Barnes & Noble readies massive Nook Color update with Netflix and Marvel Comics

It’s always nice to see a company supporting its products after an erstwhile successor has been introduced, and it looks like Barnes & Noble is doing just that with its Nook Color tablet-reader. The bookseller just released a huge update to the Nook Color’s software, well over a year after its original release, and almost a month after the Nook Tablet relegated it to the second tier of Barnes & Noble’s hardware offerings. Customers who weren’t swayed by the incremental updates in the Nook Tablet will no doubt be appreciative.

The update focuses on more media consumption, with the most notable addition being baked-in support for Netflix streaming. Flixster is also coming along for the ride. Barnes & Noble is also touting “the largest collection og Marvel graphic novels” coming to the 7-inch tablet, apparently integrated into the Nook bookstore instead of in a stand-alone app on the Android Market. The comics are formatted specifically to look and read well on the Nook Color, making the jump from the more expensive Nook Tablet where they debuted.
All this is likely to pass nearly unnoticed by the Nook Color’s active community of Android modders. CyanogenMod 7 continues to be the most popular aftermarket ROM for the easily-hacked tablet, and CyanogenMod 9 will likely make Ice Cream Sandwich available to them early next year. That at least is one reason to go with the Nook Color over the Nook Tablet; Barnes & Noble placed a locked bootloader on the newer hardware, putting the kaibosh on most custom ROMs. Stock Nook Color users can download the update from Barnes & Noble’s website.

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Barnes & Noble “Birds & Noble” Angry Birds scavenger hunt December 11th

Today Barnes & Noble has announced they will be celebrating Angry Birds second birthday coming this December. To celebrate the second anniversary of the hugely popular game they’ll be hosting a “Birds & Noble” scavenger hunt in stores nationwide on December 11th starting at 11 AM. Stores will be loaded with golden eggs, hidden Mighty Eagle tokens and more.

If you’re lucky you might even find an Angry Birds T-Shirt of a free NOOK Tablet. They also have some tasty Angry Birds cookies on sale (pictured below) but they are going fast so you better hurry. Rovio has chosen Barnes & Noble as one of their US partners and this celebration should be a huge and fun event for fans of all ages. The scavenger hunt isn’t the only activities either. They’ll also have coloring contests, design your own Angry Birds characters, parades and more depending on location.
We are also hearing that Angry Birds cookies wont be the only apparel available in stores and that B&N will also have calenders, coffee mugs and cups, posters and all sorts of goodies fans can pickup and show their love for the Angry Birds. All the games will be available in stores as well as plenty of the brand new and exciting Barnes & Noble NOOK Tablet.
Who’s ready for some bird hunting? Get ready and head down to Barnes & Noble come December 11th for all the fun.

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Barnes & Noble event set for November 7th – Nook Color 2 likely

We’ve been hearing rumblings of a sequel to Barnes & Nobles Nook Color reader/tablet for months, and it looks like predictions for a November 7th launch were right on the money. Invitations for a “very special announcement” bearing the distinctive Nook logo are arriving in the inboxes of major media now. The Nook Color 2, or whatever it will be named, seems almost certain at this point.

Barnes & Noble is playing catch-up, at least in the publicity race: Amazon’s similar full-color, 7-inch tablet the Kindle Fire also runs a modified version of Android, and wil lbegin shipping out to customers on November the 15th. Most impressively, it’s just $199, putting it into impulse buy territory when compared to $400-$500 full-sized tablets. Various estimations put pre-order sales at around a quarter million already, and Amazon might be able to make as many as 5 million by year’s end. Retail employees are already reporting displays and marketing material being prepared in bookstores ahead of Barnes & Noble’s event.
The original Nook Color is still competent for its intended purpose, reading ebooks with some light browsing, emailing and video. The $250 tablet gained notoriety among Android enthusiasts for its easy hackability via a boot table that defaulted to the MicroSD card. CyanogenMod 7 is a popular ROM, and the Nook Color was technically one of the very first devices to run Android Honeycomb via an SDK port. Who knows if Barnes & Noble will keep the easy-modified software structure of the original Nook Color, but they’ll almost certainly try to compete with Amazon’s rock-bottom pricing.

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RadioShack soon selling Barnes and Noble Nook and Nook Color

Just when you thought you couldn’t get a Nook at RadioShack, they come up and surprise you by carrying the Nook. They’ve also got the Nook Color, both of these device available very soon in most if not all of their thousands of locations across the USA and Mexico. What you need to know is that while Barnes & Noble continues to grow their eReader business, their competitors are either dying (Borders, just this past weekend, rest in peace), or re-ramping up so as to avoid the massive Nook pain. Do you own a Nook yet? Do you plan on picking one up in the near future?

What we know is that soon RadioShack will be expanding their collection of mobile devices with their first real big eReader in both the Nook and the Nook Color. While RadioShack certainly has had a wide and strange variety of electronics in the past, and a mobile business now that’s expanding day by day, this is the first time they’ve really, truly hooked up with a book store chain. Does this mean that RadioShack customers will be reading more? Who can say!

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Barnes & Noble Hosting Nook Color Workshop – Hopes To Ramp-Up App Development

Barnes & Noble isn’t ready to give up on the Nook Color just yet. Apparently, the company looks to spur more Nook Color application development for the pseudo tablet/e-reader by hosting a Nook Developer Workshop at this years App Developers Conference in Santa Clara, CA. The conference takes place in October and the Nook Color Developer team will be on hand for the workshop taking developers through the entire development process of creating apps for Android powered B&NNC. Things like app submission and approval process and utilizing Nook Color API’s. They’re enticing developers with the possibility of making big bucks seeing how the top-selling apps for the NC grossed more than $100,000 within the first 30 days of being launched. Color me impressed.
Thanks, Mark!
[Via AppDevConf]

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Barnes and Noble Nook Color 2 in the works

It appears that the booksellers Barnes & Noble have another Android tablet in the works, this next generation Nook Color 2 (or whatever it may be called) appearing to be set to be released as early as this month, so says Digitimes in Taiwan. It is in Taiwan that manufacturers are said to be speaking about a brand new version of what we know as a quite decent eReader and undeniably hackable Android tablet. Details on the next eBook reader are at the moment still sparse, but we’re to understand that this new device will have the same 7-inch display size as the current generation, companies TPK Holdings and Inventec responsible for touch panels and the device’s assembly process respectively.

One of the new unique features we’re seeing as a possibility for this next tab is a possible E Ink partnership with the company providing e-paper backplates for the Nook Color 2, this meaning the tablet may have one of the first color E Ink displays on the mass market. Take a look at Chris Davies hands-on with a new color E Ink tablet over at IFA 2011 and let us know if you think this is what the Nook Color 2 could be looking at:



[via Digitimes]

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