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Kurzweil Takes On Kindle With "Blio" E-Reader

Posted by timothy on from the free-as-in-what-exactly dept.

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."

3 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. Great Idea shame it will fail though by RotateLeftByte · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
  2. Um, that's great and all... by Phroggy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...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

    --
    $x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
    $x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
  3. Re:One standard by cain · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.