BookReader
A few years back I carried around a PDA (PocketPC) for a while. I used it mainly for reading books, mostly while waiting to do something else. (Waiting to ride the bus or ferry. Waiting to buy something in the store.) I liked being able to read even under lousy lighting conditions.
Downsides were the size of the PDA (at the time, the typical PocketPC didn't easily fit in my pocket) and its relatively short battery life. After reading a few books, I set the PDA aside.
Nowadays, the computing functionality of my cell phone is approaching that of the PDA I used before. I wrote a little bookreader app for the phone, and grabbed some uncopyrighted book content from the guttenberg.org site. The phone can't hold as much local content, but it does have a fair sized cache, and can pull in content on the fly as needed. The smaller phone display (I use an LG VX8000, which has a usable display resolution of 176x203) doesn't show as much text per page as the PDA did, but it still seems sufficiently readable to me. The reader can show text in either of 2 different sizes.
With the larger text size, about 50 words get rendered on the screen. The smaller text allows about 70 words per screen. The improved portability more than compensates for the smaller display size. I just about always have my phone with me.
Am currently reading Moby Dick via the phone. (One of those titles that's been on my 'to read' list forever). Am about a quarter of the way through so far.
posted at: 08:34 | path: | permanent link to this entry