PJ Trader

My mind has often gone on trips without the rest of me, and I seldom remember to document them for you.  Today, under the energy of a little extra Halloween sugar rush, I’ve got some ramblings for you.

For example, do you shop online?  Or look at knitting patterns, or any sort of lists with pictures?  You know what makes me mad?  When all I get is itty bitty one inch by one inch pictures on my web browser of whatever I’m trying to buy.  I have a 23” inch monitor 15 inches from my face and I can’t tell what’s in the picture because they can’t put one up that is actually big enough to see.  And then, when you click on the ENLAGE icon or whatever, you get a popup WITH THE EXACT SAME SIZED PICTURE IN IT!  What’s up with that?

I also have a gripe with websites that have a bunch of pages, so there are page numbers like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 NEXT.  Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m trained that NEXT takes you to the, ahem, next page to view.  So, logically, if I”m on page 1, NEXT will take me to page 2, right? 

But no, it takes me to page 6.  I do not understand that.  (Ok, I do know what they’re doing, but that’s beside the point.  It’s dumb design.)

It looks like the rain around here is going to stop finally.  I’m not sure, but I think they called the National Guard out to use the boats to get us to our cars, across the flooded ditches.  The good news is there’s enough candy in our office to survive 40 more days and nights of rain.

If you’re into it, I hope you have a Happy Halloween! If you’re not into the kid thing, ghosts and pirates and ballerinas and such, just have a nice weekend!

Put it on your calendar – tomorrow is the release date for the second of Nora’s Brides series.

Love blooms in the second novel in Nora Roberts’s celebrated Bride Quartet series.

As little girls MacKensie, Emma, Laurel, and Parker spent hours acting out their perfect make believe "I do" moments. Years later their fantasies become reality when they start their own wedding planning company to make every woman’s dream day come true. With perfect flowers, delicious desserts, and joyful moments captured on film, Nora Roberts’s Bride Quartet shares each woman’s emotionally magical journey to romance.

But that’s just where Jack Cooke is. He’s so close to the women of Vows that he’s practically family, but the architect has begun to admit to himself that his feelings for Emma have developed into much more than friendship. When Emma returns his passion-kiss for blistering kiss-they must trust in their history…and in their hearts.

We interrupt Wednesday’s normal yarn related news for this important update.

Yesterday Barnes & Noble publically announced the release of their new ereader, called the Nook.  The Nook is the first device to take on the Kindle camp, and the battle is shaping up to be a strong one.  B&N brings huge name recognition with it, along with a huge library of digital books.  Yes, it’s bigger than Amazons, with over 1 million titles available. 

Many of the features of the Nook are copied from the Kindle and, dare I say it, improved upon?  There’s a main top screen, in 16 level grayscale (same as the Kindle).  The Nook eschews the Kindles keyboard and provides a 3.6” color touch screen below the main screen for viewing your library via a “cover-flow” design and other navigation.   It looks totally cool.

3G wireless coverage is provided by AT&T (for free) to download new content, but the Nook also supports wifi connections, one presumes for an even faster download.  While the intneral 2GB of storage will hold 1500 books, there’s a micro SD slot for more room – which you’ll need for the jpgs and mp3s you want to carry around too.

The Nook supports PDF, ereader’s pdb  and PUB format – although it’s uncertain whether or not DRM’d files are supported.  I hope so, as then all the content I’ve purchased from ereader.com, now owned by B&N, is readable on the Nook. 

One feature B&N didn’t include was the ability to upload Word documents to the reader.  Kindle required $$$ to use that feature, so I suspect it won’t be missed on the Nook.  Enterprising authors wishing to upload their manuscripts to the Nook should probably be able to figure out how – simply PDF your Word doc and upload that instead.  For free.

One video indicates the Nook suffers from the same problem as all other ereaders – that lag during the page changes.  Not having to deal with that when purusing a book on the iPhone or computer, I’m not sure how much I’m going to like that.  I suspect you get used to it after awhile.

I was a little disappointed to see the internal dictionary is the Merriam-Webster’s version instead of the Kindles Oxford English Dictionary, but you can’t have everything.

Since B&N also released applications for most mobile phones as well as desktop and laptop computers, they include synching between devices so that you can pick up right where you left off.

B&N has product pages for some great looking covers to protect the device, a couple versions of a light for that late night bedtime reading and other accessories.  I’m lusting over the cute Kate Spade library cover, myself. 

And the other really, really cool feature?  Loan a good book to your buddy for a couple of weeks.  He can read it on his Nook, phone, or computer too!  This is a novel first among DRM’d content and something the technogeeks have been wanting for a long time.

Rumor has it that there will be another version released sometime next year that features a color, backlit screen.  But in the meantime, this Nook should do nicely.

Preorders are being taken now at Barnes and Noble.com.  Asking price is $259, same as the Kindle’s current price.

Maybe someone you know would like this as a Christmas present?