You sassafrass you, NOOKcolor! Last night we spoke about how NOOKcolor had been rooted and presented to you the final chapter in our “A Week With” reviews of that device, but what’s this?! I snuck another one in on ya! A Week with NOOKcolor: The Missing Link – Viewing Manually Loaded Books and What a Root Means for the Future. Then there’s news about how NOOKcolor saved B&N’s butt financially this year, and the iPad responds with a magazine – it’s got TRON on it! Maybe not a direct response, and I know it’s released by Richard Branson, but, you know, but I don’t think iPad is worried about the B&N competition. Then we’ve got some Farmville news and some NASA news about what might be aliens – this expressing the range of information we present here at the R3 Media Network. ALL THIS AND MORE on the SlashGear Morning Wrap-up!
Barnes & Noble has announced its latest quarterly financial results, and the retailer has its digital arm to thank for its 1-percent year-on-year sales growth. According to the results, online sales – including NOOK and ebooks – increased 59-percent over last year, whereas in-store sales decreased by 3-percent. B&N now reckons it has around 20-percent of the ebook market.
The popularity of digital devices and content – together with other recently expanded departments, such as Toys & Games which saw a 42-percent sales increase – has left Barnes & Noble confident about predicting $170m to $205m EBITDA for the full year. As for talk of selling the company, B&N’s special committee is still looking into the possibility and “meeting with both strategic and financial institutions.”
Press Release:
Barnes & Noble Reports Fiscal 2011 Second Quarter Financial Results Barnes & Noble.com Comparable Sales Increase 59% – Driven By Digital Initiatives
Barnes & Noble Launches NOOKcolor™ to Critical Acclaim
Holiday Sales Off to a Strong Start
New York, NY (November 30, 2010) – Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller, today reported sales and earnings for its fiscal 2011 second quarter ended October 30, 2010.
SECOND QUARTER RESULTS
Total sales for the second quarter were $1.9 billion, including sales of Barnes & Noble College Booksellers (“College”) of $798 million. Excluding College, total sales increased 1% over the prior year period. Comparable sales at Barnes & Noble.com increased 59% driven by increases in core products and sales of digital devices and digital content. Barnes & Noble comparable store sales decreased by 3.3% and College’s comparable store sales decreased by 1.5%.
The expansion of the Toys & Games department at Barnes & Noble stores produced a 42% sales increase for the department during the second quarter. In the third quarter, the company began testing additional concepts, including an expanded children’s offering and digital and electronics accessories, to drive further sales increases in 2011.
For the second quarter, the company reported earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of $46 million. The consolidated second quarter net loss was $12.6 million, or $0.22 per share, in-line with previously issued guidance of earnings of $0.05 per share to a loss of $0.25 per share.
As previously announced, the company continued to invest heavily in digital initiatives including: software and cloud services development costs; expenses relating to NOOKcolor; the addition of hundreds of thousands of titles to its digital catalog including a subscription management platform for digital newspapers and magazines; creating interactive proprietary content for children’s books; developing applications to serve multiple reading and smartphone devices – including iPad®, iPhone®, Android™ and BlackBerry®; and the rollout of NOOK Boutiques in Barnes & Noble retail stores.
The additional investments are expected to continue and peak during the second half of the year, and then increase moderately in the years ahead. Payoff for these expenses is estimated to begin to appear in the third quarter, when NOOKcolor is expected to be one of the world’s most sought after eReaders, and in the third and fourth quarters, when NOOKcolor owners will begin downloading digital content, including books and magazines.
BARNES & NOBLE LAUNCHES NOOKcolor
At the end of the second quarter, Barnes & Noble launched NOOKcolor, the first Reader’s Tablet that enables customers to purchase interactive digital content on a full color touchscreen. Concurrent with the introduction of NOOKcolor, the company introduced NOOKnewsstand™ and NOOKkids™, enabling customers to access periodicals, magazines, and interactive children’s books. Additional device features include web browsing, the ability to listen to music and much more.
NOOKcolor has received widespread critical acclaim from many technology publications, including The Wall Street Journal, which called the product “a winner.” Orders for NOOKcolor significantly exceeded the company’s expectations, and since going on sale on November 16, 2010, it has become the single bestselling product at Barnes & Noble.
“Since launching our eBookstore in the second half of last year, Barnes & Noble has quickly captured approximately 20% of the exploding eBook market. We have plans to grow our share well beyond 20%, and the early success of NOOKcolor is encouraging,” said William Lynch, chief executive officer of Barnes & Noble, Inc. “Selling digital content is becoming a big business for us that we expect to grow at exciting rates. Based upon the double-digit comparable store sales achieved over the past weekend, we are further convinced that eReaders and accessories will be a key holiday gift item and driver of holiday sales this year, leading to accelerating eContent sales in the quarters and years ahead. We’re continuing to invest in this opportunity to build the most expansive catalog of digital content available for sale, the best reading software on the market, and devices that deliver the most innovative digital reading experiences.”
GUIDANCE
Barnes & Noble.com’s comparable sales are expected to increase by approximately 75% for both the third quarter and the full year. The company believes these sales increases will be driven primarily by growing sales in core products and the exploding digital content business. By fiscal year end, the company expects that digital content sales will achieve a $400 million full-year run-rate.
Barnes & Noble comparable store sales are expected to increase between 5% and 7% for the third quarter, and to be in a range of flat to 3% for the full year. Increases in sales will be largely driven by sales of NOOK™ devices and accessories, and by increases in children’s products and other non-book merchandise.
During the three-day post-Thanksgiving weekend, the company experienced a strong comparable store sales increase of 17.2% at Barnes & Noble stores and a comparable sales increase of 105.7% online.
College’s comparable store sales are expected to be in a range of flat to a decrease of 2% for the third quarter and the full year.
The company expects to achieve EBITDA of approximately $160 to $190 million and $170 million to $205 million, for the third quarter and the full year, respectively. Third quarter earnings per share are expected to be in a range of $0.90 to $1.20. Full-year fiscal 2011 losses per share are expected to be in a range of $0.75 to $1.15.
BARNES & NOBLE DECLARES QUARTERLY DIVIDEND
The company’s Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.25 per share payable on December 31, 2010 to stockholders of record on December 10, 2010. At the end of the second quarter, the company had borrowings of approximately $377 million under its $1 billion revolving credit facility. The company’s financial position remains strong and the revolving credit facility provides ample room for the company to fund its strategic investments.
UPDATE ON STRATEGIC ALTERNATIVE PROCESS
As previously announced on August 3, 2010, Barnes & Noble’s Board of Directors has created a Special Committee to review strategic alternatives, including a possible sale of the company. This review process is currently ongoing and the company is meeting with both strategic and financial institutions.
There can be no assurance that the review of strategic alternatives will result in a sale of the company or in any other transaction. There is no timetable for the review, and the company does not intend to comment further regarding the evaluation of strategic alternatives, until a specific transaction is recommended by the Special Committee or the process is concluded.
CONFERENCE CALL
A conference call with Barnes & Noble, Inc.’s senior management will be webcast beginning at 10:00 A.M. ET on Tuesday, November 30, 2010, and is accessible at www.barnesandnobleinc.com/webcasts.
Barnes & Noble, Inc. will report holiday sales on or about January 6, 2011.
As you may well know if you’ve been following especially closely, we were supposed to be FINISHED with our review of the NOOKcolor – the final word was just laid down earlier today, right? It went by the name A Week with NOOKcolor: 3rd Party Apps and Final Wrap-Up and spoke of everything that was outside the hardware and the reading experience. But what’s that? You say I’ve forgotten to talk about reading books you’ve downloaded from sources outside of Barnes and Noble? And wait, what happened at basically the same time that post was posted – a root? Let’s talk!
Let’s talk first about loading some books you’ve downloaded some books and documents and such in PDF form and you’d like to know if you’d be able to read them on NOOKcolor – the answer is yes. You certainly do not get the same controls over the text that you get over Barnes and Noble distributed books, magazines, and newspapers, but you do get another set of controls that, hey, aren’t all that bad.
Manually Loaded Books
Each PDF book I’ve downloaded here has opened without hassle. If you remember the battle it is to get a video file working, you’ll know that this is an excellent sign – just as easy as it was to get photos and music files loaded, come to think of it. Each PDF not only loads seemingly as quick as the last, but flicking through pages (up and down, not left and right as you would in a B&N book), is quick and nice too. Each PDF file is instantly added to your library in the Books section, but does not appear to show up on your desktop with your recently read or updated items. Inside each book, full color works, and there’s that BACK BUTTON!
I KNEW it had to be somewhere here in the system, that ever-helpful back button that should, by all means, be present in the rest of the OS. But I’ll settle for knowing it exists here for now. It is a bit confusing to see it exist only here though, as it doesn’t just pull you back out of a PDF, it brings you back from the PDF menu too – this tells me the back button might be working everywhere by the time they send out an update for this device.
In the controls for how you’re able to view these unofficial books, you’re able to zoom in close, fit a single page to page (helpful single button incase you’re zoomed WAY in,) fit width incase you just want to get that far out of a large vertical document, go to page (allowing you to go to any page by just typing in a number), properties (this is neat and strange in that it just tells you the name of the file you’re looking at and how many KB in size it is), and About.
What About tells you is that you’re not just looking at this document in some no-name document viewer – nay! You’re viewing it in Quickoffice. It’s Quickoffice 3.3.44 to be precise, and I’m sure it’s directly to thank for the excellence found in this viewing of third-party documents. OH and also you can turn NOOKcolor on its side and view pages in landscape mode the same way you’d be able to if you were viewing a children’s book or magazine.
What the Root?
If you’ll take a look over to this NOOKcolor Rooted! thread, you’ll see that indeed those clever turnips over at XDA Developers Forum have discovered their way into the insides of the NOOKcolor, allowing first and foremost a playable NOOKcolor version of Angry Birds. What does this mean for NOOKcolor? It doesn’t mean much at all for the people who aren’t verst in the dark arts, aka those who are ballsy enough to hack their $250 devices in a way that might wreck them forever.
But for those who WOULD hack, well then, look at it this way: NOOKcolor is, once uncaged from its Barnes and Noble bonds, a perfectly wonderful Android tablet – and it’s cheap! Those unsure of why they’d want a $250 e-book reader now see that they might be able to use it for so much more than Barnes and Noble’s target audience would ever dream of. This is definitely a whole new consumer door opened for Barnes and Noble (whether they like it or not.) Will you buy one because of this? Remember that roots don’t always stick.
SlashNEUTRALITY
Aw crap. Apparently Comcast Corporation has begun setting up a fee on Internet middleman responsible for delivering part of Netflix streaming video content, this company, named Level 3, is being charged by Comcast whenever customers request content. The amount they’re being charged isn’t apparent, but is also completely irrelevant, as they (and basically the rest of the sane internet) believe this situation to fall under Net Neutrality laws that aught, we all say, to have been enacted long ago. This vote appears to be scheduled for December 21st 2010, and will supposedly decide whether phone and cable providers should be allowed to interfere with legal traffic traveling through their networks. Some of the folks on the side OF Net Neutrality are: companies led by Google Inc., EBay Inc. and IAC/InterActiveCorp, President Barack Obama, most of the internet, and your humble narrator.
Welcome to the second installment in SlashGear’s “A Week with” review session with NOOKcolor, a device which Barnes and Noble promises will be for customers the culmination of all their knowledge on how people interact with what they read. This device is a reader-centric tablet, made by the world’s largest bookstore for the people who enjoy reading the most. Today’s review session revolves around the way you the user will potentially interact with the reading materials you’ll be using while utilizing NOOKcolor. As this device is aimed not at those who wish for an open Android tablet experience, this review will for the most part assume that the people who will buy this device are the same people Barnes and Noble intends to market to. On the other hand, I and we know there’s a large population of tech-smart individuals out there who indent to try this device out as a hacked device. While I won’t be hacking into this device for your pleasure, we will be keeping you in mind.
As you open up your NOOKcolor for the first time, you’ll be sort of dazzled by the brightness and colorfulness of it all. If you’ve only used an e-ink reader in the past, this will be like going from an original GameBoy to a GameBoy color (remember that transition?) In some ways spectacular, in some ways a bit of a draw back, especially since, like many of the games created for GameBoy back in those days, lots of books never needed color to function. NOOKcolor isn’t meant for people only intending on reading novels. Barnes and Noble might disagree with me, but if you’re only intending on purchasing books that don’t require color, stick with an e-ink device.
That’s not to say that there aren’t features here that you’ll appreciate, oh you lovers of e-ink, features that don’t necessarily require the color the display here presents, but features hereto unavailable in e-readers. Most of these features have to do with sharing and interactivity.
Inside a novels, you’re able to highlight specific passages or whole books and share them via Twitter, Facebook, or your Contacts (connected through NOOKcolor.) Using this same method*, you can also highlight, add a note, or use your highlighted text to search the rest of the book. You may also add a bookmark to a page by tapping the upper right hand corner of the screen (I consider this to be a function in the same house as the highlighting.) *This highlighting is a very fun function but don’t expect to be adept at making it work unless you try at it for a while. Attempting to highlight text in an incorrect manner can instead somehow lead you to a completely different page in the book (I must assume this has to do with your ability to reach other points in the book via the slider at the bottom of the page, accessible by tapping the bottom of the page, invisible otherwise.)
Continuing in on functions inside reading a novel, there are several ways you can adjust the text. One is font size – you’re given 6 different sizes to choose from, each one general, identified in a scale of “A”s. Next you’ll be able to choose the font you like to read in best, the list of fonts being: Century Schoolbook, Dutch, Georgia, Ascender Sans, Trebuchet MS, or Gill Sans. After that, you can choose from several color combinations, those named: Normal, Night, Gray, Butter, Mocha, Sepia – these are all very nice combos, the one standing out most being Night as it’s the only one with a dark background with white lettering. After that there’s three choices for how much space you’d like between each line of text, and three more options for how much of a margin you’d like around your text. If all of these options give you a nervous breakdown, you’ve always got the option of flicking on the “Publisher Defaults” switch. All of these options are awesome, the Publisher Defaults being the icing on this nice little cake.
The rest of the functions inside a novel I don’t see everyone accessing all that often, that being brightness, search (aka searching through the book for a keyword), and Share (which includes Recommend (the book to your friends), Rate and Review (for B&N), and Post Reading Status (which just posts a status to Twitter or Facebook saying the percentage of the book you’ve completed.)) The furthest-left tab is Content, and this will be helpful if you’ve gotten the hang of highlighting passages and adding notes, as Content consists of three tabs: Contents (chapters in the book), Notes & Highlights (jump to any of your notes and highlights throughout the book), and bookmarks (working here the same as notes and highlights.)
Next are Newspapers. This category of reading material has 24 titles at the launch, so I recommend you take a look at the list before purchasing if reading your favorite title is high on your list of things to do with NOOKcolor. Once you’re inside one of these periodicals, you’ll find a very different experience than the reading of an actual newspaper – there’s sort of a disconnect, if you will, but not necessarily a bad one.
Each article is set up in a single column, one above the next, each with a tiny thumbnail preview image where appropriate. Newspapers have basically the same controls and functions that novels do, they having the ability to have their letters, margins, line spacing, etc changed at will since their content is here not the layout of the paragraphs, but the messages contained inside the paragraphs. The feature unique to newspapers (and magazines) is that if you purchase a subscription, new issues will appear in your desktop’s dock (and in your library) with a ribbon saying NEW as soon as they are released.
Magazines are a place where NOOKcolor really shines, and it really should, being brilliant in its display of colors and its simple navigation, it’s as if NOOKcolor were created with magazines at the forefront of the designers minds. You can view magazines in both portrait mode or landscape mode – I’d suggest landscape as that’s how people laying out magazines intend you to view their spreads.
You move through a magazine the same way you’d do it if you were holding the paper copy in your hands, but it’s better in that you’ve got the option to employ Article View. What Article View is is a way to have the entire article you wish to read (often otherwise spread throughout a magazine here and there) all in one place, floating above the magazine until you’ve finished reading it.
Everything else about reading a magazine here is great – zooming in works, finding a page you want by using the thumbnail scroller at the bottom of the screen works, getting new issues works (similar to newspapers). The only thing that you might think twice about, again, is if your favorite title is available, as there are only 67 titles at launch.
Next, there’s children’s books. If you’ve got a kid who is already technologically advanced (aka you give them your iPhone to mess around with while waiting in the doctor’s office lobby), plays video games, or is generally able to sit long enough to read a short book, they’ll probably enjoy NOOKcolor’s children’s books feature. Each children’s book is landscape mode only as far as I can see, mostly because the authors who lay out children’s books, again, do so by spread rather than by single page. Turning the page is done with a swipe, and at the bottom of the screen is simplified to a single arrow button which reveals the whole book in thumbnail mode, allowing you the parent or the child to select the page they want to find (“mom, lets start from where the goats and piggies perform for the chickens!”) You’ve also got the option of pressing the “Read By Myself” button or the “Read To Me” button. If you opt for the read to me option, the book is read aloud by a narrator, sometimes a famous narrator!
In the future there will be more interactivity with these children’s books (starting at the beginning of next year when the first big update to NOOKcolor happens) including moving images and the ability to move characters around, play with them, all sorts of things that work directly with the storyline. Over the phone I recently spoke with a Barnes and Noble representative who works in the department responsible for executing these children’s books, and she described their efforts as very much for the advancement of the storyline rather than just a distraction from it. Exciting!
One of the more interesting features available to you in place for you to be able to interact with other NOOKcolor users is the LendMe tab. You can access the LendMe function from other places on the device, but here you can both offer your books up directly to friends or browse the books they’ve got available and ask them to lend them to you. When you click one of your books that are available for lending (not every book is, mind you,) a message pops up giving you the ability to send the book out through Facebook or your NOOKcolor contacts. It reads: “You may only lend this book once. Your friend has up to 7 days to accept or decline this offer and then up to 14 days to read. Once the book is returned, you can download and read again.” Choose wisely!
Finally, there’s the organization of your collection. The organization of books in several places on NOOKcolor is everything you’d hope it to be. You can have them stacked on your three-screen desktop in different sizes, access them from your desktop dock (which consists of new issues from your subscriptions as they’re released as well as your most recent reads), or access all of your materials in your library. Your library is stacked according to the kind of material (Books, Magazines, Newspapers) or however you’d like in your “My Shelves” tab which you can edit however you’d like. There’s a “My Files” tab inside which there’s multiple folders which you can access when plugging the NOOKcolor in to your computer like an external harddrive. This is an interesting feature as it appears that basically everything else about the device is essentially closed-shop and curated, but inside these folders you can place basically anything. As you may remember from the hardware review portion of this “A Week with” set of posts we’re in, it’s not easy yet to put whatever file you’d like in a folder and expect it to open. Will this be rectified in the future by third-party apps? We’ll just have to wait and see.
Wrap-Up
Everything depends on how you choose to read. This is not a device for everyone, but a reader for people who’d like to access several kinds of periodicals, books, and children’s books from one device. First and last, I’d recommend checking to see if your favorite titles are available or will become available some time in the future – do not assume they’re going to certainly be here. Should the NOOKcolor blow up, that’ll be something you can assume, but for now, be sure to check. If your chosen titles are here, especially if they’re magazines and children’s books, definitely give this device a try.
As far as e-ink goes: you must be the one to decide. I personally do not have any issue with reading from a bright screen like the NOOKcolor uses, but you’ve got to take into account the fact that I work on a computer screen 10+ hours a day. If you do not use a computer at ALL during the day, then I’d probably recommend you get yourself an e-ink device instead of NOOKcolor for reading. If you’re a person who works in the food service industry during the day and can’t keep your eyes off your laptop at night, well, then, again, feel free to give NOOKcolor a try.
Be on the lookout the rest of this week for more posts like this, each of them accessible by searching “A Week with” in the SlashGear searchbar. [This paragraph will be replaced with links to the rest of this extended review at the end of the week]
Oh my goodness the padness of today. Let me tell you all about it, then, if you’re into new ways of chipping around, let Douglas L. Davis tell you all about it. First, lets get Douglas L Davis out of the way – he works at Intel and had a reconfigurable atom chip for you. Then we’ve got a Synology DiskStation DS211 review that I bet flew under a lot of folks radars as it was out late Friday. Then our Week with NOOKcolor began with Hardware on Saturday, Avi wrote an amazing column on 2014 VS 1984, Don tells us why his Wii is dusty, and iOS 4.2 is released for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch.Then it gets really exciting: e-paper on regular paper, we get our hands on a Dell Inspiron Duo, and Notion Ink’s Adam tablet receiving its very own webpage – wowzers! All this and MORE on The Daily Slash!
SlashSECURITY
If you’re living in the United States of America and have been for the past few weeks or so, or better yet have a connection to the internet and read basically any English news site, you’ve probably come in contact with a horror story regarding the TSA’s policies regarding their radiationtastic x-ray machine the Backscatter or their pat-down techniques. Today a story has arisen from a blogger by the name of Matt Kernan who was told he’d have to go through this TSA checkpoint. A quote from Kernan in response to a TSA manager telling him their policy: “I am aware that it is policy, but I disagree with the policy, and I think that it is unconstitutional. As a U.S. citizen, I have the right to move freely within my country as long as I can demonstrate proof of citizenship and have demonstrated no reasonable cause to be detained.” Matt Kernan, after 2.5 hours of reasoning with several levels of authority, was allowed through TSA security without being scanned or patted down, his constitutional rights fully in-tact. Read his full account at NO BLASTERS!
Welcome to a super amazing extended review of the brand-spanking-new NOOKcolor. Let me begin by assuring you that the name is “NOOKcolor” all one word rather than “Nook Color” as I’d originally assumed in posts of the past. Then, let me let you know that this is not the first multi-post review we’ve done of a bit of gear – search for the term “A Week with” – our most recent project being the HTC HD7. Now we move on to this NOOKcolor, Barnes and Noble’s full-color eReader, on its way out on the delivery trucks as we speak, just in time for the holiday season. This first post we’ll discuss a bit about the hardware – how the item feels, works, and functions in the real world.
NOTE: that this whole situation has both an unboxing and hands-on post and a demo post preceding it, both of the posts can be considered a sort of prequel set to this. Then lets get into the basics: weight, size, and portability.
The NOOKcolor weighs approximately 15.8 oz, that being .98 pounds – lighter than a Harry Potter book (the bigger ones.) It measures in at 8.1x 5.0 x 0.48 in, making it small enough to fit in a jacket pocket, but just a bit too big to fit in anyone’s pants pocket. You can hold it with one hand and read a book, but like any paper book, you’re going to probably want to hold it with both hands and/or balance it against your leg or a table or something along those lines.
There’s a “loop” in the lower left-hand corner that both acts as an aesthetic gesture which differentiates this device from other tablets and marks the place where you’re going to be able to insert your microSD memory card. Over the phone with Barnes and Noble I was told that without any card inserted, the NOOKcolor was able to “hold 600,000 books” – for me, this ends up being about 5.1GB of space with 26 books and magazines on the device taking up space. It is possible for each regular book on your device to be anywhere from 47.2MB all the way down to 372KB – these aren’t the limits, but they are the largest and smallest books I’ve got on the device at the moment, just to give you an idea. Also over the phone I was informed that with the memory card slot you’d be able to attain “unlimited storage.” Infinite books!
Along the edges of the device there’s a headphone jack (on top), volume up/down buttons (upper right), USB plug in (with lovely glowing orange/green “n” on the official cord) (on the bottom), and power button (upper left.) On the back there’s a lightly gripping rubbery back with the official “n” pressed into the center, FCC info and BARNES&NOBLE logo printed on the bottom of the back panel, above and below a small speaker hole grid. Along the entire edge of the device is a very sturdy plastic ring – don’t go bashing against any brick walls anytime soon, but don’t be surprised if it holds up against attacking small animals.
On the front, there’s on single button in the center of a piece of plastic as long as the short end of the screen and as tall as the greater border. This button is sort of a “home” button, bringing you back to your desktop from wherever you are in a book, app, in the browser, wherever. This button is again, cleverly shaped in the NOOK “n.”
Then there’s the screen. The lovely 7-inch backlit LCD screen which I’m told by Barnes and Noble started as a prototype. It’s an IPS screen with optics fusion, 1024×600 resolution, essentially no space between the display and the glass, with a lamination across the whole thing to reduce glare. It’s certainly not a no-glare situation, especially since it certainly is glass, but the sun’s not blasted my eyes out yet with it, that’s for sure.
The screen’s colors are brilliant. Whether you’re accessing a magazine (the best example of still-images, or a video from your “files”, you’re going to find the display’s details to be no disappointment. You WILL see some degradation if you go through the browser to a place like YouTube, even if you’re watching an “HD, 1080P” video – I always use The Matrix movie trailers to test screens out, and this doesn’t stand up to that test at all – lots of yuck in the blacks and colors and everything. However, if you do have a video optimized for the NOOKcolor, you’ll find excellence.
NOTE: Check out this post by user “The Hillarican” on MobileRead forums which explains optimal settings. Use something like the free application “HandBrake” to convert your video. Convert the file you wish to watch to the following: MPEG-4 (FFmpeg) for video codec, AAC (faac) for audio codec, stereo sound mixdown, samplerate of 44.1, and bitrate of 128. DOUBLE NOTE: This seems to work for some people and not for others. If you get it to work, comment below and tell us your super cool secret.
I do wish it were easier to play video content with the NOOKcolor. With other tablet devices (even smartphone devices) it ends up being a much simpler situation in almost every case. On the other hand, this tablet is being marketed as a reading-centric device and they do not seem to push anywhere in the marketing of this device that you’ll be able to view brilliant video. Also note that there’s no video content available anywhere in the B&N store. Should I wish for an easier video situation on a device that doesn’t technically promise it? I can’t be sure.
There are several ways to interact with books and apps, meaning several ways to tap, swipe, drag, etc, but I’ll get into more of that once we reach the rest of this review series. For now, I’ll let you know how well the screen reacts to those actions. Every sort of move or press or tap seems to work perfectly. There are times (especially when tapping something small, like a text link in a book or on the browser) that it takes a few tries to get it to accept your tap, but on the whole, it’s a very good experience touchscreen-wise here.
There is one place on the screen that shows a digital ghost when squeezing the device – see picture – this shouldn’t be a problem since, you know, why would you be squeezing the thing in the first place, but it’ll be interesting to see if this develops into a problem in the future. More than likely this situation arises from there being a piece of equipment inside the casing set up a little higher than everything else, and that’s the place that touches the back of the display first.
Plugging into the wall or the computer seems to work pretty well, the drive folder showing up on your computer’s desktop within a minute, most of the time within 10 seconds. As I’ve said before, I do really enjoy when any power plug lets me know when the device is fully charged, and this one does just that with a lovely NOOK “n” on the cord on the device’s end. While the device is plugged into the computer, you’re not allowed to access anything on the device unless you eject the files folder. Once you do this, though, your device will power up even as you use it. IMPORTANT: if you ever decide to fully power your NOOKcolor off, do not expect to turn it back on without it being plugged in. For some reason you are not allowed to turn the device on from fully-powered-down mode without the device being plugged into the wall or your computer.
Wrap-Up
The NOOKcolor has very minimal problems in the hardware department. If you’re the sort of person who loves to own the latest device in every department, this is definitely the one for reading books. It feels really great, handles well, and looks just lovely. Powered off or powered on, you know that this is an iconic piece of industrial design, and that is to be commended. I do not miss the ability to turn pages with physical buttons, and as of yet (remember we’re not reviewing the apps in any form yet) I do not miss the eINK display. The NOOKcolor is bright, it’s beautiful, and hardware-wise, it’s right on.
Be on the lookout the rest of this week for more posts like this, each of them accessible by searching “A Week with” in the SlashGear searchbar. [This paragraph will be replaced with links to the rest of this extended review at the end of the week]
Our man in the field Vincent was at PEPCOM last night and got his hands on a NOOKcolor, checking it out a bit and even having a lovely demo done in front of the camera. It was here that we got to see firsthand a working model of the NOOKcolor device and all of the lovely features available on it at the launch. This is Barnes & Noble’s 7-inch “ultimate reading device” of which there is “no more iconic, thin, [or] comfortable [an] ereader.” Sound pretty snappy. Our presenter went through all of the clicks, pinches, and drags in turn.
The device has a 7-inch LCD backlit color display – what B&N found to be the optimal construction for reading and portability. Active desktop (dock below main desktop) has most recent 50 items read, all of these items able to be dragged and dropped onto the main desktop (of which there are three screens, similar to how you’d have multiple screens to place icons for apps in an Android smartphone.) On the desktop, each of these items can then be sized and placed anywhere, on top of, behind, next to, all around eachother like a real desk.
Once inside, say, a novel, you have a customizable reading experience: the font size can be changed, night mode can be turned on (turning the background to black and the text to white). Social Interaction includes the ability to highlight a passage from any bit of text, then sharing to places like Facebook, then tagging friends as one does so. Also inside the text one can bookmark, highlight, and during reading take notes as well.
When reading magazines there’s a navigational function which includes a sort of dock that you can scroll through, showing you thumbnails of all the pages, allowing you to get to any page at any time. Magazines can be viewed both in portrait mode or landscape, navigating the same way for both. One can also pinch to zoom into pages as well.
Article View (pictured above) is something that works inside magazines for when there’s an article that would normally go 2 pages, then have several other pages of ads or other content and finish up later – this way you can read all of the text at once instead of flipping back and forth getting lost like you might in a real world magazine. Bookmarking here works too.
All children’s books (example below) are displayed in landscape mode (as they should be, as most children’s books are designed to be viewed both pages at once). Many of the children’s books have narration (sometimes by famous people!) so the reader (a kid) can read along or have the book read to them. *I should note here that in a talk I had this morning with representatives from B&N (I’ll be reviewing the NOOKcolor soon) I found out that the interactive aspect (that is, seeing items on pages move, being able to pick illustrations up and move them, etc, fun stuff, will not be available at launch, but will instead start rolling out in Quarter 1 of next year.
There’s a Library feature (pictured below) where you can customize your shelves of your entire collection of books, magazines, newspapers, all customizable by you in whichever order you’d like them in (this is in addition to your desktop which is outside of the library, but these are the same books).
There’s a Lendable feature (pictured below, but you’ll be able to see a green ribbon on each book that’s lendable once you see the device up close) which allows you to give (or get) a book to (or from) a friend for 14 days – a time during which the book is effectively transferred, appearing in the person who borrowed the book’s library and inaccessible in the person’s who lent it.
Inside the Shop there’s several ways you can access books including lots of different ways to be recommended a book, categories to browse through, and of course a simple search function.
Take a look at the video here, then the gallery below (in which you can see the microSD memory card slot under the loop,) then view the unboxing and hands-on post by yours truly, then just wait for the weekend where I’ll be posting a full review your your pleasure!
Welcome to the official SlashGear NOOKcolor Unboxing and Hands-on. I received this lovely treat in the mail at about 9AM through FedEx – joyous day! You know the NOOKcolor from its first official coming out ceremony back on October 26th (2010). This is Barnes and Noble’s first fully color Nook: it’s a 7-inch portable tablet aimed directly at those wishing to have a full reading experience. It costs right around $250 and is host to over 2 million titles (books, enhanced books, newspapers, magazines, and children’s books.) Inside you’ll see the slick box it comes in plus the accessories and feel of the device itself.
The folks at Barnes&Noble really know what they’re doing as far as graphic design and packaging. This box makes the Nook seem amazing (we’ll see how amazing it really is (or isnt?!) in the review.) They’ve got that part down. The box is thick and brilliantly printed. Once you figure out (it took me a minute) that you’ve got to break the circle sticker seals on the side, you realize that it’s an excellent fold-back design, complete with magnets(!) to hold it open or closed.
Once inside you’ll find what appears to be a free-floating NOOKcolor, but in fact it is being held in place by two sturdy pieces of board padding. Alongside the NOOKcolor you’ll find a beautifully laid out pamphlet roughly the same size as the device telling you how to get everything going. The reason this pamphlet seems so short and limited is because it is: the extended User Guide, it says, can be found inside your library on the NOOKcolor device itself.
Next you’ll be searching for the USB cord and wall plug, both can be found in a cute little box in the smaller end of the folded back package. I’m foolish so I wrecked the side panel with the Nook “n”, of course, but you’ll know right away that this box opens just like any reasonable box, right on the top or bottom. When the cord is plugged into the device, you’ll see a cute little light up “n” again, in green or orange letting you know if the charge is complete.
Next, you’ll take a look at the NOOKcolor and think “oh let’s try it out” but you cant! Take a look at the plastic protective sheet on the front of the device (I tore it off without even reading it) and you’ll find that it says you’ll have to plug the device in before attempting to explore it. The instant you do plug it in, however, you’re able to turn it right on and start your reading adventure.
The device is medium weight – you’re not holding a telephone here, this device weighs at least as much as one of those soft-cover Harry Potter books you’ve heard so much about. The back is rubbery and will never slip out of your hands, the touchscreen is extremely responsive (more on this in the review), and the lights are bright. I can just barely wrap my hand around the device to hold it – I expect most people to be using two hands to keep a grip whilst reading.
Over the next few days (I mention the possibility of just one, but I’ve got to dive deeper than that) we’ll be taking a look at NOOKcolor and all of its neato aspects, seeing how it lives up to itself. You’ll have your full review then. UNTIL then, take a peek at this sweet shaky-cam unboxing and see me struggle like a fool attempting to decipher this easy-to-understand package.
Today we reconfirm the idea that Google Voice for iPhone is a big deal – then argue about it! Apple told the world they’d be changed forever after today, then the Beatles are released on iTunes! We review and/or unbox the following items: SoundFreaq SFQ-01A, Google Voice for iPhone, Samsung Continuum, and Evan’s epic week with the HTC HD7 continues with “Software!” Barnes and Noble’s Nook Color officially goes on sale, and Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s Web 2.0 2010 appearance video is up for multiple views – the Nexus S! Gingerbread! Sweetness! On the business end of things, Samsung Galaxy Tab’s production may very well be cut in half due to poor demand, Panasonic is entering the Japanese Smartphone market in 2011, and 1 MILLION Optimus One smartphones have been sold in one month! Oh and the T-Mobile G2 was overclocked to 1.9Ghz like it was no big deal
SlashART
Ever wonder how many floppy disks it would take to install your modern day applications on your desktop? What’s that? You never used floppy disks to install anything before? You kids. Here’s a project that’ll make you appreciate this modern age of USB stick installation: “3.5 Inch Poster” is a set of posters displaying color-coded floppy disks with labels displaying which application they’re going to be used to install. On each disk is a number, for example “iTunes 8 – Install Disk 17/46″ that means it’d take 46 of these hunks of plastic just to install your everyday iTunes 8 update. The other results are thus (and they’re approximate: 358 disk for Adobe Photoshop CS4, 1760 disk for the Sims 3, 12 disk for Firefox 3, 36 disk for Firefox Add-ons. Old programs, old disks! Also, looks like Firefox wins! Or loses? These posters will be available for purchase soon via AntrepoShop. Designed by Mehmet Gozetlik in collaboration with Emre Basak.
