Gadgets, Digital Book | featured news

Barnes & Noble Inc. (BKS) (BKS), the largest U.S. bookstore chain, introduced a Nook e-reader with a screen that glows in the dark, challenging Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) (AMZN) at a time when prices for digital books may start falling.

Apple on Thursday lifted the veil on its plans to remake the educational landscape in a way that centers on its best-selling tablet computer, the iPad. "Education is deep in Apple's DNA and iPad may be our most exciting education product yet," Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of marketing, said in a statement.

In the midst of an essay on teaching long-form reading that’s well worth your time, Alan Jacobs sticks in a little tidbit about how the Kindle saved him from losing the ability to read books.

Last week, a consortium of Dutch publishers unveiled the so called “delay app”, which allows the reader to choose a story to read while waiting. It allows the user to chose a story from a well-known Dutch author to match the time you spent waiting, from 5 to 60 minutes. It still has some issues: the app contains a certain amount of stories so no new content can be added and it is only for the iPad and iphone.

B&N cut the price of its Nook e-reader to $199 and unveiled a new W-Fi only model that costs $149, as the competition over electronic-book readers turns to a new battle front: price.

Apple Inc on Monday said it sold one million iPads in its first 28 days, and users of the tablet computer have already downloaded 12 million apps and 1.5 million digital books.