Kurzweil Takes On Kindle With "Blio" E-Reader

kkleiner writes "Ray Kurzweil, prolific inventor and Singularity enthusiast, is planning to debut Blio at CES 2010. Blio is an e-reader platform, not hardware, that can be used on PC, Mac, iPhone and iPod touch. Developed by Kurzweil company knfb Reading, Blio preserves the original format of books including typography, and illustrations, in full color. It also takes advantage of knfb’s high quality text to speech capabilities and supports animation and video content."

Comments

Is this new?

[iamapizza]

There are already many other software based ereaders that exist, this one is just a bit more featured. Or am I being cynical again?

Re:Is this new?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are already many other software based ereaders that exist, this one is just a bit more featured. Or am I being cynical again?

No. It's called having lived through the dot.bomb times and all the over-hype regarding "new and innovative" products and "technologies".

Every few years, the figurative wheel is reinvented with a slight twist an is called a new technology, paradigm, etc, etc, etc. You wait, your grandchildren will come to you and say, "Grandpa, there's this new programming language that all you have to do is write once and it runs everywhere! I invested my life savings into it!"

Re:Is this new?

[happy_place]

You mean like the free Acrobat Reader? No wait, that supports only PDFs. Really the main advantage of this e-reader is that unlike Kindle, it uses a full sized monitor AND your computer, is NOT portable, and since it's plugged into your wall, will last as long as the power's on in your house, as opposed to that dreadful Kindle that lasts upwards of 10-15 days battery life (when wifi's turned off). So there!

Re:Is this new?

[rgravina]

"Grandpa, there's this new programming language that all you have to do is write once and it runs everywhere! I invested my life savings into it!"

I pictured Duke[1] in some futuristic space getup when I read this.

"Live long, and com.sun.java.salutations.IProsper" (using an interface, you can prosper in any way you see fit!).

[1] The mascot, not the game character.

Re:Is this new?

[ceoyoyo]

I don't really see that it has that many advantages over PDF. Translation? Do you really want to listen to/read a machine translated book?

Re:Is this new?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Note that Calibre seems to work just fine if you're insane enough to want an e-reader on your comp.

Re:Is this new?

[BrokenHalo]

It's called having lived through the dot.bomb times and all the over-hype regarding "new and innovative" products and "technologies".

There is also the issue of freedom (as in libre, not beer). Maybe I'm being more than usually unobservant this evening, but I have failed to pick up any reference to this software being OSS or available on other platforms (Linux, *BSD...). The Blio website appears to be just a placeholder. If the idea is just vapourware, it would be helpful if they just came out and admitted it.

Re:Is this new?

[maxume]

It's terrible. For all the format lock-in and 'do it our way' built into it, Microsoft Reader pretty much blows everything else I have tried out of the water (for reading on a PC).

The, as I call it 'do it our way' is probably responsible for most of what I like about it, of course, it is also probably responsible for most of what I don't like.

Re:Is this new?

[bcrowell]

You mean like the free Acrobat Reader? No wait, that supports only PDFs. Really the main advantage of this e-reader is that unlike Kindle, it uses a full sized monitor AND your computer [...]

TFA tries very hard to highlight the main advantage of Blio over Kindle. If you look at the very first screenshot in the article, it's a color illustration of a human skull from an anatomy textbook. This is an appplication that Kindle can't handle: illustrated textbooks. Kindle is black and white, has a page that's relatively small, doesn't usually (ever?) include illustrations, and doesn't have proper formatting for math.

I think the main advantage of Blio over PDF is this: "Like all e-readers, Blio will adopt some form of DRM and proprietary formatting [...]" Well, that's only an advantage in the publisher's eyes, but they do seem to see it as crucial.

I can also imagine certain categories of books where Blio could do something useful for the reader that can't be done as well by PDF. Consider a public-domain edition of Gray's Anatomy. You can get it here in html format. Now suppose you want to read it on the bus, without carrying a full-size laptop computer with you. If the Blio software is done well, it might adapt itself better to an e-book reader than html or pdf.

TFA says, "Kurzweil and knfb are working with Google to try to make their extensive catalog of printed materials available for Blio." Google is not in the same market as kindle. Amazon sells a relatively small number of recent, profitable books, each of which has to be formatted for the kindle. Google has a gigantic archive of old, public-domain books, none of which is a profitable item in and of itself, but which, aggregated, make something that google might be able to profit from. There is no way that google is going to bring out special e-book editions of all those books.

Re:Is this new?

[mforbes]

Wow did I read that wrong. At first glance, I thought you'd written "...as opposed to that dreadful Kindle that lasts upwards of 10-15 days battery life (when wife's turned off)."

Re:Is this new?

[_KiTA_]

You mean like the free Acrobat Reader? No wait, that supports only PDFs.

Really the main advantage of this e-reader is that unlike Kindle, it uses a full sized monitor AND your computer, is NOT portable, and since it's plugged into your wall, will last as long as the power's on in your house, as opposed to that dreadful Kindle that lasts upwards of 10-15 days battery life (when wifi's turned off). So there!

Yes, because this will never ever be ported, ever, and the existence of this eReader, pushing technology forward, will not influence the Kindle 3 and Nook 2's features in any way.

I think the new toy in this (and it's Kurzweil, he ALWAYS has a neat toy in his stuff) that we should be paying attention to is that it has actually good Text to Speech, and it on-the-fly translates to 16 different languages . While neither are particuarly NEW technologies they are technologies that are:

1. Ripe for maturing (machine translation is getting better and better every year, for example)
2. World-changing if they get perfected.

The world changing thing I want to explain -- Kurzweil has already done something similar -- the first OCR + Text to Speech commercial application was the Kurzweil Reading Machine, back in 1976. 30 years later, those tabletop sized prototypes are now... hidden inside pen sized scanners. It kinda pushed forward Assistive Technology quite a bit, for the time -- before then, the only choice Blind people had to read things was braille. Now, with the right gadgets, they can read anything.

When you add on the fly translation to the mix, things get... interesting. Manga fans, for example, won't have to wait for translations, just click, click, bam, instant translations. You'll be able to subscribe to a French Newspaper, get it in the morning, auto translated, ready to go. And finally the US military can finally feel safe and justified in firing all those gay Arabic translators, cause they can finally be replaced by robots.

Technologies such as Vocaloid (an artificial pop star software kit... thing) put forth another idea -- combining this with Speech to Text. Automatic, in line translation of diplomatic speeches, news programs, and (of course), anime and entertainment, anyone?

In short, while as a bookreader it's pretty good (and it is, it looks a lot better than the Nook or Kindle PC apps)... I'm more excited about the translation tech inside it.

Re:Is this new?

[geekoid]

no, and this is typical of Kurzweil's inventions.
the man hasn't done jack since the 70s except try to push vitamins and get people into his nerd religion.

He is a scam artists that happens to be scamming academia and science.

Re:Is this new?

[TheCouchPotatoFamine]

You are being completely cynical. The ideal book reader in my mind is an lcd and a stick of ram with two buttons, that costs much, much less then a mid-end calculator! come on, text memory is CHEAP. There a complete lack of ubiquity about our digital reading revolution. It's all highend do everything gadget that break when they get wet. Maybe the IronMan triathlon wristwatch company would like to give an ebook reader a go; i'd buy that for 39.00, no DRM (reads text) and is usb-FAT mountable. Make it glow and be waterproof to a hundred feet - all cheap - and THAT'S a nerds tool. Seeing kurzweil in this game just makes me really hope he brings some common sense

Re:Is this new?

[epine]

the man hasn't done jack since the 70s

If you lived in the seventies, you wouldn't take his accomplishments for granted. Back then inhaling a transistor could puncture a lung. He accomplished three times as much over a short period of time as most technologists accomplish in a lifetime. Then he went insane by any linear metric, but definitely not senile.

His own business maxim is that most technologies succeed, but are brought to market under the wrong conditions. Sometimes staying out of the market is the right thing to do. "Buffett says perhaps his best decisions over the past 18 months were the deals he decided not to do." [examiner.com]

In poker, after you amass a decent pile of chips, sometimes the right thing to do is sit out until you spot your main chance. Unfortunately, Kurzweil seems to be going head to head against the man with the sickle, on the vain hope that antioxidants will cover the blinds.

Even if Kurzweil is wrong, he'll still have been more right than most people. What irritates me with Kurzweil is how blithe he is about his extrapolations. Technology always goes up, because, uh, housing always goes up. He could use a refresher course in black swans. The singularity is a black hole orbited by black swans, but he doesn't see it.

I usually enjoy his lectures, but always feel at the end like I've just spent half an hour on a monorail with all the side windows painted black, as if the singularity is some Matrix-like demarcation at the far end of Potemkin Valley.

At the end of the day, what does Singularianism boil down to? Either he's right, or we'll wish he had been, when one of those meddling black swans body-checks us back to the stone age. What's the middle ground here? Our machines become smarter than we are, and nothing happens? Now that I would regard as a bold prediction.

Re:Is this new?

[zoewhite]

this is new programming language.

Computer versus Kindle

[jimbobborg]

My Brother-in-Law has a Kindle. The main reason he uses it is it's a lot easier to read text on the Kindle's LCD than on a computer LCD as there is no refresh rate on the Kindle. The screen refreshes only when you turn a page, which makes it easier on the eyes than a 60Hz computer LCD display.

Also, Blio on PC, Mac, iPhone and iPod touch, but no Linux? WTF?

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[Drethon]

Agreed, I can read the Kindle as easily as a real book but LCD displays bother me after a while if I'm just reading even though I work with them daily.

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[itsme1234]

You're thinking CRT, LCDs are in this respect very similar to e-ink, they change only when you need them to change (i.e. there's no refresh while showing static images). There is a flicker if the backlight is fluorescent (as opposed to the new LED backlight present in many new notebooks and netbooks) but you get the same flicker if you look at anything (event a book) under fluorescent light (which most people tolerate quite well).

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[vlm]

as there is no refresh rate on the Kindle.

Oh, theres a refresh "rate" alright, its about two seconds aka about zero point five Hz. That's why I specifically purchased a LCD based ebook reader.

I got to try a sony eink product, it was so slow, the first time I tried to change pages I had enough time to think it had crashed, or perhaps it was a static demo page that can't change, and the next couple times I switched pages I thought it was about to crash, memory leak slowing it to a crawl or the battery was nearly dead or something. I intellectually knew the UI was horribly slow, but I hadn't internalized it as possibly being the slowest UI I'd ever used.

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[Kapsar]

The Kindle's not really an LCD in the technical meaning. It doesn't have a back light which makes it much easier to read. There's no eye strain and it's very similar to reading a book.

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[Ephemeriis]

My Brother-in-Law has a Kindle. The main reason he uses it is it's a lot easier to read text on the Kindle's LCD than on a computer LCD as there is no refresh rate on the Kindle. The screen refreshes only when you turn a page, which makes it easier on the eyes than a 60Hz computer LCD display.

Also, Blio on PC, Mac, iPhone and iPod touch, but no Linux? WTF?

I've been reading ebooks for years now...

Originally on a Handspring Visor, then on a Palm m505, then on my desktop and laptop using various ereader programs, then on a Dell mini 9... I've used LCDs and CRTs both.

I just recently picked up a nook and I have to say it is the easiest screen to read on so far. Much easier on the eyes.

I can read for hours and hours with no more eyestrain than if I was reading a paper book. The e-ink display is definitely superior to any CRT or LCD I've ever read for long periods of time. My only complaint is that there's no backlight or anything... It would have been nice if they'd embedded a little LED somewhere on the thing, so I could read in low-light conditions easier.

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[Anonymous Coward]

My only complaint is that there's no backlight or anything... It would have been nice if they'd embedded a little LED somewhere on the thing, so I could read in low-light conditions easier.

Due to the way e-ink works, you can't have a backlight. It can only be frontlit (or sidelit, which is a frontlight sitting one layer above the screen but below the glass/plastic substrate).

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[jgtg32a]

E-Ink is still a helluva lot easier on the eyes than an LCD

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[Nyeerrmm]

That refresh rate is why its really only used on ebook readers, where the primary action is turning a page, which takes a second or two on a paper book as well. As far as for the UI for selecting and downloading books, etc., I haven't used the Sony reader, but the Kindle 1 and the Nook both have a pretty decent workaround - using a smaller, faster display to do the active portions of the UI. On the nook, its that little LCD touchscreen on the bottom, while on the Kindle 1, there is a 2x40(ish) silver strip with large pixels that has a good response rate. While certainly not good for a general purpose tablet, I think these systems work extremely well for the e-book task, and the engineers have gone out of their way to mitigate the obvious limitations of the technology.

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[Bigjeff5]

God, you must have the worst case of ADD in history. Do you turn pages in a book and have enough time to think maybe your arm is broken because it took so long? Because that's about how long it takes, a normal page turn.

Even the old ones (I have a prs-500) only take a half second to turn the page, unless you are doing something funky like custom fonts and stuff like that. If yours was taking longer than that then you were probably using an oddly formatted book, or perhaps a pdf and the particular model you were using wasn't so great at them. The new ones I know are faster, I've seen them. In any case I've read a half dozen books on mine and never thought it was outrageously slow. Slower than an LCD, yes, but it's not an LCD, and it looks a hundred times better for print than an LCD.

For heaven's sake it's made to replace a book, you're not supposed to be spending much time on the book selection page, or digging around in the options, you're supposed to be reading a friggin book!

Dumbass.

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[Cro Magnon]

I don't know about the sony product, but the Kindle was adequate. Obviously, it's far too slow for internet browsing, but good enough for turning static pages.

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[sznupi]

...
I just recently picked up a nook and I have to say it is the easiest screen to read on so far. Much easier on the eyes.

I can read for hours and hours with no more eyestrain than if I was reading a paper book. The e-ink display is definitely superior to any CRT or LCD I've ever read for long periods of time. My only complaint is that there's no backlight or anything... It would have been nice if they'd embedded a little LED somewhere on the thing, so I could read in low-light conditions easier.

One of the reasons it's so easy on the eyes is specifically because it doesn't have a backlight. Our eyes get tired less if there's not much brightness differences in the environment.

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[Bigjeff5]

Most TFT LCDs in portable devices and computer monitors do need a continuous refresh. You're thinking of LCDs in calculators and crap, which don't. LCD refresh is normally around 60hz.

The bigger problem is the flourescent light in most LCDs though, because that certainly does cause eyestrain. Haven't you ever had to go through an office ergonomics whatchamajigger? They tell you to look at your monitor no more than 10 minutes at a time to reduce eye strain. Looking at an LCD for too long without breaks causes headaches. It's no bueno.

So much for reading a book, eh?

This Blio e-reader isn't taking on the Kindle, it's taking on Adobe Digital Editions. The Blio is targeting an entirely different market, namely people who have not yet known the joy of a good ebook reader, or for some reason don't like them.

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[Bigjeff5]

It's not an LCD technically or figuratively, or any other way you could mean it. Liquid Chrystal Displays require Liquid Chrystals, e-ink has none. That makes a big difference because LCDs require light to pass through them to illuminate them, where e-ink interchanges dots of pigment, which reflect light - no backlight required.

That is what gives e-ink a contrast almost identical to the printed word, using nothing but reflected light.

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[Profane MuthaFucka]

You know, when you turn a page in a book, you get the same kind of thing. A fraction of a second when you're not looking at any particular page. The brain starts to overlook that and you don't even notice it.

And my Kindle redraws the screen faster than I can turn a page.

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[Anonymous Coward]

You can also adapt...the page turn time is usually consistent, so you can just learn to press the button when you are nearing the end of the page.

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[Anonymous Coward]

When Kindle first came out, I thought it would be useless since I had a netbook that I could load PDF's to. However, the Kindle display is much better than any LCD screen used on laptops and netbooks today. Try using a laptop or netbook outdoors and you will see what I mean, whereas the Kindle looks great when reading outdoors.

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[Ephemeriis]

One of the reasons it's so easy on the eyes is specifically because it doesn't have a backlight. Our eyes get tired less if there's not much brightness differences in the environment.

I understand this... But it is very hard to read in the dark. Which is why there are so many book lights available out there.

I'm not suggesting that the entire display should be back-lit 24/7... But it would be nice if it had some kind of integrated book light so I didn't have to turn on a bedside lamp in order to read at night.

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[MaskedSlacker]

Not nearly as much so as compared to CRT. The only issue with an LED-backlit LCD is eye fatigue from the brightness. This is why God (my pet name for whichever programmer actually first thought of this) came up with a color inversion setting in X-server (and I'm sure Mac and even Windows can do it too.) Voila, black background with glowing text. Still not quite as easy as e-ink, but close.

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[bkr1_2k]

Turn down the brightness of your monitor. I do believe the e-ink will still be less irritating/straining to the eyes, but not having your monitor ridiculously bright makes a huge difference and people seem to forget they can control it.

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, Snap!

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[sznupi]

Bedside lamp is better though. It has a huge bonus of lighting the area much more uniformly, hence helping to ease this eye-strain that was mentioned by us previously.

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[Ephemeriis]

Bedside lamp is better though.

Tell that to my wife.

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[jgtg32a]

Already cranked all the way down

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[shutdown -p now]

Also, Blio on PC, Mac, iPhone and iPod touch, but no Linux? WTF?

All you need from a good and fast e-book reader on Windows and Linux is FBReader, anyway. Open source, lightning fast, lightweight UI - what else do you want?

Combine with large-point FreeSerif on high-DPI screens to get nice "PDF-like" font smoothing, and you're all set.

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[Dog-Cow]

It takes you a second to turn a page? How big are the books you read?

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[Unequivocal]

The Nook had a software bug for a while that caused page turns to take 3 seconds. This was long enough to be annoying. I went back to check it out in late December and the delay was down to about 1/2 sec and totally reasonable. Maybe that's what the GP is just out of date on that point?

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[Anonymous Coward]

Where can I find this color inversion setting? That sounds amazing...

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[Anonymous Coward]

let me google that for you
its a compiz feature super (windows key) m or n

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[LandGator]

Ditto. I bought my first e-book from Baen.com in 1998 to read on a Palm VII (monochrome); since then, I've used a VIIx, i705, T3, T5, TX, Nokia 9300, 9300i and E90 smartphones, plus about a dozen laptops with Win 2K-XP-Vista-7 and Ubuntu Hardy-Intrepid-Jaunty-Karmic. Baen made it easy with the Baen Free Library; the first six dozen e-books, are free, little boy (he he he).

Maybeso a Nook be better, but I *always* have my smartphone with me, and spending $500 on a reader equates to buying 105 e-books.

Plus, e-books have probably saved me from scoliosis, as I no longer have to carry a dead tree book in my hip pocket to have something to read wherever I am.

And, what is this DRM of which you speak? Baen doesn't cripple its e-books, and every time I change platforms, I can redownload my e-library in the new format. For free.

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[epine]

Our eyes get tired less if there's not much brightness differences in the environment.

This must be why I keep a small halogen lamp on my desk. When the lamp is turned on (even during the daylight hours) I rarely get eye strain.

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[Angostura]

On a Mac it is ctrl-alt-cmd-8 by default.

Re:Computer versus Kindle

[Ephemeriis]

I have yet to actually purchase anything from Baen, but I love their free library. I've been grabbing stuff off there for years. They offer their books in .EPUB format, which works great on my nook, so I'm thrilled.

As far as DRM goes... I really haven't purchased a whole lot of ebooks. Most of mine have been free. Either from the Baen Free Library, or Manybooks, or Project Gutenberg, or Google Books... And Barnes & Noble has a selection of free ebooks on their site.

Great Idea shame it will fail though

[RotateLeftByte]

Why fail?
  As is runs on a conventional PC the DRM will be hacks in hours if not days s othe publishers will pull their titles.
Then the patent tolls will fire up their pencils and sue this into oblivion. There are patents on reading a text already. I'm sure that every toll and their dogs will be out in force to get a bit of their action on this.

Sorry for being so negative but I feel sure that there are just too many vested interests to let this succeed.

Re:Great Idea shame it will fail though

[maxume]

The Kindle DRM scheme has been broken for months. Publishers don't seem to care (much).

Re:Great Idea shame it will fail though

[Quarters]

This would only be pertinent if the vast majority of consumers would be even the least bit interested in knowing how to pirate ebooks. The breaking of the DVD encryption has neither stopped studios from releasing DVDs nor consumers from buying them. Music labels still release albums on iTunes even though it is trivial to get around the DRM on that system, etc.., etc... It's dangerous to make general predictions about the death of a given platform or tech based on piracy. The people that know how to perform the piracy and/or are remotely interested in learning how to do it make up an insignificantly small percentage of the people who will actually own and use that technology.

Re:Great Idea shame it will fail though

[m.ducharme]

Music labels still release albums on iTunes even though there is no longer any DRM on that system, etc.., etc...

FTFY

Re:Great Idea shame it will fail though

[AmigaHeretic]

>>There are patents on reading a text already.

This sounds so odd. A patent for reading text on a COMPUTER of all things.

Odd but surely true.

Re:Great Idea shame it will fail though

[RotateLeftByte]

I should have added the two words 'out loud'

There is a patent on reading text out loud using a Cmputer or other similar electronic device.
If adopeted here in the UK then bang goes the Talking books for the blind. The'd never be able to pay the extorsionate license fees.

PDF reader?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, the invented a PDF reader?

One standard

[Enderandrew]

There are 50 million e-book formats and standards. What appeals to me about Kindle or Nook is that it is backed by a huge retailer. I feel fairly confident that if I buy a book from them, I can access it in the future. I know they will have a huge library of titles in their format. I feel strongly that they stand a chance to become the dominant standard. Kindle is opening themselves up to other devices and resellers. My wife has been buying books via the Kindle app on her iPhone.

Would I prefer a nice open standard with no DRM? Certainly. Will retailers ever support that? No.

Re:One standard

[cain]

I feel fairly confident that if I buy a book from them, I can access it in the future.

Don't be too sure about that. In a supremely ironic move, Amazon recently deleted Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm from Kindles even though the books had been legally purchased. It's as if Amazon walked into your house and took books from your shelves, leaving a few bucks in their place. Being backed by a huge retailer makes me less confident that I'll be able t read the ebooks I purchase in the future.

Re:One standard

[vlm]

What appeals to me about Kindle or Nook is that it is backed by a huge retailer. I feel fairly confident that if I buy a book from them, I can access it in the future. I know they will have a huge library of titles in their format. I feel strongly that they stand a chance to become the dominant standard.

Sounds exactly like Circuit City's DIVX disks.... How'd that work out?

Re:One standard

[Colonel Korn]

I feel fairly confident that if I buy a book from them, I can access it in the future.

Don't be too sure about that. In a supremely ironic move, Amazon recently deleted Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm from Kindles even though the books had been legally purchased. It's as if Amazon walked into your house and took books from your shelves, leaving a few bucks in their place. Being backed by a huge retailer makes me less confident that I'll be able t read the ebooks I purchase in the future.

Thanks to the public outcry, they then apologized, gave them back, and promised never to do so again.

Re:One standard

[Enderandrew]

Amazon refunded the purchase, and they were forced to do so because they didn't have the right to legally sell it in the first place.

I've seen a few small sellers basically disappear. They shut off their DRM servers and you are left with nothing.

Again, I'd prefer an open standard with no DRM. But Kindle is probably the best we're going to get.

Re:One standard

[Enderandrew]

Divx was always a rental if I recall. You didn't have to worry about them sticking around, because you only had the rights to watch the disc once. Divx was designed to be a fairly disposable format.

Re:One standard

[clickety6]

Or Walmart's DRM encumbered mp3 files for which they switched off their verification servers.

If it's stuck with DRM, them you haven't bought anything - you've just paid to borrow it for a while, at their convenience...

Re:One standard

[jedidiah]

It's BOOKS. The only format you ultimately need to support is ASCII. Perhaps you need to support something a little more fancy like PDF.

Whether or not a jerk like Ellison will buy into the format is entirely separate from how dominant Amazon is.

Really. The first question to ask is "what will it do with my ancient copy of the Gutenberg Project"? Then ask "what will it do with these corporate docs in RTF and PDF?". Then go from there? How will it handle the Baen electronic library?

Re:One standard

[BrokenHalo]

Bear in mind that both of the titles you mentioned are freely available under the auspices of the Australian arm of Project Gutenberg. Not all countries insist on copyright under the same terms as the UK or US, and (for once) Australia is one of the good guys in this regard.

Re:One standard

[mrnobo1024]

And maybe the current owners of Amazon.com will keep that promise - maybe they won't ever do it again. But think ahead 10 years or, so by which time the company will probably have been bought by the Chinese. Do you really think the new owners will feel the same way, especially when their government says "Ban this list of books and delete all existing digital copies, or be executed"?

Re:One standard

[MtHuurne]

They promised to never do it again, except in certain situations. This includes "judicial orders", so this means that if a government outlaws a book, they can not only prohibit future sales, but also make existing copies disappear. It also means that a copyright conflict could still cause a book to be removed, but only after a judge orders it.

Re:One standard

[HAKdragon]

Or Walmart's DRM encumbered mp3 files for which they switched off their verification servers.

Unless there has been an update since October of 2008, they changed their minds...

Re:One standard

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Would I prefer a nice open standard with no DRM? Certainly. Will retailers ever support that? No.

Until Google gets into the eReader business of course....well, then we will at least get a pseudo-open standard...or something.

Re:One standard

[Bigjeff5]

That's why I never ever recommend the Kindle. They have far too much control over your legitimately purchased books, and you can never move them as far as I know.

That's why I like ePub, which is gaining ground fast. And it is much easier for publishers to use Adobe's tools for ePub books than the Kindle, so a lot of them are publishing in ePub, and then converting to Kindle.

Yes it has DRM, but it treats e-books as books and is only really there to try to make an ebook about as hard to copy as a normal book. It has provisions built in for lending and sharing and such. It even lets libraries in on the act, it's great, the most sensible format I've come accross so far.

Plus Adobe has a free reader for your PC if you really want to read the books that way.

Re:One standard

[Enderandrew]

As someone else posted, they ended up keeing the DRM servers online.

If the retailer stays in business, and shuts the DRM servers down, they are legally required to refund your purchase, which means you got an extended rental for free.

Again, I prefer a DRM-free model. But I'm not all that worried about losing purchases via Amazon. They're one of the few companies in this country that just continue to grow, despite the recession.

Re:One standard

[Bigjeff5]

Again, I'd prefer an open standard with no DRM. But Kindle is probably the best we're going to get.

ePub, it's an open standard with optional DRM (it's up to the publisher), but even the DRM is sane and not all that restrictive. Sony uses it now exclusively, and B&N will sell it to you as an option (they have their own proprietary format similar to Kindle's as well). Plus there are a dozen more online retailers who sell ePub, and Project Gutenberg has converted everything to ePub.

I really hope it grows quickly enough to stomp out the Kindle's proprietary bull, but Amazon is a giant in this young business, so who knows.

Re:One standard

[Bigjeff5]

I wonder how that would work out in court. They would obviously sue in the US, since they'd have no case in Australia, and of course they wouldn't sue for a single book, but if you download a copy of a book in Australia yet actually recieve it in America, have you broken American copyright law?

Tricky tricky.

Re:One standard

[bkr1_2k]

Promises are easily broken. They shouldn't have been able to do it in the first place, and that still doesn't help support the argument that they won't change their format in the future to something no longer compatible.

Re:One standard

[Bigjeff5]

ASCII isn't that great for ebooks. You need a format that will get you closer to the functionality of a book, with things like TOC that links to sections of the book, page jumping within the book, etc.

Also having a few standard publishing formats and the ability to use images is a big need.

That's why I like ePub, it's based on an open standard and while it has optional DRM, it isn't controlled by any one company the way Kindle's DRM is. Project Gutenberg does ePub, even, and all of Google's PD books are available in ePub via the Sony store for free.

You could almost think of ePub as a super-advanced ASCII for books.

Re:One standard

[Bigjeff5]

Google is already in the ebook business, teaming up with Sony to produce their public domain books in ePub format - which happens to be an open standard that is quickly becoming the most popular format outside of Amazon's proprietary format for the Kindle.

Re:One standard

[hey!]

The whole ASCII only thing was one of the most brain dead decisions the Gutenberg ever made.

Many books go through the ASCII lobotomy relatively unscathed, of course, but there's lots of things ASCII just can't do. That's not just peripheral things like italics, boldface or underline. I'm talking about things you absolutely need to represent what is being said. It's foreign scripts like Greek. It's mathematical symbols -- no classic math books for Gutenberg. It's currency symbols other than '$'. It's common typographic symbols that didn't make the cut back in 1963 when they only had 128 code points and the main concern was driving low res dot matrix printers writing on 14" greenbar.

Basically Michael Hart conflated "non-ASCII" with proprietary document formats like WordPerfect. ASCII is literally incapable of representing the *information* in a wide variety of books without the adoption of some kind of ad hoc encoding scheme. That's in fact what a lot of Gutenberg texts do, which means they're somewhat unintelligible, which is the exact opposite of the policy's intent.

To be fair, PG came almost twenty years before Unicode. But the only reasonable solution would be to specify a simple file format that would have the following properties:

(1) If printed as 7 bit ASCII, most texts would be intelligible.

(2) Has a standard extension mechanism for specifying symbols, the way XML has character entities.

(3) Has standard representations for common typographic effects like boldface or document structure like footnotes.

It's not that hard to do, you just can't have 100% of everything. Maximizing the prettiness of ASCII printouts is not consistent with maximizing the intelligibility of documents. So you make the documents as intelligible as possible, and then as pretty as possible consistent with that.

Restructured Text does a pretty good job of representing a number of document structures and markup features found in HTML, while retaining a plain text representation that looks like what it means.

Um, that's great and all...

[Phroggy]

...but the Kindle is a hardware platform. It's the hardware that makes it compelling, not the software. If you don't care about the hardware, and are only interested in the content, then all you're really looking for is an alternative to Amazon's e-book store - not an alternative to the Kindle.

In fact, hold

Re:Um, that's great and all...

[drinkypoo]

In fact, hold

Nice, I see what you did there.

I scrolled through TFA (really) and discovered the magical chart where the Blio e-Book reader software (oh, sorry, it's a "platform") is compared to various e-Book reader solutions... but not Adobe Reader, which otherwise pretty much has all the features of Blio, and then a whole lot more. I imagine it's a major PITA to generate it well, but Reader files have long been able to have information about the flow of the document which permits intelligent reflow for small displays, and it goes more or less without saying that as a Postscript derivative it features fairly detailed information on document layout and typography.

Re:Um, that's great and all...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bezos came out recently and said that the long term strategy is to decouple the kindle format and the kindle reader so that other readers can read kindle formatted books and the kindle reader isn't bound exclusively to the kindle format books.

Re:Um, that's great and all...

[Just Some Guy]

...but the Kindle is a hardware platform.

...except when it's not.

Re:Um, that's great and all...

[Trepidity]

Kurzweil's already uploaded himself to a computer, so from his perspective, software is all you need!

PDF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations, you've invented Portable Document Format.

Re:PDF?

[Neil Hodges]

Yes, or even full Postscript.

Re:PDF?

[shutdown -p now]

PDF sucks for e-books - it cannot be properly scaled to different screen sizes, as it doesn't reflow.

The de-facto established standard for e-books is now ePub, and it is reflowable, and has the proper metadata store with fields typically used for books.

Re:PDF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem with automatic reflow-ability is widows and orphans, that book editors could and do remove from their paper (or pdf) works. Automating that is kinda tricky, and doesn't always work. The point of the "e-reader" is that the pages you get are identical to the print version---If you want reflow, then why not just have all books be in HTML, and have eReader just have a web-browser? (or how about html.gz if space is an issue?).

Re:PDF?

[shutdown -p now]

Problem with automatic reflow-ability is widows and orphans, that book editors could and do remove from their paper (or pdf) works.

It seems to be trivial to write a layout algorithm that avoids having too few lines on a single page. I'm not sure, but I suspect TeX would have some already, so it could be just readily ported. I know that many PC e-book readers use TeX algorithms, too, and at least one hardware device (LBook).

In any case, if an automated solution does it right in 99% cases, I can live with the remaining 1%. It is a very minor inconvenience when compared to the ability to change font face and size at will, rather than being stuck with whatever the publisher liked most. Font size in particular is a huge issue for people with less than perfect eyesight.

he point of the "e-reader" is that the pages you get are identical to the print version

Where did you get that idea? No e-book reader that I've seen, neither a dedicated hardware device nor a software reader, has this as a design goal. Given that the screen has dimensions rather different from a typical book, and also given that font size has to be larger to be legible (since resolution is currently limited to ~170 DPI with eInk screens), any fixed-layout books would have to be specially produced for those readers, different versions for different screen sizes.

If you want reflow, then why not just have all books be in HTML, and have eReader just have a web-browser? (or how about html.gz if space is an issue?).

.html.gz isn't enough, as you also want to be able to package images with the book.

That said, EPUB effectively is a .zip file with book in XHTML 1.1 Strict + CSS 2.0 (or rather, a well-defined subset thereof, since you don't need it all for a book). The package also contains a separate XML file with its own schema for book metadata, and table of contents - the latter in particular is so that every reader can represent it in the way most convenient and accessible given its presentation constraints (screen size etc) - rather than just a bunch of nested lists with links.

Re:PDF?

[Jesus_666]

Except that this "Blio" format touts as its big advantage that the pages look exactly like in the real book. You can't reliably do that with reflowing. So yes, this new format sounds exactly like PDF or PostScript.

Re:PDF?

[shutdown -p now]

Except that this "Blio" format touts as its big advantage that the pages look exactly like in the real book.

TFA is very light on details, and the official site isn't even there, but I don't see any actually mentions of a new, distinct, "Blio forma"t there - it actually sounds a lot like it's just going to use PDF, from a few choice quotes that actually mention any format by name:

You can even synchronize a PDF with an audio book to get read-along highlighting ... Kurzweil and knfb are working with Google to try to make their extensive catalog of printed materials available for Blio. They are also aiming to have major publishers port their books into PDF for free.

Then there's this in Wired article on the thing:

“We can take a PDF and an audio book and merge the two to get a combination such that you can hear the audio book and see the words highlighted on the PDF at the same time,”

So basically sounsd like a container (.zip?) holding .pdf + .mp3/.ogg/whatever.

Or am I missing something?

In any case, if they are really set on a fixed layout, that's yet another nail in the coffin. They say they want to put it on the (permanently) upcoming net-tablets - the Apple one, a likely bunch of Android devices, etc - and I do not expect those to all have the same screen resolution, to begin with. Furthermore, in practice, there are also heaps of netbooks that people already own and will want to use with that; again, a wide range of different screen sizes and resolutions there, distinct from tablets.

And in general:

big advantage that the pages look exactly like in the real book

Why is that even an advantage? I can understand wanting the pages to have the same quality as a printed book (as in typography), but that's a different matter altogether. And...

You can't reliably do that with reflowing.

TeX does get pretty close, doesn't it? I mean, I can take some LaTeX source, poke around with page size, and typically get a reflowed document of about the same quality. So maybe it does get 1% of things slightly wrong - will anyone except a typography expert actually notice? And even if they will, will they be bothered by it?

I suspect this will end in the same way as the CD vs tape/vinyl discussion: to hell with fidelity in minute detail, convenience always wins for the casual user.

Re:PDF?

[Jesus_666]

We are actually in full accord on this. I also don't think that "looks exactly like a book" is much of a feature but hey, it happens to be the one they tout. To them it appears to be pretty important. Maybe they will convince the market that they're right, most likely they won't.

Re:PDF?

[Painted]

All I can say is that ePub is awful for anything you don't* want to reflow, such as tables, charts, anything with more than a simple inline image, etc.

I work for a publisher, and we have about 400 titles that we're looking at converting to some sort of electronic book. Only 50% of our catalog is really reproducible in anything readable when converted to ePub (ie, things that are mostly text, novels, short stories and the like). The rest becomes an garbled mess when we try to convert to ePub.

I find it odd that so many people on /. seem to think ePub is the be-all end-all of electronic publishing; I know I would much, much rather have a screen the size of a book, displaying text and images as if they were in a book, instead of a microscopic cell-phone screen sized paragraph or two at a time. There's a reason most books are not 1.5" x 3" (which is a generous cell phone screen).

Re:PDF?

[shutdown -p now]

I find it odd that so many people on /. seem to think ePub is the be-all end-all of electronic publishing; I know I would much, much rather have a screen the size of a book, displaying text and images as if they were in a book, instead of a microscopic cell-phone screen sized paragraph or two at a time. There's a reason most books are not 1.5" x 3" (which is a generous cell phone screen).

I don't understand what "microscopic screens" even have to do with it. I don't read from my cellphone precisely for the reasons you describe. I mostly use a dedicated eInk reader (PRS-505, though I also have an older LBook as a backup), and very occasionally also my netbook.

The problem is that there is no single standard on screen sizes for those things, nor can there be a reasonable one. Even eInk readers come in different sizes and resolutions. Consequently, following the fixed-layout model, it would require a separately formatted book for every device. Knowing how this works in real life, I'm sure that publishers (including, I suppose, the one you work for) would be more than glad to provide them - each sold separately for full price, or a bundle with "great discount". But I don't want that kind of bullshit. I want to just buy a book, and read it on all devices that I own.

I also don't understand the issue with "garbled mess". We have been "publishing" heavily illustrated material with numerous tables and figures on the Web for years, and it reflows just fine without becoming unreadable. And quality is perfectly fine for me, and, I suspect, vast majority of people out there. We don't really need some uber-fine typography with great attention to details; it's fine when it's there, but it is a very minor issue when it's not, to be honest, and if choosing between it and convenience, convenience wins all the time.

To put it bluntly, if a e-book reader would just use any existing browser engine to render XHTML extracted from ePub on its screen - with all the relatively primitive kerning, line-breaking, paragraph-breaking etc algorithms that uses - it is still good enough.

I suspect that typography aficionados will complain loudly about it, though, just as some people were complaining about how "CD killed music".

Not new

[Shikaku]

Miss Blio wants to give you your future. Call me now for a free reading!

UTTERLY PATHETIC

[tjstork]

Famous self promoting futurist has plunged deep into his well of creativity to give us a Kindle Clone.

Re:UTTERLY PATHETIC

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you on about? He's not making a device, it's software you fool. Durrr.

Re:UTTERLY PATHETIC

[Homburg]

At least this time his "invention" is a clone of a fairly useful idea, the PDF, rather than being a clone of a deeply moronic idea like the singularity.

Re:UTTERLY PATHETIC

[John Whitley]

Blio is not a Kindle and that's the point. It's not tied to particular hardware, and as such is intended to work on a wide variety of platforms, including slate devices. And unlike Kindle and many other ebook formats, Blio has color, support for proper typography and layout, and more. Personally, I see the Kindle and many current competitors as devices that are like the pre-original-iPod MP3 players. Player UI often *sucked* for navigating even a tiny library of music, but hey, they were still kinda neat, right?

Whether Blio is "it" or not is irrelevant -- Kurzweil's idea is spot on, in that the current generation devices restrict the use of much of what we've learned over the centuries about how to present text and information.

Re:UTTERLY PATHETIC

[geekoid]

Except we already have it. His idea is nothing but a way to prop up his current scams against academia.

Re:UTTERLY PATHETIC

[dargaud]

Blio has color, support for proper typography and layout

OK, for the color, but it remains to be seen if a colored text stays readable on a passive screen with only 4 or 8 grey levels. As for the typography, DO NOT WANT ! When you read text on a small screen you want it to use the ONE optimized font that is most readable on that screen, not some heavily aliased serif font that looks completely out of focus (my pet peeve my OSX when it came out a decade ago). As for layout support, only if it can be reflowed easily. I hate PDFs for this very reason: if your screen is narrower than the pdf, you end up moving left and right on each line you read; very convenient, heh ?

All that is is a reinvention of the dreaded PDF. This is just one more half-baked idea from a futurist who's still way short of a full bakery. I still remember in the 80s when he was predicting that everything would be voice operated in the near future. Hasn't improved since.

Does Kurzweil get the idea of an e-Reader?

[oscarwumpus]

For a guy that is supposed to be a step ahead tech-wise, apparently he doesn't understand that people want a portable device that is easy to read. A laptop/ iPhone/ iPod is not an easy-to-read from device* so creating a reader for those devices doesn't really get rid of the initial problem of having to use those devices. Who reads a book on an iPod or phone?! Seriously? Do you carry around one of those magnifying screens from "Brazil"? *laptop...well, the problem is the back lighting and eye fatigue, not the screen size, necessarily.

Re:Does Kurzweil get the idea of an e-Reader?

[Halo1]

Who reads a book on an iPod or phone?! Seriously?

I do (iPod Touch). Initially mainly from Baen/Webscription.net, nowadays also a lot from Project Gutenberg. It's mainly a lot easier to carry around than library books. I basically stopped going to the public library since I started reading this way.

Do you carry around one of those magnifying screens from "Brazil"?

Actually, it works surprisingly well for me (I'm 30). A colleague of mine, who's in his early fifties, can't read the text without scaling it to the point where you have so little text on a screen that it becomes useless though.

Re:Does Kurzweil get the idea of an e-Reader?

[YourExperiment]

Horses for courses, my friend. Complain all you like about the size of a smartphone or the screen quality of a laptop, but I'm not going to carry around a dedicated piece of hardware just to read books on. I already have a smartphone that does the job almost as well right here in my pocket, and that's good enough for me.

Re:Does Kurzweil get the idea of an e-Reader?

[Fizzol]

I do carry around a dedicated e-reader. It is far superior to any phone or netbook for ease and comfort of reading. So, while a smartphone might be good enough for you it definitely isn't for me or a lot of other people.

Re:Does Kurzweil get the idea of an e-Reader?

[FlyingBishop]

Do you get the idea of software? It has nothing to do with the hardware. Kurzweil is thinking ahead, and not locking his books into a format that will be obsolete when full-sized tablets become economically viable. He's several steps ahead, designing software for a couple generations down the road.

Of course, incidentally it will work just fine on your current iMac or whatnot.

Re:Does Kurzweil get the idea of an e-Reader?

[YourExperiment]

As I said, horses for courses, my friend. I am not disagreeing with you.

Your e-reader may well be far superior for readability. My smartphone is far superior for being in my pocket at all times. I don't carry a bag around with me all day, I have nowhere to put an e-reader, so having access to read books on my phone is 100% better for me than having no books to read at all.

Re:Does Kurzweil get the idea of an e-Reader?

[oscarwumpus]

I stand corrected, then. I tried reading books on a Palm device (and later my Samsung phone) a few years ago, but I found that more annoying than reading on my computer so I gave the idea the heave-ho: I really dislike reading with the back lighting, especially after working on a computer all day: it makes my eyes water and feel tired. As such the Kindle/Nook/etc are of great interest to me.

Re:Does Kurzweil get the idea of an e-Reader?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Who reads a book on an iPod or phone?!"

Presumably the software also runs on future smartbooks that may well have some sort of dual-mode swivel screen (which makes them useful as an e-reader).

Re:Does Kurzweil get the idea of an e-Reader?

[sznupi]

Oh my, the times are changing too fast for me, it seems. I can easily carry in my bag at least one piece of hardware for reading text. In the form of analogue book.

And I've heard those e-book readers are actually smaller. And can hold much more than one volume.

Re:Does Kurzweil get the idea of an e-Reader?

[C10H14N2]

Who reads a book on an iPod or phone?! Seriously?

Me. Daily.

Do you carry around one of those magnifying screens from "Brazil"?

No. Stanza and Kindle for iPhone have a variable font-size that is perfectly sufficient to approximate or best that of an average paperback.

Re:Does Kurzweil get the idea of an e-Reader?

[YourExperiment]

And my phone is even smaller, and contains even more volumes! It's miraculous really.

Re:Does Kurzweil get the idea of an e-Reader?

[oscarwumpus]

I suppose I'll just wait for the full color, multi-media playing e-paper device that is surely to follow, then. And only at that point will I say that Kurzweil "took on" the Kindle. Until such time, I will read my books the old fashioned way: via pictographs on a cave wall by firelight.

Re:Does Kurzweil get the idea of an e-Reader?

[pilgrim23]

I recall reading Mark Twain's A Tramp Abroad on a Newton. To this day a Kindle is the only machine with a screen the size of a Newton (which is portable) but lacks one feature. a green back light. I STILL occasionally use my Newton 2000 to read books and many Pub Domain books are still available in Newton package format. Of course I also read...books.. you know paper, has a cover. fits easy int he lap...

Re:Does Kurzweil get the idea of an e-Reader?

[Princeofcups]

or phone?! Seriously? Do you carry around one of those magnifying screens from "Brazil"?

Box meet the outside. The text can be any size. There is no reason that the iPod screen has to display a whole "page" as we know it in print with a tiny font. About a paragraph at a time would be about right with nice big letters, easy to read.

Re:Does Kurzweil get the idea of an e-Reader?

[MaskedSlacker]

He isn't a step ahead, he just makes a lot of self-serving noise and stupid/bored reporters report it. Kurzweil is a snake oil salesman for the 21st century. Nothing to see here.

Re:Does Kurzweil get the idea of an e-Reader?

[ceoyoyo]

Lots of people. I used to read a lot of books on my Sony Clie, which had a similar sized (but not nearly as good) screen to the iPhone. I've got several reference books on my iPhone that I might not read cover to cover, but are very handy to refer to. The problem is, most books are difficult to format for the phone. The built in PDF reader has trouble zooming in on columns properly, for example.

Re:Does Kurzweil get the idea of an e-Reader?

[hey!]

Actually, I've got a Kindle and an iPod with the Amazon reader software, and it's not so cut and dry as you make it out.

Yes, in many, many situations the Kindle is ergonomically better. Bright ambient light is on obvious example (although an anti-glare coating would have been nice). There's battery life perhaps, which may be marginally better on the Kindle, although I usually don't run into that limit. Truthfully, I think much of the Kindles advantage is that it has more text area.

There is the flip side, which is that the iPod is better in low light. It's better for reading in bed, for example. The Kindle's buttons are stiff and *loud*, which annoys your spouse. And there is the inexplicable design fault of the Kindle which is that it's just a PITA to page through documents. The iPod finger swipe is just a lot nicer. In part that's enabled by the LCD touch screen, but the whole next page/previous page/back button layout on the Kindle is awkward and unintuitive. If they'd only adopted a convention, like "the next page is left and the previous page is right", then laid their buttons out accordingly, that'd be a lot cleaner. Then you'd have "next document/previous document keys laid out analogously but in a distinct location so you couldn't mix them up.

I find that mathematics tends to render more correctly on the iPod. I have some documents with matrices, and the kindle puts the rows and columns of the matrices all over the place, where the very same document on the iPod is correctly rendered.

In any case, the software makes a big difference in the experience, it's just when it gets it right it you don't notice it.

Re:Does Kurzweil get the idea of an e-Reader?

[gad_zuki!]

>For a guy that is supposed to be a step ahead tech-wise, apparently he doesn't understand that people want a portable device that is easy to read.

Early in the computer revolution, the idea of a centralized application on dedicated hardware was popular. People envisioned computers that just ran word processors or just ran whatever stand alone application. For a little while this worked but it turns out what people want is to be able to break away from expensive dedicated hardware and just run software on a commodity machine.

Whats going on now is that people are just asking "Why must I pay $400 dollars, cant I just run this on my laptop?"

Unfortunately for nutty McFuturist, Amazon has already beaten him to the punch. You can read a Kindle book on a Kindle, on an ipod/iphone, or on a PC. I suspect the Nook will be doing this soon. Essentially, these companies are just competing on DRM formats. Not much else.

Re:Does Kurzweil get the idea of an e-Reader?

[Cro Magnon]

Who reads a book on an iPod or phone?!

I do. The Kindle is better than the iPhone, but my iPhone is much more portable. I use the Kindle at home, or if I'm going on a long trip. If I'm waiting for an oil change or for my GF to finish her shopping spree, I use the iPhone.

Re:Does Kurzweil get the idea of an e-Reader?

[rantingkitten]

Who reads a book on an iPod or phone?! Seriously? Do you carry around one of those magnifying screens from "Brazil"?

I used to read quite a lot on an old Palm III that I acquired. It was easy to upload text to it, and then I could take it anywhere. It was certainly easy enough to read.

Re:Does Kurzweil get the idea of an e-Reader?

[kuzb]

and when the phone goes dead several hours premature because you kept the backlight on, what then? The whole idea of an ebook reader device is to more closely mimic the look of paper, and to be functional in direct light, and to have superior battery life.

And Best Of All

[DynaSoar]

(as TFA says) BLIO is free. Seems logical since at this point it's a working concept. It's an idea (seems to be a good one) with no implementation as yet, but it's not quite vaporware because it's based on a working technology and product. Still, it's out there for anyone who wants to develop an e-reader for its own sake (a free reader), or to compete with other readers (another commercial product).

The bad news is "Blio will adopt some form of DRM and proprietary formatting". The good news is there probably won't be time for someone to out together a betting pool on how long it will take to crack said DRM, because by the time they're ready to take wagers it'll be done.

Of course this all depends on whether the singularity will happen, making this and other technology that's not, um, singularity compliant? obsolete. I suppose we can always watch RayKay's output, and when he stops releasing new stuff, assume he's packing his bags for the singularity. I doubt the bags will be full of the "I [heart] The Singularity" t-shirts he's selling. Time will tell whether he'll return and instead sell "I Went To The Singularity And All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt" t-shirts. Along with some other nifty stuff, also hopefully for free.

Re:And Best Of All

[CrimsonAvenger]

(as TFA says) BLIO is free. Seems logical since at this point it's a working concept.

Calibre is free. And will read pretty much any e-Book format currently in use. And convert from one form to another, if what you get isn't supported by your particular eBook reader.

And since it also allows you to read the eBooks on your PC, I'm not really sure what the special niche of this Blio thing will be....

Re:And Best Of All

[sznupi]

Hey, perhaps he's in fact hoping this particular tech will bring the singularity one step closer...

Follow the Marketing (money)

[bareman]

The best technology won't necessarily win. The best marketed one will.
(BetaMax, Superdisk, etc...)

Re:Follow the Marketing (money)

[tehcyder]

The best technology won't necessarily win. The best marketed one will.

(BetaMax, Superdisk, etc...)

That's the beauty of capitalism.

Re:Follow the Marketing (money)

[njko]

The best technology won't necessarily win. The best marketed one will. (BetaMax, Superdisk, etc...)

Best technology is very subjetive. easy to sell may be a quality aspect of the techonology, a sticky name.

Sounds like a browser to me

[marcus]

Firefox renders html ebooks just fine. It even does color, various fonts and sizes, a variety of pic formats, video, and even supports bookmarks too!

Re:UTTERLY PATHETIC bloody bleeping blio

[Anonymous Coward]

Famous self promoting greedy futurist has plunged deep into his well of creativity to give us a Kindle Clone.

There, fixed that for you. Agreed. May I be the first to say blah. I wanted to write something really elaborate, but in the end I decided to just write something as creative as the blio itself.
 

meh

[Ephemeriis]

From the fine article:

By focusing on the software, and not trying to maintain a hardware device, Kurzweil hopes to provide the most versatile, life-like electronic version of print books and enhance them with multimedia.

The first problem with this approach is that there's no physical device. Books are physical, portable objects. This software may be wonderful and all, but it still lives in a computer. I've read ebooks for literally years, and I was never happy with the computer-based ereader software. I always preferred reading on something small and portable like a PDA than on my PC. Laptops are better than a desktop PC, but still not as good as a book. Netbooks are closer still, but not quite there.

So you've got a beautiful, life-like electronic version of a print book... And it is stuck on your computer. I'm not impressed.

The next problem is that he's trying to enhance the books with multimedia.

Anyone remember when CD-ROMs were just going mainstream? Remember all the multimedia encyclopedias that were available? Remember how cool it was to look up an article on something and be able to watch a video or hear a speech or something? Yeah... Notice how those have pretty much stopped being popular?

Sure, it might be handy to have good text-to-speech in an ereader... And there are certainly some books that would benefit from a good dose of multimedia content... But, for the most part, I don't think many books are going to benefit from any of this.

There is a reason why classes - even highly visual/interactive ones like science labs - require textbooks. They can spell things out clearly and concisely, complete with diagrams and formula - which words and video can't accomplish as neatly.

There is a reason why I read books instead of going to the movies - well-written text and a healthy imagination can produce better visuals than anything in Hollywood.

Re:meh

[jimbobborg]

Anyone remember when CD-ROMs were just going mainstream? Remember all the multimedia encyclopedias that were available? Remember how cool it was to look up an article on something and be able to watch a video or hear a speech or something? Yeah... Notice how those have pretty much stopped being popular?

Yeah, funny thing, the Internet came along and wiped out the market for these.

Re:meh

[Ephemeriis]

Anyone remember when CD-ROMs were just going mainstream? Remember all the multimedia encyclopedias that were available? Remember how cool it was to look up an article on something and be able to watch a video or hear a speech or something? Yeah... Notice how those have pretty much stopped being popular?

Yeah, funny thing, the Internet came along and wiped out the market for these.

I really don't think it was simply the Internet that killed those multimedia encyclopedias.

That would imply that what had died was specifically the multimedia encyclopedia on CD-ROM... But I'm not aware of a whole lot of multimedia encyclopedia websites out there. The obvious one is Wikipedia... But most of those articles are just text with a few images - nothing printed page couldn't deliver.

Or you could suggest that the Internet as a whole has become the multimedia encyclopedia... Type your search into Google and you get tons of answers from all over the place - often with videos available if you want them. But most of the useful information is again text with some simple images.

If you recall those old multimedia encyclopedias, they were chock-full of completely gratuitous multimedia. Stuff that did absolutely nothing to facilitate learning. The whole point was simply show off the fact that you could have video and everything embedded in your encyclopedia.

Re:meh

[maxume]

Cd-rom encyclopedias were replaced by fast enough internet.

Re:meh

[Ephemeriis]

Cd-rom encyclopedias were replaced by fast enough internet.

I didn't say anything about CD-ROM encyclopedias... I specifically said multimedia encyclopedias. I'm referring to the ones that were chock-full of gratuitous multimedia that did absolutely nothing of use - not encyclopedias that just happened to be distributed on CD-ROM.

And while Wikipedia may very well have replaced CD-ROM encyclopedias... It did not replace the multimedia encyclopedia as most of the articles on Wikipedia are simple text with a few images thrown in. Not the piles of gratuitous multimedia that I'm referring to.

Do not want

[Spazmania]

preserves the original format of books

That's precisely what I don't want. A screen is not a page of paper and a window on a screen is very definitely not a page. I want the e-book to reformat itself to fit my current viewing preferences which, by the way, will change from device to device, will change depending on lighting and may even change for no reason at all.

This is nothing special.

[dwiget001]

I have been reading using "ABOOK" for many years now.

1. Long battery life, in fact, it is so advanced, that it doesn't even have "batteries", in the traditional sense.

2. Sure, you have to manipulate the "pages" by hand, but only when you need to turn the page.

3. Heck, I can even loan it to people or, if I am feeling very generous, I can just give "ABOOK" away, whether to friends, family members or the local library.

4. ...

5. PROFIT!!!!

"ABOOK" is a sure WEINNAR!

Re:This is nothing special.

[Jesus_666]

OTOH you can't even change the font size. I mean, who developed the customization interface for that thing, the GNOME developers? Even the personalization is just the annotation feature applied to a blank page!

Re:This is nothing special.

[dwiget001]

Ah, but I can change the font size, easily!

I have a companion device, which comes with higher quality dictionaries and encyclopedias called "A-MAGNIFYING_GLASS".

Or, for a little bit of money, I can get a set of different magnification "READING_GLASSES". ;)

Re:This is nothing special.

[Anonymous Coward]

2. Sure, you have to manipulate the "pages" by hand, but only when you need to turn the page.

You put that as a disadvantage, however this device you mention is so advanced that has a very advanced haptic technology!

The only problem I see is in the device size.

Stupid names

[Foolicious]

Why do all these products have such stupid names? Brio, Treo, Kindle, Nano, Vaio, blah blah blah. It's like there's a council somewhere that approves product names based only on how gadgety and futuristic they sound, but under the assumption that in the future product names will only end with vowel sounds.

Re:Stupid names

[slim]

Because all real words, and most made up words, have already been claimed, either by real products or by trademark squatters.

Re:Stupid names

[DarthSensate]

Why? ... to inspire the same coziness of a book in a cold, lifeless electronic and plastic gadget. Not that I don't like me some cold, lifeless, electronic and plastic gadgets mind you.

Re:Stupid names

[tehcyder]

Why do all these products have such stupid names? Brio, Treo, Kindle, Nano, Vaio, blah blah blah. It's like there's a council somewhere that approves product names based only on how gadgety and futuristic they sound, but under the assumption that in the future product names will only end with vowel sounds.

As opposed to the Apple design council where all product names will only begin with a vowel, and only one particular vowel at that.

Re:Stupid names

[LeadSongDog]

Why do all these products have such stupid names? Brio, Treo, Kindle, Nano, Vaio, blah blah blah. It's like there's a council somewhere that approves product names based only on how gadgety and futuristic they sound, but under the assumption that in the future product names will only end with vowel sounds.

The brand managers want brand names that sound like they might be real nouns in all languages, many of which require vowel endings. Ideally, they dream of becoming real nouns (asprin, xerox, kleenex...) For services, substitute "verbs", ("to google", e.g.) They also don't want them to actually be real nouns in any language. Remember the fiasco with the Chevy Nova in Spanish markets?

Re:Stupid names

[tgd]

Kindle is a real word.

Re:Stupid names

[OrangeTide]

iShit you not.

Re:Stupid names

[sgage]

One word...

Nook. :-)

Re:Stupid names

[ovu]

Much as I wish it were true, alas, it is not...

Re:Stupid names

[laddiebuck]

Bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy then, don't you think? :)

blame the publishers

[Lord Ender]

Don't blame the Kindle for DRM. Blame the book publishers. The Kindle works fine with or without DRM. Unfortunately, publishers are only releasing their content with DRM, so any ebook reader which lacks DRM support is certain to fail (including this one).

not a fan of dedicated e-readers

[jollyreaper]

My first e-reader was a palm m130. That's not a dedicated unit, reading books was just a happy secondary ability. But man I read the hell out of that thing. Got a tungsten after that. Again, a great reader. It got long in the tooth and I haven't seen any palm products worth the time. Got clued in on the ipod touch. It's a hell of an ebook platform and oh, by the way, look at all the other stuff it can do.

As far as distribution goes, they're still charging too much for books. I'll pay a dollar or two for an electronic book but there's simply no way in hell I'm paying $10 or $24 for an electronic version. I'm sorry, it's just not happening. But I'm not adverse to paying for things. I've bought apps via the app store. The price is so low, why even bother trying to pirate them? I haven't even checked but I'm sure you can do something to pirate the apps with a jailbroken phone or a hacked touch. It's the same reason why I'll get a movie from the dollar dvd machine at the grocery store as a splurge but won't spend $5 to download it over the Xbox Live service. I'm not paying $5 to rent a damn movie. But a dollar for a movie I want to watch now can be even more convenient than waiting 2-10 hours for a movie to finish on bittorrent, depending on how well it's seeded.

As far as the true cost goes, you can't honestly tell me Xbox Live has higher operational costs than a company putting physical vending machines in locations to distribute physical media. Content companies set price points that are both arbitrary and capricious. This is why the DVD of a $150m movie sells for $14 and the soundtrack sells for $17.

So, the hardware for ebook readers is here, it's awesome, and it's only going to get better. We're just waiting for business practices to catch up.

Re:not a fan of dedicated e-readers

[fyngyrz]

But a dollar for a movie I want to watch now can be even more convenient than waiting 2-10 hours for a movie to finish on bittorrent, depending on how well it's seeded.

And don't forget, as compared to purchasing intellectual property, bittorrent offers the unique opportunity to pay a huge fine and/or go to the federally sponsored involuntary ass-fuck brothel for a few years.... I mean, that is priceless!

Re:not a fan of dedicated e-readers

[bws111]

Why do people focus so much on cost to produce/distribute? What difference can that possibly make to you? The only thing that really matters is the value of the thing to YOU. You look at the price of $5 for the download and say 'rip-off, because it cost them less than that'. Many people, including myself, look at it as 'for $5, I get an evenings entertainment, and I don't need to go out in the cold, spend 1/2 hour getting to/from the rental store, hope they have what I want, and repeat the whole thing tomorrow to take it back'. That is $5 well spent. They could give the movies away for free at the rental store and the $5 download would still be a good deal.

Content companies set price points that maximize their profits. It (profit) is the entire reason they are in business in the first place. They maximize profits by having people value their product at a higher point than it costs to make. The bigger the difference, the better for the company. And no, the consumer is not being ripped off, because they are the ones who assign the value in the first place (if the company prices too high, people don't buy).

Feh!

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Wake me when we get direct neural I/O.

formats and speed

[e**(i pi)-1]

The biggest challenge today with electronic texts is that page build needs to be fast. PDF does not perform well. DJVU texts perform much better, are smaller in general and can be read more comfortablly. An ebook reader should be able to read both formats comfortably. Browsing through a book should be fast. I don't see the need for a new format. Give me a reader which can read PDF and DJVU with a decent resolution and page build speed and I'm sold. It is definitely also a software issue because on my Ipod Touch, I can read PDFs more comfortably than with the acrobat hog on the desktop. The Blio looks like a step in the right direction (no OSX nor linux support however for now and I do not see it on the app store neither for the iphone).

Re:formats and speed

[fyngyrz]

The biggest challenge today with electronic texts is that page build needs to be fast.

Yes, in order for real speed, convenience and maximum processing efficiency, we'll have to move to an advanced format like ASCII with embedded bitmap references. Possibly something as advanced as basic HTML. The basic technologies will become available in the future, perhaps around the 1970's or so, though you'll have to wait a few more years for HTML. You'll need at least a 4-bit processor running at 1 MHz to handle them, too.

One can only wait patiently for the future to unfold...

Re:formats and speed

[Homburg]

The biggest challenge today with electronic texts is that page build needs to be fast. PDF does not perform well

I'm really not sure what you're talking about. Moving from one page to the next in a PDF takes no perceptible time at all.

iPods are superb e-readers

[fyngyrz]

Who reads a book on an iPod or phone?

I do. All the time. And I own a hardware Kindle, too. But the Kindle app on the iPod Touch is *much* better (brighter, faster, lighter, better contrast, less eye movement, easier to hold, works in the dark, no ghosting, totally one-handed use, tons more storage.) Of the five font sizes, I use the three smallest depending on how much movement is going on. Passenger in a car, middle size. Late at night, still in bed, I use the smallest size. Otherwise, the next to smallest size. While I'm reading, my iPod Touch is checking my email, my chess games, my Words with Friends games (similar to Scrabble), allows me instant access to the weather, checks my servers to make sure they're all up and accessible, basically all kinds of apps, plays my favorite music for me, fits in my pocket, handles LOTS of other e-reader formats including PDF, in full color... downside? I have to charge it about once a day... which doesn't stop me from using it, it just temporarily (and vaguely) tethers me to the car, couch, desk or bed. Big whoop.

This is why I don't even bother with the hardware Kindle. It's also why I'm very interested to see what Apple does with the hopefully forthcoming tablet. Not holding my breath after the no-camera, no-GPS iPod non-release last cycle, but one can hope. :)

Hype from the hype-master

[Anonymous Coward]

A grain of salt on the source of this info, please: singularityhub.com is part of Kurzweil's extensive publicity machine. The article is written as if by a neutral third party, but it's all just more of the same breathless hype from a self-promoter par excellance. Why do they pretend to be objective? Sad. Transparent.

And publishers respond...

[Theodore]

With a copy-rape...
in 3..2..1..

It's not new...

[Senjutsu]

but Blio is the only e-Reader designed with Singularity compatiblity in mind!

Don't let your cyber-mind go unstimulated for kiloseconds when fragile, meat-popsicle designed e-Readers fail to survive the geek-rapture, buy a Blio today!

Honoring publisher's preference is not the point

[Anonymous Coward]

"Blio preserves the original format of books including typography, and illustrations, in full color. "

Why? This is a disadvantage of PDF -- yes, you can read it exactly as laid out in a book, but on an e-book reader, depending upon the size of the display and the preference of the user, they might not *want* it to be displayed in the original format of the books, page by page. You might want to completely re-flow the text to fit a smaller screen or different layout (portrait versus landscape). You might not like the publisher's choice of font or its size. You might not care about the illustrations, or they might be essential. You might want a strictly-specified page number so you can cite it in research or teaching (e.g., the software should be able to answer the question "Where is page ### according to the way the publisher laid it out, even though I've reformatted the text for my screen." Or maybe you could care less. Half the value of an e-book reader is the fact that most of them do allow you to deviate from the publisher's choices. That kind of tweaking is essential, as far as I'm concerned.

What you want is something that can either preserve all the details of the publisher's choices about how the print was laid out on the page and that can let you cite it that way, or that can completely reconfigure the text to the user's preferences easily and quickly. Although with CSS you can come pretty close, HTML doesn't currently do the former well enough, and PDF doesn't currently do the latter, so there could indeed be a niche for something new. But it would be a pretty narrow niche to miss. If it doesn't cover these two extremes at the same time (publisher versus user), then it is redundant and irrelevant. I can't tell from the article if it does this (looks more PDF-style), which means their first challenge is to communicate better what they are trying to do.

And yet there is

[Anonymous Coward]

da Bing!

THIS IS COMPLETELY USELESS!

[gbutler69]

What does this provide that HTML doesn't? Nothing. Why do I want "Page Formatting" preserved (HINT: I don't!) I want the content to flow seamlessly to my screen size, not force an arbitrary size that some graphic artist/layout artist thought was cool. I predict EPIC FAILURE!

Why?

[driftingwalrus]

Of what possible value is this? What is wrong with PDF, DVI, PostScript, djvu and the other hundreds of technologies that do the same damn thing?

As a linguist...

[kklein]

As a linguist, let me tell you something:

True translation is nigh impossible for a human, and requires comprehensive knowledge of both the source and target cultures. Not just the patterns of sound/text that represent the languages used by those cultures. A computer will not provide human-level-quality translation at any time in the foreseeable future. Maybe before the end of my life, especially if I take a lot of vitamins (if I'm to believe Kurzweil, which I stopped doing years ago--the guy is a hack), but not anytime soon.

I'd love for computers to be able to put me out of a job. But I don't see it happening.

Re:As a linguist...

[_KiTA_]

As a linguist, let me tell you something:

True translation is nigh impossible for a human, and requires comprehensive knowledge of both the source and target cultures. Not just the patterns of sound/text that represent the languages used by those cultures. A computer will not provide human-level-quality translation at any time in the foreseeable future. Maybe before the end of my life, especially if I take a lot of vitamins (if I'm to believe Kurzweil, which I stopped doing years ago--the guy is a hack), but not anytime soon.

I'd love for computers to be able to put me out of a job. But I don't see it happening.

And most scientists in the know thought mapping the Human Genome was a fool's errand due to the computing power requirements. Technology found a way to surprise almost everyone.

While I bow to your superior wisdom in the field, I remain convinced on some level that in 5-10 years we'll both be surprised at the amount of progress in getting computers to read. Will it replace human translation? Probably not... but it might supplement it enough that it'll make it possible for humans that aren't comprehensively knowledgeable in those languages to have a fighting chance.

For example, take Japanese -- Chosen as that is the second language I'm trying to learn. Take a bit of OCR technology -- the ReadIRIS suite of programs already do a great job of Kanji OCR, for example. Now add OCR to an augmented reality app, like something for an iPhone, or a web browser plugin, or what have you -- a simple enough prospect, really, it's just one step up from taking a scanned image and OCRing *that*.

I don't know Japanese. I can read some basic Kanji and the Kana, that's it. But with ReadIRIS and a few hours of time, I can get the gist of a chapter of Translucent or Doraemon. If I didn't have to spend hours cutting the text out of the pages using Photoshop - i.e., if ReadIRIS or other similar programs could pull text forward on their own...

Now, take that technology (on the fly OCR of Japanese characters from any source), and take it to some logical middle steps -- making the computer provide Furigana or SKIP numbers right next to the Kanji in a transparent overlay, for example. Would it translate? No, not technically, but it would certainly make it a lot easier for a Japanese-as-a-second-language student to figure it out -- instead of OCR, then copy, then paste into a machine translator, I'd look it up in a dictionary.

Or for simple translations (signs, menus, etc), you could whip out a cellphone, take a picture of a door or what have you, then look off to the side and see "Open" or "Express Vasectomy Service" -- you know, stuff you might wanna know about. ;) This is stuff that's not too far out there -- we have OCR, it just needs to get better in order to go to this step.

The rest of the functions we already have, in stuff like the Furigana Injector for Firefox, or rikaichan, although they require HTML or Plaintext. Hooking that up to an OCR augmented reality app... well... It's just taking our current gadgets 1 step further, and using some duct tape to put them together.

And actually, apparently Toshiba is working on something similar to what I was gibbering about earlier -- Voice Recognition coupled to Machine Translation and Voice Synth. Hold up your phone and let it translate for you. Kurzweil predicted this would happen in "2009 or 2010" in a November 07 interview, as well as in his 1990 book -- although admittedly he was off by 10 years in the book.

As for more traditional, complete, "humanesque" translations... Well. Lets see what happens in 10 years. To quote Pterry -- I wouldn't take that bet, it looks like it'd go to the judges.