alf

Member since: Jul 7th, 2006

alf's Latest Comments

Blog Activity

Blog	# of Comments
TUAW.com	10 Comments
Engadget	2 Comments
Download Squad	10 Comments
Slashfood	2 Comments
That's Fit	4 Comments

Recent Comments:

Reading a book is faster than reading an iBook (TUAW.com)

Jul 5th 2010 6:30PM Whilst I wouldn't fund the study if it were up to me, I don't think it is senseless.

Nowhere in the article does it say that participants were "racing" to read the story. They read it at whatever speed they were comfortable. The results showed that the participants read at a slower speed on an e-reader than a book. The question now is why this is so. Is it due to how much information is presented on a tablet at any time compared to a book? For example, the book may have more words on any one page than an e-book, requiring less slow-down as you switch pages. The book's two-page design might hep with this as well. Or is it due to some other usability issues? Could it be that it is harder for the eyes to read text displayed on a screen than a page? Etc.

I think it is very rash to dismiss a study just because you don't like its conclusion.

Reading a book is faster than reading an iBook (TUAW.com)

Jul 5th 2010 6:25PM Steve, and similar commenters criticising the study, there is a limit to how much can be achieved with any one study. Make it too broad and you're not cleanly answering any questions. Make it too narrow and you get attacked by people like you.

You assert that slower reading is better. Could be true, but is it? You're working from intuition, which is a pretty good guide, but is often wrong. That's the whole point of science, we don't need to rely on intuition, we can test things instead.

The point of the study was to look into different reading speeds between e-readers and books. That's it. They weren't testing how well you can take notes, read at night or understand the material. Some of that could be tested later (say, comprehension) and some of it was, honestly, just petty (reading at night, invest in a lamp).

As to the article's discussion of the study, this is some shabby science reporting you have going on. What was the study's conclusion as to why their participants read slower on an e-reader than a book? This is the sort of info that is vital and needs to be included in the article. Don't make your readers hunt scientific literature to really get the point of your article.

Reading a book is faster than reading an iBook (TUAW.com)

Jul 5th 2010 6:19PM There was a statistically significant difference between books and all electronic readers; they failed to reach a significant difference between iPad and Kindle.

iPhone OS 4 beta 3 adds orientation lock, iPod controls to multitasking bar (TUAW.com)

May 4th 2010 11:44PM It does.

Beta 4 of iPhone SDK 3 is out (TUAW.com)

Apr 29th 2009 9:56AM I'm downloading beta 4 now and will report when I have some experience with it, but I had no issues with betas 2 or 3. All of the apps I used the most often worked fine with no crashing (I did find with beta 3 that apps would crash if I tried to interact with them before they had finished loading).

Dogpile on Microsoft! Adobe, IBM, Oracle join EU anti-trust case (Download Squad)

Apr 16th 2009 9:12PM I can completely and entirely remove Safari from Mac OS during, and post, install. I cannot do the same with IE on Vista or XP.

Hell, I remember the days when XP would change my preferred browser back to IE every time I launched it, without so much as asking.

Facebook users hate the redesign, but does it matter? (Download Squad)

Mar 21st 2009 8:39PM I disagree that its the people who don't use twitter that are complaining. I use twitter and facebook, and I like to keep the two separate.

I liked the distinction between wall post, other post (photo/link/story) and status update.

Parallels for Mac hits 1,000,000 users (Download Squad)

Jun 11th 2008 3:37AM Both work and a secret dirty love.

Work: Windows-only apps like e-prime, and software that my work only has licenses for on the mac (damn you AcqKnowledge).

Secret dirty love: I heart Office 2007, the ribbon bar makes me swoon. I hate Office 2008.

Delicious Library 2 beta on the streets (TUAW.com)

May 25th 2008 12:40AM Anyone who can mirror the beta onto rapidshare? For some reason my download goes to 0kb/s after every single percent of the download that it finishes (tried downthemall, firefox's builtin downloader and safari, all suffer from the same prob).

Your Turn: How often do you eat organic? (That's Fit)

Mar 31st 2008 3:52AM I don't buy organic as it has no real advantage over standard food (and I'm too much of a greenie to justify having to devote more land to agriculture that organic farming requires).

Organic foods uses pesticides just like conventional farming, except that those pesticides are less effective (because they are "natural", just like hemlock), so a lot more is used. The contents of a tomato is contained in its DNA, not in the farming used.