From the If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em Dept., it has been revealed that Barnes & Noble will release a Nook reader app for the iPad and, later down the road, iPhone. With Amazon on-board with their Kindle app and now Barnes & Noble, along with Apple’s own fledgling iBook app, the iPad has fast become the e-reader of choice.

The demo was conducted in an in-store Barnes & Noble Cafe, and a couple of tables away from us, a patron was flipping through a few magazines he’d borrowed from the nearby magazine rack as he sipped coffee. At another table, a customer was using B&N’s free Wi-Fi to surf the Web on his iPad, which begged the question, when would we see a new B&N eReader iPad app?

The answer is May, though no specific date was given. Barnes & Noble reps said the new iPad app is completely redesigned from the ground up. Interestingly, the company is also working on a totally new iPhone app, but it will come out after the iPad app and be offered as separate download for iPhone and iPod Touch users. Unlike Amazon’s Kindle iPhone/iPad app, the B&N eReader will not be a universal app (you’ll have to download the specific version for the specific device).

All in all, this is good news for Nook owners, as the device they bought starts to fulfill more of its potential and works out the kinks that were highlighted in many early reviews. We’re still waiting for a weather app, but at least the games, as basic as they are, show some of the possibilities. If you’re wondering exactly how the whole gaming thing works, you use the touch screen to move your pieces in chess, and those moves are reflected on the larger playing board on the e-ink display. It’s a little awkward at first playing in this manner–especially if you’re used to using a large touch screen device like the iPad–but you get used to it after a bit.

Source: CNET

The iPad just became the ultimate way to read a comic-book, thanks to Marvel’s excellent new reader app. Boing Boing was given exclusive access for a preview of the app and the video clearly indicates immense amounts of awesomeness.

Long before people were toting around Kindles as a portable reading device, early man had to resort to something a little more archaic, but no less effective: eggshells.

The eggshells were probably used as containers, and the markings may have indicated either the shells’ contents or their owner. Texier points out that until recently, bushmen in the region carved geometric motifs on ostrich eggshells as a mark of ownership.

If the symbols do signify ownership, it could have implications for the evolution of human cognition. Iain Davidson, an Australian rock art specialist at the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales, has suggested that marking ownership must have come after humans became self-aware. The eggshells could help to illuminate when this happened in this part of the world, he says.

Written language may have evolved more than once in human history. “Judging from what we know about the evolution of art all over the world, there may have been many traditions that were born, lasted for some time and then vanished,” says Jean Clottes, former director of research at the Chauvet caves in southern France. “This may be one of them, most probably not the first and certainly not the last.”

Source

If you own an iPhone and don’t want to shell out ungodly sums of money for Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader, then you’ll want to grab the Kindle app for iPhone that came out a few weeks ago. While it was a pretty nifty app, it needed a few cosmetic and functionality improvements, and that’s exactly what has occurred, as Amazon has released version 1.1.

What’s new? Well, the biggest improvement is the app’s ability to rotate into landscape mode for those of you who prefer wide margins. You’ll also find a new color scheme with the ability to change text colors for improved low-light reading. Additionally, you can tap either side of the screen to turn pages and use the good ole pinch technique to zoom in on images.

Best of all, the app is free, though you still have to pay for the books.

Get it here!