As a welcome back to school gift, Barnes & Noble is offering up $100 in free books with the purchase of a new Nook e-book reader.

Sadly you can’t just pick you own books but rather an educational content package will get you a ticket to owning 12 classics along with a dozen SparkNotes study guides, Nook Study guides and four Nook apps available for a free download.

While you, me and the kids are gonna roll our eyes at this package since we don’t need no stinking study notes, we may need the classics which include titles such as A Tale of Two Cities, Beowulf, Ivanhoe, Crime and Punishment, and The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman.

This promotion will run through September 11, but you will need to register your new Nook by October 31 in order to take advantage of this steal of a back to school deal.

Say hello to the next big gold-plated gadget, your new Amosu Couture Kindle.

While some say that treasure lies in words, apparently this treasure will be around your words for all to see.  From gold loving company Amosu Couture comes the $1950 Amazon Kindle fit for Midas himself.

You can choose from white, rose, or yellow gold for your new Kindle 3G and of course, it also comes in the mac daddy of all features, a hardened 24-carat gold casing with optional Swarovski crystals.

Wow, nothing says “I’m reading something really clever like the Economist” like a gold-plated Kindle.  Maybe it even reads better this way…

Featuring a 800 x 600 resolution black-and-white display, built-in 2GB memory, capability to hold up to 1,600 books and supporting everything from PDF to ePub and HTML, this e-reader is pretty darn sexy.

The Nook will start shipping December 18 and will be on your awaiting doorstep by Christmas, and even earlier f you want to try your luck at an actual store.

If the talks with Verizon are productive, then Apple’s new Media Pad device may be going through Verizon’s service, and a direct competitor with Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader.

The Media Pad is slightly smaller than the Kindle, but will have a larger touchscreen and boast a very navigable iTunes store to boot.  With this in mind, it appears as if Apple is readying themselves to take on Amazon and Sony in the ebook reader market, and thus the ebook triumvirate were born…

Hearts is currently in the development phase of their own e-reader, and with so many publications under their belt already (Cosmo, Esquire), they might actually be able to put up a fight against the Kindle.

The rumors are that this new e-reader will be 4 inch x 4 inch screen, rather than the 6×6 screens we have come to expect from eBook readers.

After such a long time without these devices, it looks like we’re now hitting the motherload.

We’ve been waiting for those next-gen Kindle’s to be announced – and it looks like they might be coming soon.

On last week’s show, Oprah announced that the Amazon Kindle was “her new favorite thing”, and then announced that anyone who ordered one and entered the code “OPRAHWINFREY” during check out would receive $50 off the retail price of $359.

It’s only good between now and Nov. 1st….so expect a Kindle 2 announcement sometime in Nov.

via engadget

Boy Genius Report managed to get ahold of spy shots of the Amazon Kindle 2 last week. This newest reader from Amazon seems to have it right this time. The design is much cleaner, and I may just have to get one.

I love the idea of an eReader, but thus far I have not been impressed enough with the price point to make the purchase. If things go well with this, and they can get the price point low enough, I’ll have to take the plunge.

Another eReader is now on its way, and boy is it expensive. The iRex 1000, 1000s, and 1000SW each have a 10.2-inch b&w e-ink display. The S and the SW each support a stylus and the SW kicks it up even further with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 3G.

The base model is priced at $649, and the S is available for $749. The SW comes in at around $900 – a far cry from the $299 Sony eReader that’s available in Targets nation wide, or the $349 Amazon Kindle.

Sure we’re talking about a bigger screen than both of those devices, and a few other nice perks, but overall this is a largely forgettable eReader announcement.

Plastic Logic is showing off a new device in San Diego this week. The as-yet-unnamed device continually updates wirelessly, and can store content from newspapers, magazine, books – you name it. It has a screen that is 2.5 times larger than the Kindle (it’s closest direct competition), and it only weighs about 2 ounces more than Amazon’s book reader as well. It’s even a bit thinner.

This reading device is set to go on sale next year, but there is no price or firm release date yet. The success of this kind of thing is going to depend largely on the partners they can gain, and the price point they can start at.

Let’s hope they can pull it off – the device sounds like an interesting addition to the ebook market.

via gadgetell