Bluefire Elected to the Board of the Readium Foundation

by | Feb 19, 2014 | Micah, News

The Readium Foundation has just announced the results of its first board election and we are delighted to share the news that Micah Bowers (CEO of Bluefire) has been elected as a founding board member! The other new board members include:

  • Pierre Danet – Hachette Livre
  • Jim Dovey – Independent
  • James English – New York Public Library
  • Bente Franck-Saetervoll – Bokbasen
  • Hadrien Gardeur – Feedbooks
  • Bill McCoy – IDPF

Congratulations to all—and thanks for your commitment to making the Readium Foundation a success!

To learn more about the Readium Foundation, please visit Readium.org.

To learn more about Bluefire’s support for the Readium ePUB 3 Native Code project click here.

– Cliff

Winter 2014 Update

by | Feb 10, 2014 | News

We’ve closed the book on 2013, which means that it’s time for our annual recap post and update on our plans for the year ahead.

2013 Recap

Bluefire’s 2013 is best summed up by one word: Investment. We completely rewrote our iOS app. We continued to enhance our Android app and began our Android redesign. We launched our Cloud Services platform. We made significant progress on our Windows app and on the integration of ePUB 3 into our application platform. Whew!

iOS

Bluefire Reader was completely redesigned for iOS 7. The new app fully integrates the design conventions and underlying technologies of iOS 7, making Bluefire Reader for iOS cleaner, faster and easier to use than ever.

We also added a number of new features to the app in 2013, including:

  • Library Search (by Title, Author, Publisher and file type)
  • A streamlined Collections workflow
  • Cover View for iPhone and iPod touch
  • Our enhanced image viewer that makes it easy to zoom in on, print and share embedded images in ePUB books (as publisher permissions allow)
  • Improved management of loaned library books
  • A “Back” button for easier navigation back from footnotes and other internal links
  • Support for our Page Location and Core Analytics Cloud Services

Android

We added several new features to our Android app in 2013 and early 2014, including:

  • Our enhanced image viewer that makes it easy to zoom in on, print and share embedded images in ePUB books (as publisher permissions allow)
  • Improved management of loaned library books
  • Support for our Page Location and Core Analytics Cloud Services

We also began our Android redesign and rewrite. Our new Android app will conform to the latest Android design guidelines and will deliver improved stability and performance.

Cloud Services

We are proud to report that we’ve released our Page Location and Core Analytics cloud services. These two services are the first pillars in our Cloud Services platform. The latest versions of Bluefire Reader for iOS and Android support the services. We are rolling out Page Location and Core Analytics to a small number of white-label lighthouse customers and will offer them to all of our white-label customers in a few weeks.

Windows

We previewed Bluefire Reader for Windows at the Frankfurt Book Fair and Digital Book World, and will release the reference app this spring. Bluefire Reader for Windows will enable you to integrate your store into a full featured, ACS enabled reading app that runs on Windows XP, Windows 7, and Windows 8.

ePUB 3

We are all in on ePUB 3! As you may already know, we helped found the Readium Foundation and provided initial financial support for the native code renderer project. We’ve continued to invest significant development resources in the native code project and have provided design support for Readium the web client. We are spearheading the integration of the Readium renderer into the iOS host application framework. And that’s just the work on ePUB 3that we can talk about at this time!

Looking Ahead to 2014

In 2014 we will be focused on 4 primary areas of development:

  1. Integration of ePUB 3 support into our white label application platform – ePUB 3 is the future, but like most forward looking investments, the payoff will take time. We are actively working on integrating support for ePUB 3 into all of our reference apps. We hope to roll out ePUB 3 support to our white-label customers this summer.
  2. Update of our Android app – We are continuing our work on our Android app refresh and hope to release the reference app this spring.
  3. Rollout of our Windows app – We are putting the finishing touches on our first release of our Windows app. We hope to release the reference app in this spring.
  4. Enhancement of our Cloud Services platform – We are in the process of rolling out Sync and Core Analytics to our first lighthouse white-label customers. We will be rolling out these services to interested white-label customers over the next few months. We are also working on an API for the analytics platform. We are still working on the specs, but hope to make this feature available to interested white-label licensees later this year.

As our plans solidify we will provide updates with more granular details.

With thanks to our customers and users around the world for a great 2013, and high hopes for 2014!

The Team at Bluefire