Oyster离理想的电子书技术有多远

    长时间在手机上阅读可不是一件惬意的事。虽然掌上阅读的途径很多：Instapaper可以离线阅读电子杂志；Kindle和iBooks也有对应的移动端应用，但总的来说，没有一个完美的。究其原因，在狭小的屏幕上处理一大堆事情是非常恼人的。Kindle、Nook、iPad或平板电脑等大屏幕设备的阅读体验要好很多，但读者也需要更多的阅读空间。

    在Founders Fund的皮特•泰尔、Hunch联合创始人克里斯•迪克逊等多位风投大佬的资助下，手机阅读软件Oyster横空出世，向用户展示了堪称迄今为止最为优雅的智能手机阅读体验。Oyster拥有超过10万本图书的移动书库。只需每月9.95美元，用户就能阅读Oyster的所有书籍，还能随时把它们加入书库或从中删除（这款应用记录了用户最近打开的10本书以供离线阅读）。对于如饥似渴的书虫们，Oyster可谓天降大礼：它就像一个拥有海量藏书的全天候可定制移动图书馆。当然，如果和谷歌（Google）或亚马逊（Amazon）这样的老大哥相比，Oyster简直不值一提（尤其是考虑到亚马逊那令人生畏的电子书数量。）不过，咱们暂且不提商业影响，作为一个每周都会阅读好几本小说，而且通常是看纸质书的读者，我想从用户体验的角度来点评下Oyster。

    Oyster唯一的不足是应用安装流程。目前它仍采用邀请制，用户必须通过手机或网站请求邀请，一旦通过（我用了两天时间），Oyster会用邮件通知用户下载应用及创建账号。首先你必须支付10美元会费，没有任何免费体验选项可供选择，不过你可以随时取消会员资格。支付会费后，Oyster就会提示你选择5本书开始阅读。

    Oyster的口号是“无限的图书”，不过至少目前为止，它的书籍容量是有限的。我首先搜索了帕特里克•萨默维尔的《明亮的河》（This Bright River ），Oyster没有。我又搜索了一些小说：本•布鲁克斯的《洛丽塔》（Lolito ）、凯瑟琳•戴维斯的《双层公寓 》（Duplex ）、乔伊斯•卡罗尔•奥茨的《我们是马尔瓦尼》（We Were the Mulvaneys ）、简•斯迈利的《一千英亩》（A Thousand Acres）、本•勒纳的《离开阿托查火车站》（Leaving the Atocha Station），詹姆斯•索尔特的《一切万有》（All That Is）、托马斯•马龙的《水门事件》（Watergate ）以及科博•亚伯的《拳击手》（The Box Man ）还是一本都不找到。我并没有灰心，转而尝试纪实书籍：罗伯特•考克尔的犯罪推理小说《失踪的女孩》（Lost Girls）和乔恩•穆斯理的动物纪实小说《野生动物》（Wild Ones）。真是不走运，我要的10本书一本都没有。（Oyster只有一本约翰•艾文的小说，这也有些说不过去。）不过，Oyster在畅销书方面表现不错，在“Oyster最受欢迎书籍”列表中，萨拉•格伦的《大象之水》（Water for Elephants）、盖斯•斯泰因的《雨中赛车的技术》（The Art of Racing in the Rain）以及星巴克（Starbucks）首席执行官霍华德•舒尔茨的《向前进》（Onward）均榜上有名。

    Oyster刚刚诞生，缺少一些书籍也情有可原。这家公司表示，添加新上市书籍的周期为3到4个月。（在我搜索的10本书中，有4本的确是刚刚出版。）向用户推荐书籍是个难题，Hulu和Netflix也有类似的问题。对于那些想找找有什么书可以看的人，Oyster的推荐系统还是不错的。在软件主页你所阅读的书的下方，Oyster展示了一系列阅读主题，例如“夏末之约”和“环球之旅”等，以鼓励读者发掘书籍。很明显，Oyster目前还无法彻底取代那些提供小说新作的图书馆和书店。

    社交是当下的热门，Oyster自然不想放过，它希望能在推荐方面有所作为。个人信息页面会展示你目前正在阅读和已经读过的书，你还可以给书评分。（当然，你也可以选择“私密阅读”。）你在Oyster上的好友能关注你，还可以给你推荐书籍，Oyster自身也会利用用户的历史阅读数据来荐书。

    Reading anything long on a cell phone has never been very appealing. There are options -- Instapaper will save magazine articles for you to read offline, Kindle and iBooks have adequate mobile apps -- but in general, none looks great. Whatever the exact reasons, trying to tackle a substantial work on a micro-screen is wearying. Reading a book on a Kindle, Nook, iPad, or any other tablet, meanwhile, affords a larger screen and often, well, more breathing room.

    Oyster, backed by Peter Thiel of Founders Fund, Hunch co-founder Chris Dixon, and others, may be a temporary panacea: It offers the most aesthetically pleasing smartphone reading experience to date. The app provides a channel to more than 100,000 books on your phone. For $9.95, you get unlimited access to books and can add or drop any at any time (the app saves the last 10 you've opened for offline reading). In theory, the service could be a godsend to avid readers: a turbo-charged, 24-hour mobile library -- personalized. Of course, Google (GOOG) and Amazon (AMZN) loom large as giants that could, it would seem, make Oyster obsolete with great ease (particularly Amazon with its formidable e-library). But ignoring the business implications for a moment, I wanted to evaluate Oyster simply on a user experience basis, as someone who reads a couple novels each week and usually prefers to do it on dead-tree material.

    The only clunky trait of the app is in the setup: It is currently invite-only; you request an invite by mobile or online at its website, and once you're in (my wait was two days), it'll email you to download the app and set up an account. Only once you've paid your $10 -- there is no free test-drive option, but you can cancel membership at any time -- will it ask you to choose five books to start with.

    "Unlimited books" is Oyster's motto, but for now, the library, as large as it is, feels limited. I first searched for This Bright River by Patrick Somerville, but Oyster didn't have it. I searched for the novels Lolito by Ben Brooks, Duplex by Kathryn Davis, We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates, A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley, Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner, All That Is by James Salter, Watergate by Thomas Mallon, and The Box Man by Kobo Abe. Oyster had none, so I tried some nonfiction I'd been meaning to read: the crime mystery Lost Girls by Robert Kolker and the animal behavior book Wild Ones by Jon Mooalem; no luck. Oyster had none of the first 10 books I searched for. (It had only one John Irving novel, also a travesty.) Unsurprisingly, pop best sellers are better represented. A "popular on Oyster" menu suggests, for example, Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein, and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz's book Onward.

    It may be unfair to knock the app for some missing titles at the outset; the company says it takes 90-120 days to get a new release. (Of those first 10 that I sought out, four were indeed new releases.) Selection is an issue for Hulu and Netflix, too. For those looking to discover a book spontaneously, Oyster will do just fine. On the mobile home screen, under your current books, the app offers a "spotlight" of curated, themed collections like, "the end of summer" and "around the world." These encourage discovery. What Oyster cannot yet be, it is clear, is a total replacement for the library or bookstore for those who like to read new fiction.

    There is, inevitably, a social element too, Oyster's attempt to double as a recommendation engine: Your profile shows which books you're reading and have read, and your ratings if you choose to rate books. (You can, however, choose to "read privately.") Friends that have Oyster can follow you and recommend titles to you, and the app will also recommend based on what you've read in the past.