ReadMill is an app to keep an eye on
New reading apps are coming fast and furious these days, so i don’t usually have time to mention them all. But I heard about one today and I find it intriguing and I wanted to share. (Plus I hope that if I write about it they will let me see it sooner.)
It’s called ReadMill, and it’s due out in a few weeks (where you define a week as having between 7 and 70 days). There was a post today on the ReadMill blog, and that is what caught my eye. It doesn’t say much about the app, but it does tell me a couple interesting details about the developers.
They’re going to do something about the problem with cover images (lack thereof, too small, etc). But I’m eager to see this app because the ReadMill developers believe flat is the new black. Their app won’t have the same faux 3d buttons you see on everything. Now that I want to see.
“I say that flat is the new black; that 2D is the new avant-garde; that a surface doesn’t have to be ashamed of being a surface” — Steve Pole
Let me give an example of why ReadMill has me intrigued. Think about iBooks, and how it adds a screen layout that looks like a fake paper book ( fake crease in landscape mode, the fake page curl, fake page edges, and so on). A lot of apps are aping iBooks, but the ReadMill developers have indicated that they might be going the other way (details are still scarce). It’s contrary to the current trend of pretending the screen isn’t a 2D surface.
It’s a little thing, but it’s different.
Comments
Zetmolm July 6, 2011 um 1:36 pm
All these apps faking paper books are really like the first generation of cars that looked like fake coaches. New wine in old skins.
Hopefully this new reading app will be the first one that really looks like an, ehmmmm, reading app.
Mike Cane July 6, 2011 um 2:58 pm
I don’t understand the revolution here. MobiPocket was always flat. eReader too. And Aldiko.
Mike Cane July 6, 2011 um 3:02 pm
As for doing something with covers, their ambiguous English makes it sounds like they won’t display them, instead giving each book a color, as shown in that snap in the post.
Meredith Greene July 6, 2011 um 9:32 pm
I am running a query on your concept among my contact lists and will post the results in tomorrow’s column of Greene Ink. Cheers.