The other day I was reading a book that presented several different scientific experiments. The results of the experiments were later compared by presenting the percentages of the outcomes in list format.

It went something like this:

• Thirty percent of all people who stopped at the table with six pies purchased one item.
• Only 3 percent of people who stopped at the table with 24 pies purchased any of them.

As you can see the author did not present his information in a consistent way. I had to reread the above items several times to fully grasp the comparisons. The problem is that it becomes increasingly more difficult to compare data when it is written inconsistently.

The author should have written:

• 30 percent of all people who stopped at the table with 6 pies purchased one item.
• Only 3 percent of people who stopped at the table with 24 pies purchased any of them.

Presenting the information in the form above is much easier to compare and understand.

For a detailed explanation on how to present numerical data you should check out the book The Elements of Technical Writing by Gary Blake and Robert W. Bly.

Reading on a mobile device such as a PDA or cell phone poses several problems; one of which being the size of the screen. As you can imagine, reading large documents like an e-book on a mobile device is not the most enjoyable experience. But there is an increasing demand for an easier way to read on these devices as more and more users integrate the smaller technologies into their lives.

One solution to increase the ease of reading on such a device is called "rapid serial visual presentation" or RSVP for short. RSVP displays one word at a time from the text that you are reading onto the screen at a user defined speed. It is like watching a slideshow of a text one word at a time in fast forward. To better understand and experience what RSVP is like, check out Mobile Magazine's RSVP demo.

After going through the demo a couple of times I realized that RSVP could make reading on a small screen more enjoyable. But, there are a couple of things that could make it more usable and increase reading speeds.

For starters I would like to see more than one word at a time so that my peripheral vision could be used. On a lot of mobile screens you could fit at least 2 maybe 3 words. If you flashed 2 to 3 words onto the screen I'm sure you could read faster and with more ease. Doing this would more closely recreate our normal reading environment. For example, when reading a more traditional text like a book, our eyes don't fixate on each individual word. Our eyes rather only make a few fixations during a line of text. The rest of the words that were not fixated on were picked up by our peripheral vision, or also referred to as our perceptual span.

Another feature that would be nice to have is the ability to automatically slow down the flow of text when you encounter long and complicated words. Certain words require a little more time to read and process than others. This feature could be programmed by allowing a small delay when encountering words that contain a certain amount of characters. For example, if a word contained more than 15 or so letters, the flow of text would slow down slightly while that word is on the screen.

The RSVP method of reading would also require adequate control methods for the user. Now, I was not able to test RSVP on my mobile device because it was not compatible, but the demo made me realize that any small distraction could cause you to miss a lot of information. Some controls that would be needed would be a stop and play button that you would need to keep your finger on the whole time. If your attention needed to go anywhere away from the screen you could pause the action and resume reading when you were ready. You would also need an easy way to increase and decrease the speed. The click wheel found on the iPod would be ideal for this.

Navigation is also an issue that would be tricky. What if you were reading a 200 page e-book that you could not finish in one sitting? You would need a way to jump to the page and sentence you left off on. This could be easily accomplished by having a way to save where you left off so that you could resume reading when you came back. But what if you wanted to find a particular spot in a text? You could possibly have a feature that would allow you to jump to the 11 th chapter, 2 nd paragraph, and 3rd sentence. That would work but what if you didn't know where a subject that you were interested in was in the text? You would need a nice search feature for that (think Google for your mobile device).

As you can probably tell, implementing such features to increase usability on mobile devices creates many complications. Imagine trying to operate all these functions on your tiny cell phone! Not exactly an easy or pleasant experience. But we are getting closer to a viable way to read on our mobile devices. Just don't expect anything to replace books any time soon.

The main delay on the site was writing all the PHP code. Though the code wasn't all that complex I did run into some problems that took a considerable amount of time to fix (isn't that always the case). In fact, I might still be working on those problems if it wasn't for the nice folks over at the PHPFreaks.com. The amount of help I got over at their forums was amazing. The individuals over at PHPFreaks are really dedicated and are willing to lend a helping hand with those pesky errors that keep you awake at night. I would often post a question (sometimes at 2 or 3 in the morning) and I would have a response within minutes. If you ever have a PHP problem or question I would suggest heading over there (signup is free).

Another delay was deciding how to present my portfolio. I decided to go with the flash slide show but I'm still not happy with it. I believe some background information on the projects featured is needed and I will be adding those shortly.

So, I believe the major construction here is nearing completion. Come back soon for more updates and articles.

I will also be completely updating my portfolio (it's about time!) and also adding some useful links, photographs, and albums I'm currently listening to. I decided to redesign the whole site because my last one didn't display my skills or represent me in the "professional" manner that I think it should have.

I also needed more room to add copious amounts of content. I want visitors to find something new each time they visit. The site as a whole should be done in about a week (July 11th) and I will be constantly adding content on a daily/weekly basis.

So please, come back soon!