blio-e-reader Engadget reports on a press release concerning Blio, Ray Kurzweil’s imitation-of-a-paper-book e-reading app that we have mentioned a few times in past months. The PC application will be released for download starting September 28th, and iOS and Android applications will be available soon afterward.

Blio will, the press release claims, “revolutionize the digital reading experience with full-color, interactive, and immersive content.” The full-color reader will read files presented in XPS format, “which allows digital books to stay true to their original print version,” and will also read EPUB files. It will also offer text-to-speech technology,

Blio will reportedly have a million free titles available at launch, and 10,000 commercial e-book titles from Baker & Taylor. Toshiba already has a Blio-powered e-book store of its own.

As I’ve said before, Ray Kurzweil has some impressive chops in the fields of scanning and text-to-speech, including reading machines for the blind. It still remains to be seen just how well this will translate to going up against the commercial e-book industry giants.

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