#CSUN14 Audio: A Live Demo of the Hims Blaze EZ

Hims came into this year's CSUN conference with a bang, announcing the Blaze EZ, the successor to the BookSense digital media player. The Blaze EZ includes wireless capabilities and optical character recognition for reading printed documents. We spoke with Dave Wilkinson, Business Development Manager for Hims, who gave us a first look and live demo of the device. Blind Bargains audio coverage of CSUN 2014 is generously sponsored by the American Foundation for the Blind.

Transcript

We strive to provide an accurate transcription, though errors may occur.

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Transcribed by Kayde Rieken

Direct from San Diego, it's BlindBargains.com coverage of CSUN 2014. The biggest names, provocative interviews, and wall-to-wall exhibit hall coverage. Brought to you by the American Foundation for the Blind.

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Now, here's J.J. Meddaugh.

J.J. Meddaugh: We are here at CSUN 2014 with Dave Wilkinson, Business Development Manager for Hims; and we have what I guess you would call the next generation of the BookSense, but it's actually doing a lot more than just BookSense. It's actually doing OCR. So Dave, welcome to Blind Bargains.

Dave Wilkinson: Hey, thank you. I've certainly been on your website enough, and I've spent enough money, so it's about time that I actually got to meet the source of the reduction of my net income over the years. (Laughs)

JM: Awesome. So this is a new product called the Blaze EZ.

DW: Right.

JM: So why don't you describe to me a little bit about this.

DW: The Blaze EZ is about the size of other competitive digital book readers. It's probably — I'm not very good with measurements, and I'm not looking at the specs. It's probably about 4 inches high —

(The Blaze EZ begins speaking.)

DW: Oh, be quiet over there.

JM: (Laughs)

DW: — an inch or two across —

JM: Mm-hmm.

DW: — about a half inch thick. So it's about the size —

JM: You're right; it's pretty comparable, sure.

DW: It's pretty comparable.

JM: I see you cut out a lot of the buttons, the —

DW: We cut out a lot of the buttons. This is the Blaze EZ for a reason —

JM: Okay.

DW: — and the reason is that it's — it's — the primary buttons on it are just arrows going up, down, left, and right, with an Enter or Okay button in the middle. And then you have dedicated buttons above that that are Brailled with an M for music; R for radio; or B for books. Then you have the button down at the — at the bottom, which is labeled O for OCR. OCR is the next logical step for book readers. When book readers came out, they could handle a lot of formats — DAISY, BRF, text, .doc, EPUB, DAISY —

JM: Right.

DW: — all these acronyms that cause our heads to spin around. But what they couldn't handle was an amazingly simple format that was called print. And —

JM: I've heard of it.

DW: Yeah. It's — it's —

JM: Right.

DW: — it's still kind of popular.

JM: Okay.

DW: And so the — the idea of the Blaze EZ is to incorporate that ever-elusive but still popular format, print, into our repertoire of formats that we can handle. So we do that using a high-resolution camera that's in the bottom; and when I scan with —

JM: How — what do you mean — how many resolution are you —

DW: I don't know. I'm not an engineer.

JM: Right. Okay. (Laughs)

DW: (Laughs) I have absolutely no idea.

JM: Good enough. All right.

DW: It's a good enough resolution camera to read the menu that we're about to read.

JM: All right.

DW: How's that?

JM: Let's do it.

DW: So we're going to go ahead and go into the scanning menu here. I'm going to press the O for OCR.

(The Blaze EZ makes a clicking sound, then reads the first menu option: "Take a picture.")

DW: And we're going to press that again, and it's going to snap a picture. I'm doing the old "elbows on the table" routine.

(The Blaze EZ clicks, then makes a camera sound and begins beeping.)

JM: Oh, there you go. It's the cliché camera sound.

DW: The cliché cheesy camera noise.

JM: Yep, it's always there.

DW: And we're going to wait a few seconds; and with any luck, we'll start hearing the hotel menu.

(The Blaze EZ continues beeping. After several seconds, it begins reading the text.)

JM: So I take it you have controls to navigate around that?

DW: I can navigate around that. And it did a relatively decent job. Obviously, this is — I've been playing with this now for about a day, so I'm not a super-pro.

JM: Mm-hmm.

DW: But yeah, I've got control. I can move by word —

(The machine clicks and announces the navigation levels.)

JW: — I can move by character; if I want to go really nuts, I can move phonetically —

JM: Oh, boy. (Laughs)

DW: — and hear them all — yeah. So I can move to the beginning — so it's just like your — your BookSense, as far as the controls that we've got.

(The Blaze EZ announces more navigation levels, including paragraph and sentence.)

JM: Are they going to work on — that's a little — seems a little laggy when you're pressing those buttons, as far as —

DW: It's — this — this is pre-beta.

JM: Okay.

DW: So this is —

JM: That puts it in perspective. It's a little ways off of release.

DW: Yeah, this is very much —

JM: Okay.

DW: This is pre-beta.

JM: Mm-hmm.

DW: This will be available by the summer shows, if not before. But we wanted to be able to introduce this at this conference because it's something that we've been working on for a while, that we think there's a need for in market; but this is pre-beta.

JM: Okay. So as far as the OCR, is there settings to control the flash, things like that, or how do you —

DW: Yes. Yeah, if I go back into my — if I go back into my OCR —

(The Blaze EZ reads the OCR menu.)

JM: Okay.

DW: Now, it says, "Take a picture." Now I'm using my right arrow to move across the menu.

(The Blaze EZ chimes, then reads the next option.)

JM: Flash on.

(David moves to the next option.)

DW: And the "result" means that I can go back and look at previous results.

(David proceeds to the next option.)

DW: I can open — I can open a captured file. I store the JPG and the text file on here, so I can essentially have it re-recognize the JPEG.

JM: Could you load on a JPEG from an outside source?

DW: The short answer is you should be able to, and I have not tried it.

JM: Okay.

DW: But I'm on the beta team. When I get one of these — at the moment, they're pretty tightly controlled when we've got them, when we don't —

JM: Mm-hmm.

DW: So when I've got one in my house and am able to play with it, I'll be able to answer a lot more of that. And I'll give you my email address where you can keep up with it, and we'll see what it does.

JM: Sure. What about — the other thing, I guess, that's always been helpful as far as OCR is giving cues to help you line up with the page. That's the thing that KNFB reader did really well with, as far as, you know, telling you if the text was crooked or part of it was cut off. Have they looked at doing any of those features, or —

DW: We do not have cues at the moment. I think that's certainly something that if user feedback — we're a market-driven company like anyone else, so —

JM: Okay.

DW: — if it's something that, you know, people push for, then we'll try to develop them. I've had pretty good luck using the old "elbows on the table, lower and raise the camera" type deal. I've turned the print sideways, upside down, to see if it can handle that, and it did a nice job.

JM: Okay.

DW: But we do not have cues at this point.

JM: And I take it it does reasonably well — let's say, like, complex documents that have pictures and things like that.

DW: It does. It does as well as you can expect — it does — it beat my expectations for it. I mean, if you take some of the other stuff that was out there — like, when the Intel reader came out —

JM: Right.

DW: — I was a bit disappointed with what it could do.

JM: Right.

DW: — and I wasn't disappointed this time around.

JM: Sure. Are you aware of which OCR engine's being used, or —

DW: I have no clue.

JM: Okay. Assumably —

DW: That's why I have engineers. (Laughs)

JM: Right. Assumably, one of the major ones, though. (Laughs) So the OCR feature, that — that's probably one of the — you know, people wonder about. How do you make the — the digital book player relevant with the moving — you know, more people moving to the iPhone and Android, and the NLS app coming out for the iPhone. And this seems like a possible good way to do that because there isn't a — you know, the OCR options on the phones are definitely a lot more limited.

DW: Right. The other — the other thing about that — and I — and I think this is all part of, a lot of it depends on who you're looking at for your market.

JM: Well, who are you looking at for your market?

DW: Well, and it — — that's a good question.

JM: Right.

DW: I think, when you're looking at the digital book players and other devices, a lot of what we do you can do on other devices with other apps, with whatever. A lot of this comes down to life choice decisions. How easy do you want it to be?

JM: Right.

DW: How simple do you want or need it to be? If you are totally geeky and want to prove to the world that you can control your whole universe from your Galaxy or from your iPhone —

JM: Right.

DW: — or from whatever, then more power to you. At a certain point, you start to lose life hours in that battle.

JM: Sure.

DW: And you just want to get things done. And I think that's where products like this still come into play in that you — you still just want to get things done —

JM: Right.

DW: — and this will snap the picture, it will read back to you. You've got 12 gigs of memory to store things on. With the music, you've got 10 equalizer settings. You've got easy equalizer to use —

JM: Mm-hmm.

DW: — you've got stereo speakers built into the device.

JM: Okay.

DW: You're handling a wide variety of file formats. For the other — for example, the other night, I was downloading FLAC files. On my phone, I would have to download a FLAC app. On here, I just throw them on here. So it's a matter —

JM: So it does all the formats of the BookSense and then a couple more, pretty much?

DW: Yes. Yes.

JM: Okay.

DW: So it all comes down to — you know, how much time and energy —

JM: Sure.

DW: — you want to spend getting the end result.

JM: Do you feel the OCR is the type of feature, though, that can maybe make the book player a little more relevant to the — the higher-tech consumer?

DW: I do. I — I'm — you know, I mean, I'm wanting — what I used my old KNFB reader for —

JM: Mm-hmm.

DW: — was simple things like being able to tell if the coffee is regular or decaf. That's an important decision in my life.

JM: Mm-hmm.

DW: So I'm glad to have something like that back.

JM: Sure.

DW: And I even found — I have not had a lot of success with apps on, you know —

JM: Yeah, people have been looking for a while.

DW: Yeah. I mean —

JM: And some people still hold on to theirs, and — yep.

DW: You know, people are chopping holes in boxes —

JM: Yeah, sure.

DW: — you know, lining the camera up and all that kind of stuff.

JM: Right.

DW: — and I'm just — I'm not that good. (Laughs)

JM: What's the battery life? Understandably, of course, it's going to be a lot more reduced when taking a lot of pictures, but —

DW: I have not seen the specs on the battery life.

JM: Okay.

DW: I am assuming that it's 12 to 15 hours.

JM: Right. But — yeah. Obviously, taking a whole bunch of pictures in a row is going to —

DW: Right. It's going to reduce that.

JM: — cut that down.

JW: Sure. And it's got — you know, and again, it's one of those things — when we give you specs for batteries, just like any other company, the specs were done in the vacuum of space where we get the best possible use out of it.

JM: Mm-hmm.

DW: When you turn bluetooth on — we were using this with bluetooth with the Jambox a while ago — you're going to take more battery power.

JM: Sure.

DW: When you turn WiFi on — and this has got your online DAISY functions where you can download from Bookshare, you can download DAISY books that are on the web —

JM: Okay.

DW: — you've got your Internet radio built in. But your WiFi's going to take some battery power.

JM: Sure.

DW: So it depends on the features that you've got turned on or off.

JM: You mentioned WiFi features and that you have some of that in this model. Is there support for NLS? Is that a possibility?

DW: NLS will happen. This model that I am holding in my hand as a pre-beta model —

JM: Mm-hmm.

DW: — I cannot play you an NLS book.

JM: Sure.

DW: It will happen.

JM: Got you. And this is the Blaze EZ. That kind of implies — are there other blazes?

DW: At the moment, this is our blaze.

JM: Okay, awesome. So one of the things you mentioned before we started recording — it also does have support for more modern memory card formats: SDXC.

DW: Yes. Yes.

JM: Which — that's the newer memory card format.

DW: Yes, it is.

JM: I guess you can get up — well, they don't make terabyte cards yet.

DW: Not yet.

JM: But, in theory, at some point —

DW: In theory, you'd be able to plug a terabyte card into this. And the first thing I'm going to do when I get home is take a USB, you know, cable and plug it into a terabyte external hard drive to see what it does.

JM: Will there — is there enough power in the unit to provide that?

DW: Ask me in a couple days. (Laughs)

JM: All right. Well — hey, you know, I appreciate your candidness. It's definitely — I know it's a brand new thing, and we're, you know, of course still learning about all the — the capabilities and features of this. I assume pretty much everything else from the old BookSense is — you know, as far as the radio and the — you know, a lot of that is still going to work the same way.

DW: It is.

JM: Right.

DW: The one — now, one significant difference in the hardware in the older BookSense and this guy is that we have stereo speakers in this model.

JM: Right.

DW: And the speakers sound pretty good. I mean, I'm not really into speakers built into devices. I mean, I haven't run into a — a tablet or an iPhone or anything yet that has speakers that would make me stay up late at night waiting to hear them.

JM: Right.

DW: But they're — they're not bad as far as speakers built into portable devices go.

JM: Okay. Is there a — a price point for this yet, or —

DW: Price point is to be announced. Frankly, I have a very good idea of what it's going to be, but we're still — we're still sort of fiddling over the last few dollars when we come out with it —

JM: Sure.

DW: — so I prefer to hold off.

JM: KNFB Reader was 1800. Is it going to be —

DW: This is going to be so far beneath that that it's not even funny.

JM: Okay. All right. So somewhere, I guess maybe — perhaps between that and original BookSense is — okay.

DW: You're — you're going to be —

JM: All right.

DW: You're going to be very pleasantly surprised.

JM: All right. Okay.

DW: If you're — you know.

JM: Sure. And you're saying that —

DW: Extraordinarily pleasantly surprised.

JM: Okay. So you're saying, likely available by the summer shows.

DW: It'll be available at the summer shows.

JM: Okay. And if people want to follow the developments and the — you know, perhaps get some more details and follow up, what's the best way to do this?

DW: You can — we have a — we have several lists that you can join. You can always send us an email to hims@hims-inc.com, and we'll sign you up for our email list. You're welcome to correspond directly with me. My email address is dave@hims-inc.com. You can go onto our website where we'll be posting updates. We've also got a number of podcasts that we'll be doing over the next — not podcasts, webinars — that we'll be doing over the next several months, one of which will be on the Blaze, which is coming up the next couple of months. If you sign up for our emails, then we'll — we'll let you know when our webinars are going to be.

JM: Mm-hmm.

DW: So if you happen to be here at CSUN, you can come by the booth and we'll sign you up.

JM: All right.

DW: So there are a number of ways of keeping in touch with us.

JM: Great. Hey, thank you so much for showing this to us. Look forward to following the progress.

DW: Thank you much, and way to go at Blind Bargains.

For more exclusive CSUN coverage, visit www.BlindBargains.com, or download the Blind Bargains app for your iOS or Android device.

Blind Bargains CSUN coverage is presented by the AT Guys, www.atguys.com.

This has been another Blind Bargains audio podcast. Visit BlindBargains.com for the latest deals, news, and exclusive content. This podcast may not be retransmitted, sold, or reproduced without the express, written permission of ATGuys. Copyright 2014.

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Category: Portable Devices
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J.J. Meddaugh is an experienced technology writer and computer enthusiast. He is a graduate of Western Michigan University with a major in telecommunications management and a minor in business. When not writing for Blind Bargains, he enjoys travel, playing the keyboard, and meeting new people.