So Barnes and Noble released its e-reader today, which will compete with Sony’s e-reader and Amazon’s Kindle. Over at Business Center, they’re calling the Nook a Kindle-killer. Ironically, wasn’t this the term for not-yet-unveiled-but-hoped-for Apple Tablet? I guess they’ve waited so long to bring it out that it will have to be a Sony/Nook/Kindle killer.
Anyways, the Nook has lending capabilities. I find this notion of lending fascinating:
“One of the differentiating factors of the Nook is that customers can
“lend” books to friends. But customers may lend out any given title
only one time for a total of 14 days and they cannot read it on their
own Nook while it is lent.”
Does anyone else think that 14 days is a very, very long time? I read some books in a day, most others in a few days, sometimes in a week. 14 days seems less like a promotional time period and more like the way lending physical books works — take your time to consume, but you can’t keep the physical object and display it on your shelves once you’re done.
The deletion after 14 days reminds me of 007 (this message will self-destruct in 3 seconds) and a weird electronic “Fahrenheit 451” — there’s going to be electronic book burning going on at an astonishing rate, with files shared and destroyed.
The trouble with such convoluted software is that someone will disable the 14 day countdown and break the code disabling you to read it on your own Nook. Ask the music industry.
