Blio Reader available for download, sort of

[kestrell]

A. seems to have given me his cold, so I'm not feeling up to experiencing this myself, but I have been reading about the user experiences of those who downloaded Ray Kurzweil's Blio Reader, available as a free download as of today from blio.com .

What the publicity announcement from KNFB doesn't mention is the fine print from the download site, which says that an "accessible" version will be available in October. Good to know that the "NFB" in "KNFB" still means something.

Also, numerous accessibility professionals who have downloaded the program have stated that it has failed to run, but instead merely crashes.

Having had my doese of irony for the day, I'm returning to the paranormal romance I was reading, as it is making more sense to me at the moment.

Comments

[duskpeterson]

Let me see now. In order to join into the new e-book revolution, I need to have Service Pack 3 on my Windows XP; Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, with Service Pack 1; and a Direct X 9+ compatible graphics card.

(*Pauses to laugh hysterically.*)

They seriously think they're going to reach the masses with these sorts of system requirements?

[kestrell]

Right, I wasn't even mentioning the grumblings from folks who had to waste their time doing the upgrades first. As I mentioned in reply to someone who posted to my LJ, I think the Blio is going to make a really good teaching tool for things not to do when you develop software. I'm a little scared at the thought that Ray Kurzweil might have jumped the shark with this one.