Reads - Brendan

Typing on flat glass: examining ten-finger expert typing patterns on touch surfaces. Leah Findlater, Jacob O. Wobbrock, and Daniel Wigdor.
Typing on a virtual keyboard has been an issue for a while... the recommended changes for improving are interesting and seem to focus on mitigating the effects of losing tactile feedback. A large portion of the inaccuracy from typing on touch surfaces could probably be attributed to the inability of a user to return to the home row without visual tracking. It seems that the direction of keyboard development will be headed towards instead of the user keeping track of the keyboard, the computer should keep track of the user and adopt the virtual keyboard to the users hands. Simulating physical/holographic surfaces might also be helpful if it ever becomes possible.

Skim reading by satisficing: evidence from eye tracking. Geoffrey B. Duggan and Stephen J. Payne.
Truly. Skim reading is performed by everyone via electronic and print media. Personally, my preferred method of skim reading through a book is to flip through it backwards.

Usability benchmark study of commercially available smart phones: cell phone type platform, PDA type platform and PC type platform. Jeroen Keijzers, Elke den Ouden, and Yuan Lu.
It's a bit funny looking back at some of these older platforms. Not sure if it's true or not but it reminds me of some stuff suggesting consumers in the U.S. are usually affected more by pricing and tech specs than the manufacturer/OS compared to some Asia countries. I think the implication might have been that Asian countries had a higher exposure to phone/tablet devices and so were more likely to have developed stronger opinions from people they knew who owned the devices.

Gestural interfaces: a step backward in usability. Donald A. Norman and Jakob Nielsen
This article describes very well the largest issue facing phone/tablets. I used to cringe at the thought of a touchscreen pc mostly for this reason, fortunately things have developed so that these devices are actually somewhat useable.

Usability of iPad Apps and Websites. Nielsen Norman Group.
Definitely some good criticism of existing mobile apps. Kind of makes me wish there was an easy way of seeing all the possible gesture/touch interactions on a screen for some of these apps.