During the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas Jan. 7 to 10, Microsoft hosted Blio in its exhibition space. Blio is an e-reader application developed by futurist Ray Kurzweil, originally developed as a tool for helping the blind via its ability to read texts aloud. At some point during the development process, though, somebody decided that Blio could be made far more robust.

The resulting product, which is available for desktop and tablet PCs, netbooks, and mobile devices including the iPhone and iPod Touch, can be downloaded for free starting at the end of the January from blioreader.com. Instead of converting books into grayscale (as most e-readers do), Blio displays texts onscreen in their original layout, color and font, and readers can insert their own voice, image, text or video notes. Blio's representatives, temporarily seizing Microsoft's meeting space at the convention, gave me a full rundown of features (including the ability to highlight), which can also be found here.

The 1.2 million titles within Blio's library will come courtesy of Baker & Taylor, a major distributor of physical and digital books. Specifically, though, Blio seems most useful for those wanting to have textbooks or cookbooks in their original format and color, as opposed to having them be reduced to standard-issue grayscale e-reader text. In any case, it's an interesting and fun tool, although some of its functionality and impact may be lost in the tide of e-reader devices and applications currently swamping the market.