That rate is up from 5.6 percent a year earlier, according to the National Literacy Trust’s “Children’s Reading Today” survey (release).

The survey of kids from 128 UK schools gives an insight in to how the next generation is using various platforms to read…

It shows that: “Since 2005, reading across all formats has fallen – with the exception of text messages.”

Remarkably, that trend even goes for websites. Whilst 64 percent of schoolchildren said they read the web out of class in 2005, that dropped to 50 percent in 2011.

“This is not simply about young people shifting their reading patterns from paper to digital as technology-based reading (such as reading of websites and emails) also decreased,” the National Literacy Trust’s report says.

The report does not explain the drop. It does not appear that ebook reading has displaced web reading.

Kids have turned away from magazines, comic books, newspapers and poetry at the fatest rate. But readership of websites, blogs, social networks and fiction rose again over the last year…

To some, the results do not bode well for literary readership. The proportion of kids who read daily has fallen by seven percent since 2005 to 30.8 percent. Nearly a fifth (17%) would be embarrassed if their friends saw them reading, while 54 percent said they would rather watch TV.

The trust worries: “Children are reading less as their lives get more crowded. In 2005, four young people in 10 read daily outside of class. Today, only three young people in 10 read daily in their own time.”

But the proportion of schoolchildren who say they enjoy reading, whatever the medium, has remained largely stable at 50.2 percent.

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The latest version of the iPad app — which adds a social layer to reading, allowing you to highlight and share DRM-free e-books — will include two new features that simplify life for those on both sides. First, the “Library” function simply creates a cloud-based index of all the book files you have access to, allowing you to access them all with a touch — wherever they are stored. It’s something that seems obvious, but is missing from the current picture thanks to the widely varying approaches taken by independent online retailers.

Meanwhile the Berlin-based company is also giving publishers an easy-to-embed “send to Readmill” function that allows users to send a copy of a book they’ve just purchased to their library without any fuss.

Both are essentially two sides of the same thing: trying to make the experience smoother and more straightforward for people who purchase from indy bookshops. And between them, these moves could help level the playing field between large, closed systems and small, open ones, says the company’s community manager, Matthew Bostock.

“Users spend a lot of time trying to find their e-books, but people like Apple and Amazon have a fantastic user experience,” he told me. “We want to have that user experience, but we want to let independent sources have a way to give it to their users… This is a way of bridging the gap between buying from these stores and being able to share books.”

The new services already have some pretty good partners, launching in conjunction with a range of companies from the start: A Book Apart, Bookrix, Leanpub, Free-ebooks.net, Jotify, OR Books, Publit and Bibliocrunch. It’s also teaming up with Readability to support its new Readlists feature.

It’s also got some good news on the funding front too, with Wellington Partners (Spotify, Xing, Hailo) backing the company with a Series A funding for an undisclosed amount.

In the grand scheme of things these features are probably a minor update — but right now it feels like it could be a significant step forward for the company, which has a great idea but is hampered by the fact that a significant amount of the e-reading market is owned and controlled by competitors who are extremely closed and use lots of DRM.

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But now emerging markets, too, are becoming advanced online media markets.

In China, new research has found digital media eating in to print for Chinese’s preferred reading formats.

The  National Reading Survey conducted for the Chinese Academy of Press and Publication found  those who say they preferred reading by newspaper declined by 3.7 percent in 2011, while that for magazines dipped 5.6 percent.

At the same time, online reading preference increased 11.1 percent, while readership on mobile phones grew 4.6 percent.

Some 27.6 percent of those surveyed said they preferred reading on their mobile phones. Newspapers still led the list with 63 percent.

Chinese newspaper circulation was forecast to grow 13.9 percent to more than 50 billion in 2010.

Separately, InMobi research claims that Taiwanese now spend more time with their mobile than watching TV.

Via DFDaily.

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“We want it to be a Jezebel, TechCrunch, Valleywag type of site,” Patrick says.

Current posts on the site include “Songs Based on Books & Authors: A Playlist,” “How the Booker Got Snookered” and “Review GPA,” which “translate[s] reviews of notable new books into letter grades” to determine a grade point average. (Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot gets a 3.34.) The site will also feature guest posts by book bloggers like Dead White Guys and Rebecca Joines Schinsky.

Book Riot is currently working to build out content, and says it’s already reaching its target audience; up next month is a push to secure advertising. Within the next couple of years, Patrick said, the site will start running events that consist of “a mix of entertainment and education with emphasis on community.”

Book Riot comes from “the place of social media” and is targeting a group that has grown up on the Internet and read a great deal of quality YA fiction, Patrick said. “They’re not going to settle for something a publisher is pushing at them. I was about to say these are the Twilight readers,” she said–adding that that sounded funny because the books were critically panned, but “Twilight shows that these readers are willing to stand up for what they love, to a point where they have an effect on the market. They are not going to talk about books in the same way and they may not read the same kinds of book reviews” as older audiences.

So what interests someone who is “25 and reading”? “Sometimes it’s mixing and mashing things up with other kinds of media,” Patrick said. “How does a new book that comes out relate to the movies? How does a video game relate to a graphic novel or a YA novel?”

Some content hits the irreverent/rebellious angle too hard. Charles Dickens is “reigning king of Dead White Guys You Should Have Read in High School, But Probably Just Read the Cliff Notes or Possibly Watched the BBC Mini-series.” Editor Jeff O’Neal describes his employer, the New School, as a “big, liberal, snobby-as-all-hell university.” This is a little cloying, if irreverence can be cloying, and seems better suited to younger teens who still think it’s cool to be jaded. Luckily, though, Book Riot drops the “we’re-cool-because-we’re-not-your-parents-seriously!” tone most of the time, and when it does, it stands out as a unique site–one that reaches out to a demographic that’s fairly underserved in terms of book coverage, with a refreshing lack of hand-wringing over whether “young people” are so busy on Facebook that they have no time to read anymore.

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Seventy-three percent of college students who responded to a new Kelton Research study sponsored by education software startup Kno said they’d be willing to do something they might not normally do — including giving up dating or sex — if they could never carry another textbook.

That sounds a bit sensational, but it makes more sense when you think about the financial and physical burden that college textbooks represent: College students can expect to spend some $2,400 on textbooks during their undergraduate careers, and a quarter of students have to carry in excess of 20 pounds’ worth of books on a typical day, according to the study.

But would shifting to a digital format really make students fall in love with “books”? The research data implies that it certainly could help. Sixty-two percent of respondents said they would study more often if they could access their textbooks from anywhere without having to carry them around, and 54 percent said it would make their studies more efficient. A full 71 percent of college students said they were keen to “go digital” by putting required-reading materials on a mobile or desktop application or through the web.

Even so, many educational software companies have not taken off as quickly as many may have hoped. Kno itself was forced to pivot earlier this year after a number of launch-related hiccups. But now that college students are wanting to go digital more than ever, the tide may finally start to turn away from traditional textbooks for good.

Image courtesy of Flickr user pmccormi  

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Float is aimed at recreating users’ personal libraries in an entirely digital format. The app collates content from more than 150 sources in the publishing industry, including the Associated Press, Fortune, TIME, and People Magazine. Float can also be used to read books and some blog posts; it picks out tweets and Facebook messages that include links to reading materials and incorporates them into the Float stream.

Float’s real strength lies in its super-slick user interface. It organizes the text from all these disparate sources into one coherent format on which users can zoom in or out, or overlay settings to adjust for direct sunlight or eye strain. The app also allows users to archive and organize what they’ve read and save articles they plan to read for the future.

But the app is also inherently limited, at least in its current form. Since Float does not utilize  standards such as Atom or RSS, Scribd’s engineering team has been tasked with incorporating each of the different content providers into Float’s unique interface. That is a fine strategy for a launch with 150 hand-picked publishers, but can Scribd realistically scale the app to include all the long tail content that makes the Internet such a great tool for discovery? “Our goal is to have every blog and every news service included in Float,” Scribd CTO Jared Freidman told me in a pre-launch interview. But can the company really do that with just 50 full-time employees? “We have very smart engineers,” Freidman said. That may be so, but there is only so much that a team of that size can do, especially when it comes to the kind of customized integration it seems that Float has built itself on thus far.

Overall, Float seems genuinely pleasing to use, and imparts an easy fluidity between different types of media in a way that had not previously been perfected on mobile devices. As Freidman put it, “It’s really quite an ambitious idea, and I don’t think anyone has tried to combine so much into one single ecosystem.” That level of ambition could ultimately wind up being Float’s downfall — or the key to its success.

Here are some screenshots of Float (click to enlarge):

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Customize Your Monitor Setup

The easiest thing you can do is to change your screen settings to become more eye-friendly. This document from Cornell University and this guide from Charles Poynton have some suggestions that you can use as a reference. Some of these include placing the monitor 25 to 30 inches from your eyes, matching the screen brightness and contrast to your work area, and tilting the monitor so that the bottom of the screen is a bit closer to you. Here are some additional factors you should consider:

• Display width. Some people argue that using larger monitors or multiple monitor setups improves productivity. When it comes to reading, though, you have to make sure that the paragraphs you’re reading aren’t too wide. Yes, a 23-inch monitor can be handy, but not when you read blocks of text that stretch out across the entire screen.
• Focus. Though this is more of a problem for CRT monitors than LCD ones, everyone who spends a lot of time reading on the computer should ensure that the text is in focus. Even slight blurring on the edges will strain your eyes, because they’ll attempt to correct the focus themselves.

Use Tools for Easier Reading

Apart from changing your monitor’s settings and position, you can also use tools that make online content easier to read. Many browser add-ons and extensions do this. Examples include the following:

• Readability. This bookmarklet removes the clutter from text you’re reading online. You simply choose the style that’s easiest for you to read, then add the Readability button to your browser’s bookmark toolbar. Every time you click on the button, Readability will format the text on the current page in the style you selected.
• TidyRead. TidyRead is a Firefox add-on similar to Readability, but it gives you the option to change style settings every time you use it. It also has a “Smart Mode” feature that detects article pages so that TidyRead is automatically activated when you open an article page. There’s also a version for Chrome.
• Reading Glasses. This Chrome extension allows you to select the text you want to read and then lets the rest of the page become less visible. It prevents your eyes from being distracted by ads and other unnecessary clutter.
• Reasy. Reasy is a browser add-on based on the concept of Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP). This means that the text you’re reading will be presented to you one word at a time — kind of like flashcards. The benefit of this approach is that it increases reading speed. Reasy has versions for both Firefox and Chrome.
• NoSquint. Apart from some minimal style edits on a page (such as text color and background), NoSquint is a Firefox add-on that lets you set zoom defaults for the sites you visit. Just as the name implies, you don’t have to squint to read small text or view fine details in the sites you visit.

Of course, none of these tools and techniques will really work if you constantly abuse your eyes. A previous post tackles how we can take better care of our eyes even if our workload requires a lot of online reading. By combining proper habits with the right tools, eyestrain and fatigue from online reading will no longer be an issue.

Share your eyestrain avoidance tips below.

Photo by flickr user Toms Bauģis, licensed under CC 2.0.

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I did have an iPad-sized hole in my life. For me, a MacBook is weighty overkill. I have two jobs: the corporate-level one that pays the bills and my writing gig where I blog, freelance, and work on personal projects. The day job comes with its own Windows laptop that I lug around. I try to maintain a separation between the corporate job and personal work, so there’s very little in the way of personal data on the work machine. My commute is almost four hours round-trip. Most of it’s on a train, but if I wanted to write, I’d need the MacBook with me.

For personal work, my needs are modest. I need to write, research ideas, and read a book or watch a video. Simply put, I just need a tool to let me put words down. I don’t care about how they look when I’m composing on the iPad; just want to get them out of my head and onto what passes for paper for these days.

Productivity

A month in, I find Pages whelming. I felt Pages was about one patch from elevating itself from “merely OK” to “good,” and the 1.1 patch did that with support for landscape toolbars. I find myself to be fairly proficient with the virtual keyboard. While I am clearly faster and more accurate with an external keyboard, the iPad doesn’t seem to handle swapping between virtual and physical keyboards well, so I tend to stay with the iPad’s.

What I wasn’t expecting is, even at home, I prefer to write on the iPad. I think it comes down to a fantastic screen and, oddly, the single-tasking nature of the device. Pages gives me enough of a distraction-free environment that I can focus on writing.

For an in-depth look at Pages for Mac, view Pages 101 (subscription required).

I’m going to be giving a talk in a month or so, and as much as I try and tell myself I can do it on the iPad, the fact is, I can’t. While I tend to use my own fonts for my talks, I can design an effective presentation for the iPad using stock fonts, but I don’t want to be chained to the podium with no remote control.

The presentation issue pales to getting files to and from the iPad. Original rumors hinted of some sort of a shared-pool for files, but that never came true. Instead, each app still has files isolated to its own sandbox. You can use iTunes to transfer files into the sandboxes, but it’s a pain. Since there’s no true syncing, I can’t really work on a file on a desktop and get it back to the iPad without feeling like I’m playing a shell game. My ideal solution would be to have a Documents version of Photos. Apps could read and write to that sandbox to their heart’s content and there would be  OS-level integration of MobileMe iDisk.

These issues, while frustrating, don’t make me regret my decision to buy the iPad at all. I’m getting more done with the device, so that’s a win

Recreation

Like most writers, I read. A lot. I probably read about 30-40 books a year, not counting assigned reading for class and the like. I also am somewhat of a magazine junky. The iPad is indispensable for consuming this type of media.

Amazon’s Kindle app and Apple’s iBooks are both fine readers. Amazon’s selection is better, but I like the flexibility in iBooks’s presentation; the ability to change the order of my library is huge. However, when I’m researching, Amazon’s note tool wins out.  One small thing iBooks does is tell me how many pages are left in a chapter. That’s great for reading in bed and deciding if I want to commit to the next chapter.

I find the Zinio app fine for reading magazines. Recent updates have significantly improved page load times. As with the Amazon app, my chief complaint is not being able to arrange the library the way I want it. Deleting magazines seems undoable, also. I’d love an archive feature like the Kindle’s. I have a few subscriptions that thoughtfully provide DRM-free PDFs and GoodReader is my choice for reading them.

3G vs Wi-Fi

This was one of the hardest decisions I made regarding the iPad. In the end, I chose the Wi-Fi because it was out sooner. A close family member was having some major surgery and hospital stay before the 3G came out. I’d had some luck using the iPhone during a previous hospital visitation, but knew the iPad would be better. I also knew I’d be weak and keep the $30 data plan going and didn’t want the expense. While there have been times I wished the iPad had always-on Internet, I don’t regret my decision.

Final Thoughts

A month later, like my iPhone, the iPad is a device I rarely leave the house without. Its excellent battery life means I don’t need to worry about charging out. A heavy night of writing, surfing and game playing barely takes 30 percent of the battery. I like that I can get a creative idea and be writing it in less than 30 seconds. I do see an anti-glare film in my immediate future. It’s almost unusable outside, and a frequent place I use it has a fluorescent light directly overhead.

How about you? One month later, what are your thoughts?

What’s all this ⌘4 stuff about? Why, that’s my browser shortcut to Instapaper by Marco Arment. Instapaper strips the text out of almost any browser page and stores it for later reading; for me, that’s usually via the Instapaper Pro app on my iPhone.

And now Arment brings us Instapaper for the iPad. I’ve never been more excited! On the Instapaper blog yesterday, Arment wrote;

I’m probably supposed to keep this secret and build everyone’s anticipation to hype this up. Oh well. Maybe I’ll do that for the Instapaper edition for Apple’s next revolutionary computing platform.

First: Instapaper is definitely coming to iPad.

Second: Instapaper is coming to iPad very soon. Possibly even on day one — yes, I’m going for it — but that’s optimistic.

Third: Instapaper Pro will be a universal iPhone/iPad application. That means that you only have to buy Instapaper Pro once to have it on both devices, and the iPad edition will be available to all Pro purchasers at no additional charge when it’s released.

You know that joy we all felt when Apple announced Snow Leopard would be super-duper-cheap? Remember the way you smiled when you heard the news, and felt a warm glow inside? That’s how I feel about Instapaper Pro on the iPad. I think I even went “Squee!” when I read Arment’s post. (I was alone, so no one knows I made a fool of myself. Oh, wait…)

Arment adds;

It looks like Instapaper Pro, but bigger, and with slight interface tweaks and redesigns where appropriate.

When everyone else was stalling their iPhone development for months in order to redesign entire applications for the iPad, I made the obligatory cardboard prototype and mocked up a bunch of radical interface departures.

Ultimately, none of them were very practical. Some worked well, but only with ideal content (which, in practice, is rarely the case except in the Editor’s Picks folder). And I didn’t want to commit to any huge risks because I don’t have an iPad to test them on.

And that’s the hurdle many iPad developers currently face. Any developer will agree it’s important to be in the iPad app store as close to Day One as possible, but all app development and testing is horribly crippled by the ‘little’ fact that no one has an iPad yet. Emulators and simulations are all very well and good, but nothing beats having the real thing to hold in one’s hands.

Supersize

What might seem like a great design decision or function implementation in a simulator may not work in ‘real’ life, on an actual hold-it-in-your-hands-and-swipe-with-your-fingers iPad. There’s a big difference between how we interact with a computer monitor, and how we interact with a magazine – and the iPad is the mongrel offspring lovechild of the two. (You know what I mean.) Truth is, no amount of cardboard dummy iPads and on-screen simulations will provide the same tactile feedback and degree of first-hand quality control offered by an actual iPad.

Some developers are no doubt hoping that the iPad’s super-size function (by which apps designed for the iPhone are displayed at more than double their original size on the iPad) will keep customers happy until they can get a real iPad and spend time properly (re)developing their apps for it.

So why didn’t Arment just let Instapaper Pro run in that supersize, double-pixel mode? After all, content in Instapaper is mostly text. No worries about pixelated graphics there, right?

Wrong. Arment fired up Instapaper in his iPad simulator. The result?

It sucked, and it was completely unusable by my standards…

While I could have taken the conservative option and waited until a month or two after the iPad’s release before launching Instapaper for it, an iPad without native Instapaper Pro is not a device I want to own.

Me neither. And, if early reports are accurate, neither will a lot of other people for whom the iPad is, for the most part, a reading device. According to a report today on TUAW, a comScore poll of prospective iPad customers revealed that 37 percent said it’s likely they’ll read books on the device; 34 percent were more certain, saying that they would use the iPad for reading magazines and newspapers.

For those of you, like me, who are using Instapaper heavily every day, the iPad is like a dream come true and I can say with certainty that catching up on all those ⌘4’d articles and web pages will be what my iPad is used for most often. And for the 34 percent of iPad customers-in-waiting, Instapaper (and the inevitable copycat apps that follow) will make the iPad just about the only screen from which we’ll want to do any reading, ever again.

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