Have you heard about blio reader, the free ebook reader from Baker & Taylor? I got a demo of it last week at the American Library Association conference in Boston. It’s pretty cool, offering full color and audio for any open system – MAC, PC, iPhone, netbook, etc. Blio was developed by a gamer – very cool and wise decision in my opinion. Even children’s books looked and sounded good on this reader. Some cool features I saw included:
- full color
- text 2 speech (TTS) – which sounded pretty good
- track audio down to the word, start reading again at the exact word
- embedded multimedia
- page turning
- highlight word and get a definition
- reflowable text
- change font
- some titles were narrated, depends on publisher
- publishers can edit/control the voice for text 2 speech reading – change gender, tone, speed, etc.
blio will be available for the retail market in February with access to over 1 million free ebooks and a large selection of trade/childrens titles for purchase, through the online bookstore. B & T plans to expand to the library market in the summer of 2010. The website offers a comparison chart of various ereaders. Check it out.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Cindy // Jan 25, 2010 at 1:42 pm
The Blio reader sounds cool! Never heard of it. I really love the text to speech feature. I’m going to check the link you provided.
2 KV // Jan 27, 2010 at 8:25 pm
You might also want to check out kobobooks.com
Similar concept — except they have already launched and are expanding their service very soon. They claim to have 1.8 million free books + 200,000 paid titles.
3 Cindy // Feb 8, 2010 at 4:03 am
Thank for you introducing me to kobobooks.com.
I really like that they believe that people should be able to read any book on any device! As they say, the closed system hinders growth. How true is that?! I think that many people who are considering buying a ebook reading device is turned off by the fact that they will be ‘tied into’ one source for getting their e-books. I have happily joined their mailing list!