Blio Software Revealed

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Inventor and designer Ray Kurzweil has revealed Blio, a new software suite that lets you purchase and read electronic versions of books in full color glory. Blio, if installed on a tablet, could be a strong competitor to traditional eBook readers who’s E Ink displays are limited to grey scale screens.

The Blio project reportedly was started by the National Federation of the Blind and will feature strong text-to-speech capabilities. The concept of full-color eBook software has got some excited. John Wiley & Sons was one of the first book publishers to sign on with the Blio project. Wiley produces travel guides, cookbooks and the “For Dummies” series of books. All of those could be, arguably, better on a full-screen tablet display than a small greyscale E Ink display.

At first, the Blio software will run on a PC, Mac or an iPhone app. Open source books from the Gutenberg Project, the Wiley & Son help books, and a few other mainstream books are currently up for sale on the Blio service. The impending Mac Tablet has got the rumormill claiming that CES 2010 will be the year of the tablet, which could be huge for Blio.