I’m working on a collaborative reading app called Rdrs. You can upload a ebook, create a reading group, invite others and your reading position, comments and highlights are synced live with the group. You can also read privately, and as its web-based is available on any device.
I’m still in active development so there may be bugs or crashes, but I’d be very interested in your feedback.
This a really cool idea. I've just started a book club with my room mates and we'd be keen to give this a try, especially if we can leave notes/thoughts for one another as we go through
Yes, you can leave comments on text and I've just implemented comment replies, so you can have conversations on the comments. You can upload your own books as long as they're DRM-free epubs.
Please be aware it's still very buggy so bits may break. If you do decide to try it, I'd appreciate any bug reports or feature ideas you may have.
As a UI designer and developer, I would push the blame further along the stack and say that execs and shareholders want “flashy, sleek, stylish”, in the same way everything has to have AI jammed in now, lest the number start going down or not up quite as fast as hoped.
In ambient light the contrast is worse on the Daylight than the RM2 - the screen background is quite significantly darker.
However, the Daylight has a backlight which increases the contrast enormously. And it’s usable in the dark which the RM2 is not. The much faster refresh rate also gives it a more fluid feel.
What I didn’t anticipate is the difference the screen makes in how I use and perceive them:
As the RM2 is so simple and static it feels more like a notebook or book reader that happens to be battery powered, whereas the Daylight is definitely a gadget.
I’m more likely to use the RM2 to take notes or do some thinking and the Daylight as something to tinker with.
The remarkable is a lot more like paper and has that simple feel.
Daylight was created for the express purpose of being a portable computer you can use in direct sunlight. It can also just be your notebook but it does so much more than take notes.
I may be a little bit biased but I'd personally prefer a non-laggy device with a little bit worse contrast.
Olivetti also owned Acorn Computer, inventor of the ARM processor, although Dave began a good few years before they bought it. Apparently the project was so secret that Olivetti didn’t know about it until the purchase was complete.
I’m working on a collaborative ebook reading app. The idea is that you can create a reading group, invite people and then share comments and highlights and see each other’s reading progress.
It’s something I’ve been wanting for a while, for example to read a book with a group of friends or with a work team, but there’s lots of other possibilities including author reading parties, proofing and education. Got the basics of it working now, need to polish the UI and add the commenting and highlighting features.
I’m using Next.js and Supabase, neither of which I’ve used before so it’s been a fun but often frustrating process. Claude has been an amazing assistance, fixing my mistakes and countless type errors.
Ooooo.... Idea! One thing I've always wanted is an "asynchronous" book group. Basically, some way to tie the questions and conversation to a page or chapter, and then you can follow along at your own speed. Just passing the idea along since I'll never do anything with it.
Storygraph[1] does this with their Buddy Read feature. My wife and I use it to read books together and leave messages about different happenings, which only get unlocked when you mark that you've read up to that page in the book. It's a great feature, and we really enjoy it.
I wish there were discussion websites for media like this. If I've finally watched a tv show, everyone is already talking about another season. I want some sort of "season one insulated forum" or something. For all those that are in the same "temporal" spot.
That’s a cool idea, thank you for sharing. Yes, I want to tie conversations to specific locations in the text, but I love the idea of being able to set discussion questions as well. Will look into that.
Hey man, it is an amazing idea. I have been thinking to build something similar.
I am building reading clubs for my custom library - on top of crypto tech, and in the process, I have experimented with several book reader tech. pdf.js, muPDF and some other tools, which one did you settle on?
That’s a fascinating project, thanks for sharing. I’m using epub.js as it already has things like annotations and highlighting and it’s fairly easy to override the book styles.
From the research I’ve done, it seems that most ebook reader libraries are old and not very well supported. Haven’t considered PDF readers yet.
Is it going to be P2P? It would be much more easier to handle book versions and other such technocalities if it is, allowing people to share the EPUB via the platform and stay in sync
I’ve been using Daylight Computer’s new Android tablet for a while now, which has a 60fps reflective grayscale LCD screen.
During the day it looks and behaves like E-paper, but with a much faster display rate. It’s also got a warm backlight for use at night.
When the backlight is off the contrast is lower than the E-ink Carta panel used in the Remarkable and Boox tablets, but the backlight and fast refresh really help make up for it.
Have you compared sessions where you're principally, say, reading books with a bookreader app vs. Web browsing, or using other apps?
My experience on the BOOX, an E-ink device, is that web browsing (Einkbro) consumes battery at ~10x the hourly rate that reading books (Neoreader) does. How much of that is active display, and how much is other CPU usage, I don't know.
My experience on the reMarkable 2 is that leaving it "off", showing the screen it displays when it detects that you haven't done anything for a while, will drain the battery in a matter of days, whereas leaving it "off", showing the screen it displays when you manually navigate into the shutdown menu and tell it to turn off, drains the battery in a matter of months.
I assume that none of the difference is in active display; the display is static in either case.
The Remarkable2 is an E-Ink device. I'd asked mattkevan as they are using a transflective LCD-based "E-Paper" device.
The technologies have a similar appearance, but utilise different technologies (electrophoretic vs. liquid crystal). Principle differences are the responsiveness of the display (LCD is far faster) and power consumption (LCD draws constant power, the display clears when voltage potential is removed, electrophoretic displays persist indefinitely when power is off).
As I'd noted in the comment you're replying to, I've used an E-Ink device for years, and am familiar with its power consumption characteristics.
Watching videos/ interviews of the founder, it sounds like he’s very vey focussed on scaling this up to build affordable and durable wall sized versions of the display tech.
I’m certainly rooting for them. I hope they have more devices available soon
I’ve not been happy with the state of desktop ebook readers for a while, so I recently built a simple web-based ebook reader. It’s designed to be a quick and easy way to read books while also providing decent layout and typography.
Although it’s a website, books and reading histories are saved in the browser’s local storage and it doesn’t track anything.
Hey, might I suggest adding a public domain example book? I tried adding a couple of different epubs that I happen to have on my phone, but it just says "Please select an EPUB file." when I do. (Using mobile Firefox.)
I would love this too. Calibre is amazingly useful and powerful, there’s nothing else like it, but my goodness the UI is ugly.
I’ve come to appreciate it as some sort of outsider art anti-design, defiantly refusing to follow any notion of design consistency and aesthetics. But still, a nicely designed version would be amazing.
I’m still in active development so there may be bugs or crashes, but I’d be very interested in your feedback.
https://www.rdrs.app
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