|
Newsletters
|
|
|
|
|
The WDN Symbian DevZone Looks at RapidReader; Accelerated text reading in a wireless world
by Richard Bloor, February 03, 2003
Softology is one of a small number of US based companies who became involved
with Symbian soon after it was formed. They created a version of their
RapidReader product for the Psion Series 5 even through it had limited exposure
in the US. However their involvement was an integral part of more ambitious
plans to create a whole new media.
- Printer Friendly Version
RapidReader - Accelerated text reading in a wireless world
Its 10 minutes before that vital meeting and you realize that you have not
reviewed the latest market briefing. You phone the office and they email the
document to you on your smartphone. 1000 words to read and now barely 5
minutes to the start of the meeting. 2 minutes to the meeting and you have read
and understood every word of the document from your smartphone screen and
are ready to go.
It is estimated that a good reader is able to read between 150-250 words a minute
on the paper page. On a PDA that rate can drop to around 50 words per minute.
So how did you managed to read 300 or more words per minute from a tiny
phone screen? Well with the help of technology from Softology called
RapidReader.
 The roots of RapidReader are in research that looked at ways in which people
could be assisted to read more efficiently, undertaken during the 1970’s at a
number of universities, the leader being John Hopkins University. The research
discovered that there are two significant factors that reduce our reading speed.
The first is eye movement, tracking words across the page, which means that the
eye spends most of its time moving rather than letting the brain read. The
second is sounding out, the process of looking at a word, sounding it and then
understanding what it means. As Peter McIan, Softology’s CEO, put it, “it’s the
difference between seeing a stop sign and immediately putting on the breaks and
seeing a stop sign sounding out the word “STOP” and then putting on the brakes.
You already recognize the word "STOP" so there's no need to sound it out to
yourself.” The research lead to the development of a method of presenting text,
implemented back then on videotape, where subjects were able to read and more
importantly comprehend up to 1600 words per minute. More recently, with the
aid of Cat Scan technology, it has been found that this reading method uses a
different portion of the brain from ordinary reading. Traditional reading uses a
portion of the brain called Broca’s or Wernickes Brain, where we process the
words we see as sounds, while the new method uses the visual cortex,
recognizing words like visual symbols.
So what is this method. Basically to eliminate eye movement text is displayed in
the same place on a screen word by word, like a series of flip charts or as Peter
puts it "like watching a movie". The elimination of sounding comes as an almost
natural by-product of the resulting higher reading speed. RapidReader applies
this research using the computer, to dynamically present text in this scientifically
efficient manner, something that literally could not have done prior to the
development of computing.
Building on this research over the course of 10 years Softology developed and
patented a technology called Speech Mimic that allows text to be displayed in a
cadence that is similar to human speech. This all resulted in the development of
a product called RapidReader, which was initially available as a PC application.
Softology recognized the strength of the Symbian OS quite early. They were
amongst the first US companies to develop add-on software for the Psion 5mx. In
fact they built the Psion version of RapidReader before they build a Palm version.
Peter noted that “we have always felt that RapidReader would have the greatest
benefit on small screen devices. The limited screen real estate means that
scrolling is excessive creating a slow reading experience. At the same time we
foresaw that mobile phone manufactures were going to be looking to operating
systems like Symbian OS to deliver new features. We therefore concluded that it
was important for us to develop a relationship with Symbian.” So in 1999
Softology became one of a handful of companies working on software for Symbian
OS phones which were 2 to 3 years away from market. “So our interest was in
the operating system, whether it was on a Revo or a Series 5 or 9210 was at that
time almost irrelevant, it was about gaining experience of the Symbian OS” noted
Peter.
“I think the OS is brilliant” said Peter “it has a whole host of advantages
compared to what else we have seen on the market. In the past a major challenge
in porting high-speed text to mobile devices has been the quality of the screen.
The displays offered in the current Symbian mobile devices, such as the Nokia
9200 series, are actually easier to read than even full size PC's which makes
RapidReader even more of a benefit for mobile users.” In fact Peter was obviously
impressed, as his daily work companion is a Psion Netbook.
Because they were relatively early adopters of the Symbian OS Peter noted “we
resolved most of the big issues early with good technical support from Symbian.”
This has meant that Softology has had little need for support from either Symbian
or the licensees recently.
The move to smartphone technology was more than simply recognizing that
RapidReader would improve the users reading experience on that type of device.
Softology’s vision is of an entirely new way to deliver text information to consumer
or corporate users. However RapidReader currently works largely from text in
pre-existing formats. This meant that one of early goals for the application was to
achieve the transition from “print” to RapidReader as easily as possible.
RapidReader was therefore developed so the user could just click a button in
Word or a Web browser to open the text in RapidReader. A slightly different but
equally effective approach has been taken with the mobile version of
RapidReader. On the Nokia 9200 machines, for example, the user is able to open
MS Word, plain text, emails and concatenated SMS messages directly from the
application, which also means that there are no special conversion requirements
for the most common PC document formats.
Peter ultimately sees RapidReader as providing an information format that
seamlessly mobilizes text without the overhead of print formatting, as a result
Softology has created a file format for RapidReader documents. Peter said "our
goal is to create an intuitive form of groupware, with the ability to attach notes to
documents and handle a wide range of embedded media such as pictures. With
this media it will be possible for enterprises or content providers to move
information from the web or a network through to work stations, handhelds or
mobile devices, getting the benefit of accelerated reading at any stage." They are
also developing an authoring tool, called StoryBoarder, to allow the direct
creation of RapidReader documents.
“We were able to boot strap the company so we have basically got three years of
market research about what people want. This has told us that users are not
only interested in reading faster but in what they can read faster. So we have
created product lines which address different market segments. For example,
content aggregator can use RapidReader to deliver news, gossip, horoscopes or
other content. While enterprises have shown that they are interested in the
seamless transitioning of mission critical information, focusing on easing the
bottleneck between the information on the screen and the human being who
wants to absorb it.” said Peter “What is starting to happen is that we are getting
calls from places like the Center for Creative Leadership and Innovation
Associations all over the US wanting to deploy our technology.”
Softology are currently running a number of pilot projects including one at the
Bank of Montreal focused around information workers. The goal of this project is
to remove the bottlenecks created by the time it takes for people to read
information, which can delay making decisions based on that information.
Softology are also starting to develop relationships with wireless service providers,
who are looking at offering new types of services.
Symbian OS implementations remain core to Softology’s strategy. Series 60 and
UIQ versions of RapidReader are in the pipeline, with development planned to
start once full Adobe Acrobat support has been added to the PC implementation.
Initially Peter expects that these applications will be delivered as user
downloadable software from Softology’s RapidReader store, as the version for the
Nokia 9210/9290 currently is.
From personal experience I can say that Softology’s claims for RapidReader are
met or exceeded. When I first found RapidReader I also looked at rival products.
While they did allow you to read faster they were nowhere near as comfortable
and easy to use as RapidReader’s text rendering. To carry Peter’s movie analogy
further the other products were like watching a poorly acted film.
Evaluation versions of RapidReader for PC, Palm and Psion are available from
their web site (www.rapidreader.com).
About the WDN Symbian Editor, Richard Bloor:
Richard Bloor has 16 years experience in the IT industry. His earlier
work was largely in design and development of commercial and
manufacturing systems but more recently has focused on
development and test management of government systems.
Richard Bloor is the Mobile Applications champion at System
Architecture consultancy Equinox of Wellington, New Zealand.
Richard can be reached at symbian@wirelessdevnet.com.
Symbian DevZone Home
Nokia DevZone Home
|
|
|
