Black Friday is almost upon us, and it bids fair to be an e-reader kind of holiday season. There’s no word yet from Amazon on any discounts on its Kindle products (though it seems to be discounting just about everything else), but Barnes & Noble has announced a special deal on a “Limited Edition” of its Nook Simple Touch e-reader—in stores only, it’s knocking $20 off the price. This brings it down to $79—on par with Amazon’s lowest-tier ad-supported Kindle price. Amusingly, one of its listed benefits is No Annoying Ads Reading...

If you’re getting a Nook Tablet, don’t expect to have access to much of its 16 gigabytes of onboard memory. Maximum PC reports (based on an Engadget review) that only 1 gigabyte of onboard storage is accessible to users. The other 13 or so gigs (that aren’t taken up by the operating system) can only be used for content downloaded from Barnes & Noble (though users can plug an SD card into the tablet and get access to more storage that way). Gizmodo checked with B&N and was told that the measure was intended to prevent customers from...

It’s probably obvious from the article posted earlier today about sideloading apps onto the Kindle Fire, but just to make it explicit, Mashable reports that it is fully possible to install the Nook Android app onto the Kindle Fire. It’s just necessary to enable installation of apps from unknown sources on the Fire, then sideload the non-corporate app store GetJar (choosing another Android 2.3 device from its install options since the Kindle Fire isn’t listed). Then GetJar can install the Nook app. (Not all third-party GetJar apps will install successfully, but Nook is one that will.) There’s...

Mike Shatzkin’s latest blog entry looks at the quandary posed by converting “illustrated” books, which one estimate puts at 25% of print books sold, into e-books. The major problem is that usually the books have to be specifically formatted so that the pictures are in the right place—and when you come to different screen-sized devices, such as the 10” iPad, the 7” Kindle, Nook, or Kobo tablets, or the 3.5” iPhone and iPod Touch, that means one size definitely does not fit all. Although tools exist that make it relatively quick and easy for a designer...

Our sister blog Gadgetell has a brief piece on the new version of the Nook for Android app, which notably adds the Nook Newsstand and personalized recommendations to the app for any Android device running version 2.1 or later—including smartphones. And speaking of Newsstand apps, ReadWriteWeb looks at the Kindle Fire Newsstand’s app as one of Amazon’s secret weapons in the war against the iPad. Offering over 400 full-color publications,  and including a free three-month trial of various Condé Nast magazines for those who subscribe before March 1, 2012, the app will compete with Apple’s own Newsstand. The Apple...

Earlier this year, Microsoft sued Barnes & Noble for patent infringement over its use of Android in the Nook Color. (I somehow missed this when it happened, so didn’t know about it when I posted this article more recently about Microsoft’s Android patent licensing deals.) But this week, an interesting new document emerged as evidence in the case: a 29-page slide deck from Barnes & Noble presenting the problems with Microsoft’s patent stance. The site that presented the slides, GeekWire, is down right now (presumably due to the heavy bandwidth demand from all 29 of those pictures being downloaded...

At The Digital Reader blog, Nate Hoffelder has heard from three different sources, at least a couple of whom are Barnes & Noble employees, that Barnes & Noble will be launching its next generation of Nook Color on November 7th. One source remarked on the huge “NOOK boutique” that his store built, complete with LED TVs, touchscreen point-of-sale systems, and so on, which his manager said “was not designed to house just 2 nooks.” It will be interesting to see whether this pans out. As Hoffelder points out, given that the Kindle Fire will be shipping soon, this is...

Whether it will ever be great again or not, Barnes & Noble seems to be trying to survive by imitating Amazon. An article on Time explains that B&N is adding more shopping categories to its bn.com website, including Home and Gift, Consumer Electronics, Arts and Crafts, Toys and Games, and Baby. The items in these new categories will mostly be provided by third-party vendors, with B&N taking a sales commission on each item it sells. This seems to be an example of playing to one’s strengths—thanks to Nook e-book sales, the bn.com website seems to be one of...

On FutureBook, Steve Emecz wonders why Barnes & Noble still hasn’t made the Nook devices, Nook Reader apps, or Nook e-books available outside the US and Canada. Amazon and Kobo, he points out, have readers and software available in the UK. Why not B&N? An excited author of mine downloaded the Nook PC app and bought a copy of his e-enhanced book this weekend and was hugely impressed (The London of Sherlock Holmes hyperlinking to Google Maps). I tried to do the same, and indeed also tried to download the exciting new Nook iPad app too...

We mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Barnes & Noble had pulled all of DC Comics’s graphic novels from its bookstores in protest over DC’s exclusive e-comic sales through the Kindle Fire when it had refused to sell them electronically through the Nook Color. This action has started getting more media coverage lately, with a report in the New York Times yesterday on the incident, and an update—bookselling chain Books a Million (which sells a version of the Nook as its own e-reader) has also pulled DC’s graphic novels, for the same reason. As the Times...

No, they weren’t, writes Sue Walsh at our sister blog Gadgetell. Walsh points out that if e-books were responsible for killing Borders, they’d have done in Barnes & Noble and Amazon as well. Many people, especially publishers, are quick to accuse ebooks of being harmful to the book industry when in reality they are breathing new life into it. I’ve lost count of how many people have told me they started reading MORE when they got their e-readers. Both new and established authors are embracing the new technology with many well known authors getting the...

How much the tech world changes in how short a time! In August 2010, Technologizer blogger Harry McCracken rounded up 32 potential “iPadversaries”—tablets being planned or manufactured to compete with the iPad. (Paul Biba covered the original article here.) Now McCracken has gone back to look at the eventual fate of each of those tablets in a new post for the Technologizer. It’s a little hard to believe that, just over a year later, the vast majority of them have vanished with little trace of their passage. Indeed, it’s hard to believe that there could ever have been 32...