coloring

Liberty Media offers $1B for Barnes & Noble stake

Barnes & Noble may soon have a new majority owner.

Liberty Media, a conglomerate with its fingers in everything from the QVC and Starz channels to Expedia and Evite to SiriusXM Radio, announced yesterday after market close that it has offered Barnes & Noble $17 per share, or about $1 billion, for a 70 percent stake in the book retailer.

The offer represents a sizable 20 percent premium on Barnes & Noble's closing stock price yesterday of $14.11. In after-hours trading, the book retailer's shares soared to $17.95.

Liberty Media's acquisition bid comes at an … Read more

Nook Color app downloads hit 1 million

Barnes & Noble's Nook Color application marketplace appears to be catching on with users.

Barnes & Noble announced today that 1 million applications were downloaded from its marketplace in the first week of availability. Not surprisingly, Angry Birds was the most popular paid application, followed by Drawing Pad and Solitaire, the company said. Aces Jewel Hunt and Astraware Mahjong rounded out the top five paid apps. Fliq Calendar and Fliq Notes were the most popular free applications in the store.

Barnes & Noble released a major update to its $250 7-inch e-reader late last month. The update delivered a … Read more

Bezos hints at Amazon tablet in interview

For months we've been talking about the impending arrival of an Amazon Android tablet and Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos didn't quite let the cat out of the bag--but he came close.

In an interview with Consumer Reports, when asked about the possibility of Amazon doing a tablet, he replied, "stay tuned."

Bezos also said that if Amazon were to do a tablet, it wouldn't replace the Kindle but be sold alongside it. That seems rather obvious, but that he was even talking hypothetically about such a scenario strongly indicates that a tablet is coming; … Read more

Microsoft buys Skype

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

Microsoft buys Skype

Google's Music Beta

Underage Facebook users

New Nook coming soon; most likely e-ink model

This isn't how products are typically announced, but thanks to a couple of sentences in an SEC filing, word is out that Barnes & Noble plans to release a new e-reader later this month.

Late yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported that according to the filing, Barnes & Noble will unveil the "new eReader device" on May 24:

Barnes & Noble spokeswoman Mary Ellen Keating declined to comment beyond the 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which contained one sentence of text to comply with Regulation FD fair disclosure rules, except to confirm the meeting took place in New York City. The filing says simply that the company, in the meeting, "indicated it expects to make an announcement on May 24, 2011, regarding the launch of a new eReader device."

The filing had no specific details about the e-reader, but for some reason the Journal speculated that Barnes & Noble might release a "more powerful combination tablet and e-reader" that would perhaps run Honeycomb, the Android 3.0 OS designed for tablets.

We're here to tell you that's probably not the case and that the more likely--and logical--scenario is… Read more

Amazon tablet to hit market later this year?

Could an Amazon tablet reach consumers later this year?

Sources quoted by tech site DigiTimes claim that Taiwan-based Quanta Computer has already gotten orders from Amazon to build the retail giant's first tablet PC. The new tablet will apparently use E Ink's Fringe Field Switching LCD technology, suggesting it will be a color LCD touch panel (a departure from the black-and-white E-ink Kindles we've seen to date)."

The tablet will start shipping as soon as the second half of the year with monthly orders expected to hit 700,000 to 800,000 units during the peak … Read more

E Ink: No successor to Pearl this year

Sri Peruvemba, vice president of global sales and marketing at E Ink, recently stopped by our New York offices and talked displays and reminded us just how thin the e-ink screen for the Kindle and other e-readers is.

While he was showing off a "Triton" color e-ink prototype that's been making the rounds and piqued the interest of textbook publishers, we were more interested in what's up next for monochrome e-ink. Peruvemba couldn't speak about any new e-readers from Amazon or Barnes & Noble, but he did say that the company's latest and greatest e-ink display, which goes by the name Pearl and was released last year (it's in the Kindle and Sony Readers but not the Nook), would be it for now; we shouldn't expect anything new in 2011.

"We're generally on a two-year cycle with our e-ink technology," he said. "It takes some time to develop and test the next generation." … Read more

Apple's iPad 2 Smart Cover color conspiracy

The other day I noticed that one of our tech editors here, Joe Kaminski, had a light blue Smart Cover on his iPad 2. Now Joe prides himself on being kind of a macho guy--some of you might know him from the Digital City podcast--so a little ribbing was in order.

I said, "Dude, why does a guy like you have baby-blue iPad cover?"

"I know, I know," he said. "It's kind of lame, but it's the best color they had in the cheaper version. What, I'm gonna get that DayGlo … Read more

Android Atlas Weekly 46: Desire and the Cute Girl Index

Nielsen thinks that Android phones are finally more desirable than iPhones, but Antuan could have told you that based on less than scientific observations. Justin shows us a phone that he does not desire, the HTC Droid Incredible 2. The unlikely Barnes & Noble Nook Color is rapidly becoming the most desirable Android tablet thanks to a new firmware update. Meanwhile, Motorola plans to give hardcore users what they truly desire, quad-core processors and more hacker friendly Android phones. All of that plus more news and the answers to your emailed questions on this week's episode of Android Atlas … Read more