Nook

In-app purchasing will finally make its way to the Barnes & Noble Nook tablet.

Nook Media, the recently formed subsidiary of Barnes and Noble, announced the news today, saying that it's partnered with mobile-payment provider Fortumo to bring in-app payments to its line of Nook tablets. Fortumo will provide the tools to developers to integrate in-app purchases. The company's platform also includes real-time data on revenue and analytics.

For the customer, the experience of in-app payments should be similar to what they've found elsewhere. The platform will allow for one-click buying; simply clicking the "Pay" … Read more

Over the last few months, Barnes & Noble has been running a number of special deals on the Nook HD+, the larger of its two tablets, including a free credit of $50 to spend on Nook content. But now the company is taking things a step further by throwing in a free Nook Simple Touch E Ink e-reader -- usually $79 -- with the purchase of Nook HD+, which starts at $269 for the 16GB model. The offer is available from March 24 to 30.

The deal comes at a turbulent time for the company. Much has been written lately … Read more

When it comes to free stuff for your tablet or e-reader, Amazon rules the roost.

The Amazon Appstore is home to a kajillion freebies for Kindle Fires, while the Kindle Store offers literally thousands of free Kindle e-books.

Barnes & Noble, on the other hand, offers a comparatively limited selection of free apps in its curated store, and I couldn't even find a "free books" section in the Nook Book Store.

At least there's Free Fridays, which gives you a free e-book every week. Today, for example, you can get the Nook edition of David Rhodes' "Driftless," … Read more

The Nook is stocking up on video.

Barnes & Noble subsidiary Nook Media this morning announced new content licensing partnerships with Hollywood studios and content providers including Lionsgate, MGM, Paramount Pictures, Relativity Media, National Geographic, Little Pim, and Film Buff.

The partnerships will provide Nook users with the choice of "thousands" of additional movies and TV shows including "The Hunger Games," the Twilight movies, "Skyfall," "Rocky," "Mad Men," and "Amazing Planet," the company said.

With the news, Nook Media is playing up the high-resolution screens of its 7-inch … Read more

I know from response to past posts that there's a lot of interest in rooting Barnes & Noble's Nook tablets (specifically the Nook Color, Nook Tablet, Nook HD, and Nook HD+). And why not? The hardware is great, but B&N's heavily modded interface curtails many of Android's best features -- not the least of which is access to Google Play and all the apps, movies, TV shows, and games therein.

Tech-savvy users can "root" a Nook to run Android proper, and the even tech-savvier ones can make a Nook run Android from … Read more

Just last month I shared a deal on one year of Bitcasa unlimited cloud storage for $69.

This is less.

Through this weekend, as part of a Cheapskate exclusive deal (woo!), you can get a year of Pogoplug unlimited cloud storage for $39. No file size restrictions, no limits on uploading or downloading, just an endless supply of virtual-hard-drive goodness.

Granted, Bitcasa and Pogoplug are, to a degree, apples and oranges. The former works more like Dropbox on steroids, syncing selected folders and even letting you migrate data off your hard drive and onto your cloud drive.

Pogoplug doesn't … Read more

The company, which has struggled in the changing bookselling market, disclosed that Leonard Riggio plans to offer to buy the retail side of Barnes & Noble's operations. Riggio has not yet made a formal bid but said in a regulatory filing that he plans to negotiate a price with the board for Barnes & Noble's 689 stores and Web site. The bulk of the purchase would be made with cash, Riggio said. He is the company's largest shareholder with a 30 percent stake.

The Nook hasn't worked out as Barnes & Noble had hoped, reportedly leading executives at the bookseller to rethink its hardware strategy.

The bookseller, which acknowledged last month that Nook segment sales for the holidays were much lower than expected, will "move away" from building its own hardware to a strategy that focuses on licensing content to third-party developers, sources tell The New York Times.

"They are not completely getting out of the hardware business, but they are going to lean a lot more on the comprehensive digital catalog of content," said an unidentified person … Read more