The Nook Color Arrives

Amazon, your Kindle is now less cooler. Barnes and Noble introduced the Nook Color book reader today and the specs look pretty darn good. So good that you can get caught up in all the features and forget that it's purpose is to read electronic books.

An eBook reader that comes in less than 1 pound, built on Android O/S, and offers a color touchscreen? Welcome to the Color Nook. It's not just a book reader, but a whole lot more. This is the book reader I dreamt about and have been wanting for so long. It is the very reason why I held out to not go out and buy an Amazon Kindle because I always felt something better was going to come around.

I see that Barnes and Noble is inline with my view that the Nook needs to be part of an in-store experience. Customers who purchase the Color Nook will be able to visit any Barnes and Noble store and sit down to read up to 1 hour of eBook content for free. Now if they would only realize that they need to cut down on hard copy inventory, downsize their brick and mortar lease space to convert to electronic reading rooms, and offer hard print copy services they will make brick and mortar hip again.

Although the Color Nook is WiFi only, that is perfectly fine. 3G/4G support can come later and I wouldn't mind. If Barnes and Noble is to continue to attract customers into their stores to build upon an in-store experience, they should avoid it and push the free content. Remember, its about selling the experience.

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Color Nook Specifications

• Price: $249
• 8.1"x5.6"x0.48"
• 15.8 ounces
• Built on Android 2.1
• Texas Instrument OMAP3 3621 CPU
• 7" color touchscreen display capable of 16 million colors
• 1024x600 backlit display at 169PPI
• 6 font sizes
• Stereo headphone jack
• Up to 8GB memory
• MicroSD supportt for additional storage
• 178 degree viewing anglei
• MP3/AAC audiot player
• Watch MP4 movies
• WiFi enabled 802.11 b/g/nt
• Supports EPUB, PDF, XLS, DOC, PPT, PPS, TXT, DOCM, XLSM, FFTM, PPSX, PPSM, DOCX,XLX,PPTX
• Up to 8 hours without recharging battery
• 3 hours recharging time
• Over 1 million eBooks for free
• Over 1 million eBooks for purchase as low as $9.99
• Magazine and newspapers available
• Share books with friends
• Special in-store experience featuring special offers

It is good to see they are creating an open development platform for further creativity and innovation.. Software developers are encouraged to build customized Nook Apps. A software development kit will be made available in the next few weeks. Nook developers will be able to submit their applications in early 2011 and sell them online. Terrific.

Now I know what I want for Christmas. Santa? Are you listening?

The Color Nook is available online at the company's website and will be shipping before Thanksgiving.

About Kerry Kobashi

Kerry is the founder of KerryOnWorld. He lives in Silicon Valley and has worked as an engineer and project manager. He owns Kobashi Computing a consulting company.