Mobile Computing News

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Few of us find the time to read anymore. Life is just too hectic. Dailylit.com looks set to change that with technology that sends instalments of the most popular books right to your laptop or cellphone. So, is this a good or a bad thing for reading culture?

How does it work?

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Dailylit.com allows its subscribers to read online by choosing a book which will be sent to them on their laptop or phone in daily instalments. Users can choose from a range of popular books, and select what time of the day they’d like to read  – and just like that, their chunks of reading will arrive on their device by e-mail or RSS feed. These aren’t whole chapters – most instalments will take an estimated two to five minutes to complete. Dailylit.com’s collection of material available is fast expending to include most popular books, as well as classics, and some interesting and unusual reading options. You can also create a profile and review the books you read online. The best part? It’s for free.

Curling up with a good… phone?

The old debate continues to rage, and just grows more heated as new technology makes its topic more relevant: when you read a book online, on a screen, is it really comparable to reading a physical book, with actual pages? For those who feel that the Internet and technological innovations are killing reading culture, a site like Dailylit.com requires some serious rethinking on the subject: access to literature through a medium that’s easy to use and that ‘non-readers’ already interact with on a daily basis can surely only lead to an increase in the popularity of that old-fashioned pastime of enjoying a good book, and the excitement of being the first to read the most popular books.

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As the Dailylit.com website explains, the service was created because most people spend hours of their day on email, but can’t find any time to read a book. Of course, there are many readers who feel that actual pages can’t be beaten for their therapeutic value, but there can be a place for both the kind of reading that takes place in bed with a cup of tea and a book, and that which happens with a Blackberry and takeaway coffee during a commute or long wait for an appointment.

What’s the next chapter?

Dailylit.com should make some interesting changes to the way the world reads, and its creation leads to some questions: will the most popular books read online be the books that are most popular on bookshelves? Will the advent of this kind of technology have a positive effect on literacy, or will the same people who read books just read more online? How widespread will the use of Dailylit.com and applications like it become? Only time will tell – maybe it’s a good idea to find something interesting to read while waiting for the answers.