The image here shows a highly readable text (clearer on the phone than in the photo) of The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe coming through the Safari browser of my iPhone. The text is from the comprehensive and authoritative collection of Poe works at the website of The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore. The Society is an open source for reading Poe’s work on any mobile online browser.
Transitional reading through apps
The app store phase in which mobile content delivery now finds itself cannot be the comprehensive and authoritative venue for future mobile learning content. For one thing, there is no reason to duplicate the open collection at the Society of Baltimore for delivery by one or more app stores. There are thousands of content websites already available for academic topics ranging from the humanities and arts through the sciences and technologies, and essentially everything else studied in education. It is a huge and unnecessary effort to organize all of that again for one application and then another.In the case of works like Poe’s, which are in the public domain, the adjustments to what is available already for larger screens for reading in a mobile browser are highly doable. We need to be perfectly clear that protecting copyrights and making money are the motivations for pushing reading matter through app stores. I am not saying that is not okay. I am only suggesting that long range, accessing reading material — and most other study subject collections — through browsers will prevail.
March 9th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
March 10th, 2009 at 7:13 am