Comparing iPad and Kindle reading speeds

Jakob Nielsen, who normally writes and teaches about web page design, did a small group study of iPad and Kindle reading speeds. It might be an important indicator for anyone interested in the purchase of an e-reader or educators working in classrooms or libraries who have a professional interest in the reading performance. The article can be found online at:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ipad-kindle-reading.html

While reading text on iPad and Kindle tablets is faster than in the past, they're still slower than reading printed text. PC screens were much slower for reading long-form text. Like a good friend and former director of media services for a Florida school district usually says, I suspect we'd both like to see a larger, more comprehensive study, but at least it may have be a hint that we should be careful when we use desktop computers or laptops to measure reading speed during computerized instruction and testing.

As one who used to read Washington Post articles and other news on my old Palm Pilot, I still think I'll wait for a tablet-sized device with a useable plug-in keyboard (like my old Palm) and the Android operating system. The next two or three years may really be interesting as computer form factors continue to evolve.

In the meantime, Nielsen's article on iPad and Kindle useability may help if you're thinking about moving to an e-book reader.


UPDATE 1: Our own local feedback on tablet computing has been all over the map for the past several days. One of our friends who works with technology and computer networking received an iPad for her birthday last week and thinks it's a wonderful tool. Another friend who deals with research, is very analytical and like my own look at e-readers, is still evaluating their potential use. A third friend and former reporter/editor is seriously looking at the lower priced Kindle ($189) with the software upgrades and improved type, but not with the improved screen of the more expensive DX model (yet). Her goal for a Kindle is mostly for convenience and saving trips to the library or used book store. All are what I'd call "serious readers."

Whatever the future holds for tablets, I don't want to be limited by Amazon's e-book inventory, Apple's online store or any set of vendors. I want to replenish the contents of a tablet from an infinite variety of sources, any video, audio and text in any format that will download and play on a conventional computer. I do most of my current daily reading online and more listening to books on tape and podcasts when Katy and I are on trips, unless she has one of the several books from her "book bag" already in her lap while I'm driving and I'm listening to NPR via Sirius Radio or an MP3 podcast through a single ear-bud.

Maybe I just forgot if I ever heard it before, but I do not remember seeing earlier attempts to quantify the difference in reading speed between printed pages, e-readers/tablets and at the slow end, desktop computers. It's more likely academic research was being done but without any notice by the popular media. The reading speed issue caught my attention because I've always believed that someday, it would be more economical for schools to move beyond textbooks and laptops by purchasing e-readers or enhanced tablets.

The enhanced tablets that students could carry between home and school would contain individualized student lessons as well as expanded resources including text, audio and video materials. These tablets would allow student progress to be monitored, software and student work backed up - even new lessons automatically reloaded by school wireless networks drawing from additional online servers (easily and inexpensively updated from regional or state-level networks). Think of a Florida Online School expanded statewide or even regionally or nationally with broad university participation and public funding for course development. Students could advance at their own pace and on their own vocational path as they grew older. Teachers could actually serve as mentors and advisers more than lecturers.

I may never live to see universal access to educational technology for every student, IF that's what it would eventually be, but I can also safely predict that the future of education will probably NOT take the actual form that technologists or anyone else predicted even 15 years ago. Never the less, age has not dimmed the goal that one day educators can have the tools at their fingertips to evaluate a child's education by what he or she has actually learned - their "entire body of work" - and not by the length of time they remain in school or their performance on a few superficial tests.

Thanks to all who commented via email or in conversations for stimulating a few more ideas into the discussion topic this week. I really appreciate the exchange.

UPDATE 2: PCWorld.com has picked up the story and added some of the questions that might be answered by a more extensive comparison of e-readers, tablets, laptops and desktop PCs. The story has also been picked up by Lifehacker.com and the British e-zine, The Register.

UPDATE 3  The ars technica website reports as of July 19, 2010, "Kindle books are now outselling Amazon's hardcover books in the US." Lowering the price of the smaller Kindle to only $189 has tripled the Kindle's sales in the past month. 

Keyboard stickers can make an old keyboard easier to use

For the last decade or so, a typical computer keyboard will usually last me only about two years before I've worn the letters completely off of six or eight keys. That's not a big problem for a touch typist, but when you've worn away the letters, punctuation marks and symbols off three or four keys on the same row, it starts to get a little more serious. Or it could be that the eyes behind my trifocals aren't as sharp as they used to be. You may notice your own eyes bouncing up and down from the keyboard to the screen and back looking for specific keys. Maybe it's a little of both.

Standard replacement keyboards are not that expensive and almost always included when a new computer is purchased. On the other hand, what do you do if your expensive wireless or ergonomic keyboard is missing a few critical letters or the characters and punctuation symbols on your standard keyboard are getting harder to read? Remembering that a couple of companies make sets of sticky key labels for foreign languages and a number of office or graphics software packages, I looked for "keyboard stickers" on Google. Once I got past the designer keyboard stickers with flowers or flames and the glow-in-the-dark keyboard stickers for those red-eye flights across the continent, I settled on what looked to be a no-nonsense website and checked out www.4keyboard.com.

You can pick from a wide variety of languages, colors, and special applications. They even have stickers for the smaller keys found on netbooks. Compared to the cost of a new keyboard - particularly the $50 or $60 for a new ergonomic keyboard, less than $6 plus shipping for a set of keyboard stickers didn't sound like too much to spend if it would help.

I actually ordered a set of "English US LARGE LETTERING Keyboard Stickers (Upper case)" on sale at $2.66 plus shipping. These particular stickers are available in black, grey and white to match your keyboard. The stick-on key labels arrived in about a week. The "F" and "J" key stickers were even notched to clear the small bumps that help a touch typist find the home row on the set I ordered. I read the online directions and gave myself a couple of hours to work on applying the stickers to the keyboard. You can check out the vendor's online instructions at http://www.4keyboard.com/page_2.html.

After disconnecting the keyboard, I used a little alcohol on a soft paper towel to clean the top of each key. The stickers are fairly stiff but do use tweezers to hold the sticker so that you can more easily rotate and align each sticker individually. Take your time and plan ahead. Sometimes it is easier to rotate the keyboard to help find a steady spot to hold the tweezers and sticker while your other hand aligns the sticker and presses it down when properly aligned. My Microsoft ergonomic keyboard also has several keys that are slightly different sizes than the standard keyboard. In a couple of cases, I used a small razor knife to trim any surplus sticker after the sticker was applied to the key.

NOTE: If you click on the picture, check out the original size of the characters on the Backspace and function keys. You can also see the right-hand shift key sticker was trimmed to fit the slightly smaller key on the ergonomic keyboard.  The very dark black areas seen on the space bar, "N" key and several other keys now covered were worn perfectly smooth by heavy use.

I now have a keyboard that I can read out of the corner of my glasses, and the much larger, high-contrast letters are certainly easy to see. In the unlikely event that the keyboard lasts longer than the current sticker set, I can easily afford to replace any stickers again. In any event, I'll consider the keyboard and stickers a "long-term test."

Beware of Facebook's privacy policy

Just got an email from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) expressing concerns about Facebook's decision to make all online activity on Facebook "social by default." What that means is, "All of your personal information, and all of your online activity, automatically shared by Facebook with anyone, anytime it wants to, without your permission."

EFF has published analyses of how the various Facebook changes affected your private information, including a video teaching you how to make your data private again, a translation of Facebook's jargon, and a guide to Facebook "Connections." The following four articles are recommended if you have any concerns or questions about Facebook's most recent changes: 

Facebook's Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline: How Facebook's privacy polices have changed from 2005 to April 2010.  

How to Opt Out of Facebook’s Instant Personalization: Step-by-step directions (and new video) on how to navigate Facebook's more complicated privacy settings to protect yourself from all the various "Instant Personalizations."

A Handy Facebook-to-English Translator: In a world where "the default is social," plain English terms like "public information," "visibility," or "connections" do not always mean the same thing this week that they meant two weeks ago. Do you really want your "Likes" and so much of your other personal information on Facebook to be public?

Six Things You Need to Know About Facebook Connections: "Connections" is such an innocent-sounding word. The blog post explains how connections allows your personal information to be shared with far more people than ever before, including people you don't know, regardless of whether you want them to.

Leave it to free enterprise. I'm not sure the FBI, CIA or NSA could have build a better system for sharing your newly "public information." I dropped out of Facebook months ago and while I deleted my Facebook account, nothing on Facebook really disappears.  I've had two well-meaning individuals want to share information from a YouTube account that I've never intentionally made public because it has NO video stored there. I haven't used it yet!. How did they find out I had a YouTube account? They're both on Facebook and apparently YouTube and Facebook now are "plugins" exchanging info with all the other corporate and government plugins. How many more reciprocal plugin accounts are being shared without my knowledge? How many of your other accounts are being shared? 

Anyway, that's why I've always paid my dues to EFF every year. To find out more about the Electronic Frontier Foundation and all the things they do, visit: http://www.eff.org/

Update: As I was writing this post, I discovered that Today@PCWorld has added a post, "New Facebook Social Features Secretly Add Apps to Your Profile," which reports that Facebook is now adding Facebook apps to user profiles without the user's knowledge or permission. 

If you visit certain sites while logged in to Facebook, an app for those sites will be quietly added to your Facebook profile. You don't have to  have a Facebook window open, you don't need to signed in to these sites for the apps to appear, and there doesn't appear to be an option to opt-out anywhere in Facebook's byzantine privacy settings.

Software added to our computers without our permission used to be called spyware or malware. Facebook now says that secretly adding the stealth apps is a bug, and apps are no longer being added, "however any unwanted applications that were previously added will still need to be removed manually."

Apparently EFF and 14 other consumer protection groups have launched a formal complaint against Facebook with the Federal Trade Commission. If Facebook's management cannot grow up and clean up their act, it may be time for the FTC or other adults to intervene. There's a reason that more corporate and government networks are already blocking Facebook and as a result of Facebook's lack of discipline, poor record on user privacy and now lack of rigorous software testing. It's about time!

It's everywhere! There is no escape!!

It looks like old dogs and young pups will both need to learn a few new tricks!

For those who thought they could avoid joining the more than 400 million residents of Planet Facebook, abandon all hope. Social media — complete with Facebook-like status updates, profile pages and networks of social connections — is coming to your office cubicle.

The SiliconValley.com "First Edition" had a short note and link to the original article: "Facebook-like status updates coming to the office" 

The article includes info on Lotus Connections, Sharepoint 2010 and Socialtext. Maybe the larger companies can work out a few kinks in the privacy and security issues with Facebook, Twitter and other less business oriented social software programs. While it is entirely optional, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS has social networking - broadcast and chat accounts - baked into the OS with access from the top level menus. The fact that social networking is included in all installations of this important long-term-support release speaks to how popular the Ubuntu developers think social networking has already become.
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Updated - While business and other organizations move in the direction of social media, The New York Times has an article on the implications of social media on children:

The question on researchers’ minds is whether all that texting, instant messaging and online social networking allows children to become more connected and supportive of their friends — or whether the quality of their interactions is being diminished without the intimacy and emotional give and take of regular, extended face-to-face time.

What are the implications of more and more electronic communications between children? They obviously have some impact on relationships. Do social networks and texting potentially slow the development of social skills in children? Does this new means of communicating between friends help shy students come out of their shell? For the April 30th article with references to distinguished authors and books on the topic see: "Antisocial Networking?" by Hilary Stout.
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In either case, I wasn't overwhelmed with Facebook when I tried it a while back. On the surface it allowed a friend's visit to China to be quickly and easily shared with friends from halfway around the world.  Technology always looks good until you can find and evaluate all the hidden costs. Actually I abandoned ship during the first round of Facebook privacy concerns, so I haven't rejoined the revolution... yet. But those of you who are (still) actively working with large organizations - corporations, non-profits, schools or voluntary associations - may find yourself needing to know more about this growing phenomenon from a business and a professional standpoint. I hope the articles will help and keep looking for those hidden costs.