Mobile Readers

[quantus]

Intel's product, just released: http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/show ... =221600886

Mobile reader running on a cell phone released by another company about 2 years ago: http://www.knfbreader.com/products-mobile.php

It's a good idea, but it's been done and I think done better already. It's true, the enlarged font being included is novel.

[Jonathan]

You don't want to shell out $1500 for a new Intel reader? For shame!

[George]

I'm not sure why they think there are "millions" that both have trouble reading and have $1500 lying around. Or are they hoping to supplant powered scooters as the Medicare fraud of choice?

[Jonathan]

I am sure the amount of market research indicating a price point of $1500 will sell more units than there are people is enough to kill a water buffalo. So do not worry.

[quantus]

No one would. Likely the Department of Rehabilitation or an insurance company would though since most aides already cost that much and more.

[Jonathan]

http://venturebeat.com/2009/11/09/intel ... the-blind/
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/1 ... re-market/

Apparently being fixed-function enough for insurers but also as flexible in input and output as assisting software on general compute devices is the market niche this is targeted at. Most of the competition runs $5000+ according to the second article.

[quantus]

LM was one of the testers, so I've actually seen one of them up close and I was not impressed either compared with the quality and cost of the other devices she uses. I also won't comment on here on how well the Intel researchers actually listened to the feedback they got from her and others...

Really, I don't know what text-to-speech devices are being sold at $5000-10000. The only devices I've seen up in that range are CCTV's and Braille printers/displays which this product is not. TTS is mostly just software and is available off the shelf at this point. It should not be that expensive, or else how would Amazon put the Kindle out for so cheap with the feature built in (they chose good TTS software for the Kindle). OCR has also been around for a long time and is fairly cheap as well. Too bad whatever OCR software the Intel Reader uses is crappy. It's slow and not very accurate. The problem of dealing with columns of text or weird signs has been dealt with and solved before like in the KNFB Reader Mobile.

I can tell you right now that the visually impaired community is not happy with this Intel product. Here's one sample feedback:
http://blog.serotek.com/2009/11/what-i- ... eader.html

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On a side note, the article above mentions the Kindle being inaccessible and this is actually a problem for one of Amazon's target markets--libraries. Libraries need to conform to the ADA and can't really afford to buy two products to read ebooks when one would suffice. I expect Amazon to fix this relatively quickly or lose the market to someone else. If this happens, it's yet another competitor to the Intel Reader albeit without a camera to do OCR. However, it would be able to get content (including newspapers) delivered wirelessly.

[Jonathan]

I gotta say I was not impressed with the pricing. The BOM is just not that high and you can't expect the same margins on consumer electronics as leading edge silicon. But I'm not in charge.

[Jonathan]

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/

Mo' competition?

I wonder how this affects Martin...

[quantus]

Well, the touchscreen interface is likely going to exclude it from the library/school market since it's not going to be as accessible as the Kindle with it's keyboard...

Yo Martin, tell the Kindle people to make pressing the 4-way controller to always be the same as hitting <enter>. It's annoying that some dialogs work only with pressing the 4-way and others only by pressing <enter>!

[quantus]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/techn ... email.html

One of my readers is alarmed by a precedent being set:

"When the iPod introduced music lovers to the idea of copy protection, a years-long war ensued between consumers and the RIAA (and others). The primary issue was that if I purchased a song for my music player, it would only play on that player; I didn't really own it, per se. Years later, we finally have digital music without copy protection.

"Enter the Kindle and the Nook and copy-protected books. If I purchased a Kindle a year ago, and I have 30 books for it, and now want a Nook... you can guess where this is going.

"Where are the upset people? I never see reports on how e-book copy protection is bad for consumers. Didn't we learn anything from the music industry? Does this lock-in bother you? Am I missing something?"

Amen!

The dude even showed that his print sales didn't drop. Come on publishers, drop the stupid DRM already!