The UberReview » Books

Barnes & Noble’s nook, a Silly Name for a Kindle Killer

C. S. Magor — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 01:55:25 +0000

Much of what separates the Barnes & Noble nook from the Kindle 2 is sheer novelty. I can take or leave the color multi-touch screen, and the size and weight differences are elementary. It is the nook’s subtle additions that set it apart. It is like the folks at Barnes & Noble made a list of everyone’s gripes with the Kindle and then set about correcting them.

To start things off, there is the connectivity. The Kindle comes with Sprint, the nook AT&T – which they peg as being faster but who really cares; the big difference is WiFi, lack of WiFi connectivity is what stops me from buying the Kindle and it is what will make me consider buying the nook. If you don’t live in the U.S. (which I don’t), then you are stuck with something that can only read books.

The SD card slot for removable storage is another sweet feature; especially for major collectors and e-book pirates. Another boon is native PDF support, which makes it stupidly easy to download books from a wide variety of sources (including torrent sites).

The major Kindle gripe that they have dealt with, however, is sharing; the Kindle doesn’t have it, but the nook does, and it supports a range of devices which is even better.

The drawbacks to the nook are few and far between, lack of Word Doc support is annoying and it does not have text-to-speech but other than that Barnes & Noble seem to have covered their bases well and come out with something that trumps the Kindle with features, while costing the same, and kills the Sony and iRex readers on price. I am impressed enough to part with two hundred and fifty-nine hard-earned dollars.

Price: $259

Culinary Nerdification: Star Wars Cookbooks

C. S. Magor — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 02:10:01 +0000

While part of me suspects that recipes like Wookie Cookies, Jedi Juice Bars, Dark Side Salsa, Boba Fett-Uccine are just geeky names attached to familiar eats, I must admit that I am somewhat tempted to pick up two new additions to my respectably sized cookbook collection.

Price: $10.99 and $14.99 [Think Geek via Slippery Brick]

Personal Library Kit Protects Your Books From Light Fingered Friends

C. S. Magor — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 11:03:15 +0000

Why is it that there are people that we can entrust our lives or our secrets to that cannot be trusted to return a book? My guess is that they have been doing it all of their lives, growing up they used to forget to return our action figures, or our box of 5 1/4″ Verbatims accidentally fell into their bag (that guy is a lawyer now); now they forget to return our books, which is where a personal library kit comes in handy. The kit comes with cards and a date stamp, everything you need to save you from buying Neuromancer for a third time.

Price: $20 [Fred Flare via Nerd Approved]

Burn Through Books With a Burning Bookmark

C. S. Magor — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 23:04:18 +0000

The burning bookmark adds a little bit of hotrod flame to whichever book you happen to be reading at the time. It looks pretty cool, it serves a purpose and at the same time shows that the printed word still lives, for now anyway.

Price: $6

via Technabob]

Guinness Book of Records Second Annual Gamer’s Edition to Be Released

C. S. Magor — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 01:22:31 +0000

It would seem that the first Guinness Book of Records Gamer’s Edition achieved some success, so much so in fact that they are doing it all again this year. I am just dying to find out how my high score at phone Tetris stacks up against the best. [Gear Log]