CrunchGear |  |
- Toshiba Japan Announces 10.1-Inch, Windows 7-Powered Tablet
- Video: Honda’s (Amazing) Personal Mobility Robot Uni-Cub
- Nokia Exec: iPhone, Android Handsets No Longer Appeal To Youth
- Daily Crunch: Next Gen
- Apple Reportedly Buying Flash Memory Company Anobit For $400 Million – $500 Million
- Review: Fujifilm X10
- Kickstarter: Meet Eyeboard, A Low-Cost Open Source Eye Tracker
- Survey: Consumers Increasingly Concerned With Products’ Origins And Rate Of Release
- Hands-On With The Latest Motorola Xyboards
- Review: Iomega 2TB Mac Companion Hard Drive
- Samsung’s LTE-Friendly Galaxy Tab 7.7 To Find Home On Verizon
- The Nao Next Gen Bot Will Be Your Friend When No One Else Will
- Amazon’s Trojan Horse: Don’t Underestimate The Kindle Fire
- Lenovo’s 2005S LePad Goes Live In China For Just $415
- Barnes & Noble Updates The Year-Old Nook Color, Adds Netflix, Flixster And More
| Toshiba Japan Announces 10.1-Inch, Windows 7-Powered Tablet Posted: 13 Dec 2011 04:50 AM PST  Japan seems to really like Windows 7-powered tablets: this time, it’s Toshiba, which has announced [JP] the so-called WT301/D for the local market. Just like so many Windows tablets, this model is specifically designed for use in enterprises. These are the main specs:
Toshiba plans to launch the tablet on the Japanese market next month (the price hasn’t been fixed yet).
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| Video: Honda’s (Amazing) Personal Mobility Robot Uni-Cub Posted: 13 Dec 2011 04:05 AM PST  Honda caused quite a splash a while back with the introduction of the U3-X, a personal mobility robot that’s basically a motorized unicycle (and that our own John Biggs was “impressed” with after taking it for a test drive last year). And now, at the Tokyo Motor Show 2011, Honda took the wraps of a pretty similar robot, the so-called Uni-Cub. In fact, Honda says it has been working on mobility solutions for single drivers since 1980. Just like with the U3-X, this new model makes it possible for drivers to ride in the direction they want to go by just moving the upper body or operating a joystick (the robot can also handle lateral movements). 360-degree motions are still possible, too, but Honda added another wheel to the robot to make it more stable. To increase driving comfort, the Uni-Cub features armrests (that previous models didn’t have). According to Honda, the Uni-Cub can reach a top speed of 10km/h and has a battery life of one hour at this point. Unfortunately, the company is still not sure about when to commercialize the technology. Honda sees the Uni-Cub used by people who want to scoot around places like shopping centers and exhibition halls. Here’s Honda’s Uni-Cub promotion video:
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| Nokia Exec: iPhone, Android Handsets No Longer Appeal To Youth Posted: 13 Dec 2011 03:36 AM PST  Looks like Nokia executives are increasingly picking up on a specific kind of skill honed by Microsoft execs over the past few years: saying something stupid about their competitors that is undoubtedly coming back to bite them in the ass at some point. Straight from the foot in mouth department: in an exclusive interview with Pocket-lint, Niels Munksgaard, Director of Portfolio, Product Marketing & Sales at Nokia Entertainment says iPhone and Android devices no longer appeal to younger crowds:
Now, I like Nokia’s Lumia 800, which runs Windows Phone Mango, a heck of a lot (more on that later). But why this executive felt the need to scoff the iPhone and Android as a whole, is beyond me. Yes, Windows Phone looks and feels different, but not everyone agrees that it’s better. The reality is Nokia has everything to prove betting the smartphone farm on Microsoft, and a lot to lose. Throwing around statements that today’s youths are fed up with the iPhone because “everyone has it” – what does that even mean? As the proverb goes: speech is silver, silence is golden. (The awesome facepalm image above = courtesy of Flickr user MithrandirAgain)
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| Posted: 13 Dec 2011 01:00 AM PST  Here are some recent stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: 'Small Cell' Maker ip.access Raises $15M From Intel, Qualcomm And Others Survey: Consumers Increasingly Concerned With Products' Origins And Rate Of Release Kickstarter: Meet Eyeboard, A Low-Cost Open Source Eye Tracker
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| Apple Reportedly Buying Flash Memory Company Anobit For $400 Million – $500 Million Posted: 13 Dec 2011 12:04 AM PST  Apple is reportedly going to use part of its enormous pile of cash to buy an Israeli fabless semiconductor company that specializes in flash storage solutions. Calcalist reports – in Hebrew – that the world’s most valuable company is in talks to buy Herzliya Pituach, Israel-based Anobit for $400 million to $500 million. If the report checks out, this would mark Apple’s first acquisition in Israel (and the first with Tim Cook at the helm as CEO), and also a rare occasion because the consumer electronics giant doesn’t usually buy non-software companies. The only hardware companies Apple is known to have acquired in the past two decades were Steve Jobs-founded NeXT, Raycer Graphics, Intrinsity and P.A. Semi. Anobit provides flash storage solutions for enterprise and mobile markets, based on its proprietary MSP (which stands for ‘Memory Signal Processing’) technology. Its solutions are designed to improve the speed, endurance and performance of flash storage systems while driving down the cost. Anobit's technology is comprised of signal processing algorithms that compensate for physical limitations of NAND flash, the company claims. Anobit does not publish a list of customers or references, but says its clients are among the world’s leading flash manufacturers, consumer electronics vendors and storage system providers. According to Calcalist reporter Assaf Gilad, Apple relies on the company’s solutions for the iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air product lines, among other devices. South Korean Hynix is said to use Anobit’s solution for a flash memory chip you can find inside the iPhone 4S. Anobit says it has 21 granted patents (and 95 in total). The company has raised $76 million from Battery Ventures, Pitango Venture Capital and strategic investors, including Intel Capital. Apple is likely interested in Anobit for its MSP-powered MSP20xx embedded flash controllers for smartphones and tablet computers, which can significantly boost memory performance. Last August, Anobit announced that it had shipped a remarkable 20 million of said flash controllers. Anobit was founded in 2006 and is led by co-founder, chairman and CEO Prof. Ehud Weinstein. Prior to co-founding Anobit, Prof. Weinstein was a co-founder and CEO of Libit Signal Processing, which was acquired by Texas Instruments in 1999. Anobit co-founder and president Ariel Maislos was previously co-founder of Passave, which was acquired by PMC Sierra in 2006. The rest of the Israeli company’s management team members also have impressive resumes, which is certainly another argument in favor of an Apple acquisition. Calcalist reports that Anobit employs roughly 200 people today.
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| Posted: 12 Dec 2011 04:08 PM PST  Short version:A stylish and fun alternative to the likes of the Canon G12 and Nikon P7000. It’s not the quickest on the draw, and the build quality is obviously a step down from its elder brother, the X100, but image quality is good and operation is straightforward. It’s got a great lens and after a little familiarization could be quite versatile. While it compares decently with the competition, it’s far from a knockout, and if you’re looking for a compact enthusiast camera you would do well to look closely at the other options before pulling the trigger. Features:
Pros:
Cons:
Full review:The X10 is, in a way, the X100 minus everything that made that camera good. The X100 had an excellent 20mm f/2 lens, a nice big APS-C sensor, a great metal body, and of course the unique hybrid viewfinder. The X10 has none of those things, sharing mainly the look and feel of the X series. However, it also adds a very respectable zoom lens, fixes some control problems, and really improves the menu system, which was pretty bad. It’s actually a more practical camera for most people. You turn on the camera by twisting the lens counter-clockwise to its 28mm position. When the camera is off, the lens is retracted all the way into its case, but whenever the camera is on, the lens protrudes. This is bad news for people who like to keep their camera on standby and ready to shoot: having the lens sticking out all the time makes for a less portable package. The zoom is a 28-112mm by 35mm standards. It’s extremely quick and satisfying to use, much better than electronically-controlled zooms. At the wide end it’s F/2, and that goes down to F/2.8 at the long end, which really is quite a decent amount of light to be gathering at that level of telephoto. Attached to the zoom is the viewfinder, which zooms along with it. It gives the illusion of operating a zoom lens on an SLR body, which will probably be a comfort to people who are used to that (like myself). The lens barrel actually protrudes into the viewfinder window at wide angles, which ends up more quaint than problematic. There are unfortunately no displays inside the viewfinder, so if you want to adjust your aperture or what have you, you’ll have to look at the LCD. There is also no proximity sensor that turns off the LCD when you’re using the viewfinder, which is kind of an odd omission. On the topic of the viewfinder, it is a little narrower than the actual image, which is of course better than being wider. In the following two shots, I framed the viewfinder with its corners at the edges of the windows (in the first shot) and its sides at the side of the chest (second shot). I’ve outlined roughly what the viewfinder covered: So it’s not exact, but it’s a fair approximation and you shouldn’t feel any anxiety using it as long as you feel confident in the autofocus. The body of the camera is similar to the X100, but looks and feels quite a bit cheaper. I thought the black-on-black color would look stealthy and cool, but because everything on the camera is black, it just makes it look plain. Not that this is a serious objection to owning the camera, but it is a little disappointing that it’s not as beautifully designed as the X100. Don’t get me wrong: it’s certainly more interesting-looking than the competition, if you ask me. I wish they’d spent more time on the finish, though. On the back the layout is similar to the X100, but the X1′s jog wheel/d-pad just feels better. Maybe I’m imagining things, but it just seems more stable and responsive. There is now a dedicated white balance button, which some will enjoy. On top there are two dials: mode and exposure bias. More direct manual controls like shutter and aperture would be nice, but really it doesn’t make sense unless you can have them all, so mode and bias are just fine. In manual mode you have instant access to pretty much everything you need, even if it’s not on a dedicated dial. Power shooters should be able to set up custom shots in just a few seconds once they’ve gotten the hang of things. The menus for things like white balance and ISO are only one level deep, so there’s not a lot of navigation to do unless you’re fiddling with settings. Handling likely depends on your hands and what you’re used to – like any camera. The X10 is definitely a two-hander, though it has gained a thumbgrip that makes one-handing while zooming easier. I have medium to large hands and my thumb tended to rest on the rear dial instead of the thumbgrip if I didn’t steady it with my other hand. Focusing is kind of a pain. I mean, if you’re not in a hurry, there’s no problem: I found the autofocus to be accurate and obedient. You can switch between center-point and matrix autofocus and manual using a little switch. But I wouldn’t say it was quick, though I’ve seen some report it as such. It can be quick, certainly, but it’s not reliably so, and like many others, it tends to over or under-shoot the mark and then reverse and try again. It’s not a flaw unique to the X10, but I still wouldn’t feel confident shooting any kind of action with this camera. On the other hand, the macro mode is very nice: The manual focus-by-wire is one of my least favorite parts of the camera. Lacking a focus ring on the lens itself, you must use the jog dial on the back. This can be either quick or exact, but not both. If you spin it fast, you can get to either end of the focus pretty easily, but getting the focus exactly right is a bit fiddly, I found. The camera, thoughtfully, automatically zooms into the center of the frame so you can check your focus exactly. There is a very cute pop-up flash with its own designated pop-up button, which I love. The button, not the flash. The flash is pretty standard point-and-shoot stuff and you’ll want to use the hot shoe if you’re doing any real flash photography. The LCD and info display are all right, but I feel like they could have streamlined the different modes a bit. Some of the X10′s competitors also have a higher-resolution display, something that really should have been included on an enthusiast camera like this one. The digital level is handy for people like me who must have everything perfectly perpendicular: Image quality For serious comparisons of similar cameras, I recommend going to a dedicated photography site like DPReview, where they have a controlled test setup. For my part, I just kept it around and used it as I normally would, getting some pictures in and out of doors in a few lighting situations. Click on these to get the full-size images, which you can inspect for noise and such. Be sure to open in a new tab to avoid triggering the windowed viewer. Yes, I know the tree is sideways. I didn’t want to reorientate it and have to reprocess the JPEG. And note that the house picture and the dog on the porch were taken from the same vantage point with the widest and longest zoom respectively. The lens is nice and fast, so you won’t need to push the ISO too much. I found that at 800 it was perfectly fine and 1600 was acceptable. Beyond that I started seeing some very noticeable luma patterns, though I didn’t see much in the way of colored noise. As for lens quality: only some detailed analysis will find the limits and best practices, but I found it just fine for normal shooting, with no vignetting at wide angles and no more than the usual chromatic aberration and fringing. Movie quality is… fine, I suppose. It’s 1080p30 and looks good, but you can’t adjust exposure or focus manually while it’s recording. DSLRs at this price offer a better video experience, manual focus, and more options for formats and framerates. Conclusion While people interested in getting into serious photography would do better to pick up a DSLR and a nice starter prime lens, the X10 is a charming and fairly powerful camera that anyone, photographer or not, will have fun using. A larger sensor for low-light sensitivity would have been welcome, and manual focus is still not as good as the rest of the camera, but overall it’s both practical and lovable. It’s a camera with personality. Compared with high-end point and shoots it is more complicated and more suited for specialized photography, and compared with its larger brethren, the G12 and P7000 among others, it falls behind in some features (LCD,
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| Kickstarter: Meet Eyeboard, A Low-Cost Open Source Eye Tracker Posted: 12 Dec 2011 03:31 PM PST  I’m a little ashamed to admit that I spent the tail end of my high school career goofing off and trying desperately to appear cooler than I actually was. Fortunately for our future, people like Luis Cruz exist: this recent high school graduate designed the Eyeboard, a low-cost, open source eye tracking solution meant to make communication easier for disabled users. While many prominent eye-tracking solutions use cameras to monitor the movement of a user’s eyes, the additional hardware means that they can be cost-prohibitive for the people who could use them the most. Cruz’s Eyeboard takes a different approach: users wear a pair of glasses with a set of electrodes mounted inside, and an external board (powered by an ATMega328 microcontroller) measures changes in the resting potential of the retina that correspond to their movement. It isn’t the most precise way to go, but the simplicity of Cruz’s design means that the Eyeboard is far less expensive than more accurate alternatives. The board runs into a PC, where the Eyeboard software (which is available in both Windows and Linux flavors) then interprets those voltage readings as movement inputs. The end result? An inexpensive way for users type out messages on-screen with just their eyes. And like I mentioned, Cruz’s project is entirely open source so people with specific use cases can feel free to tinker with his code as needed. Eyeboard prototypes have been making the rounds for a few months now — his work was highlighted on CNN — but now comes the tricky part of actually producing Eyeboard kits en masse. For that, Cruz has turned to Kickstarter for support: while his early prototypes cost around $200 to $300 to build, interested investors can lock in a first-run Eyeboard kit for $95. It’s a niche product for sure, but with any luck, these things will start seeing use in underfunded schools and developing countries before long.
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| Survey: Consumers Increasingly Concerned With Products’ Origins And Rate Of Release Posted: 12 Dec 2011 12:43 PM PST  A large survey of consumers and manufacturers from around the world has found a number of interesting statistics, though some are interesting not in and of themselves, but in what they imply about those surveyed. For instance, 57% of consumers say they’re “always or usually” aware of a product’s country of origin. This seems rather generous, considering how incredibly complex the supply chain is, and how a given high-tech product might include pieces from 10 or 20 different countries, depending on how deep you want to dig. And while 67% of people said that product quality is better today than it was 5 years ago, 75% think manufacturers don’t use the best-quality materials and don’t follow environmentally friendly procedures. Perhaps most entertainingly, 97% of manufacturers consider themselves “ahead of the curve” in safety and reliability, and nearly that many think the same regarding sustainability and innovation. They can’t all be above average. The full survey can be read here. The NY Times takes a few of the stats to suggest a “global gadget fatigue.” A generalization that isn’t really supported by this survey, but probably is true nevertheless. The amount of money and research going into consumer electronics has made product turnover much faster, and the nature of PR demands that products not be released all at the same time. So the results is a new “revolutionary” phone, TV, laptop, tablet, or what have you pretty much every week. It’s a major shift from the slower-moving world of the 90s, when much common wisdom was established about computers and mobiles among the population at large. The study also suggests that environmental concerns and consumer interest in the origin of their devices is going to be playing a major part in brand and marketing over the next few years. This may have to do with the simple flattening of the world that is the result of the internet and globalism in general. More products are being manufactured internationally, yes, but more people are aware of it, perhaps partially because of the continuing decline in manufacturing jobs in the US. But the 57% figure cited above is globally; in the US, only 46% say they’re aware of the country of origin, compared with 70% for India and 66% for China. Still, the number is probably far higher than it was ten years ago. As I have argued, it’s unlikely that people will agree to an increase in price for “ethical” devices, as much as we would like to think so. And although labeling and regulation should be established regarding the country of manufacture, component manufacture, and material sourcing, that’s still something of a fantasy. But it’s a good thing that consumer interest in such things is growing.
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| Hands-On With The Latest Motorola Xyboards Posted: 12 Dec 2011 11:53 AM PST  It’s not every day that you have two – count ‘em – two Motorola Honeycomb tablets drop on your lap but today’s one of those days. I’ve just powered up the Xyboard 8.2 and 10.1 and am running them through their paces right now. The tablets are surprisingly thin and, in preliminary LTE tests, surprisingly fast on the wireless networks, topping out at 28.8mbps. I’m going to withhold judgement until I mess with these guys a bit but as it stands the power and performance are impressive. As Matt notes, however, the 10.1 model costs $529 with contract and the 8.2 costs $429. You’re going to hear this again and again: Verizon’s prices are too darn high. Contracts aside, these look to be quite capable and if the battery life isn’t too bad they may be worth looking into if you’re looking for a tablet with an LTE solution built-in.
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| Review: Iomega 2TB Mac Companion Hard Drive Posted: 12 Dec 2011 10:59 AM PST  Iomega’s Mac Companion hard drive is a 2TB ($349, 3TB model is $449) desktop drive with a few features that make it interesting to the average Mac (or PC) owner. While it doesn’t have the bells, whistles, and network access of many NAS and home storage devices, it does look good next to your iMac. The drive is clad in brushed aluminum with a black glossy top panel and a two-port USB hub in back. You can also daisy-chain Firewire devices through the rear Firewire ports for 800mbps data transfers. The drive inside is a 7200RPM modem with 8MB of cache. Three lights on the front signal available capacity if you download a small helper app. My tests found the drive to be more than adequate in terms of speed. Maxing out at 73MBps over Firewire (compared to a 70MBps for a similar SATA drive), the Mac Companion is a useful back-up drive or scratch disk for video editing. Can you get a cheaper, less attractive drive for half the price (or less)? Sure, but Iomega is banking on looks and performance to push this drive into the premium space. While I can’t recommend it unequivocally, it is a strong contendor for sexiest drive of the year. Bottom Line
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| Samsung’s LTE-Friendly Galaxy Tab 7.7 To Find Home On Verizon Posted: 12 Dec 2011 09:50 AM PST  Verizon is awash in solid tablet options right now, but their current LTE-capable lineup may leave you wanting for something a little less unwieldy. If the thought of manhandling a 10-inch tablet is too much to bear, then take note: Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 7.7 will be coming to Big Red in due course with support for the company’s 4G network in tow. Droid-Life reports that entries for the 7.7-inch tablet have begun to trickle into Verizon’s employee-facing support systems. Despite being the runt of the Galaxy Tab litter, the pint-sized tab is no slouch: it features a 1.4 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM, a 1280×800 Super AMOLED Plus display, and a 5100 mAh battery. Hopefully the battery will be able to provide enough juice to accomodate the Tab’s LTE radio, which could be a make-it-or-break-it factor when it comes to usability. It’ll certainly be a great choice for people looking to lighten their load, but as of yet there’s no word on when Verizon will push it out the door. Pricing details are nonexistant too, but hopefully Verizon cuts us consumers a break: they recently launched the Motorola XYBOARDs with a pretty hefty contracted price, so maybe Verizon can afford to dial the price gouging down a bit.
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| The Nao Next Gen Bot Will Be Your Friend When No One Else Will Posted: 12 Dec 2011 09:23 AM PST Whoa. I thought Pleo was hot but this thing is out of this world. It’s basically a little walking robot that can see, hear, and recognize you from a distance. Originally designed to help teach autistic children, the Nao is now a fully-featured and surprisingly friendly-looking robot that can walk, play catch, and talk to you. The company, Aldebaran Robotics, updated their original Nao robot, adding a 1.6GHz processor and two HD cameras. This guy won’t be cheap – he’s a service robot and the movement is so surprisingly smooth that I don’t doubt it will be in the upper thousands when it’s finally available. You can pre-order right now although I suspect that these guys choose you rather than the other way around. From the press release: Three years after it started selling its first NAO models, the company has sold 2,000 robots worldwide. Aldebaran Robotics has now released the latest generation of its programmable humanoid robots, which is intended for research, teaching and, more generally, for exploring the new area of service robotics. Stemming from six years of research and dialogue with its community of researchers and users, NAO Next Gen is capable of a higher level of interaction, thanks to increased computing power, improved stability and higher accuracy. Therefore, the latest version of the NAO robot widens considerably the range of research, teaching and application possibilities made available to specific user groups. As well as its innovative features with respect to hardware, NAO Next Gen boasts a new, faster and more reliable vocal-recognition programme called Nuance. This programme is coupled with a new functionality known as „word spotting‟, which is capable of isolating and recognizing a specific word within a sentence or a conversation.
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| Amazon’s Trojan Horse: Don’t Underestimate The Kindle Fire Posted: 12 Dec 2011 08:11 AM PST  A number of prominent folks have been ripping into the Kindle Fire lately, claiming that it is slow, exhibits poor UX choices, and that consumers are returning them en masse. Heck, even the affable Marco Arment writes “If I didn't need the Fire for Instapaper testing, I'd return it.” Tough crowd. But there’s another narrative that says this is a secret success. Analysts estimate that Amazon will sell 5 million of the devices this quarter, a little under half the iPads sold in Q4 2011 (although the Fire has been on sale for a shorter period). I have a feeling that Amazon will hit or just graze this mark once it tallies holiday sales but, Amazon being Amazon, they’ll never announce total sales. Marco Arment or no Marco Arment, the Fire will do just fine. The Kindle Fire is Amazon’s Trojan Horse. It’s made for the mass of men and women who have been looking into this whole tablet business and like what they see. But it is, first and foremost, a reading device and to fault it for not playing Angry Birds well or offering a sub-par Netflix experience is to ignore its primary goal: to inject the concept of Amazon content downloads into a consumer base that is increasingly inundated with video, audio, and ebook sources. The Kindle Fire isn’t for the Marco Arment’s of the world. It’s for the folks who have priced the competition – the $529 Xyboard, the $499 iPad – and refused to take the plunge. Aside from a few mid-range sources (Vizio comes to mind, as does Viewsonic) there has been little support for the lower end by major manufacturers. When Amazon put their might behind something that may, at best, be frustrating to power users, the general consumer will scoop it up. In short, Kindle Fire, like the Nook Color before it, was the tablet I was waiting to buy for my mom. The Kindle Fire clearly has some issues. The power button is horrible, for example. However, if you stay in Amazon’s walled garden of books and content, straying only occasionally to download a game or app, your experience is going to be more than acceptable. What frustrates the Android and iPad power user is the sense that the Fire should be so much better. It can’t and won’t be. Amazon isn’t selling to the power user. In a tech market obsessed with Tegra chips and Ice Cream Sandwich, the Fire is a device alone, designed from the ground up to be Amazon incarnate, from now unto eternity. Honeycomb? They don’t need no stinking Honeycomb. In the end Amazon will cry all way to the bank as the Fire sells out over the holiday and is updated next year to faster and potentially slimmer hardware. It’s hard to accept, but Amazon doesn’t need the hardware geeks salivating over its specs. All it needs to do is serve up copies of The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest.
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| Lenovo’s 2005S LePad Goes Live In China For Just $415 Posted: 12 Dec 2011 07:34 AM PST  Size matters, folks. Especially in the minds of our beloved electronics makers. Even with the 3.7-inch LePhone and the 7-inch A1 tablet on the market, Lenovo still made plans to fill the 5-inch space. Today those plans have taken shape with a pricing announcement for the 5-inch LePad S2005 Android mini-tab (or giant phone). GizChina reports that the Android 2.3 Gingerbread-powered LePad is now available across China in Lenovo’s online stores, as well as its Taobao store for just 2699 Yuan (US $415). In terms of specs, you’ll find a 5-inch 800×480 LTPS touch screen, a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage. A 5-megapixel shooter sits around back along with a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video chat. There’s nothing here that really stands out, but all in all it looks like a pretty cheap option if you’re looking to satisfy your phablet craving.
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| Barnes & Noble Updates The Year-Old Nook Color, Adds Netflix, Flixster And More Posted: 12 Dec 2011 06:26 AM PST  Barnes & Noble isn’t done with its original tablet. The Nook Color is over a year old and it just got its largest update to date that brings Netflix, Flixster, and access to Nook Comics and PagePerfect Nook Books. The Nook Color paved the way for the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet by showing there’s a market for a content-driven low-cost tablet. The Nook Color was almost instantly a hit partially because it is completely hackable. Modders quickly improved the device by opening it up to 3rd party apps, but B&N was clearly paying attention because the tablet’s official updates often followed the trends of recent hacks. Slowly the Nook Color gained access to email, a proper web browser and even apps. Now, a year after it was released, the Nook Color is more tablet than ereader. Today’s update brings Netflix and Flixster to the Nook Color. The update is of course free although access to content from either service is not. The update also brings two new Nook services: Nook Comics and PagePerfect Nook Books. The Nook Comics app opens access to what B&N is calling “the largest collection of Marvel graphic novels” and thanks to the Nook Color’s color screen, these comics are displayed in full color. The PagePerfect Nook Books gives publishes a bit more control over how content is displayed on the Nook Color’s 7-inch screen. The new category of Nook books are “carefully crafted” to maintain the “precision and beauty” traditionally associated with their print counterparts. This media type first debuted with the Nook Tablet and is now available on the older Nook Color. Barnes & Noble is officially a major player in the tablet scene. After Apple and Amazon, their line of tablets are seemingly outselling tabs from the big boys like Motorola and Samsung. B&N managed to ship more than a million Nook Tablets in the month follow its release. With support continuing for the aging Nook Color, B&N is stating loud and clear that it’s ready to fight. The Nook brand is here to stay (as if there was any doubt). Nook Color owners can sideload the update today or simply wait for the OTA update that’s expected to roll out later this week.
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