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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.
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。
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.
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。
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.
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。
"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.
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。
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.
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。
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.
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。
What really matters: The reading experience is clean and visually unobtrusive. Print size and font are easily, instantly adjustable. In contrast to the horizontal leanings of the functions on a tablet, the Oyster design is suited to the tall, thin iPhone: you turn the page not by swiping left, but by moving your thumb up, and the progress meter is vertical, on the right side, not horizontal along the bottom. Another smart, subtle design detail: At the bottom right, where you can see how many pages are left in the chapter, it also gives an estimate of how long it'll take ("23 minutes, 37 pages left"), just as Longreads and other sites post articles with the average reading time attached. (Some Kindle models also show remaining time.)
真正重要的是，Oyster阅读体验简约低调。调节页面大小和字体都十分便捷。与平板电脑上功能操作多是水平方向不同，Oyster的设计适合iPhone的竖条形屏幕：翻页不是靠手指向左滑动，而是靠向上滑动，而且进度表也是位于屏幕右侧的竖条，而不是位于底部的横条。另一个很巧妙的细节设计是：在右下方不仅会显示当前章节还剩下多少页，还会估算出看完当前章节大概还需要多长时间（比如说“剩余37页，需时23分钟”）。长篇内容阅读网站Longreads等站点所发布的文章也会附上平均阅读时间。（有些型号的Kindle电子书也会显示剩余时间。）
What you cannot do is highlight a passage you like or take a note. In that regard Oyster doesn't stack up to iBooks or Kindle, both of which allow you to highlight a line and write a note for export later. (Then again, you could always screenshot.)
不过，用户不能标记精彩段落，也无法做笔记。在这方面，Oyster比不上iBooks和Kindle，后两者都有标记和笔记功能，而且之后还能导出相关内容。（不过，反正可以进行屏幕截图嘛。）
other readers -- will ever read a great number of books on a phone. I'd plunge into a novel that way only if it's one I'm dying to devour, and because of my affinity for brand new books, Oyster won't usually have the ones I want to read. But in a pinch, it's a lovely-looking option. For now, it exists only for iPhone, but an iPad version is coming in the fall and will boast, "even more personalized features," an Oyster spokesperson says.
要我看，我自己以及其他好些读者可能不会在手机上阅读大量书籍。就我而言，除非某部小说真是引人入胜，让人欲罢不能，否则我不会选择用手机来阅读。而且，由于我喜欢看最新的作品，所以Oyster上往往没有我想看的书。不过，在必要时，Oyster是个很不错的选择。目前，这款应用仅推出了iPhone版。不过iPad版即将于秋季推出，而且据该公司发言人称，iPad版将有“更多个性化的功能”。
Oyster is easily worth the reasonable $10 per month even if just for the ability to have books to read when you've got nothing on hand but your phone. But it still handles just one reading-related need: book supply on mobile. There are other needs that other apps and sites have attempted to handle, but remain unfulfilled. One: a review site or app that collects not just subjective, often-amateurish user reviews (the way Goodreads, a sort of Yelp for books, does, giving them an aggregate out of five stars) and not just high-level reviews from the Times and other critical outlets, but all reviews in a more binary, Rotten Tomatoes-style system (i.e. plain and simple, 78% of people liked this book). Another need: a reading app that makes it easier to jot a note or underline a passage and instantly save it somewhere other than inside that app. Another: a reading app that isn't just for books, or magazines, or one-off articles saved from the web, but all of the above.
有了Oyster，当你手头除了手机什么都没有的时候，也能有书可看。哪怕就冲这一点，它每月10美元的会员费也不算贵。不过，它还是只处理了一个与阅读相关的需求，即在手机上看书。还有别的与阅读相关的需求，已经有其他应用程序和网站试图来满足，但都未能成功。比如说：现在有书籍点评网站Goodreads。它的用户往往是非专业人士，网站通过聚合用户的主观评论，对书籍评定星级，最高为5星。但是，还没有点评类网站或应用能将这样的用户生成内容与来自《泰晤士报》（Times ）等重要媒体的高水平书评结合起来，建立一个电影及电子游戏评论网站烂番茄（Rotten Tomatoes）那样更为二元的体系（比如说，就直接给出“78%的人喜欢这本书”）。再比如说：还没有哪款阅读应用，能使用户在做笔记或标记某个段落后，能即时将相关内容导出并保存。还比如说：目前还没有哪款阅读应用，能兼顾书籍、杂志以及保存下来的网络文章的阅读。
What tech-savvy literary folks need, still -- and Oyster may or may not fill this gap eventually -- is an all-in-one app, available across all phones and tablets, that allows for reading of any materials -- books, poetry, comic books, magazines, articles you've flagged from the web -- with easy, seamless exporting of passages or notes, social sharing, and quick, do-you-recommend-it-or-not rating ability that would translate to a more useful database for anyone seeking their next free-reading choice. Think of it like a Facebook or Google focused squarely and solely on reading. All of it is doable already -- let's see how long it takes someone.
而精通技术的文艺青年们需要的则是这样一款一体化应用：它能用于所有手机和平板电脑，能阅读任何格式的内容，不论是书籍、诗歌、漫画、杂志，还是你从网上保存下来的文章，而且能轻松导出段落或笔记，在社交媒体上进行共享，并带有“你是否推荐该内容”的排名功能。Oyster最终不一定能填补这个市场空白。排名功能将形成一个更有用的数据库，为那些正在寻找自由阅读材料的人士提供参考。它更像是仅仅专注于阅读的Facebook或谷歌（Google）。所有这一切在技术上都已经可行，且看这样的产品什么时候才会出现吧。
