Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
Kurtzweil is essentially supporting producers too lazy to do their job.
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As we've seen, those are Legion.
In the article, he highlights that he is talking *primarily* about formating-dependent content; magazines, cookbooks, coffee table books, etc, more than fiction and essays. And, realistically, there *is* room for a standard high-feature format-intensive, *malleable* ebook format. PDF is basically frozen pretend-paper (despite efforts to bring reflow to it) and attempts in the other direction (adding hard-formatting PDF-like features to ePub) are inadequate for what he is talking about.
Essentially, he is taking about a better Zinio.
And if Blio offer a better path to malleable, formating-dependent content than custom-coded, platform-dependent app-mags and app-books, he *will* find takers among those lazy content producers. Not at all hard to see that side of the deal working out for him.
The consumer side of the deal, though, remains to be seen.
Is Blio *only* for open platforms like PCs and tablets? (iPad and Android MIDs are a good target for Blio. WinCE, too.)
But, will there be a Blio for Kindle? For Nook? (Not impossible; both are going to be supporting arbitrary apps soon.)
For the second-tier Linux-based readers? (If he open sources the reader software, probably.)
Will Sony buy in? Again, not impossible.
Kurzweil doesn't always appear to have all his oars in the water so a bit of skepticism is warranted. But there probably *is* a market out there for what he discusses. There *is* a real need for that kind of product.
I'm just not sure Blio is the answer to that need, though.
We'll see soon enough.