Today, the company is showing off the products it hopes you’ll be watching that video on: New Nook tablets, called the Nook HD and Nook HD+.

The Nook HD is a seven-inch tablet, while the Nook HD+ is a larger, nine-inch device. Both are lightweight, have high-resolution displays and are running on “forked,” or modified, versions of Google Android’s 4.0 operating system.

The tablets are available for preorder today, and are expected to hit stores in early November. They’ll range in price from $199 to $299, depending on size and storage.

If you’re getting a sense of deja vu reading this, it might be because you followed the Amazon event in Los Angeles a few weeks ago, at which the company unveiled its own new seven- and nine-inch tablets with HD displays.

What do you mean, you can’t keep all these HD tablets straight?

In truth, as the tablet market gets increasingly crowded, it gets more difficult to set some of these devices apart, aside from the obvious branding. So AllThingsD went ahead and made a couple of charts that show how these two compare with the Kindle Fire HD, Google’s Nexus 7 tablet and the new iPad.

(More after the charts …)

A few things worth noting: These comparison charts leave out some other features, like microSD, HDMI and USB ports, NFC capabilities, and speaker and camera specs. Also, as manufacturers boast better and brighter displays, you might see more references to PPI (pixel density) and IPS (In-Plane Switching display technology), said to support better viewing angles and richer colors.

And, these are battery life claims from the companies, not the results of our own tests. Battery life tests can vary quite a bit, and in Walt Mossberg’s reviews of the iPad 3 and seven-inch Kindle Fire HD, he wrote that the Kindle Fire lasted for nine hours and 28 minutes, about half an hour less than the iPad, and more than an hour less than the Nexus. The battery claims for the new Nooks are based on tests in which the display brightness is dimmed to around 50 percent, for what it’s worth.

The biggest differentiating factor between these devices has nothing to do with hardware, though; it’s the app ecosystem.

Barnes & Noble, which has seen growth in its digital content business despite disappointing device sales, says there are currently 10,000 Nook-specific apps available. This is a fraction of the apps available in Apple’s App Store and the Google Play store, though Barnes & Noble points out that the key apps you’d expect to see — popular social, media, music, productivity and gaming apps — are all there.

The Kindle Fire HD, as Walt noted in his column, also offers only a fraction of the third-party apps available on either the iPad, the Nexus 7 and other standard Android tablets.

Is the Nook app store on a new, attractive, competitively-priced tablet enough to lure consumers? Barnes & Noble Nook sure hopes so.

Update: A previous version of the charts contained an error, which showed the seven-inch Kindle Fire HD and Nexus 7 displays with a 1280 by 1800 resolution, instead of the correct 1280 by 800.

This morning, the bookseller offered a skeleton picture of the service, with more details to come later this fall. For a little background, Barnes & Noble said in April it was spinning off its Nook unit into a new Microsoft-backed venture, though Nook is currently still a Barnes & Noble subsidiary.

Here’s what you need to know about the company’s latest digital initiative:

• It will be called Nook Video, and it will be a part of the online Nook Store. Barnes & Noble says the video service will run on Nook devices, tablets, smartphones and “smart” TVs, though it has declined to say which specific operating systems it will be available on.
• The video streaming service is not a subscription service. It will offer HD and SD movies and TV shows. As with Google Play and Amazon’s Instant Video service, assets will be available both as rentals and as downloads (most 24-hour movie rentals I’ve seen on Google and Amazon range from $2.99 to $3.99). The content will be stored in the user’s Nook Cloud, which the company introduced a couple months ago.
• How many movies and TV shows can I access, you ask? Barnes & Noble didn’t give numbers, but says it will be offering classics, popular movies and TV shows from studios like Disney, HBO, Sony, Starz and Warner Bros. Entertainment. These include Disney-Pixar’s “Brave,” “Toy Story 3,” “The Hangover,” the “Harry Potter” movies, “The Dark Knight,” “The Daily Show,” “Dora the Explorer,” “The Walking Dead,” “True Blood” and more. Also: “Breaking Bad.” Because if you can’t get your Hogwarts and Hangover with a twist of Walter White, I don’t know if this could even be considered a streaming media service. Now, what it really needs to get started is Shades of Gray: The Movie ….
• Nook Video will also create and store digital copies of the DVDs that you normally play on UltraViolet and Blu-ray players. So if you purchase a Blu-ray or UV DVD and sync your console with your Nook Video account, it will create a digital copy in your Nook Cloud. You could then, theoretically, watch it on another gadget, via the Nook app.
• We don’t know when exactly this is launching, except for “this fall” in the U.S. It will hit the U.K. this holiday season, though, again, it’s unclear whether the full features of the service will be available abroad. On Google Play, for example, rentals are available in the U.K., Australia, France, Spain and Japan, among other places, but the ability to purchase movies is only available in the U.S.

Whether Nook finds a niche as a legitimate video service for consumers, amid stiff competition, remains to be seen. But it’s worth noting that Nook Video, tied to the Nook Cloud service, sounds like the first practical way for Nook hardware owners to grab and store video on the device. It’s not that Nooks don’t have storage capabilities; the problem was, prior to this, users had to “sideload” media onto the Nook from their PCs or tablets, as AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka explains well here.

Walmart has stopped selling all of Amazon’s hardware, a move it chalks up to its “merchandising strategy.”

Reuters first reported the news. Here’s the statement from Walmart PR (no comment from Amazon):

Recently, Walmart Stores, Inc. made a business decision to not carry current Amazon products beyond our purchase commitments and existing inventory.

Our customers trust us to provide a broad assortment of products at everyday low prices, and we approach every merchandising decision through this lens.

We will continue to offer our customers a broad assortment of tablets, eReaders and accessories at a variety of great price points. This decision is consistent with our overall merchandising strategy.

So what does that really mean?

Here are two potential theories, which aren’t mutually exclusive:

This is about price: Walmart can’t get the margins it wants from Amazon.

This is about more than price: Walmart sells a lot of books, music and video from its stores, and that may lead to a conflict with Amazon, which has made no bones about the fact that it views its hardware as retail outlets for everything else it sells, like books, music and video.

The only problem with both of those theories is that you could apply some or all of them to all of Walmart’s other hardware suppliers. The retailer continues to sell tablets from Apple, Google and Barnes & Noble, all of which drive hard bargains themselves, and all of which compete with Walmart for media sales, too.

Kobo’s new Arc tablet

Collectively known as the Kobo Family, the Kobo Glo, Kobo Mini, Kobo Arc and Kobo Touch are all expected to be available in October and November, and are designed to give readers more choices in devices.

“Our customer base is focused on e-reading and e-book discovery,” Michael Serbinis, Kobo’s CEO, said in an exclusive interview with AllThingsD. “Some of our customers are really into comics or kids’ e-books, and you can’t go after the color book market with just an e-reader.”

The Kobo Glo has a front-lit, six-inch display that illuminates the E-Ink screen so you can read books at night or in darker environments. The company says built-in technology provides an even distribution of light, and allows you to adjust the brightness levels.

It will be available Oct. 1 for $129.99, $10 less than the Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight.

The Kobo Mini, which Kobo is aiming at the kid market, offers a more pocket-friendly form factor. The e-book reader has a smaller, five-inch E-Ink screen, so it can more easily fit into a pocket or purse.

It can hold up to 1,000 e-books and costs $79.99. Like the Kobo Glo, the Mini will launch on Oct. 1 in black or white.

The Kobo Arc expands on the company’s Vox model, which came out about a year ago, and competes against the Amazon Kindle Fire.

It’s a seven-inch tablet running Android 4.0, and provides access to books, music, video, apps and the Web. It’s got a seven-inch HD color touchscreen, front-facing speakers and a built-in mic and camera. Kobo says the Arc’s battery can provide up to 10 hours of continuous reading or video play, and up to two weeks of standby battery life.

Users can download content from the Kobo e-book store and the Google Play store. A discovery feature tool called “Tapestries” will recommend related content based on what you’re currently reading and watching.

Unlike the Amazon Kindle Fire, which runs a “forked” version of Android, Google’s stamp is more obvious on the Arc. “The Arc is really built on the Google Android experience, rather than taking the approach of burying the OS,” Serbinis said.

The Kobo Arc will be available in November, in either an eight-gigabyte model or a 16GB model, for $199.99 and $249.99, respectively.

The last member of the Kobo Family is the $100 Kobo Touch, which launched in June 2011, and features a six-inch touchscreen.

The new Kobo e-readers will be sold at a number of retailers here in the U.S., including Staples, Target, Best Buy and Sears.

Based in Toronto and owned by Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten, Kobo has been selling e-books since 2009 and e-readers since 2010. It has more than 10 million users in 190 countries, and has nearly three million books across 60 different languages in its e-book stores. But the company has struggled to establish a presence in the U.S., and the loss last year of its major U.S. bookseller distributor — Borders — certainly does not help.

Kobo has since struck a deal with independent U.S. booksellers to sell its devices and e-books.

Kobo is also facing stiff competition overseas. Recently, Barnes & Noble went international by launching its Nook e-reader in the U.K. Amazon also opened its Appstore in Europe, which could signal that it’s getting ready to take the Kindle Fire overseas.

Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani, who goes by the name Mickey, said in an interview he plans to utilize his e-commerce properties to boost the Kobo brand. “There’s a great syngery between e-commerce and e-books, we may be able to create more strategic partnerships with our e-commerce businesses,” he said.

Amazon is hosting an event in Santa Monica, Calif., later today, where it is expected to announce, among other things, a new version of the Kindle Fire and a backlit Kindle.

“I think we’re going to be competitive with whatever is going to be announced today, especially with the Kobo Glo,” Serbinis said.

AllThingsD will be covering the Amazon event, so be sure to check back at 10:30 am PT for the news.

AllThingsD’s Lauren Goode contributed to this report.

It was only a year ago that Bezos introduced a plethora of devices in New York, including Kindle Touch for $99, a 3G version for $149, a Kindle Fire for $199 and a bare bones e-reader for $79.

This year promises to be an equally significant event. But until we find out what it entails, let’s do a quick recap of what we know so far:

The 10-Inch Kindle Fire:

While this has been the biggest rumor that has been out there, a larger Kindle Fire 2 — which would be equal in size to Apple’s iPad — is most definitely not a done deal. According to several sources, even though a larger cousin of the seven-inch Kindle Fire is definitely in the works, it’s not clear if Amazon is ready to roll one out quite yet.

There might, though, be a slightly larger version, perhaps around eight inches or slightly more.

While not getting a 10-inch version might disappoint some, with Apple’s latest iPad expected to be a smaller version, sources said that competing head on with the old one is a possibility but might not come in this iteration.

The Seven-Inch Kindle Fire:

As reported by AllThingsD’s John Paczkowski, there will be an updated seven-inch device, which is expected to be thinner and lighter than the original.

It is also likely to have a built-in camera and a much-improved display. Developers are being told to expect a display with a 1280×800 pixel resolution, which is a bit different than the 1024×600 display of the current Kindle Fire.

Back-Lit E-Reader:

One of the biggest upgrades to expect in the black-and-white department is a device with back-lit technology to compete with the Nook Simple Touch with its GlowLight. The Seattle mega-retailer has kept this product under wraps, but a small acquisition made in late 2010 gives the effort away. 

That company, founded in 1991 in Helsinki, was named Oy Modilis. It has a number of patents relating to lighting technology that can be used in e-readers, according to TechCrunch, which spotted an early prototype a few months ago.

Price:

Since the Kindle Fire was introduced last year, the seven-inch Nexus 7 came out with many of the same specs and at the exact same price point. If the original Fire has a chance to continue on, it would have to fall below $199 with the new version at or near that price to remain competitive.

How low can it go? What if there were a bare-bones device subsidized by Prime subscriptions and advertising? Still, about 16 months ago, Kindle Director Jay Marine told AllThingsD ”the economics don’t work” for a free Kindle.

Connectivity:

Today, the Fire ships with Wi-Fi, but no cellular connectivity. Expect that to change, but how it will work is anyone’s guess. Today, Amazon packages 3G with some of its more expensive e-ink readers for free.

But that seems like an impossible model when it comes to devices designed to be media hogs. While not optimal to make consumers pay for 3G or 4G, having the option is a feature consumers might be looking for.

Some of that bump occurred because B&N’s onetime rival, Borders, went out of business last year.

The rest of it? “Strong sales of the ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ series,” the company says. See? It’s not just you — everyone’s reading this stuff.

Meanwhile, B&N says its Nook business posted flat sales for the quarter, but saw losses increase from $51 million to $57 million. It still plans to create a new Nook subsidiary with $300 million in funding from Microsoft.

The bad news is that, unlike the dead tree versions of books, these items are battery-operated and require constant recharging.

So, for this week’s review I took a look at some battery-charging products that can juice up multiple devices while you’re carrying them in a backpack or laptop bag. I mainly focused on the portable myCharge, made by Michigan-based RFA Brands. This multipurpose battery pack launched Aug. 1, and is available in a variety of colors and prices, from $50 to $100. The one I tested, the myCharge Peak 6000, is at the high end.

RFA also makes Powerbags that come with built-in packs for juicing up your phone and tablets. The ones I tested — a messenger bag and a backpack — cost $140 and $180, respectively.

At two-and-a-half to three pounds each, the Powerbags were too heavy and bulky for my everyday use, and I discovered that they charge certain devices at a snail’s pace. The portable myCharge, however, was more useful. Unlike some countertop power-pack solutions with tentacle-like wire attachments, the myCharge was light enough to throw in a bag to create my own homemade Powerbag. And when I was carrying around multiple devices, I found a myCharge to be much more helpful than something like an attachable battery pack for a phone.

It’s important to note, though, that none of these products charge laptops, which might be their biggest drawback.

The myCharge Peak 6000 is named as such because it’s a 6,000 milliamp (mA) battery pack. That means it can charge an iPhone four times in a cycle before the myCharge itself needs to recharge. If you charge two devices at once, it cuts those charging claims in half.

The myCharge can actually charge up to three devices at once, with little rubber arms that hold micro-USB, USB and Apple connectors, in addition to its USB port. It works with iPhone, iPod, iPad, BlackBerry and an assortment of other phones. While it is compatible with the new iPad, it won’t charge it very well, due to discrepancies in milliamps.

The myCharge casing is made of glossy white plastic with gray sides and a matching strip down the middle. Overall, the device measures 4.25 inches by 7.25 inches, is 2.5 inches thick and weighs half a pound. All of the charging connectors snap in and out of the device, keeping it compact and free of wire tangles. Even the device’s own AC wall plug is wire-free and tucked into the back of the myCharge.

While the myCharge Peak 6000 packs a lot of power, it isn’t super-speedy. When I charged my nearly-dead iPhone using the myCharge Peak 6000, it took nearly two hours to get to 100 percent, longer than it would normally take to charge my phone when it was plugged into a wall outlet. I found that I used the myCharge more often when I was looking for a quick boost on the go. When I was home, I would still plug my devices into a wall outlet.

I really liked the myCharge’s new voice notifications, which the earlier version of the 6,000mA myCharge lacks. It told me how much power the myCharge had, and acknowledged when I plugged in different devices. It also told me when the myCharge itself needed to be charged.

One drawback of the myCharge is that you can’t charge two of the same devices simultaneously without carrying a cord. So, when I was charging my iPhone, I could only charge an iPad 2 via the USB port on the myCharge. When I created a makeshift Powerbag one night by tucking the myCharge in my purse, my dinner companion and I couldn’t both charge our iPhones.

However, I could charge an iPhone at the same time as I charged a Kindle, or a Samsung smartphone, via micro-USB. And with the myCharge, the Galaxy Nexus charged much more quickly than it did with the Powerbag.

The $140 Powerbag messenger bag contains a 3,000mA battery pack that can charge four devices at once. It has micro-USB, mini-USB and 30-pin connectors — the proprietary plugs for Apple devices — as well as a spare USB port. It has some style, and smartly weaves charging cables through the bag. When I plugged in my 50 percent-charged iPhone, it fit neatly into a small pocket in the bag, and by the end of a hour-long business meeting, the phone was charged.

The Powerbag backpack offers the same connectors, and contains a more powerful 6,000mA battery back. But it has so much unnecessary bulk that I doubt anyone would be the cool kid in school — or the office – with this bag. I carried it to a tech event here in New York City and, while I appreciated the extra source of battery life, I found it to be just as cumbersome as the backpack I usually use for carrying my professional camera gear.

In my experience, the Powerbags charged one of my test phones — a Samsung Galaxy Nexus — at an incredibly slow rate. After more than an hour of charge time, the initially-drained smartphone had charged 33 percent.

RFA Brands says that even though the Powerbags come with 6,000mA and 3,000mA batteries, they only deliver a 500mA current (comparable to charging from your laptop via USB) to tablets and other newer devices, including the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the phone I tested. This results in slower charging.

Also, while the Powerbags are compatible with all Amazon Kindles and the Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader, as well as the original iPad and iPad 2 — they won’t fully charge the new iPad, due to the new iPad’s high-milliamp battery.

While I wouldn’t recommend investing in the Powerbags, the myCharge Peak 6000 is a solid device with multiple charging options, ideal for regular travelers, business people shuttling to and from meetings, or students looking to charge those digital devices for class.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120820/make-any-bag-a-powerbag-with-mycharge-battery-pack/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20120814/nook-tablets-get-discount-as-mini-market-grows-more-crowded/ http://allthingsd.com/20120814/nook-tablets-get-discount-as-mini-market-grows-more-crowded/#comments Tue, 14 Aug 2012 11:30:52 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=240975 With Amazon expected to refresh its Kindle Fire tablet some time in the third quarter, and Apple rumored to be prepping a diminutive iPad mini, and Google’s Nexus 7 winning accolades in the market, Barnes & Noble is taking some proactive measures to keep its own Nook tablets competitive. Its first move: Slashing the prices of its Nook Color and Nook Tablet.

Beginning this week, the price of the eight gigabyte Nook Tablet drops to $179 from $199; the price of the 16GB Nook Tablet slips to $199 from $249. B&N has taken a scalpel to the Nook Color’s price as well, lowering it to $149 from $169.

The reductions make the 16GB Nook Tablet price competitive with the 8GB Kindle Fire and Nexus 7. More to the point, they allow the Nook Color and 8GB Nook Tablet to undercut both on price. A decent enough competitive strategy. And certainly B&N needs to do something to maintain its e-book business in the face of these emerging new threats. By some estimates, B&N has managed to capture 27 percent of the e-book market, second only to Amazon, which holds about 60 percent.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120814/nook-tablets-get-discount-as-mini-market-grows-more-crowded/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120717/nook-for-web-lets-you-sample-and-read-books-from-your-browser/ http://allthingsd.com/20120717/nook-for-web-lets-you-sample-and-read-books-from-your-browser/#comments Tue, 17 Jul 2012 18:07:08 +0000 Bonnie Cha http://allthingsd.com/?p=230945 Whenever I go into a bookstore, I always check out the new-releases section, and if a title catches my eye, I like to skim the first couple of pages to see if I want to buy it. Now, Barnes & Noble is giving you the ability to do just that from the comfort of your own computer.

Nook for Web launches today, allowing you to browse and read free samples of books from almost any Web browser, including Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari.

You don’t need to download any software, sign in or have a Barnes & Noble Nook account to use the service. You will, however, need the latter if want to buy a title; once purchased, you can read it on the Nook or from your computer’s browser.

Barnes & Noble is not the first to offer such a service, as Amazon and Google have had similar Web-based services for some time now.

To entice new customers, Nook for Web is offering free downloads of six bestsellers, including “Map of Bones” by James Rollins, “Sex and the City” by Candace Bushnell and “The Vow” by Kim Carpenter, through July 26.

Barnes & Noble says support for Internet-enabled tablets and smartphones is coming this fall.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120717/nook-for-web-lets-you-sample-and-read-books-from-your-browser/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120626/podcast-hunter-tracks-down-the-webs-best/ http://allthingsd.com/20120626/podcast-hunter-tracks-down-the-webs-best/#comments Tue, 26 Jun 2012 22:20:11 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://allthingsd.com/?p=224775 What do Alec Baldwin interviewing David Letterman, an explanation of why mimes replaced traffic police in Bogotá, Colombia, and a story about burping have in common? They are all free podcasts that were, until now, difficult to discover and hear.

I’ve been testing Smart Station, a new feature in an app called Stitcher, that aims to simplify the hunt for great podcasts. Smart Station fills a station with audio content on a variety of topics that it thinks you’ll like, finding this content using an algorithm that compares your listening patterns with tens of millions of listening hours from other users. It is designed to improve as you listen to more podcasts.

The Smart Station feature on the Stitcher app uses an algorithm to help listeners discover new sources of audio podcasts that they might like.

The Stitcher app is free and runs on Apple’s iPod touch, iPhone and iPad, as well as on Android phones and tablets, Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color and Nook Tablet and Amazon’s Kindle Fire. It provides an elegant interface for finding and playing some 100,000 hours of podcast programming. But the app, alone, wasn’t doing a good enough job of helping users discover content they might like.

The Smart Station feature is a delight to use. I listened to podcasts it suggested while I was commuting, exercising and cooking in my kitchen. As promised, the content in my Smart Station seemed to get more personalized the more I used it. Each podcast in the curated list lasted about 30 minutes, more to chew on than three-minute news clips.

Other recent additions to Stitcher are a sleep timer, as well as a feature that shows podcast-representative album art on your device’s lock screen.

Meanwhile, Apple just released a standalone Podcasts app with a Top Stations feature.

My Smart Station took days to start working rather than the required minimum listening time of five minutes. Noah Shanok, Stitcher co-founder and chief executive, said this was due to a significant server outage soon after the release of this new version of Stitcher; the outage has since been fixed. Currently, the only way to manually adjust content added to your Smart Station is to start playing it and give each podcast a thumbs-up or -down, which will add more or delete similar content, respectively. Mr. Shanok said a future version of Smart Station will let people vote content up or down without playing it first.

Stitcher first-timers can choose up to three topics of interest from categories such as current events, liberal or conservative politics, tech, entertainment, and lectures and education. Or they can type a topic or radio station into a blank search box.

On your Favorites list new podcast episodes enter the queue when they become available.

I tested Stitcher using an HTC One S Android phone, an iPad and an iPhone. One of the app’s coolest features is its seamless cloud synchronization. This means that if you use your iPad to listen to a Jeff Daniels interview on NPR’s Fresh Air, pause it and then want to restart it later while standing in line at the post office with your Android smartphone, “Fresh Air” will play from exactly where you left off on the iPad. Just don’t forget your earbuds.

If you find a podcast you like, hit the thumbs-up button to tell the app and improve the Smart Station algorithm. If you tap the star icon to add that show to your list of Favorites, new podcast episodes will fill up Favorites whenever they’re available. You can share any podcast episode with friends via Facebook, Twitter or email. If you do nothing while listening, Smart Station still knows what you’ve listened to, how far you’ve listened and when you stopped so it can tell whether or not to suggest similar content in the future.

I used Smart Station to discover the shows Freakonomics Radio and Moth, and found NPR favorites, like Car Talk, as well as some I didn’t know existed, like NPR’s Most-Emailed Stories Podcast. I learned a lot by listening to a podcast called Stuff You Should Know, made by Discovery Communications’ How Stuff Works. A podcast episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class taught me the fascinating history of John James Audubon.

Stitcher’s Front Page is a section of the app divided into In the Headlines, What’s Hot and What’s New. Another section of On Demand Shows lets people search podcasts by interest, such as Games & Hobbies, Local and Spirituality & Religion. A Live Radio section lets you hear what’s playing through normal radio stations, but I preferred podcasts. Smart Station is located in the My Favorites section of the app.

Stitcher’s new sleep timer offers seven options ranging in length from 15 to 120 minutes. And its lock-screen album art came in handy once or twice when I wanted to know the name of the podcast I was hearing in a quick glance.

If you’re already a fan of talk radio or you’re curious about what kinds of programs are available in free podcasts but don’t know where to begin, Stitcher’s Smart Station will almost surely surface several shows that will pique your interest.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120626/podcast-hunter-tracks-down-the-webs-best/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120612/nook-vs-nook/ http://allthingsd.com/20120612/nook-vs-nook/#comments Tue, 12 Jun 2012 22:00:03 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=219446 Q:

I would like to get my mother a Nook Color. Are they near to releasing a new Nook Color? What are the differences with the Nook Tablet? Can’t you surf the Web with Wi-Fi on the Nook Color?

A:

I know of no plans by Barnes & Noble to release a new Nook Color. Yes, the Nook Color can surf the Web, but it’s the lesser, and older, of the company’s two color Nooks. The newer Nook Tablet is lighter, has longer battery life, a faster processor and comes in two models, one with greater built-in memory. The Nook Color costs $30 less than the Nook Tablet with the same built-in memory.

Q:

I purchased an iPad 2 in December 2011. Today, the camera does not work. It shows the lens closed and then goes black. Today and for a couple of days past I cannot get updated emails even though I am connected to the Internet and can receive those emails on my computer. What should I do?

A:

For years, I have stressed that digital devices should be treated like any other appliance you buy—if they malfunction, take them back, or send them back, to the merchant. There may be a simple way to get your iPad 2 working properly, but I can’t diagnose it remotely. And you don’t sound like the kind of tinkerer who would relish searching the Web for solutions and fiddling with it.

So, I would reboot the unit, plug it into a PC or Mac running iTunes to make sure the operating system is up-to-date, and, if it’s still not working right, take it to an Apple store or wherever you bought it for fixing or a replacement, especially if you bought a warranty. If you want to troubleshoot it yourself, try this website: http://bit.ly/Kd6ljz.

Write to Walt at walt.mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120612/nook-vs-nook/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120604/attacked-by-pirates/ http://allthingsd.com/20120604/attacked-by-pirates/#comments Tue, 05 Jun 2012 06:59:04 +0000 Voices http://allthingsd.com/?p=216610

Most Kindle, iPad and Nook owners seem to view piracy as a low-rent and time-consuming experience compared with the sanctioned alternatives. They probably wouldn’t if the publishers had kicked things off with a five-year content boycott.

– Rob Reid, from an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, entitled “What To Do When Attacked by Pirates”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120604/attacked-by-pirates/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120603/what-to-do-when-attacked-by-pirates/ http://allthingsd.com/20120603/what-to-do-when-attacked-by-pirates/#comments Sun, 03 Jun 2012 11:39:13 +0000 Rob Reid http://allthingsd.com/?p=215913 If you were attacked by pirates, who would you want by your side? A loyal horde of head bangers, gangstas and hard-core punks? Or a brainy clutch of bookish types? I’d generally advise you to go with the former group. But it turns out that in the swashbuckling arena of digital piracy, the publishing world is acquitting itself far better than the brash music industry.

Ten years ago this Sunday, the record labels thought they had turned the tide against piracy when the wildly popular Napster—a service that allowed anyone to find and download recordings online—declared bankruptcy.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

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