Archive for the ‘color e-book’ tag
Blio Still Incoming – to Wal-Mart? 1 comment
The NYT reports that Ray Kurzweil’s Blio ereading software should be more widely available over the next couple of months. This as PC makers start to
include it on their machines. The article also suggests that Wal-Mart may offer the Blio software on a device of its own.
So will Wal-Mart have its own ereader? Kurzweil won’t elaborate, but he does say that Wal-Mart is “very excited” about something. Recent press releases have indicated that Wal-Mart is enlarging its consumer electronics department and it would not be inconceivable that it may try to develop its own ereader as it tries to take over the electronics section of the retailing world.
The Blio eReader software presents ebooks in the original format – layout, fonts and images are the same as in the original book. Blio is especially suited for graphics-rich books such as cookbooks, travel guides, textbooks, children’s books, etc. Purchased ebooks are permanently stored in a virtual library and can be transferred to your favorite device.
Blio also supports multimedia and includes study tools
such as translation, sticky notes, highlighting and bookmarking. You can even insert voice, image or video notes into your books and these can be exported to create study materials.
The Blio website lists the following as platforms the Blio eReader software will soon be available for:
- Windows and Mac
- Linux
- Android
- Symbian
- Windows Mobile
- iPhone
- Supported ebook formats currently are: XPS, PDF, ePub
I saw Blio at their booth at CES and it was pretty impressive, although I personally don’t like reading ebooks on my desktop or laptop. Blio should be very nice on the iPad and on smartphones though.
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Fujitsu’s FLEPia; Worlds first color ebook reader no comments
Fujitsu’s FLEPia, the world’s first color ebook reader has recently gone on sale in Japan. FLEPia uses Fujitsu’s flexible color electronic paper which works by slowly rewriting the next page over the previous one.
The feature set is impressive, and it better be for the $1000 + price tag. FLEPia currently comes in both A4 and A5 versions, weighing 320g and 480g, and sporting 8” and 12” screens respectively. Both models are 12 millimeters thick. The unit can display up to 260,000 colors, is equipped with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a touch screen which has a resolution of 1024 x 768. An SD card (up to 4 GB) is used to store books purchased from the online bookstore Papyless. The keyboard is on-screen. FLEPia consumes power only on redraw, not for the display of a continuous image and Fujitsu claims battery life of 40 hours, though wi-fi will no doubt shorten that. The FLEPia is a little bigger and heavier than the Kindle 2, and the screen takes up to 8 seconds to refresh at 260,000 colors, so you better not be in a hurry. Even at lower color settings screen refresh rates are slow.
FLEPia comes with a trio of body color choices: white pearl, pink pearl and silver. The unit also comes with a stylus. There is no word yet when or if it will be available outside of Japan. The ebook formats it now uses are primarily used in Japan.
The FLEPia has other capabilities in addition to reading books: it comes with Windows CE 5. This means support for e-mail, internet and document handling. These capabilities potentially raise the FLEPia to a level somewhere between Amazon’s Kindle 2 and more powerful computing devices such as laptops.
E-ink, used in Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s readers, will probably not be available in color until the end of 2010 at the earliest; more likely 2011. iRex, maker of the iLiad ereaders, has also promised a color model by 2011, and in addition claims that their device’s display will be three times brighter than existing color displays.
Probably the greatest significance of the Flepia is that it is a first step towards the next generation of color ebook readers, and provides incentive for other manufacturers to ready their color devices.
£149.00
£109
