Meet the nook. Yesterday afternoon Barnes & Noble held a coming out party (in NY of course) for its ebook reader, nook, which can be pre-ordered for delivery in November. Amazon definitely has the better name (nook takes me to places I'm not going to mention on a PG-rated family blog) but other than that, it looks like B&N is going to give Amazon a run for its money.
One of the biggest differences between the nook and the Kindle, according to Wired and Read Write Web is nook's LendMe feature, which will allow users to share a book with a friend for up to 14 days. And that friend doesn't need to own a nook; any smartphone or computer with B&N's ereader software will do.
The nook also supports epub, an open format which will give users access to thousands of free e-books, and though I haven't seen anything yet about reading library ebooks on the nook, it seems that if the ebook is in PDF format, it would work on the nook.
The nook is priced at $259, as is the Kindle, still a hefty amount of money for a luxury. One advantage the Kindle still has is that Amazon came out with an international version that can be shipped to users outside the U.S., though it's not available in Israel.
The nook has a small color touchscreen for navigation and a removable back panel that you can customize with four other colors. From November 30th, you can test drive a nook at your local B&N.
You can view a comparison of features between the Kindle and nook on the B&N site.
In more ebook news, the Internet Archive, a non-profit organization based in San Francisco which is building an online library, announced the creation of Bookserver, an open system to allow users to find ebooks to buy or borrow. According to Read Write Web, you could search for a book and find out all the places where the books is available to buy or borrow, including libraries and directly from the publishers.
I enjoy watching these new developments in the world of ebooks. I love all the new ways it's now possible to read or listen to a book and can't wait to see what else the future holds.
2 comments:
Still can't use it on shabbat.
I'm hoping Machon Tzomet can come up with something.
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