Nuance, Amazon Text-to-Speech Partner, Launches Free PDF Reader to Compete with Adobe Acrobat Reader

Almost a year to the day after Amazon began shipping its first Kindle 2 units with its Text-to-Speech feature developed by Nuance Communications, Inc., that company has just announced the launch of new free Windows-based PDF Reader software that, Nuance says, "includes features typically found in premium products" and "takes up less disk space, is more secure than Adobe® Reader®, and works with virtually any PDF file."

It will be interesting to see if the Amazon-Nuance partnership is extended to the point where and overlap develops between the new Nuance PDF Reader, and its related products, and features that might become available soon in a current and/or future Kindle model. (Recent weeks have seen growing controversy between Nuance competitor Adobe and Apple's Steve Jobs over issues related to Adobe Flash.)

In Nuance's own words, the free Nuance PDF Reader will allow you to:

• Convert PDF files to Word, Excel, or RTF!     
• Fill and save PDF forms     
• Annotate PDFs     
• Keep your documents safe     
• Enjoy 100% compatibility with Adobe® Acrobat®; and    
• Work with PDF portfolios

Check here to download your free Nuance PDF Reader or here to buy Nuance's PDF Create 6.0 for $29.99 from Amazon.

For now at least, these are Windows-compatible products.