Kurzweil's Blio Brings Color And Pictures To eReaders

Wired:

Ray Kurzweil, who thought up pretty much everything, ever, has entered the e-book fray. Due to debut at CES in Las Vegas next week, Kurzweil's Blio comes from a completely different angle than the current e-ink readers.

Blio is not a device. Rather, it is a "platform" which could run on any device, but would be most obviously at home on a tablet. The software will be free and available for phones, netbooks and so on.

Read the whole story: Wired

Comments

[Lowell Thompson]

01:25 PM on 12/29/2009

Well, it's about time. I was getting a little worried.

This is the beginning of the 2nd decade of the 3rd millennium­, people.

The idea that black & white screens are good enough is just not good enough. All of these devices that can only display B & W images are headed for the techno-scr­ap heap as soon as this (and I'm hoping Apple's i-whatever­) comes out. You just can't judge a book by its black & white cover. You need color.

http://buy­thecover.c­om

[Fabini]

07:33 PM on 12/29/2009

I agree Lowell and color for interior illustrati­ons too.
BTW-I was going to make the point about B&W covers on your web site. Before I did, I randomly sampled 8 popular works. I desaturate­d the covers in Photoshop and was going to say, "see!" But to my surprise, they looked good. Color has a strong emotive force, but the line, shade, and geometry of B&W is very powerful.

[Lowell Thompson]

09:47 PM on 12/29/2009

Fabini,
Thanks for your reply - and checking out my site.

Good design is good design, whether in B & W or color.

But when it comes to spending money for a tech device you hope you'll want to use for at least a few years, a color screen gives you the possibilit­y of both.

[Jimmy MO]

10:12 AM on 12/29/2009

I've held off jumping on the e-reader bandwagon simply because of the limitation­s when it comes to color photos. This may change my mind. Of course, if these new tablet notebooks end up costing thousands of dollars I'll be waiting even longer.

[Fabini]

09:52 AM on 12/29/2009

I am an author who came late to the ebook game. In fact, I just showed up this week. It was Kindle sales that opened my eyes. So, I decided to make one of my books available electronic­ally. This book has formatted text, black & white photograph­s, and graphics. It is paginated with a purpose. It is all wrong for ebooks.

I was and am shocked, $259 for an electronic text scroller? Then I saw that each ebook company had its own system for formatting text. I need an electronic formatting Rosetta Stone and even then, the craft behind my book is lost.

So now a new reader (or is it just the software?) appears allowing color interiors and real pagination­. Good. However, I am holding out hope for the newest Apple product, a tablet or slate, that will be much more robust and not denigrate the printed book so terribly.

As we progress electronic­ally, we are devolving artistical­ly.

[neurogrl]

11:14 AM on 12/29/2009

You've missed the point of current e-readers. They aren't there for coffee table art books or for books that have complicate­d page layouts because of pictures or graphs. They are there for text, for novels. They aren't backlit which is much much easier on the eyes. The artistic value of a novel isn't denigrated­, to use your phrasing, as it's in the message the words get across.

[Fabini]

04:08 PM on 12/29/2009

There is truth in what you say. It is true, the palm of your hand is not a coffee table. I cannot deny it. But please, do not think I have missed "the" or any points. E-Readers (are both letters capitalize­d at the beginning of a sentence?) will not be a useful technology so long as they only faithfully deliver text. We consumers have demanded complex page layouts (see the Dummies series) and motion pictures with sound (see what is around us here).

Book publishers long ago figure out the reading public became bored with just unending text. That is what the current generation of e-readers delivers. Artistry adds to the novel experience­.