Hasta La Gadget!

Thinking about getting an e-reader before you head back to school this fall? Barnes & Noble surely hopes so, and to sweeten the deal it’s offering 12 free classics along with study guides and apps if you register your freshly unboxed Nook before October 31st. That’s right folks, over $100 worth of e-books can be yours with the purchase of the new Nook, the Nook Color or even the first edition Nook. While it must be said that most of the available titles are out of copyright and so are already available for free download elsewhere (we’re looking at you, Gutenberg.org), you can at least select from a dozen Spark Notes of time-consuming reads such as War and Peace. So if you’re looking to take a break from all that Organic Chemistry mumbo jumbo, you can catch up on A Tale of Two Cities in your spare time.

Barnes & Noble offers back to school Nook deal, adds more to your reading list originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Aug 2011 05:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just when the snarkbot in me wanted to giggle at Borders like a great big jerk, they go and send this genuinely heartfelt farewell message. In summary: they got their butts kicked, and they’re sorry. So am I. More »

As the internet has overtaken newspapers as an information source, convincing readers to shell out the dough for online news has proven an uphill battle. Now two papers are trying a new approach: entice customers with discounted Android tablets and pre-loaded content apps. The Philadelphia Media Network, which owns the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, is planning a pilot program for mid-August which will offer around 2,000 tablets; if successful, it could expand to more readers. The combined price of hardware and a one- to two-year daily subscription should be about half of retail. So far we have few details on what you’ll get for your money, but expect a WiFi tablet from a major manufacturer, with 3G and/or 4G possible in the future. If you’re from the city of brotherly love and want more details on this early-stage plan, see the video after the break.

Continue reading Philly papers to offer subscribers discounted Android tablets that make terrible birdcage lining (video)

Philly papers to offer subscribers discounted Android tablets that make terrible birdcage lining (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It happened once before, but now it’s in stone: MSI has just come clean with its WindPad 110w pre-order, with $599.99 grabbing you a place in line. For those who’ve forgotten, that price premium nets you a 10-inch panel (1280 x 800), 4GB of DDR3 memory, a 32GB solid state drive, a pair of full-size USB ports, a mini-HDMI socket, Windows 7 and AMD’s Brazos processor platform. Make no mistake — this ain’t your average tablet, which may (or may not) explain the $100-above-average MSRP. Hit the links below if you’d like to make the best impulse buy of your week, but make sure you’re prepared to wait on an August 1st ship date.

Continue reading MSI’s Brazos-powered WindPad 110w tablet officially up for pre-order, ships August 1st

MSI’s Brazos-powered WindPad 110w tablet officially up for pre-order, ships August 1st originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Jul 2011 14:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oh paper, ye olde guardian of human wisdom, culture, and history, why must you be so fragile and voluminous? Not a question we ask ourselves every day, admittedly, but when you’re talking about the British Library’s extensive collection of tomes from the 18th and 19th century, those books, pamphlets and periodicals do stack up pretty quickly. Thankfully, Google’s book digitization project has come to the rescue of bewildered researchers, with a new partnership with the British Library that will result in the availability of digital copies of works from that period — spanning the time of the French and Industrial Revolutions, the Crimean War, the invention of the telegraph, and the end of slavery. In total, some 250,000 such items, all of them long out of copyright, will find a home on Google Books and the British Library’s website, and Google has even been nice enough to bear the full cost of transforming them into web-accessible gems of knowledge. Jump past the break for the similarly digital press release.

Continue reading British Library and Google Books partner up to digitize 250,000 out-of-copyright works

British Library and Google Books partner up to digitize 250,000 out-of-copyright works originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Jun 2011 07:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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