A Burn Of Innovation

I had to do a "pecha kucha" (means chit-chat, in japanese) for my english class, it basically consist of an oral presentation, together with a slide show in a 20X20 model (20 slides, 20 seconds each).
The theme was innovations of the 20/21 century. I thought internet. Then cell phones. And while I was doing my research I came across this:

CELL PHONE NOVELS

to know more about this new and amaizing innovation, try reading this artical on the New York Times:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/22/081222fa_fact_goodyear#ixzz0iXaoX4LN


Either way, check out my apresentation!

1 slide

Hi! My name is Sara and I have a question!
How many people here have cell phones?
Come on! Raise your hand! I don’t have all the time in the world!

Just as I thought…
And I bet many of you can’t even imagine life without a cell phone, well I’m sorry to inform you, it’s possible!
Thousands of people trough thousands of years lived without cell phones and without even having a idea of what the hell a cell phone was!
In fact the idea itself is quite modern! Created in the eighties!
But before you get carried away, no, my work is not about cell phones… it’s about cell phone novels!
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2 slide

What is a cell phone novel?

For those of you, who have never even heard of this, relax!
I was surfing down the net, when something interesting caught my eye.
This!
Apparently cell phones are used so prominently in Japan (and other Asian countries like South Korea and China) that people read entire novels on their cell phones. The serialized portions are released periodically over a period of time and since only 140 characters can be read on a cell phone screen at most, the portions are extremely short. Some people are comparing it to what Charles Dickens did in the 19th century with his novels, serializing them chapter by chapter.Out of the top ten bestselling novels in Japan last year (2007), five of them were mobile phone novels.
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3 slide

The first cell phone novel was published in Japan in 2003 by a young online writer, Yoshi.
His first cell phone novel was called Deep Love, the story of a teenaged prostitute in Tokyo.
It became so popular that it was published as an actual book, with 2.6 million copies sold in Japan, then spun off into a television, a manga, and a movie.
The cell phone novel became a hit mainly through word of mouth and gradually starting to gain traction in China and South Korea among young adults.

Later on, it spread! and is now available pretty much everywhere!
Europe, USA, Africa...

Within three years of its release the cell phone book’s download site had accumulated over 20 million hits. Now some of the book companies are already starting to use this idea.
Harlequin, the famous romance novel publishing house, now provides a subscription service called Harlequin On The Go, which delivers serialized Harlequin stories directly to users cell phones.
Already there are a wide variety of book types available for cell phones, including non-fiction, poetry, graphic novels, short stories, and whole novels.
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4 slide

Ok, so everyone is thinking: “of all the amazing inventions out there…”
But hear me out!

I thought: Cell phones and schools are not usually associated together, at least not in a good way.
But this form of technology is one that has been undergoing great leaps and improvements, and perhaps one day soon teachers will be reprimand students for forgetting to bring their cell phones to class, or teachers will be listening to excuses from the student who didn’t complete his reading homework because the phone battery was recharging.
After all most of the functions we have now with a computer, are already or will soon be available in your cell phone!
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5 slide

And before anyone dismisses the idea of using cell phones for reading, consider how readily available these tools are.
If you care to look at the statistics you will find that in 2003, 70% of middle and high school students and 61% of upper elementary students had cell phones, and the numbers have only been growing since then.
Just looking at how the average high school students of today spends their time shows some of the differences from previous generations, as today’s students weekly spend more time on the internet (about 16 hours) than watching television (about 13 hours), and still find time for talking on the phone (about 7 hours) this without mentioning texting messages!

We have to move with the times!
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6 slide

Ok, so let me tell you more about cell phone novels now that you’re beginning to see the advantages:
Popularized about five years ago, these novels are posted to the Web by authors who write them on their phones, constrained by the limitations of the medium.Then they are released electronically as serials, They are called keitai shousetsu.
The most successful of them are published on paper in a format that mimics the cell phone experience. Some are adapted into manga comic books and movies.
aIn the first six months of 2007, half of the top 10 bestselling novels in Japan were originally thumbtyped on a phone, and have averaged 400,000 copies each in sales.
Most of these novels are written by women, and involve some seriously messed-up subject matter.
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7 slide

Popularity spreading beyond young girls
The popularity of the genre is spreading beyond young girls.
Ten of the bestselling printed novels in Japan in 2007 were based on cell phone novels, and each sold around 400,000 copies. Strikingly, the sales were strongest for costly hardcovers, which readers who had already experienced the work on their cell phone screens bought as memorials. Starts alone has released 40 titles that have sold 10 million copies.
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8 slide

At the same time, parents and critics are concerned that these works, with their substandard grammar and focus on violence and sex, might be a bad influence on the young women and grade school girls that are their many dedicated readers.
One grade school teacher wrote a scathing review of “Koizora” (2005), calling it a “crime of the media” and suggesting that the story — which involves a young girl in a tumultuous relationship with a juvenile delinquent
"The stories traverse teen romance, sex, drugs and other adolescent terrain in a succession of clipped one-liners, emoticons and spaces (used to show that a character is thinking), all of which can be read easily on a mobile phone interface. Scene and character development are notably missing. "

The answers to this accusations about the themes vary, but mostly people say:
---“Aah. So it's basically simple teen literature? Well, that's okay then.”

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9 slide

Most critics believe that the furor will die down.
“The era of selling a million copies of one book is over, with the rising number of writers and the shrinking number of youth in Japan,” they says. “However, this is a very sturdy industry that will continue to mature and grow.”

Not everyone is so sure. “I think Japanese readers, publishers and society wish for cell phone novels to have more impact than they do,” said Kim, 37, a researcher at the University of Tokyo who has studied the cell phone novel phenomenon. “The point is, how long it will last.”

For the writers part, they don’t seem interested in the long term anyway. “I really haven’t thought about what to do from now,” Kiki, the writer of 'I, Girlfriend' says. “If people think for a second that my free-writing in cell phone novels is interesting, that is enough. I want to keep on writing like that.”
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10 Slide

I'm not sure it is agood thing some of the best selling novels in Japan last year were written with no more than two thumbs and some spare time.
Nevertheless, it is getting people to read, and some of the writers are actually interested in improving their craft.
Personally, I love books.
I could never imagine using a tiny device that could store my entire library of books onto one small, portable chip, let alone reading it off of a thumbnail sized screen.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have some music to go listen to, right after I charge up my...oh...crap.

The end

Wanna try it?!
Go right ahead!

Software for creating Java books:
BookReader by Tequilacat http://tequilacat.nm.ru/dev/br/index-en.html
ReadManiac http://www.deep-shadows.com/hax/ReadManiac/index.htm
mjBook4: http://www.mjsoft.nm.ru/booke.htm

Online for creating Java books:
t41 readme: http://www.t41.nl/

Existing cell phone book libraries:
Audiobooks For Free: http://www.audiobooksforfree.com/
HaperCollins: http://mobilereader.harpercollins.com.au/
Harlequin On The Go: http://store.eharlequin.com/splash/mobile_intro.jhtml
MobileBooks: http://www.mobilebooks.org/
tx2ph: http://www.tx2ph.com/

101 Things I Will Do, Before My Life Burns Away!

1. I will finish University!
I know it sound banal, but it's a very important thing! And it's not just about finishing it, it's about doing so with good grades that I can be pround of and most of all ending the third or fourth year, and leving University with the feeling that I actually learned something, that even if I never use in my work life, at least I enjoyed learning and knowing them has somehow, help me grow and improve as a person.

2. I'll go on ERASMUS!
Once again same theory, I don't really need to go to erasmus, it not essecial to my life, or my future career. But I have never really travelled far, and I know I can do it! why don't people let me try?! (people being the Erasmus administrators at school! I don't really know if they will let me go, most precisely if they will give me enough money on the schoolarship, so that my mom will let me go, I kow I know, momma's girl.)
I really want this! to travel far, hear everyone speak the language I love: english, and to try out new stuff. To learn about a different culture, different people and that strange, new world out there!
~~more to come~~
(writen on a school computer, shool's computers sucks!)
See you when butter flies...
scalvim signs out!