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Students demonstrate innovative iPad book page flip

by Kelly Hodgkins Jan 24th 2012 at 8:00AM

One major complaint about reading an eBook is the experience; holding an iPad is just not the same as holding a book and thumbing through the pages. This complaint may lose some of its weight if the folks at the KAIST Institute of Information Technology Convergence can get their patented Smart E-Book Interface Prototype out of the lab and into the wild.

The interface uses the private Apple API for the page flip and turns it upside down and inside out. Not only do you get a beautiful page flip like the one in iBooks, you also get page flipping that lets you scan 20 or 30 pages at a time, multiple page flips that are controlled by the speed of your finger swipe, and a way to hold your thumb on one page and flip through the book with your fingers. You can see it in action in the video below to marvel at how the interface mimics the way most people flip the pages of a softcover book.

[Via Macgasm]



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One major complaint about reading an eBook is the experience; holding an iPad is just not the same as holding a book and thumbing through...
 

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Joey Ingles

Salivating...I want.

Where can I get it?

January 31 2012 at 8:08 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
fugeesnfunions

Love all the new ideas seen in the video, but if Apple could only integrate one, I would love to see moving by "ginger gesture", seen at 1:28, implemented into any app with pages. The ability to simply write out the desired page number could save loads of time.

January 30 2012 at 1:33 PM Report abuse +1 rate up rate down Reply
Dane DeMuth

There is some heavy criticism here jeeze haha, I thought it was a cool idea..

January 28 2012 at 8:12 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
ttringle

Apple should buy these guys, like TODAY!

When I heard about this without looking at it, I thought it was a stupid idea, but now that i've seen it in action it's brilliant.

January 25 2012 at 2:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Idea Guy

Some day books on tablets will totally replace printed books. Will people even know what it was like turning pages on a real printed book? This is like having an interface to an abacus on your tablet. I mean like get real!

An even better idea that I will give out to you devs for free is to use voice commands to turn pages, go to any page, etc. Better yet, just hook the tablet up to a neural interface to read my brainwaves to control the book interface. Don't forget that those are my creative ideas. Sheeesh!

January 25 2012 at 2:23 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Martin C

Paging on the iPad is cumbersome now? What a load of ****. In either Stanza or iBooks, I just tap the right margin as slow or as fast as I want and it turns the pages to match.

Talk about solving a problem no one was having.

January 25 2012 at 10:54 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
stinhoutx

Firstly, this is cool and I commend the group on their work.

But, as far as needing to duplicate the page turning experience to read an ebook...I don't recall ever hearing anyone driving a car complain about how they wish it felt more like walking, riding a horse or a bike. Just saying...

January 25 2012 at 10:30 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Michael Long

Too many of the speed and timed-touch gestures look prone to triggering accidentally. Especially for someone with poor motor control.

The slide on and back multi-page flipping gesture seems promising. Don't know that I'd want to "waste" the multi-finger gestures just to skip a few pages. Would rather have, say, a three finger gesture that skips to the next chapter.

But the core premise of the article, that holding an iPad is just not the same as holding a book and thumbing through the pages is correct. Thank goodness. I'm sick and tired of trying to thumb through a book that wants nothing more than to snap itself closed.

January 24 2012 at 12:31 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Michael Long's comment
Aaron H

Several of the ideas are superfluous or step on other system wide gestures, but overall, I've gotta disagree.

Flipping to the next chapter is pretty readily done by using the table of contents. It is much more annoying to go back just a few pages (like to take another look at a graph or something) - especially when you don't remember just how far you need to go. It is these short range "fuzzy" navigations that would be greatly helped by something like this.

January 24 2012 at 2:44 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Aaron H's comment
Michael Long

Depends on how the TOC is organized. Many ebooks have an HTML TOC spread across a dozen pages or more. Have to disagree with your notion of "readily". (grin)

Besides, the multiple page gestures make it easy to MISS your chart, since it could easily be skipped. For that sort of thing popping a cover-flow or thumbnail view would be the better choice.

January 24 2012 at 5:54 PM Report abuse -1 rate up rate down
Jones

Nicely done visually, but the core idea is gimmicky; the book metaphor needs to die a swift death just as much as the desktop metaphor, ie let's find something new already.

January 24 2012 at 12:11 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jeff Harrison

No thank you.

January 24 2012 at 10:50 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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