The Barnes & Noble NOOK Color eReader just got updated with Android 2.2 (Froyo). The update adds Adobe Flash Player support, NOOK Friends beta social network for sharing books, 15 new NOOK Kids Read and Play books, NOOK Email, NOOK Books Enhanced with embedded video and audio, and NOOK Newsstand for quick access to magazines and newspapers. There is also a new NOOK Apps store filled with about 125 applications. The apps are free or are priced below the $2.99. The update is called NOOK Color v1.2 available now for free. You can get it by going to nookcolor.com/update or you can wait for an over-the-air update in a few weeks.
Shorten press release.
Barnes & Noble Expands Award-Winning NOOK Color™Reading Experience with the Most Requested Tablet Features
NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller, announced today that it added significant new features and content to the NOOK Color Reader’s Tablet, making what has already been acclaimed as the best reading device on the market, the best tablet value on the market at just $249. With a major update to its bestselling device, Barnes & Noble is delivering more of what NOOK Color customers want: shopping a broad collection of popular apps, staying connected with full-featured, built-in email and an enhanced Web experience. In addition, NOOK Color’s reading experience gets even better with enhanced books featuring in-page video, new interactivity in digital children’s picture books, and now over 150 interactive magazines and newspapers, including new popular titles like The Economist and Food & Wine. All current and future NOOK Color customers can experience all of the great new features in v1.2 now available at www.nookcolor.com/update and provided for free over the air (OTA) via Wi-Fi to customers beginning next week.
“NOOK Color offers the best reading experience of any device, and now delivers the most popular tablet features such as engaging apps so customers can play, learn and explore, free, built-in email, an Android operating system update for enhanced Web browsing and more interactive content”
“With our new NOOK Apps program, we’ve partnered with the world’s best publishers and developers to offer popular brands like Angry Birds, Epicurious, Uno, Lonely Planet, Dr. Seuss, Little Critter and many more quality and entertaining applications. These and other enhancements, plus new ways for adults and children to experience exciting content, make NOOK Color a great alternative to paying double the price – or more – for an expensive tablet. Our easy-to-use, full-featured Reader’s Tablet is available for only $249, and presents the best value of any tablet on the market.”
Introducing NOOK Apps
NOOK Color customers can get even more out of their Reader’s Tablet – built specifically for reading and complementary experiences – with a collection of top quality apps specially designed to take advantage of NOOK Color’s stunning 7-inch color touchscreen and to keep the whole family entertained, engaged, connected and organized. Enjoy great games like Angry Birds, Uno and More Brain Exercise, and stay up-to-date on news and weather with Pulse and My-Cast. Learn new languages with Lonely Planet Phrasebooks apps, and try new recipes with the app from Epicurious. Keep sharp with pre-loaded crossword puzzles, chess and Sudoku. Stay organized with calendar apps, relax with streaming music from Pandora® Internet Radio and spark creativity in children with Drawing Pad and more fun apps made just for kids like Sandra Boynton’s Going to Bed Book.
NOOK Color customers can easily discover and download apps in seconds from Shop on NOOK Color, so they can browse complementary apps alongside books, magazines and other content. Customers can explore a growing collection of more than 125 favorite NOOK Apps from leading third-party developers and content providers in categories including Play, Organize, Learn, Explore, Lifestyle, News and Kids. The NOOK Apps offering will continually expand as new high-quality applications, optimized for NOOK Color, are added from the large and growing number of qualified developers and content providers submitting their applications through the company’s new app submission process.
Barnes & Noble offers a selection of free NOOK Apps – including calendar and notes apps, requested by NOOK Color customers – and paid apps, with approximately half of the collection available for $2.99 or less and the vast majority priced at $5.99 or less. Customers will easily find their newly downloaded or preloaded apps by tapping the NOOK Apps button on the Quick Nav menu or Apps section in their library, as well as through the newly refined search. All updated NOOK Color devices will now include NOOK Email™ and NOOK Friends™ apps preloaded in addition to Pandora Internet Radio, Crossword Puzzle, Sudoku, Chess, Contacts and Gallery.
Stay Connected with Email
NOOK Color now helps customers stay connected with the full-featured free NOOK Email application built in to organize Web mail accounts in one inbox. Given NOOK Color’s compact design that fits easily into a purse, jacket or bag, email was one of the most-requested features requested by customers. Connect to Wi-Fi to check and send emails with a full-screen virtual keyboard, making it easier than ever to stay in touch while on the go. NOOK Email works across the top Web mail services including Yahoo! Mail, Gmail™, AOL and Hotmail.
Updated Platform and A More Complete Web Experience
NOOK Color’s update to Android OS 2.2/Froyo offers system improvements, enhanced browser performance and a more complete Web experience giving customers access to enjoy even more video, interactive and animated content. NOOK Color now includes support for Adobe® Flash®Player. Surfing the Web is even better with the ability to easily switch between larger desktop or mobile Web experiences and enhanced pinch and zoom. Additional enhancements include improved global search and quick settings such as battery indicator, shortcuts to settings and audio.
- NOOK Kids™: Barnes & Noble’s state-of-the-art NOOK Kids digital picture book experience – the first with the innovative Read to Me™ feature – has been expanded with 15 new Read and Play™ titles that bring animation, activities and stories together. In NOOK Color’s innovative Read and Play books, children can interact with their favorite characters and enjoy activities built right into the story they’re reading. Whether it’s drawing with Fancy Nancy or making the dogs go in Go, Dog, Go!, parents and children will enjoy narration, animation and interactivity that fits into the story and plot lines of new Read and Play titles including Splat the Cat, Are You My Mother?, Caps for Sale, Little White Rabbit and more, now available to explore and enjoy.
With more than 350 NOOK Kids digital picture books and more than 12,000 children’s chapter books, Barnes & Noble offers the world’s largest collection of digital content for children. Children can choose stories featuring popular characters like Nickelodeon’s Dora The Explorer and SpongeBob SquarePants, and Disney favorites like Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Snow White andCars.
- NOOK Books™ Enhanced: Watch that appetizing recipe being made step-by-step or learn how to perfect yoga poses with embedded video and audio in cookbooks, health and fitness, biography, photography and travel books, along with other interactive content on NOOK Color. With more than 225 multimedia titles (and growing), Barnes & Noble offers instructive content including Knitting for Dummies, You: Raising a Child and ELLE: Workout Yoga starring Brooklyn Decker. Learn more about bestselling books from authors including David Baldacci, Pat Conroy, Russell Brand, Keith Richards and many more.
- NOOK Newsstand™: Dozens more favorite magazines and newspapers are now available on NOOK Color – the first reading device to offer popular newsstand titles in rich, full color. From Us Weekly and Elle to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, NOOK Newsstand delivers your morning paper and latest magazines right to your NOOK Color, ready to read in an amazing new way. With enhancements to magazine navigation on NOOK Color, it’s even easier to enjoy the full-color, digital edition of the print magazine, including Barnes & Noble’s innovative ArticleView™ feature. Barnes & Noble continues to build its NOOK Newsstand offering, now with more than 150 top full-color magazines and newspapers including recent additions such as OK! Magazine, ESPN The Magazine, Travel + Leisure, National Geographic Kids, Every Day with Rachael Ray, Dwell, Outside, Saveur,The Onion, PC Gamer, Family Handyman and many more. All can be enjoyed with a 14-day free trial, via subscription or purchased in single issue form.
Get Social with NOOK Friends
With the new NOOK Friends App (Beta), NOOK Color creates the go-to social network for people who love to read, and offers even more ways to connect. Customers can create a group of NOOK Friends to easily swap books, get a friend’s take on a new bestseller, discover great new reads or see if someone’s enjoying a book they recommended on the Friends’ Activity tab. NOOK Color customers can view their NOOK Friends’ content ratings and reviews, shared quotes, recommendations and how they’re progressing on their latest book. Check out all or individual NOOK Friends’ LendMe™ books available and track all current and pending sharing activity. Updates to NOOK Color also make it easy for customers browsing the great content available in Shop to share which products they “Like” on Facebook and view how many other Barnes & Noble customers “Like” it, too.
I’ve had my Nook for about 2 weeks and love it. Before I purchased it, I spent weeks researching the differences between the Barnes and Noble Nook and the Kindle and other ereaders. I chose the Nook because I can read .epub format books on it; something you cannot do on the Kindle. The Kindle only supports .pdf files and ebooks in the proprietary Amazon.com format. That severely limits the number and type of ebooks you can read.
With the Nook, I have borrowed free ebooks from my local library and within minutes downloaded them to my computer and then transferred them to my Nook. AWESOME! In addition, unlike the Kindle, I can read free ebooks available from Google.
The only thing I don’t like about the Nook and the Kindle is that neither one of them has a back-lit screen so, at night or in the dark, you have to have alternative ample light. So I either turn on a lamp or use the small, clip-on light I bought at the local RiteAid for about $10. It works just fine.
So far, I have had no problems navigating my ebooks; everything works smoothly and the pages turn quickly. I’m enjoying the convenience of being able to travel with 30 books and audio-books at a time. I also have some music loaded on my Nook so I can listed to it while I read. Lastly, I’m glad I bought a case for it because I pretty much take it every place I go so the hard case prevents the screen from getting scratched or broken.
I’m very happy with my purchase.
My journey towards owning a nook took kind of a strange path. I’d been excited to an e-reader, and when I was asked what I wanted for the holidays, my immediate response was a Kindle. I hadn’t done any research, knew nothing about it other than it was the only e-reader I had heard of due to commercials, conversations, etc.
When I received my Kindle, I immediately fell in love. I purchased several books using an Amazon Gift Card and carried it everywhere I went. It was the perfect size, the screen was clear and crisp, and it took seconds to set up. I had heard that my local library had a lending library of eBooks, and day after receiving my Kindle I raced over there to renew my library card. That was where my love affair with my Kindle began to fray.
After getting my first book via email, I set about working to get it on my Kindle. Needless to say, this led to hours of frustration. I scoured the internet looking for a way to make it work, to get this ePub book to read on my Kindle. After an exhaustive search, I determined that without breaking dozens of international copyright laws are instantly learning how to hack or re-write script. I learned how proprietary the device truly was. In fact, if I wanted to read anything, I would have to purchase it from the Kindle store on Amazon.com. It was with a heavy heart that I deleted all my purchases from my Kindle, packaged it back up, and sent it back to Amazon. To their credit, Amazon’s customer service made the return process extremely easy. Within days I had my complete refund, including for the books I had purchased.
Enter the nook. During my research, I had learned that the nook had the capability to do all the things the Kindle had lacked. It was specifically listed on my library’s site as a capable e-reader, and allowed me the flexibility of purchasing from other sites, lending books to friends, or previewing books in store. I found a seller on Amazon who was offering the nook for its expected price of $149, not the ridiculous mark-up some of the vendors on this site are asking (in some cases $180???).the seller shipped the device quickly, and it arrived in the prompt fashion we have come to expect of Amazon purchases.
I am very, very happy with my choice. While the nook is slightly larger, and perhaps a bit heavier, it performs like a champ. The e-ink screen has the same clarity and crispness of the Kindle, and the page turning feels sharp and quick, no different than flicking a page in its ink and paper counterparts. Setup was quick and easy, I was able to connect to my WEP-encrypted Wireless network within seconds. I already had a B&N account, so registration was a breeze, and my first book purchase was quick and easy as well. You have the option of purchasing from the site on your PC or perusing the store right on your nook, and the books arrive within seconds. The reading experience is fantastic, my love of reading ha been renewed after years of growing stale while reading and re-reading the covers on my bookshelves at home. I recommend a cover, of which Barnes and Noble offers a myriad of choices for both practicality and style.
The only cons towards the nook that I have discovered thus far:
1) The touchscreen, unlike the e-ink screen, has a glossy finish. It took a little getting used to the first time I read my nook. There can be a slight glare, and I recommend setting the touchscreen time out to 10 seconds. After just a few hours of reading, however, I forgot it was even there. I use a book light at night, and all it took was setting up the light so that it didn’t reflect off the touch screen.
2) The touchscreen is also not what we have come to expect with the advent and popularity of devices like the iPhone and Android. It can be slower than we are used to, but if you got this device primarily for reading as I did, this will be a minor annoyance.
And thats really the only downsides I have been able to find thus far. Its also exciting having a brick and mortar storefront to visit with my nook. My first visit to the store with it, I was able to get a free smoothie from the cafe using a coupon from the screen. In fact there are several offers from the store page, including discounts and other offers. Add to this you can read for free in the store, and it just makes for a great experience all around. I stepped into the store, turned on my Nook, and it instantly welcomed me into the store, connecting instantly to their local network and filling me in on current offers.
While the Kindle may be the more talked about e-reader, the smart choice is the nook. Until Amazon lifts the proprietary restrictions, the Kindle will always be an extraordinary device with ridiculous limitations on its capabilities. Go with the nook, you’ll be happier in the long run.