Hasta La Gadget!

Updated at 5:30 p.m. Eastern to add comment from K-NFB.

This week, K-NFB, an e-reading company founded by Ray Kurzweil and the National Federation for the Blind, launched its much-anticipated Blio reading app and e-book store. Blio was immediately and widely panned by publishers, developers and readers.

“Many of the failures are fundamentally at odds with the one thing that Kurzweil was touting above all else: accessibility,” wrote Laura Dawson, a digital reading industry consultant, formerly of BarnesAndNoble.com. K-NFB initially promised to make e-books more accessible to blind readers; yet Windows, currently its only enhanced books platform, has known text-to-speech conversion issues.

K-NFB and Kurzweil responded by saying the software had been released before a fully-accessible version was ready, and that they plan to release an improved version next week.

“People understandably have very high expectations,” Kurzweil said in an interview with Wired.com Thursday. “We believe Blio is very usable and has many features other book formats don’t. And there are many features that we want to add.”

In addition to bug fixes and other tweaks, an accessibility release scheduled for October 25 will work with Freedom Scientific’s JAWS, screen reader software for Windows specifically tailored for blind users. The 1.0 version released Tuesday relied on Windows’ built-in text-to-speech capabilities.

K-NFB spokesperson Peter Chapman acknowledged the problems with Blio’s text-to-speech in an interview with Publishers Weekly, but blamed the platform, not the books: “the TTS software on most Windows machines isn’t very good.” Yet many Windows XP users were unable to even install Blio’s software. (This has since been resolved.)

K-NFB also confirmed that an iOS 4 version for iPhone and iPod Touch is currently in private beta, and that an iPad version will shortly follow the iPhone, probably sometime after November’s release of iOS 4.2. Android and Mac OS X versions are also in development.

Users weren’t the only ones frustrated with Blio. Hadrien Gardeur, founder and CEO of free e-books site FeedBooks, complained on Twitter that Blio was offering downloads from FeedBooks’ catalog without permission: “Hey Blio, next time that you add our OPDS [Open Publishing Distribution System] catalog to a commercial product, send us an e-mail first.”

In a follow-up e-mail, Gardeur noted that FeedBooks only allows other systems to include their catalog under the following conditions:

• full support for the EPUB standard (Blio converts EPUB into its own format and can’t support EPUB with other companies’ DRM)
• support the entire OPDS catalog (Blio only includes some of FeedBooks’ feeds)
• Add other OPDS catalogs to its library (Blio can’t do that)
• allow payment for commercial content through open standards (Blio doesn’t)

For these reasons, Gardeur asked Blio not to include FeedBooks’ content in its initial launch; according to Gardeur, K-NFB went ahead and included part of Feedbooks’ OPDS catalog anyways. Since FeedBooks has a planned system update forthcoming, it will most likely break Blio’s access to the catalog.

Kurzweil stated Thursday that K-NFB was continuing to work with Feedbooks and other free book providers; he credited the dispute over Blio’s use of their feeds to a miscommunication.

Finally, as we noted earlier this week, Toshiba launched its own branded version of the Blio application, store and e-book catalog called Toshiba Book Place. Toshiba is offering 6,000 titles at launch; Blio 11,000. This puts Blio at a distinct disadvantage against the 700,000 e-books, blogs, magazines, and newspapers for sale from Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s library of over 1,000,000 e-books.

It’s not precisely clear why there’s a gap in the number of books offered by Toshiba and Blio. But the brand and store fragmentation is another confusing component of a deeply confusing product launch. It’s especially troubling for those who have been hoping for serious innovation in making e-readers accessible to users of all abilities.

Image via Blio.com

See Also:

• UPDATE: Toshiba, Blio Jump In With Enhanced E-Books For Laptops …
• Singularity Proponent Ray Kurzweil Reinvents the Book, Again …
• 5 Things That Will Make E-Readers Better in 2010
• Apple's Tablet E-Book App Rips off Indie Dev's Creation
• Amazon's Kindle 2 Pits Authors Versus the Blind
• Apple's iPad Will Read Books Out Loud, Support Free E-Books …
• Copyright Owners Fight Plan to Release E-Books for the Blind …

When we reviewed the $150 Kobo e-reader this summer we liked the value it offered, but didn’t particularly appreciate the poor performance nor the missing wireless connectivity. Now it’s back, a new version offering fixes to those two issues (the system works!) and selling for $10 cheaper to boot. The new Kobo Wireless eReader adds WiFi into the mix, enabling on-device book downloads whenever you’re in range of a suitably accommodating hotspot. There’s also a new processor to speed things up, but at this point we don’t know by how much. That question will be answered on November 1 when the thing starts shipping in your choice of three colors (black, silver, and lovely lavender), but as it’s currently up for pre-order now at Borders you’d better hurry and make with the clicking if you want yours by the holidays.

Continue reading New Kobo eReader gets wireless connection, faster processor, pretty colors

New Kobo eReader gets wireless connection, faster processor, pretty colors originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Sep 2010 07:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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One of the great original fears when Amazon built the Kindle was that they were after some iTunes / iPod-style walled garden ecosystem. And while, sure, Kindle is a walled garden ecosystem, those walls sure are extensive! Amazon just announced that it will be supporting the new BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, in addition to the BlackBerry mobile app they’ve already got. There aren’t any specific details about this app, but Amazon is all about the consistent user experience, with features like WhisperSync keeping your copy of Neal Stephenson perfectly synced across a myriad of devices, so there’s nothing much to say we suppose. We are sure, however, that page turns will be blazing with that dual core processor.

Continue reading Amazon bringing Kindle app to BlackBerry PlayBook, loves making Kindle apps

Amazon bringing Kindle app to BlackBerry PlayBook, loves making Kindle apps originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 18:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sharp has just taken the veils off its bold new e-reader devices, dubbing them both Galapagos in honor of the evolution the company believes they represent. The 5.5-inch Mobile version (pictured above) has a delightfully dense 1024 x 600 LCD screen, while its 10.8-inch Home sibling offers a very decent 1366 x 800. There’s 802.11b/g WiFi on both, while the littler slate is also enriched with a navigational trackball. Sharp’s emphasis here really seems to be on the cloud-based ecosystem it’s creating for these “terminal” devices — 30,000 newspapers, magazines and books have been lined up for its planned December launch and an “automatic scheduled delivery” facility will help you get at them as soon as the latest issue’s ready for consumption. Sadly, we should note that this is specifically tailored to suit the Japanese market, which makes an international release seem somewhat unlikely. For a size comparison between the two tablets and the full press release, jump past the break.

Continue reading Sharp announces Galapagos e-reading tablets: 5.5 and 10.8 inches, getting e-bookstore in December

Sharp announces Galapagos e-reading tablets: 5.5 and 10.8 inches, getting e-bookstore in December originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 03:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just seven months after unveiling the Entourage eDGe, a device that somewhat awkwardly combined an e-reader and a LCD screen, Entourage is gearing up to launch a pocket-sized version.

The original dual-screen eDGe has a 9.7-inch E Ink screen on the left half and a 10-inch touchscreen LCD on the right. That means you could use it as an e-reader, a notepad or as a netbook–or all at the same time. In practice, it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

The Pocket Edge will have folding, book-like body with a six-inch black-and-white E Ink screen on one side and a seven-inch color LCD touchscreen. It will still run the Android operating system, says The Digital Reader.

Entourage is planning a 3G edition of the Pocket Edge for Verizon and a separate, Wi-Fi-only model.

The original Entourage eDGe made its debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. Then, e-readers and netbooks were two of the hottest consumer electronics products. Entourage tried to combine the two and birth the eDGe. But the Frankensteinish device suffered from some major problems.

For starters, the eDGe was just too big and heavy. The 10-inch screen size meant that it couldn’t easily be whipped out and used to read e-books on the train or browse web pages on the road. The device’s weight, about twice that of the iPad, put a strain on the arms if it was held up for more than 15 minutes.

The eDGe ended up as a device too big to be an e-reader and, without a keyboard, too uncomfortable to be just a netbook.

The Pocket Edge hopes to correct some of those problems. In terms of tech specs, it will have features similar to the bigger version. It will come with a USB port, a micro SD card slot, a  camera and a non-removable battery.

Along with the smaller screen, the changes mean that the Pocket Edge will be lighter, about one pound, compared to the three pounds of the original.

What’s disappointing to hear though is that the Pocket Edge will use the older Vizplex version of the E Ink screen and not the new Pearl E Ink display that’s in the latest Kindle and Sony e-readers. The Pearl has a much better contrast and for e-reader enthusiasts the older technology in the Pocket Edge is likely to be a disappointment.

It’s also indicative of why the eDGe didn’t become a hit the first time around. If the device is mediocre e-reader and a passable netbook, consumers have little incentive to buy a half-baked device that’s doesn’t offer the best of either worlds. Instead, they are better off getting a Kindle or a Nook that does one thing very well and using a netbook or a tablet for their other computing needs.

Entourage hasn’t said how much the Pocket Edge will cost but the device is expected to ship in late October. So far, the word is it will be cheaper than the $500 original model.

Check out more photos of the new Pocket Edge below.

The Pocket Edge Combines an E Ink and LCD Screen.

The Pocket Edge has a USB port and a micro SD card slot.

See Also:

• Hands-On: Twin Screens Pack Potential in eDGe Netbook, E-Reader
• Entourage E-Reader/Netbook Hybrid to Start Shipping
• Gallery: E-Readers Push Boundaries of Books

Photos: Nate Hoffelder/The Digital Reader