If you've noticed that Barnes & Noble has been clearing away books to make room for the NOOK, get ready for more redecorating on the selling floor as the bookseller takes aim on Amazon's $199 Kindle Fire this holiday season with its just-revealed NOOK Tablet.

Also, of course, looking to nibble at the iPad's market share, NOOK Tablet is described by B&N as "Our fastest, lightest tablet with the best in HD entertainment & more!" (including more than 2.5 million books, magazines, newspapers and other titles), the NOOK Tablet is selling for slightly more, at $249.

"With the Nook Tablet we are delivering the best media device ever created in a portable form factor," said Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch at a launch event in New York today.Continue reading...

Amazon today unveiled "Found new Kindles, four amazing price points," but it was the top-end of the range that's garnering the most attention.

The $199 Kindle Fire (available Nov. 15) is burning up Twitter and Facebook, with consumers poring over the just-released details of the tablet computer seen as a direct shot across the bow of Apple’s iPad.

More than 'just' an e-reader, the smaller and cheaper-than-an-iPad Kindle Fire has a 7-inch display, Wi-Fi connectivity, (but not 3G access) comes with a 30-day free trial of Amazon Prime and runs on Google’s Android software.

Announced at a press event in New York, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos sees Kindle Fire — the flagship device in its newly expanded Kindle line — as more than just a tablet — it's a digital hub and services platform that leads right to his store.Continue reading...

Here's the new Amazon commercial for Kindle Fire, the $199 tablet Jeff Bezos revealed today in New York to take on the iPad. The description: "Meet the all-new Kindle Fire — a Kindle for movies, music, apps, games, reading & more. Only $199."

Below, watch the commercials for the new lower-priced ($79) Kindle, whose pricing drew gasps from the reporters at the press conference; Silk, Amazon's new cloud-based browser; plus Kindle customer testimonials taped two weeks ago ... and let us know what you think of it all in the comments below!Continue reading...

South Korea is the world’s most wired nation with the fastest global broadband connections (seven times the world average), and students there have been experimenting with digital since 2008, using e-textbooks on tablet-like Fujitsu PCs and Samsung Galaxy Tabs. 

Now, the nation is pushing for all elementary-level educational materials to be digitized by 2014, while by 2015, the entire school-age curriculum will be administered by computers, smart phones and tablets. 

The national initiative has a $2.4 billion budget, with Samsung poised to get the bulk of the deal. Not only will this move redefine primary school education, it will spawn a huge market for home-grown electronics including the iPad, the Galaxy Tab and other branded tablets.Continue reading...

The customer comments on a Comic-Con post on the Borders bookstore chain's Facebook page, its last post in fact, say it all.

Following on its "don't worry, it's business as usual as we search for a buyer" notice on its website, Borders Group, a pioneer in big-box booksellers, posted a sad notice on another section of its website confirming an unhappy ending to its story.

A press release yesterday confirms that it will close all stores and be out of business by the end of September. Unable to attract a buyer willing to rescue it from bankruptcy, the nation's second-largest bookseller, with 10,700 employees and more than 1,200 stores, is ending its run.Continue reading...

The e-reader may have failed to save the Borders bookstore chain, but that's not stopping Google from investing in one. The iriver Story HD, the first e-reader to integrated with the Google eBooks platform, launched Sunday at Target stores and Target.com for $139.99.

Google describes the device as "slim and lightweight with a high-resolution E Ink screen and a QWERTY keyboard for easy searching. It includes over-the-air access to hundreds of thousands of Google eBooks for sale and more than 3 million for free. With the Story HD you can now browse, buy and read Google eBooks with your e-reader through Wi-Fi, rather than downloading and transferring them from computer to e-reader with a cord as you can already do with more than 80 compatible devices."Continue reading...

Barnes & Noble's upgraded Nook Color (and campaign) today in no way (cough!) prompted Amazon to release its new Kindle ad today. 

Apple's latest iPad 2 ad, meanwhile, ("We Believe," below), is now three weeks old — or three years, in web time.Continue reading...

Nook, Barnes & Noble's $250 e-reader, is now the cheapest Android tablet with today's addition of Android 2.2 Froyo to the Nook Color. B&N also announced the device offers 125 apps including Flash, Facebook and the ever-popular Angry Birds.

As Nook makes a run at iPad's market share by adding the "most-requested" tablet features, B&N also just rolled out a new advertising campaign for the Staples-bound device, "Read Forever," which touts the joys of reading, "whether by book or by NOOK."