Lerche Nr. 24

ICUE
Moving the way you read
December 7th, 2005: A new era of reading
begins with the official launch of a promising
idea in the United Kingdom. ICUE
enables the user to read books whenever
and wherever he or she wants. Nothing
special, you think? It’s special when you
haven’t got a ‘real’ book and just a mobile
phone at your fingertips.
This private enterprise presents a new way of
distributing content to readers by sending entire
books to their mobile phone, and enabling them
to read comfortably without having to press any
keys. To avoid the impractical aspect of reading
long texts on a tiny screen, the system uses the so
called tachistoscope technology: one word after
the other appears on the screen of your mobile,
flickering up in front of your eyes to let them absorb
it.The system can be downloaded to any colour-screen
mobile phone, but isn’t yet working
in Germany due to missing contracts with
German mobile providers.
How to get it?
Within the UK, only a few seconds after sending
a text message to 64888, the ICUE-programme
appears on your phone’s applications menu. It
includes a direct link to the book store and a
WAP-based internet site, as well as generating an
internal ‘library’ in which to store the bought
books. It has a system for setting up reading preferences,
such as style, text size and the speed at
which the words appear. The text can also be set
up to scroll automatically across the screen or it
Shakespeare goes mobile
British phone company offers world literature via SMS
The British mobile service for students
Dot Mobile, offered by the London company
Taylor Herring Communications,
follows a new path in sending poems and
literary quotations via SMS. Classics of
English literature – varying from Jane
Austen over Charles Dickens to the great
William Shakespeare – are optimized for
mobile-phones.
The words are transformed into the typical »SMSlanguage«
or even substituted by symbols.The so
called »textification« was developed by John
Sutherland, professor for English at University
College London. He says that this service is a great
opportunity for both, introducing classic literature
to the youth and for students’ preparation for
exams. »The educational opportunities the service
offers are immense.«
can appear word by word or phrase by phrase. In
every chosen way the text will appear automatically,
which is essential for comfortable reading.
Even during reading the user is able to control
the speed, pause and skip back or forward in the
The mobile book
text, just like you can do with a ‘real’ book.
Getting used to the tachistoscope technique will
take two or three minutes reading and a little bit
of practice. Publishing houses in the UK are very
interested in this new way of distribution.
Currently ICUE has deals with major publishing
houses such as Harper Collins, Pan Macmillan
and Egmont. They are negotiating with other
houses including every major player in the UK.
ICUE gets the license for the content of the booksto-mobile
sector and the publisher gets a royalty
split for every book sold. »We ask in exchange
that they make us their exclusive mobile distributor«,
says Jane Tappuni, managing director of
ICUE.
While the project began in January 2006, it’s still
questionable if this method is useful because the
interest of teens in reading books dwindled to a
shocking level. Isn’t it actually an alarming step
back to bring up more and more facilitations
which make thorough reading somehow unnecessary?
Don’t we partly lose the richness and
colourfulness of a beautiful language?
Furthermore, this new kind of »language« doesn’t
follow the grammatical rules. Often letters are
left out and words shortened, which detracts the
ability of reading and understanding longer texts
or writing correctly.
Mr. Sutherland also states, that even Charles
Dickens himself would have supported this idea
because he also worked as a shorthand copyist.
The average cost of a book will be around £5
(approximately Euro 7.50). The mobile operator
takes around 35 per cent of this fee, and the rest
is shared between ICUE and the licenser. »People,
and in particular kids, are far more open to the
idea of using their mobile phones for a variety of
purposes – they’re already using them to play
games, watch TV clips, and send photos to their
friends. Reading off your mobile phone is the
natural next step«, said Sally Gritten, managing
director at Harper Collins. And because of that
teenagers are a main target group of ICUE, but they
are a market that statistics show does not read as
much as other segments.The company hopes that
the new system on a familiar gadget will show
teenagers the modern way to enjoy books and
encourage them to read far more. The promotion
of reading is one of ICUE´s main objectives.
Marc Lewis, a well known new media innovator in
the UK, is the founder of ICUE and represents a 75 per
cent share of the company. »All his profits are being
used to fund a new charity, which focuses on improving
reading skills among teenagers and adults.«,
as you can read on the homepage of the company.
ICUE is also liaising with organisations such as
The Book Trust and the British government, »to
explore ways which ICUE can use to improve
reading skills and to broaden access to books.«
TEXT: NADJA ZEUGHAN, MARIE LOMAX
FOTO: FABIENNE WERNER
MORE INFORMATION
• www.i-cue.co.uk
LITERATURE VIA SMS
• Jane Austen:
1) Fit&Loadd
• William Shakespeare:
2) 2B?NT2B?=???
3) Romeo, Romeo-wher4 R thou Romeo?
• Solutions:
1) ». . .handsome and wealthy . . .«
(Pride and Prejudice)
2) »To be or not to be – That’s the question«
(Hamlet)
3) »Romeo, Romeo, wherefore are
thou Romeo?« (Romeo & Juliet)
Try and find out, whether you might be a fan of
textification yourself, technically you are ready –
if you only own a mobile-phone. TEXT: YVONNE ANGER, FRANSISKA IMMISCH
Leipziger Lerche Nr. 24 7
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