This is BrainLog, a blog by Dan Sanderson. Older entries, from October 1999 through September 2010, are preserved for posterity, but are no longer maintained. See the front page and newer entries.

October 20, 2009

The Barnes & Noble e-book reader, Nook, can view ePub, eReader and PDF, can read MicroSD cards, has a little color touch panel instead of a keyboard as well as an e-ink reading surface, has complimentary 3G cellular network access (AT&T) and Wi-Fi, and costs $259. It supposedly runs the Android operating system, though I suspect that doesn't have any implications for end users or even hackers (much like the Kindle runs Linux). Also a neat (but closed system) "lending" feature to share with others that have a Nook reader or free computer software that runs on Windows, Mac or iPhone.

The catch? Barnes & Noble's e-book store sucks. Pretty much all of the books I've seen available for the Kindle that I'd want to read aren't in B&N's store at all. Their browsable catalog is missing entire categories available on the Kindle. I presume I could try to find ePub/eReader versions of those titles from other stores, but that throws me back to the pre-Kindle state of the e-book universe, where e-books were hard to find, buy and manage. They have to nail the store, or it's useless. Amazon got this right, and will continue to lead even with a proprietary feature-weak format because of it.

My upcoming book will supposedly be available in several e-book formats, including ePub. But from the looks of B&N's store today, I'm doubting it'll be obvious how to buy a Nook-compatible version. Here's hoping.

I'd be excited about the PDF support, but a PDF on a small screen means you'll be scaling or sliding the display around to view a page, not walking through the text like with e-book formats. The $500 mega-Kindle supports PDFs and that makes sense because you could easily read a full PDF "page" on the screen. It's gratifying that I can easily copy my own text to the Nook for reading (unlike the Kindle), but I don't have high hopes that it'll be useful—unless it can also do HTML or plaintext.

Nothing on the site about a web browser, either, nor Wikipedia. Out by November according to a press release, though of course it doesn't say that on their website.