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Free e-book reader from Ray Kurzweil to offer text to speech and handle ePub, PDF, other formats: November U.S. launch
October 16, 2009 | 2:32 pm
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By David Rothman
Free e-book-reading software from inventor Ray Kurzeil and a blind-advocacy group will offer text to speech.
ePub, PDF and other formats will be handled, with a variety of fonts to choose from.
Developed with help from the National Federation of the Blind, the product will be launched late next month in the U.S. for blind and nonblind people alike.
Name of the Kurzeil-NFB joint venture involved is knfbReading Technology.
Among other capabilities, says Publishers Weekly, the knfb software can highlight words as they’re read. This is great news for people with learning disabilities such as Amos Bokros. An alternative to expensive special-purpose software?
knfbReading’s technology will even let plays be read aloud in different voices. A whole new market for plays in book form? I wonder what the voice quality will be. Any possibility of a capability to handle inflection well, based on language patterns?
The knfb product is to work with a variety of desktops, laptops and mobile phones.
Biz model is to use the reader to sell books. At the same time, the joint venture will let other companies brand the product and offer themselves.
Let’s just hope that publishers will be enlightened enough not to interfere with the general use of the TTS for books, despite the obstinacy they’ve shown in the case of the Kindle. As I’ve noted, the general book market is much, much bigger than the one for audio books. Priorities, please!
PW quotes Kurzweil as saying that “there are a small number of publishers who feel that TTS will compete with their audio books. For blind and dyslexic users they have a right to use TTS to gain equal access to print information. We believe this issue will be resolved soon in favor of universal TTS.” Fingers crossed!
I’ll be curious if the product works with DRM and would be suitable for library use. If Adobe doesn’t come through with TTS in Adobe Digital Editions, is there any chance that knfb could be a replacement?
Related: Baker & Taylor join with K-NFB reader. Also see The scariest thing about the Kindle 2’s text to speech capabilities.
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Comments:
Good for Kurzweil and the blind-advocacy organization. I’ve read Kurzweil’s book about the ‘singularity’ where humans and technology will merge. Very interesting stuff. So it makes a lot of sense he’s interested in digital reading.
I wonder what the ADA would have to say about publishers who deny use of TTS. Has a complaint ever been filed with them?
Reading ebooks on a computer is great, but before bying an ereader, please consider that paper books are more sustainable and better for the environment:
http://selfdestructivebastards.blogspot.com/2009/10/ebooks-versus-paper.html
@Canada Guy. When actual studies have been done, eReaders come out as being more environmentally friendly.
For example CleanTech:
http://cleantech.com/news/4867/cleantech-group-finds-positive-envi
claims that eReaders (Amazon Kindle in this case) have
“significant environmental advantages compared to the publishing of books, magazines and newspapers”.
I tend to believe people that have actually tried to measure things, over someone just posting his opinion on his blog
Jim, I actually linked to that study in my article and commented on it.
Ahh, I missed the link the first time. However my original point still stands. While you have pointed out potential weaknesses in the quoted study (checking beyond just carbon emissions), you haven’t come up with any quantifiable data to evaluate your claim that p is better than e for the environment, so I have no reason to believe your statement.
Jim, we can’t know the future for sure, but for everyone to start using ereaders, that would require a massive use of resources to build a billion ereaders (yes, I know, it would not happen all at once.) We already know (and I pointed out) several ways to decrease the waste and inefficiencies in book publishing.
Also, would you disagree with my argument that books use a sustainable resource (especially if we get rid of the wastefulness), whereas ereaders don’t? What happens were certain metals becore too rare or expensive? What about oil?
I had written a lengthy response, but I’ll let it rest since this is getting off topic of a really good industry trend, which is the development of eReaders targeted for people with needs that the current eReaders don’t address, regardless of the environmental impact.
(Now if David or Paul want to start up new article on eReader vs P, as opposed just e vs P which is covered here: http://www.teleread.com/2009/09/28/ebooks-save-millions-of-trees/ or here:
http://www.teleread.com/2008/08/31/books-vs-eebooks-which-are-greener/ then I’m more than game to continue the discussion )