ACM TechNews

University Researchers Develop E-Book Reader

Diamondback (07/17/08) Zeleznik, Alyssa

Researchers from the University of Maryland have teamed up with scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, to develop a prototype of a unique e-book reader. The electronic device is designed to work more like a book, in that it has two separate screens to imitate turning a page. Most e-book readers are single-page devices. The dual-display reader is slightly smaller than a typical book and reads handouts, forms, term papers, spreadsheets and books that have been converted into electric documents. E-book readers have been slow to catch on, largely because of their price, but they could potentially compete with textbooks. "An electronic version of a textbook would be considerably easier to carry around, and the activities people do with textbooks tend to intersect with what electronic books are good at: Namely, searching for a specific topic, or jumping to a section of interest," says Nicholas Chen, the lead graduate student on the project. Chen, who is also affiliated with the university's Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, says the team hopes to add a feature that will allow users to write on a page or highlight a section.

http://media.www.diamondbackonline.com/media/storage/paper873/news/
2008/07/17/News/University.Researchers.Develop.EBook.Reader-3391850.shtml

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