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I met François and Sabine from Minifizz last year in Brussels. They develop mobile games focused to meet the interest of young women/girls. Simple, smart, focused… I like that. They licensed their game portfolio allready to the USA and Japanese market.

But this post wants to focus on a new idea Fraçois developed this winter and that is worth the attention: bringing classic novels to the mobile phone.

There have been articles before on the use of novels on the cell phone and the reading on cell phones trend in Japan but François does it through the use of a technology called TXM: “TXM is located at the crossroads of our shared cultural heritage and the rewards of modern technology. Access to books (all books) has now become possible by using the one electronic device that we carry with us everywhere, all the time: our mobile phones. And that is quite revolutionary.”

I tried it and it works fine though I was quite sceptical when I first heard about. An easy interface lets you navigate through the chapters and pages, you may also adapt the fonts. You can use it “on the train, waiting for the subway, in the twilight of your bedroom or under that big maple tree in the countryside, devour new novels and the greatest classics.”

Many classic novels are allready available for immediate download on their website. With a simple click I can download a new book; it’s amazing how many classic novels you can store on a 16Mb memory card (!)

I think the idea is really great and it’s another way of keeping classic literature available for everybody on many media. I don’t see myself finishing the complete “1001 nights” on my mobile but I think it can work well for short stories and magazine articles.

Despite the marginal succes of eBooks and reading on PocketPC’s, much more people have acces to the mobile… I’m really curious to see how this idea is going to develop in the future.