Comments(0) While watching the Charlie Rose show a week ago I saw this interesting interview about the iPad. It is definitely worth a watch for anyone in the media industry.
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In our last post we mentioned that Spreed is following a new direction. We believe in the power of smart phones and are now focusing on developing best of breed native applications for newspapers and anyone else with a content rich website. The power of the native mobile application is astounding. Not only is it able to take advantage of the vast capabilities present in these new mobile platforms, but because it sits on users mobile dashboards it becomes a daily part of people’s lives; much like email.
Since our last post we quietly launched the Globe and Mail’s iPhone application. I call this a quiet launch as the app currently does not include all the features we plan on rolling out to the mass public. We used a strong early adopter community on Twitter to test out the base application. This was done to ensure our core focus on creating a strong, best of breed, content application was satisfied. Since the initial launch we have garnered lots of fantastic user feedback both through the hashtag #globeapp on twitter and through our uservoice page. This feedback has led to a second release that includes offline reading as well as haptic feedback and has also paved the way for many more future product developments.
Thanks to our core group of early adopters, it is safe to say that the soft-launch of the Globe and Mail application was a huge success. The usage numbers are through the roof and we have already been featured on one of Canada’s most prominent technology blogs, Techvibes. Warren Frey, who contributes to Techvibes on the topic of game changing business models states that:
As an ardent news junkie, one thing I immediately noticed about the app is that it’s rock solid. Unlike the New York Times iphone app, Spreed’s app is robust and never freezes up and crashes …
It’s not what’s under the hood that’s interesting about Spreed, though they’ve certainly done a good job of crafting a solid mobile news app. It’s their adaptation of print media to a new form in a smart way that’s most impressive.
We appreciate Warren’s understanding and excitement for our new business model and are very proud that he believes that our goal of creating a reliable and user friendly way of diseminating the news on mobile phones has been achieved.
I would like to thank Warren and all the members of our fantastic early adopter community. Without all of you this application would not have been such a great success and we look forward to working with everyone in the near future to help build a best of breed mobile newspaper platform.
Comments(5) I must have drank some seriously potent iPhone Kool-aid while I was in San Fran for the Web 2.0 Summit. Ever since I have been back all I can even think, dream or talk about is the huge potential behind the iPhone. The problem is that some people, in some cases even Apple, do not seem to be fully appreciating the scope of what is possible here.
The most recent example of a company failing to see the full potential behind this new platform is Penguin Publishing. I received an email from a colleague at the start of the week letting me know about a new application that Penguin released. It’s part of a broad sweeping initiative by the publisher to embrace the new social web, so kudos to them for finally jumping on the band wagon. However their iPhone application simply does the following, and I quote, “It makes the features of the Web site—the blog, book previews, podcasts, news and Penguin-specific book-finding tools—available on the iPhone.” Wow, awesome, but am I missing something here? What about the potential of literally selling people books to read on the iPhone through the application? They now have a direct channel to a medium that users can easily read their books on, why not skip over all the book re-sellers and simply sell the digital format of these books through their app? I dont get it! I am not saying that they should stop using book stores to sell their products, but the iPhone is a highly effective tool for reading books, why not go straight to the source?
I recently downloaded Stanza (an e-book reader application for the iPhone) and blasted through Animal Farm in 3 days flat. The reading experience on the iPhone is an absolute pleasure. I actually enjoyed reading using my phone over and above reading a traditional paper back (I may just be a seriously early adopter though). The best part about it is that I never have to lug around another book with me. All I have to do is go to Stanza’s book store, download a new book and its with me everywhere I go. If the iPhone really is to become a new medium for content, why would Penguin develop an application that does not include an ebook reader so you can simply download their new releases and old classics directly into your phone while your on the go?
The other element of this whole debacle that eludes me is why Apple has not made an e-book reader part of their own native application bundle. They have an internet browser, a music and video player, a camera, but no book reader. If this is really going to become the new media device of the future, they certainly should include the most trusted form of content … text! And whats more is they have the perfect distribution channel to be selling e-books through; iTunes! They already sell audio books, why not sell ebooks also to be read directly through an application on their phone just like MP3′s. Hell they can even include DRM for all I care, to get the publishers on the board.
There is a lot of potential here in the field of text based content on the iPhone that a lot of people seem to be looking over in favour of more flashy features. I love all the potential behind some of these new innovative features but In my opinion (please keep in mind the line I stated off with, that I definitely drank some potent iPhone kool-aid) the iPhone has the potential to destroy Amazon’s Kindle business and in turn the future of Amazon’s e-book sales. Who wants to lug around an extra device or another book when you already have everything you need in your pocket? Not me, thats for sure.
Comments(2) Since our mention in Wired Magazine, we’ve had a lot of great feedback from users requesting changes to our reading interface. We had the whole gamut of requests from different colors to different fonts, changing of font sizes, adding words to each cluster, subtracting words from each cluster.
These are all great suggestions and they seem pretty commonplace. One has to ask, why haven’t the guys at Spreed already implemented many of the requests? To technically implement them is not that hard. What gives?
The answer is not simple.
The easy answer is that we are the first company entirely focused on reading enhancement. It is a new space with new challenges. Our goal is to become the experts in this field. We have developed some significant expertise and we try to use this when building in features. This means that we have a look at the existing sciences to justify a feature’s benefit in terms of reading efficiency.
Our initial goal when we started Spreed was to let the computer do the heavy lifting of speed reading. We wanted to develop an algorithm and a reading interface that would be effective for most people. No doubt Spreed demands that people challenge themselves to learn how to get through information faster. We remain adamant that with a little (or in some cases a lot) of practice, we can help you read faster. When Spreed eventually catches on and is integrated with other content and technology providers, you’ll be able to let the computer do the ‘heavy lifting’ for all your digital reading.
That’s the easy answer to the latency in adding features. I am going to pick a specific part of our research to have our users think about: Have you ever wondered how the human eye picks up words?
When reading traditionally your eyes do not move in a linear fashion across the page. The eye makes many “stops” and occasionally doubles back to words previously read. Even fast readers double back – only they are a lot faster at it than the average reader. A “stop” is called a saccade and it typically lasts in the range of 200-250 milliseconds.
The Science of Word Recognition – Kevin Larson, July 2004.http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ctfonts/WordRecognition.aspx
On each stop, the eye will focus on a word, look for first few letters of the next word and also go further ahead to gauge the length of upcoming words and the sentence as a whole. The eye’s ability to look forward might be the reason why single word flashing also know as RSVP might be less efficient than our algorithm.
So what does your eye process in a saccade?
There is a vast array of academic research in this area. I am going to quote Kevin Larson who is the leader in this field. Mr. Larson is a cognitive psychologist working at Microsoft with their advanced reading technologies team. Who knew Microsoft has such a team??? Regardless, we find his work very useful.
During a single fixation, there is a limit to the amount of information that can be recognized. The fovea, which is the clear center point of our vision, can only see three to four letters to the left and right of fixation at normal reading distances. Visual acuity decreases quickly in the parafovea, which extends out as far as 15 to 20 letters to the left and right of the fixation point
The Science of Word Recognition – Kevin Larson, July 2004.http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ctfonts/WordRecognition.aspx
Visual acuity? Fovea? Parafovea? What happens when font sizes are increased? when colours or contrasts are changed? when the number of words or characters in a cluster change? How will this affect how you can absorb information? You need not worry about these questions, but we do!
ps. We will be at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco this week November 5-8. If you feel like talking about Spreed, shoot myself or Dave an email (suhail@spreedinc.com or dave@spreedinc.com)
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If you are a new reader here at the Spreed:Blog, you will find out in due time that we are quite obsessed with digital publishing and the ways that we take in digital content. Spreed’s goal is to make the digital reading experience more efficient on any electronic device. Our speed reading application is only one class of product we are working on. We want to streamline the entire online reading experience and make it more productive. As such we are constantly looking for the newest and coolest technologies out there that aid in the effective reading of electronic material. By far the most exciting new platform out there is the Kindle and we have covered this product here on our blog many times before. However, over the past couple of weeks there has been some very interesting news surrounding the Kindle and I just wanted to give light to all these new developments here:
Amazon Growth Slows a Bit; No New Kindle in 2008: Publishers Weekly
CFO Tom Szkutak said that while sales of the Kindle have exceeded expectations, it does not plan to release a new version of the e-reader until 2009 “at the earliest.” He noted that Amazon has ramped up manufacturing capacity for Kindle, and the device is in stock. When the Kindle was introduced last November, the readers quickly went out of stock. Amazon said the e-book reader now accounts for more than 10% of unit sales for books that are available both in digital and print formats. Bezos said purchase of e-books is “additive” to sales of print books with Kindle e-book buyers tending to buy as many print books in addition to e-books.
Oprah Comes Out For Kindle: The Guardian
Today in Chicago, and on TV screens across the USA, Oprah Winfrey is going to recommend her new “favorite gadget,” which is Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader. A brief video has appeared on Amazon’s website to plug the show — as spotted by Chris Nuttall at the Financial Times — which will also feature a guest appearance by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Kindle in the University: Brave New World Blog
Yale, Oxford and the University of California have all adopted Kindle programs, and now Princeton University Press will begin publishing Kindle-edition textbooks, launching, Robert Shiller’s new economics book “The Subprime Solution” on the device two weeks before the hard copy. Princeton plans to roll out hundreds of books through the Kindle’s online store. The questions over over the commercial ‘revenue sharing’ arrangements are between the parties and whether , as some may say, Amazon is buying trade.
