This section covers news and updates from the knfb Reading Technology™ family of products, and showcases the Blio e-reader.
knfb Reading Technology™ is a joint venture between Kurzweil Technologies and the National Federation of the Blind, the largest and most influential membership organization of blind people in the United States. The company develops products that innovate access to print for anyone with difficulty seeing or reading, including the blind and learning disabled.
In 2010, knfb Reading Technology™ partnered with global media distributor Baker & Taylor to create the Blio e-reader, which delivers an advanced electronic reading environment for today’s digital content. The Blio video tour provides further details on the product's features.
The Blio e-reader application is included on the HP TouchPad. Video below shows the February 9, 2011 HP WebOS “Think Beyond” event, and the Blio segment begins at 1:23:40 — “HP TouchPad also offers a full library of news and lifestyle publications, a choice of e-readers including Blio and others.”
Video Source: HP | “Think Beyond” event
Related:
HP TouchPad
Source: New York Times — June 18, 2010 | Ashlee Vance
There’s Amazon.com’s Kindle, Sony’s Reader, Barnes and Noble’s Nook, Apple’s iPad and a bevy of iPad and Kindle clones. Still, Ray Kurzweil, the famed inventor, thinks people deserve yet another option when it comes to reading books and magazines with… read more
CNET | The future of reading: Ray Kurzweil knows a little something about e-readers. The computing pioneer, who among other things helped develop modern text recognition software, has been working to use digital technology to improve reading for the past 30 years. His latest project, Blio, is an effort to improve the emerging electronic book field with software that turns e-books into more than just a digital… read more
Video Source: CNET
Related:
CNET | Ray Kurzweil tries to build a better e-reader
You can learn more about Blio here (Blio.com) and here (MeetBlio.com).
Source: Jewish Currents magazine — January 12, 2011 | Lawrence Bush
Ray Kurzweil note: 35 years ago today, Walter Cronkite used the Kurzweil Reading Machine to read his signature sign off: “And that’s the way it was, January 13, 1976.”
The first reading machine capable of translating printed material into spoken words was unveiled on this date in 1976 by inventor Raymond Kurzweil and the National Federation of the Blind. Kurzweil, a pioneering scientist in artificial intelligence, appeared on Steve Allen’s “I’ve Got… read more
Source: Toshiba — June 18, 2010 | Toshiba Book Place
Toshiba | The new Toshiba Book Place lets you browse and purchase favorite titles from our virtual bookshelves — filled with today’s bestsellers, a wide range of cookbooks, travel guides, children’s books, textbooks and more. Toshiba Book Place will offer a full-color, 3D, interactive reading experience — powered by Blio, the world’s most engaging and innovative e-reading software.
Book Place brings books to life with a variety of unique features, including… read more
Source: No Shelf Required — September 19, 2011 | Sue Polanka
Last week I interviewed Michael Bills, Director for Sales, Digital Products, from Baker & Taylor about their e-reader software, Blio. Michael discussed the functionality of Blio and discussed Axis 360, a hosting and circulation platform for the Blio reader. For more information on blio, visit: http://www.baker-taylor.com/blio.cfm
Michael’s interview, along with 40+ others are available on the NSR interviews page. [...]
[audio:http://www.libraries.wright.edu/noshelfrequired/bills.mp3]
Source: Engadget — September 29, 2010 | Joanna Stern
Last week we brought you news that KNF-B was prepping for a September 28 launch of its Blio e-reader software, and according to our date books, the time has come! The free PC software (Windows XP, Vista and 7 are all supported) can be downloaded now at the source link below; the iPhone app should be hitting the App Store very soon, however. We’ve been using the… read more
MEDIA ALERT | Ray Kurzweil has received the Perkins Miracle Worker Award from the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, MA.
The award recognized Ray’s lifelong contribution to technology that helps blind and vision-impaired people. His latest invention, the K-NFB Reader, the state-of-the-art in blind-assistance technology, was demonstrated at the event.
Source: BBC News — November 11, 2010 | Kabir Chibber
[…] Sites like the student-run Textbook Revolution aim to compile all the free resources available online to undercut the big publishers, including textbooks as PDF files. Still, the industry is fighting back. The Follett Higher Education Group has initiatives like Rent-A-Text, which preserves at least some of the returns of the paper model, and its CafeScribe e-book store and social network.
Mr Prescott is also hopeful… read more
Source: Other Things — October 18, 2011
A new update of K-NFB’s Blio for iOS [app store link], which uses our libEucalyptus, was released today. If you’re not aware of Blio, I wrote a bit about it when the iOS app first came out a few months ago. There are lots of great little additions in the update — both utilizing updates by us in libEucalyptus, and otherwise in the app itself. I’m really enjoying reading with… read more
Source: MediaPost — September 28, 2010 | Erik Sass
This week brought the official launch of Blio, a free multiplatform, multimedia e-reader app from KNF-B Reading Technology, a company founded by futurist Ray Kurzweil, the inventor of voice-recognition, in cooperation with the Federation of the Blind.
Originating as an app to help people with impaired vision read digital content more easily, the partners are marketing Blio to mainstream consumers. Blio aims to preserve the visual… read more
Stevie Wonder presented two knfb readers to students at the Stevie Wonder 11th annual House Full of Toys Benefit Concert in Los Angeles on Dec. 16.
The Readers, the first handheld devices capable of reading and converting printed text into spoken words, were donated by knfb (Kurzweil-National Federation of the Blind).… read more
Source: PR Newswire — January 5, 2011
Media demonstrations, interviews with Ray Kurzweil available Thursday, January 6, at 3:30 p.m., in the Microsoft booth at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
K-NFB Reading Technology, creator and developer of Blio, will bring to life new, enhanced e-book content, including well-known children’s titles, on Thursday, Jan. 6 at the Consumer Electronics Show. K-NFB founder Ray Kurzweil will be demonstrating full-color, studio-quality audio titles on the Blio e-reading software at… read more
Toshiba | With access to more than 1 million e-books and a broad selection of best-sellers, Book Place, from Toshiba, is your destination for the coolest digital reading experience available today. Book Place, powered by Blio, offers a rich, interactive e-reading experience that maintains the book’s original layout and features unique innovations such as highlighting, note taking, and hyperlinking.
Select books can be read aloud using the text-to-speech feature. At… read more
Video Source: Toshiba
Related:
Toshiba Book Place
