News: Digital Life
Google transforms iPhone into eReader
06.02.2009
With Google's new mobile version of its Book Search site for the iPhone and Android phones, these handsets have been transformed into virtual eReaders with a wealth of free material at the user's fingertips.
Yesterday, Google announced that it had developed the Book Search mobile site, which takes a different approach to the original Book Search format.
Book Search works by displaying a scanned version of the actual book page, but while this reads well on a computer screen, it doesn't hold up well on a handset.
Google has used Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to extract plain text from these volumes and the end result is easily readable. Once you access, books are listed by category in a mobile-friendly display, and bob's your uncle, you have an eReader!
There are over half a million ebooks to choose from (with 1.5 million books if you live in the US), a strong case against investing in an exclusive eReader like Amazon's Kindle or the Sony Reader.
If you come upon a pag e that seems to display weirdly because of OCR failure, then you can double-tap on the screen to go to the original image. Happy reading!
By Marie Boran
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