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Kurzweil preps e-book format for iPhone, tablets

updated 12:15 pm EST, Tue December 29, 2009

 

Blio offers full-color e-books with text-to-speech


Well-known futurist Ray Kurzweil is about to introduce a new e-book format specifically optimized for devices like the iPhone or tablets. Called Blio, the standard is intended to overcome the limitations of digital text by allowing for complex image and text formatting, such as diagrams, without sacrificing the ability to search the text. It would support full color and allow text-to-speech much like most Kindle books.

The initial lineup of books will include a mix of commercial and free, public domain titles. In most if not all cases, the necessary reader app will also be free and should include Mac- and PC-borne versions along with mobile software for the iPhone. Moreover, Blio is billed as cross-platform and isn't tied to dependence on a particular technology to function.

Details should go public for Blio at CES next week, less than a month before Apple is rumored to hold a special event that could introduce a tablet suited to Kurzweil's format. [via Gizmodo]




By Electronista Staff

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iPhone, industry, gadgets, software, iPhone apps, tablet, Apple, Blio

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Previous Comments

  1. Feathers

    Grizzled Veteran

    Joined: Oct 1999

    -1
    12/29, 12:33pm | report spam | reply

    correction

    Surely it should read: Well-known fantasist and gobsh*te Ray Kurzweil


  1. charlituna

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Sep 2009

    0
    12/29, 12:34pm | report spam | reply

    i would add two things

    one would be to change the 'text to speech' to perhaps a built in audiobook version straight up. where you could even switch modes without losing your place or run them side by side (very handy for ESL students).
    and add video. imagine non fiction titles like a cookbook where a recipe is using a technique you don't know and you could watch an embedded video that shows you. or even be able to watch the whole recipe.


  1. testudo

    Forum Regular

    Joined: Aug 2001

    -2
    12/29, 02:14pm | report spam | reply

    well-known?

    Well-known to whom? Futurists or the general public?

    And isn't this just what we need? Yet another proprietary digital book format? And this one backed by an author!


  1. hayesk

    Professional Poster

    Joined: Sep 1999

    +1
    12/29, 11:11pm | report spam | reply

    Futurist?

    Where do you go to school to become a futurist? I can think about stuff we'll have in the future? Does that make me a futurist?


  1. facebook_Spencer

    Via Facebook

    Joined: Nov 2010

    +1
    11/11, 04:26pm | report spam | reply

    conditoned thought



    he forgot that there is an ever decreasing rate of effect or influence on the exponential rate
    meaning 'point of saturation'

    meaning that in theory the exponential is infinite but the population does not double and speed up its increase in numbers on the same exponential rate as technologies (for example) and there will reach a point where there are more technologies than there are people to work in those fields. This is the threshold of flourishing exponential impetus.

    In chaos theory its where a pattern falls into entropy
    Singularity is like Pi
    the material physical world and lifeforms will never be able to experience this singularity. When we pass the threshold of singularity and acceleration of evolution/time, we wont even notice it (most of us) our timeline is now moving much faster than it did 2000 years ago, but i bet my my favourite armchair that the people who existed 500 years ago where one day was like one of our months, that the passage of experience (events/time) felt the same velocity to the observer as it does now to us.
    If we flew fast as tachyons wed feel dizzy, but for a tachyon it feels like walking.
    We shall never notice the change because it doesnt happen in a single moment
    it happens constantly in each small moment
    in fact there arent any separate momenmts (to wait for the moment of singularity) all seconds minutes and hours are simply markings where to cut a cake
    a cake is one
    but we can cut it into sixty or twelve or however many units we imagine. The units are imaginary forms of measurement for communication and study purposes only
    in which case we are already in the final moment, as well as to say we are all still in the first moment that scattered the stars into space.

    developing technologies doesn't make us perfect, or solve the causes of our recurring sufferings and problems.
    Whilst we still are not masters of our own minds and emotions we will be still ignorant and make terrible mistakes and wrongdoings to each other..

    advancement is not technology - advancement is becoming yourself, awake, all knowing (of the nature of existence and its causes).

    This comes from personal re-programming (practice in developing the mind and will) - the answers are not outside they are inside us.

    we cant attain true vision of reality and understanding of the way the universe and conscious existence is by looking to technology.

    Awakening and completion of evolution as a sentient being comes only from true insight, which no machine3 or technology can do the job for us.
    We may have machines to make us live almost forever and do way with the monetary system so greed and selfishness becomes much less apparent. But the negative and unenlightened aspects of the mind/heart cannot be taken away with technology. They can only be removed with mind science and self transformation.

    To escape the shackles of a mnd that is ruled and imprisoned in the limits of perception within the framework of rupa nama (form and name), one must attain the fourth level of fourth Jhana in order to be able to percieve the true nature of existence
    when conditioned thought and applied thought is silenced and extinguished, and sensation and reaction (emotion/pleasure/suffeering and neutrality) are muted, then the world appears for the first time clearly for you to observe see and understand
    see the wooden table and wooden floor??

    well think of the distribution between molecules of wood element and the empty spaces between those molecules.

    Now cxonsider that if the floor and the table are of the same element, then their density and distribution of particles/space is equal to each other - the two bodies are equally composed of the same spaces and particles.

    So - where the foot of the table and the surface of the floor come into contact??

    what separates them really?
    Our minds of course under the power of Nama (name ... we name things and then our brains solidify the concept which arises in our minds on hearing that name, and buolds a conditoned image of what is in fact not a separate object (table/floor etc), but is simply one variation of a massive cloud of matter and space particles, which the ancients called 'maha bhuta rupa' (Pali Sanskrit)

    Rupa and Nama (form and name) are the two sentries of the formless realm and forbid normal humans from transgressing the frontier of perception to be able to see beyond conditioned objects and thoughts - so we think the table and the chair are separate.

    Its not just applicable to physical objects though;
    emotions too, sensations too
    for example, close your eyes and focus on the feeling/sensation of your butt on the chair/floor
    feel the hardness of the chair, and the cushiony softness of your butt cheeks
    so which feeling is the chair and which is the cushion?
    which part of that sensation represents you yourself and which part of the feeling represents the inanimate chair???
    where do the two sensations cross over?
    are they one and the same or separate??
    are they you?
    or are they external??

    you might not understand this if you dont sit and practice it repeatedly until you begin to get a glimpse of the insight recieved from such an investigation

    in fact our minds split everything up into separate entities or units/categories
    but they don't really exist separately.


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