I absolutely love my Kindle. But I like to keep up on what’s going on with other e-readers. Well Barnes and Nobel introduced a rather interesting firmware update for their Nook. The firmware includes a basic web browser, games (chess and sudoku), and the general performance enhancements. But the really cool feature in my not so humble opinion is called read in store.
What this does is allow you to browse through entire books when in a Barnes and Nobel store. This feature makes sense as Barnes and Nobel marketed the Nook as a mechanism to get people to come into their stores. But it also seems kind of gimmicky to have a feature on a device rely on where you happen to be. Of course there are restrictions. Although you can browse entire titles you can only do so for one hour per day (whether that’s an hour per title or an hour for the feature use period is not made clear). Still it’s nice to see they’re throwing features in. Now if they could just build a device without that bloody LCD screen.
Update 2010-04-23 13:14: It appears that the new web browser only works with Wi-Fi, not the build in 3G card. This is a direct contract to the Kindle web browser which works on 3G (as it doesn’t have Wi-Fi). This really seems like a stupid limitation if you ask me.