Blio eReader

Way back in January, when the iPad was still a twinkle in Steve Jobs eye, I talked about a piece of software called Blio.  After many months, Blio is available for download.  Blio is an eReader that allows for natural formatting of the text.  In fact, Blio looks exactly like a book, even a picture book!  I was very pleased by the look and feel of the books that I got as part of the free download.

Blio is also meant to allow text-to-speech so books can be read.  This is probably one of the features I was most excited about.  The text-to-speech is a decent voice, has highlighting, and is not difficult to listen too. Unfortunately, Blio is hampered.  Text from my computer was read fine, but the free children's book did not allow text-to-speech, my guess is that the publisher would not allow it.  This is very similar to the text-to-speech issues with the Kindle.  Just frustrating to see that publishers are still limiting the ability for all persons to access eText.

Blio also features a bookstore to purchase books directly through it.  Many of them best sellers.  You can also print documents from your Windows computer, using the XPS printer installed on most Windows machines, and it can read PDF, Doc, and  As of right now Blio is only available for Windows, but is soon to be released for iOS, Android, and Blackberry.  You can sync your Blio books between up to 5 devices.

While I am still excited for this program, I hope they get out all the versions very soon, and fix the text-to-speech.

Patrick


Share this
Do you know somebody else who would find this post interesting or useful?  Please forward it to them.  Did somebody forward this post to you?  Visit Teaching All Students and subscribe to receive posts for free.   If you need a tutorial please visit this post: RSS Readers