In my previous posts, I acquainted you with the different trending technologies and what can you expect from them. In this post I am going to talk about one of the smartphone application that we could see in future sooner than later.
We all believe that Mobile Communication made our life easy. And with the invention of Smartphones and 3G network our daily activities were made more mobile. This invention gave more ground to intellectuals around the world for showcasing their creativity. As a result, we have a wide variety of apps for all age groups of people and for their varying interests.
Seeing to this large club of smartphone applications in Education Field with different categorization, I feel it needs one more member in its family.
An application which provides you with all the necessary insights of the book and lets you decide whether you should buy it or not. For now, I would like to call this App “Book Browser”. A browser in the form of app which would let us browse some basic information about the book. Eventually helping us to decide which book to purchase.
Well, this would be an interesting application to have in our phones. Cherry on the cake would be if it gives a small device with it called “Index Reader”. The function of this device would be to scan the bar code of the Book and display the index in the App. The device could be connected to the phone app through the Bluetooth.
Let’s see what Features this would be Application “Book Browser” and Device “Index Reader” would have:
Index Reader:
It would be a very small device of the size of a Bluetooth or a button which would have 2 touch switches. The basic functionality of it would be:
- It would have a Bar code scanner in it. Through which it would scan the bar code of the book and at press of the “Store” button it will be stored in the memory of the device.
- It would have a Bluetooth for connecting with the app on the phone. At the press of “Transfer” button the bar code will be transferred to the app.
Book Browser App:
An application to browse all the basic information about the book. The information which it would display would be divided in 6 categories as listed below:
- View Index: The index of the book will be displayed in it.
- Critics Reviews: Reviews from the well-known critics will be listed in it.
- Hardcopy Purchase: It would give information about the online vendors of the book with their price quotes.
- Kindle Purchase: It would give information on the online vendors of the Kindle Edition or EBooks with the price quotes.
- Similar Books: List of other books with similar content will be displayed here.
- MISC: Some additional information regarding the usage of the book, it’s latest edition if any, display of “About the book”, who should read this book etc.
On the broader level the application will have two functions. First to give the information about the book whose name you would enter in it. Second to display the information about the book whose barcode it will receive from the device Index Reader. Let’s have a look at the features and functionality of the application:
Features Specific to the Device:
- When the bar code will be transferred to the app by the device, the app will process the bar code and would display the 6 categories of the information on the book, as listed above. User can click on any category name to have a detailed view of it.
- View Index category will have one feature to convert it to other languages. User can select the language from the list.
- Other feature in the View Index category will be of searching a particular topic in the index.
- Third feature in the same category will be switching the display from the Index of the book to the Content list of the book. Content list display will also have the former two mentioned features.
- The category of Similar Books will also list the same book in different languages if any was published.
Other Features of the App:
- As mentioned earlier this application would function as browser for the book information. User can search for any book as he does it on the google. For e.g. user can search by entering text like history of paintings, novels by Sidney Sheldon, etc.
- The application would display the list of the books in response to the search query. User can click on any book and a window would open up displaying the before mentioned 6 categories of information about that book.
- It would even have a feature of saving some books information.
- A feature of setting notification if any book at that time is not available on any online stores. So whenever that book will be available on any online store a notification will be sent by the app.
- The application will also have it’s own database of the books divided in the logical categories for users to surf through it.
Conclusion:
This application is a Search Engine for the books and would not let you read any book. It could be of a great use to the students pursuing graduation or post-graduation or doctorate degree. As they don’t have one book for their courses and they could find in this app which books has maximum topics and which all books they should purchase.
It is beneficiary even in general book purchases as it would display all the information that people want to know before buying a book.
So, let’s see whether we will receive any such smartphone app making our book searcher task easier to one more level.