Barnes & Noble on Monday added a more features to their Nook Color ebook reader, pushing the device more into the classification of a tablet. In addition, B&N added a store for buying applications, which Barnes & Noble is calling Nook Apps. It includes apps for email, calendars and contacts; support for Adobe Air and Flash; and a new Nook social networking app. NOOK Email works across the top Web mail services including Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, AOL and Hotmail (pdf).
The 7-inch touch-screen Nook Color, which features 8GB of storage, remains at $249. Enhanced NOOK Books have embedded audio and video content. Choose from hundreds of multimedia titles that allow you to watch that appetizing recipe being made step-by-step, learn how to perfect yoga poses, enjoy behind-the-scenes insights from your favorite authors, and much more.
The Nook Color is being switched over to a newer version of Google’s Android operating system, version 2.2, called Froyo. Unlike the Honeycomb software (version 3.0), which was designed specifically to run on tablets, Froyo was designed for phones but is on many tablets, such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab.
The Nook Color won’t be running all Android apps. Instead, Barnes & Noble is asking developers to optimize their apps for the Nook Color and submit them through the Nook Apps store, rather than simply allowing users to download apps from the Android Market.
As of Monday, 125 apps were available in the Nook Apps store, including Angry Birds, one of the more popular games on tablets and smartphones.
Other apps include Pandora Internet radio, the game Uno, the cooking app Epicurious and Boingo Wi-Finder.
Writer and illustrator Sandra Boynton will be one of the first authors to host an e-book signing, that lets authors digitally sign their e-books using a stylus.
