Oct 22

Report: Nook Color Will Be Android-Based Reader/Tablet

Posted in: barnes noble, e-books, e-readers, nook, rumors, Tablets and E-Readers, Today's Chili, touchscreen

Rumors are swirling that Barnes & Noble’s next device after the first-generation Nook will be an Android-based, full-color, touchscreen e-reader. The company will reportedly announce the e-reader/tablet hybrid, called the Nook Color, at its October 26 media event in New York.

“It’s a big step ahead, instead of chasing Amazon,” a source told CNET editor David Carnoy. Carnoy identifies the source as an anonymous tipster “who has proven reliable in the past.”

Reportedly, the Nook Color will have be Android-based like the current Nook, have a 7-inch screen and retail for $249. It won’t have quite as much functionality as the iPad or a full Android tablet, but it will also cost much less.

Currently, the Nook has a custom Android-based OS, a 6″ black-and-white E Ink screen, a 3.5″ color touchscreen LCD for navigation, and costs $149 ($199 for a model with 3G). Barnes & Noble will reportedly continue to sell the current Nook along with the Nook Color.

Barnes & Noble has definitely long been interested in combining e-books with color. Earlier this year, Pandigital offered a 7″ color reader with access to Barnes & Noble’s e-bookstore. The Pandigital Novel was available at many retail outlets, but was panned for poor hardware and interface design and went back to E Ink in its second iteration.

It’s possible that a color-capable Nook could use a Mirasol screen. Developed by Qualcomm, the Mirasol is low-power, is readable in direct sunlight, switches back and forth between color and black-and-white, and can play video. In August, we reported that Qualcomm was shipping 5.7″ screens at the end of 2010 for devices — including one from “a major client” — slated to appear in early 2011.

That doesn’t match the specs suggested by CNET’s source, which instead point to a 7″ LCD touchscreen. It would also mean that the new Nook wouldn’t appear until sometime next year at the earliest.

Barnes & Noble could also stick with the Nook’s two-screen approach, using a 5.7″ Mirasol screen for display and a 3.5″ LCD touchscreen for navigation. It may not run a full range of applications like a hybrid, but would be a solid media player, offering color books, photos, the web and some video on a single screen. Barnes & Noble could announce the device now, do preorders later this year, and begin shipping it in late winter or spring 2011.

That’s not quite as good as being able to sell it right away, but might slow the Kindle 3’s momentum. And with a firmware upgrade for existing Nooks on the way, they can continue to sell the discounted older device and plenty of e-books until the Nook Color arrives.

Image: Mirasol prototype e-reader.

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Oct 22

Nookcolor.com domain snapped up by Barnes & Noble, hints at Nook Color device

Posted in: barnes and noble, BarnesAndNoble, nook, rumor, Today's Chili

At some future point in time, when the technology finally allows it, all ebook reader displays will make the jump to color. Perhaps that’s what Barnes and Noble is thinking by registering the nookcolor.com domain. Then again, “Nook Color” is the name rumored for B&N’s new 7-inch color touchscreen device said to cost a mere $249. Or maybe it’s just a collection of colorful snap-on bezels for its existing Nook. Whatever it is, we’ll be treated with the truth on Tuesday when B&N hosts its very special event. Be there won’t you, we will.

[Thanks, Matthew C.]

Nookcolor.com domain snapped up by Barnes & Noble, hints at Nook Color device originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Oct 2010 02:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 21

Barnes & Noble prepping new Nook with full color touchscreen?

Posted in: Android, barnes and noble, BarnesAndNoble, e reader, e-book, e-books, e-readers, nook, tablet, Today's Chili

Yeah, the Nook already has one color screen, but its primary display is depressingly monochrome. Now there’s word on the street, from a reliable source of CNET’s, that Barnes & Noble will be bringing a full-color, Android-based, touchscreen Nook to its event next Tuesday. That sure sounds a whole lot like a full fledged Android tablet, which would be quite a departure for Barnes & Noble — sure, the Nook is Android-based, but it hardly acts like it currently. Still, there’s a smell of Android tablets in the air, and it wouldn’t be horribly surprising to see B&N move in this direction. CNET’s tipster says the device will be called the Nook Color, and retail for $249. That’s pretty low for a 7-inch touchscreen LCD device, but perhaps (hopefully) B&N has its eye on an alternative tech like Mirasol or Pixel Qi? Either way, the existing Nook will apparently continue to be sold as a lower-end version, so e-ink aficionados have no need to throw their hands up in despair just yet. Stay tuned!

Barnes & Noble prepping new Nook with full color touchscreen? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Oct 2010 17:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 21

Barnes & Noble Nook goes on sale at Walmart next week

Posted in: barnes and noble, barnes noble, BarnesAndNoble, e reader, e-book, e-book reader, E-bookReader, e-books, e-readers, nook, Today's Chili, walmart

We still don’t know what Barnes & Noble is announcing at its “very special event” next week, but the company has just made another fairly big announcement: the Nook will be hitting the shelves at some 2,500 Walmart stores beginning “as soon as” October 24th (in addition to Walmart’s online store). That includes both the 3G and WiFi-only Nook models, and some Walmart stores will even have a “Nook-branded eReading area” where customers can try out the device. Head on past the break for the complete press release.

Continue reading Barnes & Noble Nook goes on sale at Walmart next week

Barnes & Noble Nook goes on sale at Walmart next week originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Oct 2010 13:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 21

Barnes & Noble Nook goes on sale at Walmart next week (update: Kobo, too)

Posted in: barnes and noble, barnes noble, BarnesAndNoble, e reader, e-book, e-book reader, E-bookReader, e-books, e-readers, nook, Today's Chili, walmart

We still don’t know what Barnes & Noble is announcing at its “very special event” next week, but the company has just made another fairly big announcement: the Nook will be hitting the shelves at some 2,500 Walmart stores beginning “as soon as” October 24th (in addition to Walmart’s online store). That includes both the 3G and WiFi-only Nook models, and some Walmart stores will even have a “Nook-branded eReading area” where customers can try out the device. Head on past the break for the complete press release.

Update: Not to be outdone, Borders will release the Kobo e-reader at Walmart next week as well. Competing devices on the very same shelf — imagine that!

Continue reading Barnes & Noble Nook goes on sale at Walmart next week (update: Kobo, too)

Barnes & Noble Nook goes on sale at Walmart next week (update: Kobo, too) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Oct 2010 13:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 20

Barnes & Noble May Present Nook 2 Next Week

Posted in: barnes noble, e-books, e-readers, firmware, nook, Tablets and E-Readers, Today's Chili

A year ago today, Barnes & Noble presented its Nook e-reader. Yesterday, the book retailer sent media invitations for an October 26 event at their Union Square store in New York. Next week, we might see the next generation of the Nook.

Here’s what we know: A Nook 1.5 firmware update is coming out late next month for current-generation Nooks. It promises faster page turns, better search, custom library organization, password protection and the ability to sync last page read between the Nook and all Nook mobile and desktop apps.

This gets the Nook close to feature parity with Amazon’s Kindle. It also means Barnes & Noble has done some investment, both in developing new software and on its backend services. And that suggests that it might be ready to announce a new device.

This summer, Amazon rolled out a 2.5 firmware update for Kindle 2 users. Then a month later, it unveiled the new Kindle 3.

Last October, Barnes & Noble announced the dual-screen, Android-powered Nook, promising preorder delivery and in-store sales before Christmas. The company wasn’t able to ramp up production to meet demand and had to fix immediate firmware bugs, delaying some preorders and pushing back in-store availability to February.

I doubt Barnes & Noble wants that scenario to play out again. There’s a chance that a next-generation Nook will be available right away, but I would expect that new devices would ship around the same time as the 1.5 firmware, either in late November or early December — or Barnes & Noble will give a more conservative delivery date of early next year.

Although the Kindle has captivated mindshare, the Nook and its bookstore has been tremendous hits for Barnes & Noble, boosting revenues through strong e-book sales, particularly among Barnes & Noble members, both for the Nook and for its mobile and desktop apps. It has a 20% share of e-book sales — higher than its share in sales of printed books.

The bookseller spent the last year reoutfitting its retail stores to show off the Nook. It dropped prices and offered a Wi-Fi only model before Amazon matched them with Kindle 3. Now it’s B&N’s move again. No company is more ready to deliver a next-generation e-reader than Barnes & Noble.

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Oct 19

Barnes & Noble holding a ‘very special event’ next week

Posted in: barnes and noble, BarnesAndNoble, e reader, e-book, e-books, e-readers, nook, Today's Chili

Can you believe it’s almost been a year since the Nook was announced? The reader was first shown to the public on October 20th last year, and started shipping to the public in limited quantities in December. We don’t know if Barnes & Noble is planning a follow-up just yet, but this mysterious invite we just got in the ol’ email inbox might hint at such an occasion. Last year’s event in NY was at a much larger venue, while this year B&N is hoping to cram people into its Union Square store in the area it typically hosts authors for book readings — that could be a hint at something less impressive, or maybe they just wanted to cut costs. Maybe Chairman Leonard Riggio is going to read a book to us! Hopefully it’s a little more exciting than that, and we’ll be sure to tell you all about it either way.

Barnes & Noble holding a ‘very special event’ next week originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Oct 2010 17:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 18

Leatherbound: 48-Hour Webapp Compares E-Book Prices Across Formats

Posted in: amazon, e-books, e-readers, ios, ipad, kindle, nook, Tablets and E-Readers, Today's Chili

There have been other e-book price comparison sites, but I don’t think any of the others were built in 48 hours. A team of four developers built Leatherbound from scratch as part of this weekend’s Rails Rumble competition. It’s designed to help iOS app users (or anyone else who is platform-agnostic when it comes to e-books) compare prices across formats in a jiffy.

“No more searching the Kindle, Nook, and iBook stores to find the eBook you want at the price you want,” the site promises. “Search once with Leatherbound.”

There are a handful of devotées who own multiple e-readers, but Leatherbound is especially useful for readers who use the e-bookstores applications for desktops, tablets or smartphones — and consequently have greater ability and incentive to shop around. The inclusion of Apple’s iBooks suggests that the site is targeted for iPad and iPhone users, since iBooks isn’t available for any platform besides iOS.

Leatherbound has a simple but well-animated interface. When you enter in a search term (either author or title works equally well), you first get three matches for the book, with an option to load more results. Select a book, and the site fetches the prices from the Kindle, Nook and iBooks stores.

The book loads results as it finds them, meaning that it will show you a Kindle price even if it hasn’t yet found the book in Nook or iBooks. (When the site can’t find results, the “searching” wheel just never stops spinning.) Then there’s a button to tweet your search results — an easy way for readers to advertise a find or authors or publishers to let readers know about availability across the three major e-book stores, at least for iOS users. (Sony, Kobo and a few other e-bookstores are left out in the cold.)

Rails Rumble is “a kickass 48 hour web application development competition,” according to the official site, where contestants have “one caffeine-fueled weekend to design, develop, and deploy the best web property that you can.” The competition has become popular among developers using the open-source web application framework Ruby on Rails.

According to the site’s otherwise self-satirizing “About” page, the four developers — Nathan Carnes, aka “The Hand of God,” Andrew Dumont (“The Suit”), Adrian Pike (“The Brain”) and Amiel Martin (“Mr Juggles”) met while working as developers for group text-messaging company Tatango.

When searching Leatherbound, be forewarned: like every new storefront, it’s a little crowded on its first day. An unexpected deluge of visitors from tech sites (including this one) have made the quickly-built service rather slow.

Leatherbound Helps You Compare eBook Prices and Availability [ReadWriteWeb]

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Oct 15

Borders enlists BookBrewer for its e-publishing portal, ‘Time Cube’ guy asks where to sign up

Posted in: Books, e reader, e-book, e-books, e-readers, ebooks, nook, sales, Today's Chili
We guess that Barnes & Noble can’t have all the fun, huh? You’ll soon have another option for self-publishing your wildly fantastical (and wonderfully fact-free) rants: Borders has announced that it’ll be using the BookBrewer platform for its new eBook publishing service. Beginning October 25, $90 will get you one ePUB format book, complete with ISBN and distribution to “all major eBook stores,” including Borders and Amazon. Does that mean that your pamphlet, EARTH HAS 4 CORNER SIMULTANEOUS 4-DAY TIME CUBE IN ONLY 24 HOUR ROTATION will finally be taken seriously? Nah, probably not. PR after the break.

Continue reading Borders enlists BookBrewer for its e-publishing portal, ‘Time Cube’ guy asks where to sign up

Borders enlists BookBrewer for its e-publishing portal, ‘Time Cube’ guy asks where to sign up originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Oct 2010 12:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 12

HP Photosmart eStation C510 printer / Android tablet now on sale

Posted in: Android, hands-on, hewlett-packard, HewlettPackard, HP, nook, now available, NowAvailable, on sale, OnSale, printer, slate, tablet, tablet pc, TabletPc, Today's Chili, video, Yahoo

An HP Slate it isn’t, but if you plop down $399.99 for the eStation C510, you’ll also bring home a detachable 7-inch Android 2.1 tablet that’s designed to act as a “wireless digital companion and control panel for remote printing.” We’ll point you to the source link if you’re actually interested in the printer specs, and you can head right over here for a hands-on preview of the (admittedly lackluster) tablet. But do us a favor — don’t buy this thing for the slate alone, okay? Okay.

HP Photosmart eStation C510 printer / Android tablet now on sale originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Oct 2010 14:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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