EbookFormat
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Ebook publishers seek universal format, lament Apple and Amazon's closed ecosystems
You don't need to sit down, we're not about to hit you with any shocking news, but a recent BookExpo America convention has given publishers the chance to air out their laundry list of complaints. Seriously, do these guys ever have anything positive to say? Now they've managed to pinpoint a flaw in the Kindle and iPad's resounding success, identifying the two ebook reading platforms as closed, and expressing a yearning for a universal and open format that all books can be published and consumed on. Of course, they wouldn't be publishers if they didn't also lust after robust DRM measures, which might explain why they're not roundly supporting the readily available EPUB format. It has DRM options, but perhaps they're not gnarly enough for the dudes responsible for bringing us the psychological horror of the Twilight series. We still don't like the suggestion that the people, Amazon primarily, who popularized this market should just open it up out of the goodness of their own hearts -- maybe we would if publishers ever showed themselves capable of doing similarly noble things.
Blio seeks to take digital reading in a new, more inclusive, and colorful direction
As if we didn't have enough pretenders in the ebook space, here's Ray Kurzweil with a new format of his own and a bagful of ambition to go with it. Set for a proper unveiling at CES in a week's time, the Blio format and accompanying application are together intended to deliver true-to-life color reproductions of the way real books appear. Interestingly, the software has been developed in partnership with Nokia, in an effort to turn Espoo's phones into "the smallest text-to-speech reading devices available thus far," though apps are also being developed for the iPhone, PC and Mac. The biggest advantage of this format might actually be behind the scenes, where the costs to publishers are drastically reduced by them having to only submit a PDF scan of their books, whose formatting remains unchanged in Blio. We'll be all over this at CES, but for now you'll find more pictures and early impressions over at Gizmodo.
