The Nook sets itself apart from the pack with an innovative dual display, one part electrostatic ink book screen, and the other part a thoroughly modern 3.5-inch full-color touchscreen for navigating between menus and book covers.

Much like the Kindle before it, the nook can download books via Wi-Fi or 3G connections, and it offers a high-contrast 16-shade E Ink display for reading books. Free 3G coverage is provided by AT&T, while you’ll get free Wi-Fi whenever you’re visiting a B&N store. And it can read open standard files like PDF and e.pub documents -yay! Did I happen to mention the Nook runs on Google’s open source Android OS? Ruh-oh. Kindle’s on the ropes now.

Barnes & Noble will even let you sample a little bit of each book before you buy – sorta like the music previews on iTunes. The nook even lets you “lend out” books to your friends for up to 14 days at a time. They don’t even need to have a Nook – you can share them to a cell phone or computer too. You can even sync your books own to your iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Mac or PC and pick up wherever you left off reading.

Barnes & Noble plans on offering over 1 million download-to-own eBooks, and a variety of subscription magazines and newspapers in its electronic bookstore, and the nook has enough storage on board to hold up to 1500 of ‘em. And if you’re a real bookworm, you can stick in a 16GB MicroSD card and carry around a your own mobile Library of Congress with up to 17,500 books.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The nook will ship starting in late November, and will sell for $259.99 (USD). You can pre-order one now over at the Barnes & Noble website.

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I lol’d at Eau, You Have Cats. DuroSports went the extra mile and even concocted a scandal with the Author’s Guild, obviously a parody of the Kindle text-to-speech snafu. The Guild’s “statement” claimed that the Smell of Books was violating the “olfactory rights” of authors, so DuroSports had no choice but to pull out their aerosols for now.

[via OhGizmo!]

Foxit took a long hard look at the Kindle’s specs and said, “Hmm. Pork.” No. They one-upped Amazon on so many levels that it’s amazing they ended up with a device that’s $100 cheaper than the Kindle. Like the Kindle, the eSlick also connects via USB, and it also plays MP3 files. But it can also open and create PDF files via the packaged Foxit software. Whereas the Kindle has 256 Mb of internal storage, the eSlick comes with a free 2 Gb SD card to boost its 128 Mb internal memory.  And at 0.4″, it’s 50% thinner than the Kindle.

One thing the eSlick concedes to the Kindle is the latter’s wireless connectivity via Whispernet, and of course Amazon’s online library. Here’s hoping that Amazon considers support for the eSlick, because everyone will benefit from that. Also because the eSlick is a $100 cheaper. Mostly because it’s a $100 cheaper.

Soon Foxit will be taking pre-orders at their website, with a special initial offer of $230, $30 off from the ordinary price.

[Foxit via electronista]

According to my rough math, the display cranks out over 230 pixels-per-inch, about 3 times that of the typical LCD computer screen. Perfect for use in electronic book readers, the flat panel measures in at just 3mm thick, and can display 1400 pages on a single button-cell battery.

While Seiko Epson hasn’t revealed any products which use the new display, it’s only a matter of time before we see these in real world devices.

[via MobileRead]

For starters, there the 4-port Podera Luxe USB hub. The simple and elegantly designed hub looks great sitting on your desktop, and provides easy access to all your UDB devices. All ports are full USB 2.0 High-Speed compliant, and the hub doesn’t require a supplemental power supply.

Then there’s the matching Luxe memory card reader. This pint-sized box provides easy connectivity to MemoryStick, SD, or MMC-sized memory cards all through a single opening.

Both the Luxe USB hub and memory card reader come in a variety of bright color accents as well as white. I haven’t been able to find a U.S. retail outlet for the Podera line yet, but it looks like Ryde Products is the North American distributor if you’re looking for more information.

Chinavasion’s latest media player not only handles your music and videos with aplomb, it can also emulate a variety of classic gaming consoles. There’s emulation support for the NES, Gameboy, Gameboy Color and Sega Genesis so you can play your favorites from the past. In addition, the device also integrates an E-book capability that actually uses text-to-speech to read books to you in either Chinese or English.

The player has a 3-inch TFT widescreen, and comes with a snap-on gaming pad accessory so you can get your game on. The device has 2GB of on-board memory and can be expanded up to 6GB total, with the addition of a 4GB SD card. Chinavasion hasn’t announced a price yet, but based on their past bargain-basement releases, it’s almost a sure bet that it’ll be inexpensive.

Bookeen’s Cybook 3 reader will hit shelves this September, with prices starting at $350 USD. The Cybook 3 is a super-slim electronic book reader that’s only about as thick as a magazine and weighs in at just 6.1 ounces. Powered by a crisp 6-inch 166dpi E-Ink electrostatic display technology, the device can display up to 8,000 pages on a single charge.

The Cybook 3 is compatible with Amazon’s Mobipocket book distribution technology, meaning that you’ll have access to around 50,000 books when the reader is released. The device can also read a variety of other non-DRMed content formats like RTF, HTML, PDF and PRC files without any conversion software. It can also handle JPG, GIF, PNG and MP3 file formats. Just transfer the files you want to read via USB, and they’re ready to go. In addition to a small amount of on-board storage, the device has an SD slot, so you can store a huge number of books for those really long journeys.

This is definitely one to watch for when it comes out this Fall.

TigerDirect is offering the Sony PRS-500 E-Book Reader for just $99.99, which is a savings of over 70% from the original price. And yes, the PRS-500 has a nice 6.9″ x 4.9″ display, not a 5-inch display as listed on the product page (Sony never made a 5-inch model.)

The reader can hold about 80 digital books in its internal memory, and can be expanded to hold plenty more if you add an SD card. It can also read PDF documents you download to it from your computer. Battery life is pretty amazing too, letting you read up to 7,500 pages on a single charge.

To sweeten the pot even more, if you happen to pick one up before July 31, 2007, Sony CONNECT is offering $149 worth of free eBooks making this one really amazing deal. Let’s hope that the price isn’t a typo.

[via MobileRead via pocketables]

E Ink’s new Vizplex display modules have a new switching mechanism which will allow the displays to refresh almost twice as fast as prior displays. In addition, the new units will be 20 percent brighter than the earlier models.

Previously, refresh (switch speed) was rated at 1200ms, while the new version will switch at 740ms. In addition, the new displays will support 8 levels of grey, versus the 4 levels in previous models. All of these improvements should lead to higher quality electronic book readers and other e-paper devices within the next year or so. Display panels will come in a variety of sizes ranging from 1.9 to 9.7-inches diagonal.

[via MobileRead]

The Sony Reader features an innovative high contrast E-ink display, capable of allowing up to 7,500 pages to be displayed without a battery recharge. The display is designed to be read from just about any angle, and won’t wash out under daylight conditions (although I’d love a backlight for nighttime reading).

It’s hard to tell from the picture, but the Sony Reader is only about the size of a large paperback book at 6.9-inches high by 4.9-inches wide by .5-inch thick.

Out of the box, the player has sufficient (64MB) memory to store about 80 eBooks. Plenty of additional storage can be gained by adding a Memory Stick or SD memory card. In addition to displaying Sony’s book format, the Reader can also be used to view Adobe PDF files, JPEGs and even has audio playback capability for MP3 and AAC files.

Included with the Reader will be access to Sony’s CONNECT online store with over 10,000 eBook titles available for download. Sony has also announced that they will be including a $50 certificate toward eBook purchases with initial shipments of the Reader through December.

This is looking like it could be one of the must have gadgets for this holiday season.

And if that’s not enough, the device also provides Bluetooth connectivity for your computer. Priced at just $25 USD, it’s a must for graphic designers who need to be able to read cards provided by their clients.

[via Coolest-Gadgets via CNet Asia]

ED: What is is about the number 52 this week? I just realized that I’ve posted three (1, 2, 3) articles in the last 24 hours all with the number 52 in the headline. I wish I could play that number on the roulette wheel!