Announcing Cloudshelf Reader for iOS
We are pleased to formally announce Cloudshelf Reader, an all new ereader application from Bluefire that supports digital publications in the EPUB3 open standard that can contain video, audio, animation, interactivity, media overlays, fixed layout content, and other advanced features of the EPUB3 specification.
Cloudshelf Reader empowers learning and productivity with tools for bookmarking, highlighting, annotations and full text search as well as tools for browsing, tagging and searching bookmarks and annotations across all downloaded documents – in one place. We’ve also included a fun drawing feature for annotating publications with a stylus or finger. This feature is experimental at this point, but we see opportunities to extend and refine this feature in many exciting ways.
The app was designed from the bottom-up to leverage the accessibility features of the iOS operating system such as Voice Over. We intend to further improve the a11Y related reading features, and with this 1.0 version we have a solid foundation to build upon. For us, accessibility is the most meaningful and important aspect of the EPUB3 specification, and we are strong believers that accessibility is not just the right thing to do, it will soon be seen as mission critical for all major business and institutions worldwide.
In Cloudshelf Reader, we are leveraging the work we’ve been doing with the Readium Foundation over the last few years to build core open source technology components necessary to build browser and platform native reading system apps that support EPUB3.
For use cases that require digital rights management we chose to integrate an all-new DRM technology from Sony DADC called User Rights Management Solution (URMS). This technology makes use of the robust Marlin DRM specification. URMS provides unique flexibility in content license management including optional license transfer and on-demand revocation which we believe will enable innovative new products and services for digital publications. As such, we have decided to become a reseller of URMS.
Cloudshelf Reader is not an update to, or replacement of Bluefire Reader. It is a completely new product and we continue to offer our popular Bluefire Reader white label app service. More information about our Cloudshelf Reader products and services can be found on our website.
Please download the free Cloudshelf Reader app, give it a spin, and let us know what you think. The Dropbox feature provides a convenient way to import your DRM-free EPUB files, and of course the “Open-in” feature of iOS is handy too. We’ve put together a Cloudshelf Reader community site, and we very much value and appreciate any feedback, feature requests, or bug reports.
Cloudshelf Reader apps for Android and modern browsers are coming soon.
-Micah