. Nevertheless, the three AAA batteries used to power the Librie should stretch to an impressive 10,000 pages, enough for about 40 novels.
So sue me =P
"The average book in Japan weighs 309g; we designed the Librie to weigh 300g, including case and batteries."
just some funny trivia; and:
To keep a tight rein on the flow of ebooks, 15 major publishers and newspapers, including Kodansha, Asahi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun, have teamed up with Sony to form a company called Publishing Link and to provide content through a website known as Timebook Town.
Readers can choose texts from seven sections, or clubs, ranging from business books to novels and may either pay ¥315 (£1.65) for a single title or join that club and gain access to up to five books a month for ¥210 (£1.10) each.
This is important. I don't have a problem with DRM itself, I have a problem with content that costs more than physical mediums (i.e. you pay more for online renting than if you do it in real life, until Steve Jobs beat some sense into the RIAA heads they offered 64kbps WMAs that didn't allow you to do anything with them for $3, etc), that is restricted like hell. Digital files are cheaper for the publishers so I want to benefit from that.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage