Hasta La Gadget!

Americans love a good bargain — especially, when it’s a twofer. Barnes and Noble, arguably the only real competitor to Amazon’s Kindle juggernaut, has just announced a promotion to get as many of its Nook readers into consumers’ hands as possible. Starting March 24th and running until the end of the month, consumers that purchase the Nook HD+ online, in-store or at select big box retailers will also be given a free Nook Simple Touch. The limited promotion comes hot on the heels of rumors that B&N would start to de-emphasize hardware production for the Nook line in favor of its content services; a rumor the company publicly shot down. Still, there’s no denying e-reader market share’s been an uphill battle for B&N, even if the segment is seeing marginal year-over-year increases. Numbers aside, if you’ve been holding out on joining the digital reading fray because of cost, now’s the time to make the switch.

Filed under: Tablets

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Via: The Next Web

Barnes and Noble has just dealt up some good news for movie-loving owners of its Nook HD and HD+ slates, with the announcement of new licensing agreements with a host of studios. Lionsgate, MGM, Paramount, Relativity Media as well as National Geographic, Little Pim and Film Buff are all part of the new wave of additions to the Nook Video line-up. This means titles such as The Hunger Games, Mad Men, and the Twilight Movies will be available for rent or purchase starting today. Little Pim provides foreign language learning for kids, so there’s something to expand the minds of the little ones too. This, combined with that UltraViolet integration and the odd item at the FCC suggests that Barnes & Noble is taking its media content offering more seriously than ever. We’re certainly not complaining.

Filed under: Tablets, HD

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Publishers often want to work closely with e-book outlets — possibly a little too closely — but it’s rare that they involve themselves directly. Pearson is taking that uncommon step by making a 5 percent, $89.5 million investment in Nook Media, the joint venture between Barnes & Noble and Microsoft. Some of the reasoning won’t be made public until Barnes & Noble provides holiday sales results on January 3rd, but Pearson is clear that it’s furthering its online education plans: it wants Nook Media’s distribution skills to make a “seamless and effective experience for students.” Just when we’ll see this harmony is still up in the air, though. Nook Media has yet to outline what Microsoft’s partnership means for e-books and e-readers, let alone how Pearson factors in. We’re not expecting a sea change until companies start speaking up.

Continue reading Pearson buys a small stake in Nook Media, wants a fast track for digital education

Filed under: Microsoft

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Source: PaidContent

Barnes & Noble’s Nook unit didn’t have its greatest quarter. The $160 million in revenue the new Microsoft-backed spin off raked in was slightly better than last year’s $152 million, but still a significant drop from $220 million. In a sign of the growing ubiquity of e-readers however, digital content sales were up 38 percent while the units overall revenue was up just 6 percent. Of course the Nook is still losing money, having cut $51 million from the company’s bottom line. If you step outside of the digital realm things are looking slightly better for the book purveyor, as profits were up to $65 million — a 15.6 percent increase over the same time period last year. As we enter the holiday season things should start to look up for B&N and there were good signs during the four day shop-stravaganza from Black Friday to Cyber Monday as sales of Nook hardware doubled from last year. For all the fun financial details hit up the source.

Continue reading Barnes & Noble reports Q2 2013 earnings: digital content sales up 38%, Nook unit rakes $160 million

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Via: TechCrunch

Source: Barnes & Noble

Barnes & Noble’s Nook readers are top notch — there’s no argument about that. The application part of that equation however, is pretty messy. The web app is integrated into the B&N site and keeps the UI clean and minimal. The Mac and PC clients on the other hand go with forest green highlights, grays and a busy sidebar for navigation, while the Android and iOS apps get bright blues and lots of gradients. And lets not even bring the Nook Tablet and Color into this. Basically, they’re all completely different, confusing and rather poorly designed. The company’s new Windows 8 app on the other hand appears to take cues from the Paper interface of the Nook HD which, while not exactly stunning, is certainly a huge step in the right direction. It also brings a certain amount of consistency to the ecosystem across platforms, something that’s been sorely missing. The current version is a little basic, as it appears the app lacks notation, look up and social sharing features, but it will let you pin content to your Start Screen as a live tile. Download it now at the source and check out the PR after the break.

Continue reading Nook app comes to Windows 8 with clean Paper-like design

Filed under: Software

Nook app comes to Windows 8 with clean Paper-like design originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Nov 2012 12:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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