Glass And Reading: New App Provides Real Time Word Definitions And Translations

Thanks to the benefits it brings, online reading is definitely in vogue now. But with the new Google Glass app you can have the same benefits when reading regular books. The application is called Reader for Glass and its goal is to make hard-copy book reading as easy as the online versions of the book, meaning that while you do your reading, Glass could provide instant translations and quick definitions. But it is not the same thing as Google Reader, which doesn’t even exist anymore. Furthermore, the software was developed by graduate student Jacob Funch, while working on his master thesis.

Funch thought that reading from a screen could get your eyes tired faster than reading a normal book, but reading a book doesn’t come with all the benefits that an online book can provide, such as platforms from which you could access definitions or translations for a certain part of the text. So, by counting the downsides and upsides of both, he got to the conclusion that by using Google Glass you could read a hard copy of a book and also get fast online explanations when needed. Practically, you can have the best of both reading methods.

Reader for Glass is easy to use and very helpful, especially for students that have big theses to write and have a lot of books to read and research to do. As presented in the video below, in order to interact with the app, all you have to do is to highlight the word you need translated or for which you need a definition, and then wink. Simple like that! Also, if the app will keep the same structure it has now, after the wink it will display a page in which you have to confirm the highlighted word selection; next, just swipe to the right and the software will display Wikipedia information on the word and its translation.

But Jacob says that in the near future he plans to update the app to an easier form, and by that we mean that you’ll no longer have to highlight the word, but simply point your pen or pencil at the word you need more information on.

Also, he plans on releasing the app pretty soon, probably in a beta version so that people could bring their input and who knows, maybe find some new potential uses for the software. It is more than necessary that such software would receive the public’s approval before being launched and used by the mass customers.