In my CES primer on Monday, I made quick mention of Blio as part of one of the big trends (e-readers) at the conference, pointing out that it would have a color interface. Well, much to my pleasant surprise, it offers a lot more than that, according to CNET.
Because it’s a software program instead of an actual e-reader, Blio can be used on personal computers, the iPhone, the iPod Touch and, hopefully, other devices, too. And along with presenting books in color, it presents them looking like, well, books (as you can see in the video below).
Also, it’s going to be Web-enabled, so that textbooks, for instance, can be interactive, connecting to Web sites, video clips, etc. Another great enhancement is the ability to synchronize audio to the e-book, highlighting each word as it’s being read. This can be a helpful part of the experience for children and others trying to learn how to read.
Kurzweil, an inventor and futurist best known for his prediction that “machine intelligence will surpass that of humans around 2045,” has worked in areas such as speech recognition and text-to-speech synthesis. His knfb Reading Technology, a joint venture between his company Kurzweil Technologies and the National Federation of the Blind, provides reading products for those with disabilities and also came up with Blio.
Creating a cool e-reader technology is one thing, but putting that technology to use to help improve the reading experience on multiple levels, including something as fundamentally important as learning how to read, is much more impressive.
Blio should be available within a month, it’s a free download and comes with about a million free books.
Photo courtesy of Geek Tonic, via Flickr