This week we will hopefully get one of the best new inventions in digital reading. The blio eReader will go live this week and I can’t say enough how excited I am about this.

What’s all the fuss about?
Blio is a new free eReader software that makes eBooks more “real”. The books are in full.color and they still have the full layout of the original. All the fonts and the structure is the same. They can also include new digital material like videos or interactive questionnaires. Sound a bit like Vook but in reality it seems to be so much more.

You ask yourself why this is great news?
Okay it won’t make such a difference for your everyday reading but it opens the digital reading world to other genres or formats. Think about books for children with all these colorful pictures in it. Blio has an integrated reading aloud feature that will always highlight the word it’s reading at the moment. The kids can actually see which word they hear.
Even more important for me it will make all these brick like textbooks you need for class into something you can actually use as an ebook. They want to integrate features like marking text and I think these interactive aspect could be a real blast.(Take a look at the video at the bottom. They show an example in an anatomy book there).
Or cookbooks? How cool would it be to actually have someone showing you how to make the Sauce Hollandaise. I could imagine cooking would get easier for me this way.

What is Blio reader exactly?
Blio is a software program that runs on most platforms like Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile *throws confetti* and iPhone operating systems.
That’s one of the things I adore most about this great piece of technology. It will give you the opportunity to use the hardware you already own and doesn’t force you to buy an eReader for it.
It also can adjust the layout of the ebook to the width of your handheld screen. It uses a simple reflow option for that but it makes the otherwise colorful and voluminous books into something more practical for a small screen without losing the integrated abilities like for example the reading out loud feature.
Another great thing is that the software will be for free and they will have a large amount of free books to take a look at Blio and try it out.(I already saw that Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl will be in the bookstore- probably not for free but it will be there)

You want to see it in action?
I found a nice video where Ms. Ray Kurzweil,  explains and shows the capabilities of Blio in a cnet interview:

About Susi

Susi is a geeky vegetarian from Gemany. She just finished university and now works as a civil engineer in steel construction. Besides her reading addiction she also knits like a maniac while listening to audiobooks. Susi also blogs at the Secret HEA Society.

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