Emerging technologies e-texts, mobile browsing, and rich Internet applications.

Online reading is evolving beyond the perusal of static documents with Web pages inviting readers to become commentators, collaborators, and critics. The much-ballyhooed Web 2.0 is essentially a transition from online consumer to consumer/producer/participant. An online document may well include embedded multimedia or contain other forms of invited user interactivity such as questionnaires, annotations, pop-up windows, or animations. Adobe's recently released Adobe Digital Editions illustrates the trend, moving from static PDF's (read with the Adobe Reader) to a Rich Internet Application (RIA) in which PDF's are just one possible resource alongside many others. Apple's new iPhone sets another interesting marker in terms of accessing online documents, as it forgoes entirely any type of local file access and relies on ubiquitous network access for retrieving documents. On the other hand, electronic devices dedicated to the reading of texts have recently been introduced, taking advantage of new technologies for an improved e-book reading experience. In this column we will be looking at these and other recent developments as they pertain to accessing and experiencing electronic texts, and what these developments might mean for language learning.

WEB TEXTS

The proliferation of authentic texts on the Web is far from enough to guarantee that language learners can profitably delve into texts they have located to help them in their language acquisition. More likely, an uninformed search will result in frustration as an overwhelming variety of texts, both useful and useless, are retrieved. Critical thinking and evaluation skills are crucial in sorting through the vast collection of readings to be found online. Learners need to be able to locate texts at the level of their language skills, but they also need to develop metacognitive strategies to be aware of how they learn and what might prove useful for improving their reading ability. Reading on a screen is itself a different experience from reading a printed page. Monitors have been steadily improving in screen resolution and contrast, which helps considerably in on-screen reading. What may still pose a challenge in online reading is unfamiliarity with the constantly evolving design options for Web pages. Styling of text through manipulation of CSS (cascading style sheets) makes it easy for Web developers/authors to add show/hide elements, use a variety of indicators for linked text (i.e., dotted lines may indicate a different kind of link from solid lines), and enlist many different options for arranging text on the page. Online reading is not nearly as straightforward as opening a book.

Most importantly for language learners, reading Web-delivered texts can be enhanced through the use of a myriad of Web functions and tools. The fact that the reader is using a network to retrieve a text means that there are other readers online who may be able to offer comprehension help or to become discussants of content. That could happen in real time through chat or instant messaging or asynchronously through posting to discussion forums, blogs, or wikis. One of the major Web developments in recent years has been the extent to which readers are becoming writers. The popularity of blogs testifies to this, as does the proliferation of social networking sites. Sites such as Amazon have long offered readers the opportunity to write personal reviews; the large number of readers who have availed themselves of this option testifies to the read/write nature of the Web today.

The online reader also has help in the form of a variety of language tools and resources, including electronic dictionaries and grammars, translation tools, and glossed texts. One of the more interesting developments in this last category is the availability of tools for the automatic glossing of texts. There have been projects underway such as PC-KIMMO or the Berkeley Interlinear Text Collector, out of which text glossaries have been developed. Recently, dedicated text glossing tools for online texts have become available. One of the easiest to use is Gymnazilla. Gymnazilla uses freely accessible open-source dictionaries to create on-the-fly annotated (dual language) versions of any electronic text. The users specifies the source of the text, the original language, and the desired glossary language. The newly created glossed text maintains the layout of the original document, including any multimedia or interactivity, and adds links to glosses of words and phrases which appear when the user moves the cursor over the text.

An online version demonstrates how Gymnazilla works. There are additional features which can be added to an annotated text, including insertion of images (found through image searching) as glosses, creation of personal wordlists, and online vocabulary exercises constructed from personal wordlists. Gymnazilla is based on XNLRDF, an XML-based database for multiple languages. As the database is built from open source collections, it varies in completeness and accuracy from language to language, depending on available resources. It is possible for users to add to the database, which could be helpful in improving the effectiveness of Gymnazilla as a practical tool for language learners.

DEDICATED E-BOOK READERS

One of the other major new developments in the area of electronic texts has been the release of several new dedicated e-book readers, which offer significant enhancements over the previous generation of electronic book readers, none of which have been commercially very viable. There are three principal new features to these new devices: improved screen readability, expanded connectivity, and a more attractive form factor. With its soft leather case and paperback book size, the Sony Portable Reader strives to give the impression of reading a printed book. It is light (9 ounces or 250 grams), thin (1/2 inch or 1.3 cm), and features a 6 inch (15.2 cm) display. The display is what is most striking about this and other new generation readers. The text does not flicker on screen and is readable from virtually any angle and in almost any light, including sunlight. The enabling technology is called E-ink, which uses electrically charged microcapsules of ink (black and white) to display the letters. It requires no backlighting and consumes power only when the page is turned, thus improving battery life. The high contrast monochrome display is very clear and because the image is stable, and in high resolution, it is less fatiguing to the eyes than a traditional LCD; it really does come close to the experience of reading a printed book.

While the Sony Reader relies on a USB connection to transfer files from a PC, the iRex Iliad Reader, which also features E-ink, adds WiFi connectivity to provide wireless networking. It also integrates a WACOM sensor board, which allows for writing and drawing on the screen. Like the Iliad, the new Cybook from Bookeen runs a version of Linux. The Bookeen device features a new and improved display technology, Vizplex e-paper. This is said to overcome one of the issues with E-ink displays, a relatively slow refresh rate, which results in having to wait several seconds for a new page to appear. Vizplex also draws less power--Bookeen is claiming up to a month of use time between charges. An impending entrant to the list of E-ink readers is the Kindle reader from Amazon. Amazon's reader adds 3G cellular connectivity, with the possibility of purchasing and downloading e-books directly to the device. Amazon has had for some time an "upgrade policy" which allows users who have purchased books to obtain an electronic copy of selected texts for a minimal fee. It seems likely that the release of their e-reader hardware will result in an expansion of their e-book services.

It is uncertain whether the new e-book readers will be any more successful than their predecessors. They are not inexpensive, ranging in price from 300 to 500 USD. That's a high price for a single purpose electronic device. They might prove to be more marketable if they took greater advantage of network connectivity as well as providing the possibility to write and post. Several e-readers do feature RSS news feed capability but they do not incorporate a Web browser. They generally support traditional e-book formats including plain text, PDF, RTF, and HTML. However, for commercial texts, they use different DRM (digital rights management) schemes that are mutually incompatible. While Sony runs its own service, Connect, for use with their reader, most e-readers rely on Mobipocket , a service which provides texts in .PRC format. The Sony Reader, like the other e-book devices, supports Unicode, but with some limitations. A thread on the MobileRead forums discusses the steps necessary to encode Russian texts for display on the Sony device.

MOBILE PHONES AS E-READERS