Scribd, a website to share and read documents and news stories, has launched a new App today, called Float. According to the company, it is designed to improve the mobile reading experience.
The app allows users to select various areas of interest and pick favourite websites to “follow” and stories gets delivered to users in a constantly updated feed.
You can then select stories to view or store in your “library” for later viewing. The app allows customisation of how page appears – changing the font size or choosing a sepia tone (newspaper) or a night reading mode with a black background – much like you can do on e-reading apps like Kindle and Nook. You can also link your Facebook, Twitter, and Scribd accounts to Float and easily share content with those sites.
This app basically reformats the hard to read full web pages which are difficult to read on smaller devices like smartphones. Float strips down those web pages and converts them on the fly to the Float format.
Scraping content like this tends to anger content owners, which is why Scribd has partnered with 150 websites including Allrecipes.com, The Associated Press, The Atlantic, Engadget, Entertainment Weekly, Fortune, HuffingtonPost, InStyle, People, Salon, Scientific American, TheStreet, TechCrunch, Time, Wired, and three CBS Interactive properties: CBSNews.com, CHOW, and CNET to display content in the new format.
The key features of the app includes ‘floating text’ that can move up and down like a Browser or left to right like a book; and the ‘reading list’ for offline reading.
It also includes a “library” that allows you to archive and organise all your reading by date, publisher, and title, and one-touch font magnification.
You can choose from a dozen customised reading styles including night time and sunlight reading. And also share back to Facebook, Twitter, Scribd, or e-mail in mere two clicks. Content Synchronisation to Float.com is also available. (Float.com is the site through which you can choose your content and modify your account).
The application is free for the users, but there will be advertisements later to generate revenue. You can download it from here. The Android and iPad versions of the app are going to be launched later this year.