Tucson-based Language Technologies, Inc. made a breakthrough last week by releasing the free ReadSmart Edition iPhone/iTouch downloadable application.
The program lets you buy electronic books that maintain the look and design sensibilities of the printed page while subtly making the words more readable than they ever were in print.
“I think that this is huge,” said John Maher, the company’s boisterous 42-year-old chief technology officer, who developed the application with director of development Christopher D. Nicholas.
Maher, who used to work at the celebrity-gawking, frivolous-minded E! Networks, flies his tech-geek flag proudly and keeps his iPhone at the ready like a Wild West gunman to enthusiastically show off the technology.
Neither Maher nor his colleagues are given to understatement or modesty. They view their work as powerful enough to change the world. Never mind that the company has yet to turn a profit, nor does it expect to do so any time soon. The company is scrapping for market share in an e-publishing world dominated by Amazon, its handheld e-reader Kindle and the iPhone Kindle app that uses dominant E Ink technology, which converts book text into monotonous digital type.
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Thankfully, President/CEO Lee H. Berendt said, the privately-held company is blessed with six patient, anonymous investors who believe in the Language Technologies’ long-term prospects.
Chairman Thomas G. Bever is a Harvard and MIT grad who has worked as a research professor of cognitive science and psycholinguistics at the University of Arizona since 1995. He developed ReadSmart technology with Language Technologies co-founder John Robbart, who stepped down more than five years ago but remains on the board of directors.
As Bever describes it, ReadSmart is ergonomics for readers’ eyes. Based on several decades of research in cognitive science and psycholinguistics, the algorithm sets type in a way that improves reading comprehension, speed and enjoyment.