20% off all Kobo ebooks

16 January 2010 By Rachel 5 In Uncategorized

If you have not heard of Kobo, you may want to check them out. The company was formerly Short Covers, but recently overhauled their name and their look. They only sell eBooks, and all of their eBooks are DRM’d with Adobe Digital Editions. This means that they can very easily be read on the Barnes & Noble nook.

Kobo currently has a promotion going for the month of January. If you use the coupon code, Save20, you can save 20% on any of their books. This offer lasts until January 31.

Their regular prices are pretty reasonable, so this 20% off makes it a great deal!

You can get the new Stephen King book Under the Dome for only $7.99 with the coupon code

Or Dear John (recently made a movie) for only $6.71 with the coupon code

If you have never used Kobo to buy books, it’s pretty simple:

1. Got to their website here.
2. Pick the book you want to buy, and click Buy Now
3. Under the part where it asks for credit card info, you’ll see “Have a promo code? click here”, click there
4. Enter the promo code Save20 and hit apply
5. Enter you credit card info and check out

You’ll want to make sure you have Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) installed on your computer before you download the book. If you do not, you can pick it up here. Download the file and follow the instructions for installing it to your computer. Once it is installed, you can download your newly purchased Kobo book and it will open right up in ADE.

Now you just need to get the book from ADE to your nook. It’s pretty simple really. Plug your nook into your computer using the USB cable. Once it’s plugged in, open ADE. ADE will recognize the device and ask you if you want to authorize it. Click Authorize Device, and now all your ADE books will work on your nook. You only have to authorize your nook the first time you plug your nook in with ADE. After the first time you do not even have to open ADE to get the books on the nook.

There is an easy way to move the books that are in ADE to your nook using ADE, but unfortunately if you do this, you will not be able to read them on your device. The ADE folder does not show up on the nook when it’s not plugged into the computer, so you’re going to have to get your ADE books on your nook a different way.

1. Open the folder that contains your ADE books (Mine is in my “My Documents” folder on my desktop)
2. Go to the My Computer and open the nook Drive
3. Copy the books that are in the ADE folder and paste them in the “My Documents” folder on the nook (Important: Do not put them in the ADE folder on the nook, this is the folder that is not recognized once the nook is unplugged)
4. Unplug your nook and get to reading!

When this is all typed out here, it seems like a lot, but I promise you it’s not. The good thing about having your books with ADE DRM instead of B&N DRM is they will be able to be read on a much wider variety of devices in the future.

So remember visit Kobo and save 20% using coupon code Save20.

Happy Reading!
Rachel

Photo by evelynishere from Flickr

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Nookboards Unboxing the nook

07 January 2010 By Rachel 7 In Uncategorized

Well I have officially joined the ranks of nook owners. If you’re wondering why I didn’t order the nook the day it was released (even though I bought the Nookboards domain the day it was announced), the reason was funds. I never thought Nookboards would actually take off (though of course I hoped it would), and I didn’t have the money to drop on the nook since I had just bought my Kindle in April. But once Nookboards started to get active, and I saw all these people talking about their orders, I knew there was no way I could properly run the board without one. I decided that, in addition to the nook I needed to properly run the board, my husband also needed one as a gift for his birthday. Luckily a Christmas bonus ended up covering the expense for us, and now we are a proud dual nook family.

I took still photos of unboxing my nook, and a video of unboxing my husband’s (yes he was sufficiently rewarded for allowing me to open his for him). Let’s get into it!

First off, the nooks arrived in a rather plain brown box

Once the box is opened, you encounter plastic wrapped air and a thick gray foam pad

Also on top here are your instructions for opening the box




Once this is all removed, you are left with the nook

If you follow the directions closely, you’ll actually do fine getting the packaging apart.

Step 1
Remove the plastic shrink wrap that encloses the entire package

There are actually 2 layers of shrink wrap, the first wraps the nook with cardboard

and the second closely wraps the nook

A pen, scissors or a knife while easily help you get these two plastic wrappings off.


Step 2
Slide the paper box sleeve that covers the top portion of the package


Step 3
You will see a small tab on both sides of the package with the word “PULL” printed on it. Starting with the tab, pull the security strip off and away from the packaging around the top of the box and down the opposite side.


Step 4
Lift off the plastic top case. This opens the plastic box so you can get to your nook, which is in its tray attached to the bottom case.


Step 5
While still attached in its tray, pull your nook and the tray straight-up. Lift the bottom end first and then unhook the top, while holding down the bottom case against a flat surface, such as a table. Your nook and its tray should slide off of the bottom case.

Now you are left with the nook on its tray

Step 6
To detach your nook from its tray, start at the top of your nook. Hold it in your hands as shown and use both thumbs to push evenly against the plastic tray to pop it off from your nook. The opposite end should now easily slide out of the try.

If you examine the top of the tray, you will see there are two small tabs that fit into small slots in the nook

You want to apply enough pressure on the tray to push those tabs out of the nook. They will snap right out. It does take some force, so don’t be afraid to push hard!

And your nook is free!

Don’t forget to remove the sticker on the screen


Step 7
Remove the small white box found at the bottom of the plastic packaging with the “nook” and “BARNES & NOBLE” logos printed on it. Push on one end to slide the box out of its paper sleeve.

The white box pops right out of the top of the case

And the inside part slides out like a matchbox

The instructions come off and you have your micro-usb cord and charger below

And that’s it! Your nook is unboxed and ready to play with!

Here is the video of unboxing my husband’s nook. I videotaped it myself, and it shut off half way through, so I had to put the nook packaging back together to show you the last half of the unboxing. Because of this, you’ll notice that the second half of the video the nook is stickerless! Hopefully my video making skills get better!! Regardless though, you should get a pretty good idea of the process of unboxing your nook.

I hope you enjoyed my unboxing, if you have unboxed, or soon will be unboxing, your own nook, please join us at our forums: Nookboards.com/forum

Happy unboxing!
Rachel

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Nookboards Book Club – Boomerang

04 January 2010 By Rachel 0 In Book Club

Due to popular demand, Nookboards will be hosting a monthly (or as often as we get hosts) book club! We are very lucky to have Alan Hutcheson, the author of Boomerang, as our very first book club host. So not only will you get to read a cool book, but you’ll get to hear from the author himself, his thoughts and ideas on the book.

So how will this work?
It’s pretty simple really, these will be the dates we will be following ….

January 3, 2009 – Alan will give us the first set of pages to read by Sunday, January 10, 2009.

January 10, 2009 – Alan will post the first set of questions for us to answer and give us the next set of pages to read by Sunday, January 17, 2009.

January 17, 2009 – Alan will post the second set of questions for us to answer and give us the next set of pages to read by Sunday, January 24, 2009.

January 24, 2009 – Alan will post the third set of questions for us to answer and give us the next set of pages to read by Sunday, January 31, 2009.

January 31, 2009 – Alan will post the last set of questions for us to answer and we will have a wrap up of the book club (cake for all!! :) ).

What is the book about?

Ted Hogwood’s beloved guitar is in the window of Topp Dollar Pawn. The only way he can get the money to rescue her is to accept an assignment from the AABC, a not nearly official branch of the US intelligence community. He is partnered with Jerry Kwiatkowski to steal a boomerang containing secrets that should have died with J. Edgar Hoover. It would be simple if they knew what they were doing.

Where is the book available?
Alan’s book can be found for free at Smashwords using a special code he has provided for Nookboards:

Smashwords Use coupon code: HD26A This will be good through January 31, 2010

Or it can be found at Barnes & Noble for $1.99, and half of his royalties from these sales go to his local high school band …

Barnes & Noble

Interested in joining us?
Visit our dedicated Boomerang forum here, if you are interested in following along with us! Alan had already posted the Week One Reading Assignment.

Cheers!
Rachel

Photo by grewlike from Flickr

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nook Firmware Update

21 December 2009 By Rachel 1 In Uncategorized

I just wanted to throw up a quick post to let people know that Firmware updates for the nook have been reported. It doesn’t seem like everyone has gotten them just yet or that they have sent an email to owners about it, but a few people have reported that their nook has updated itself.

Here is a picture that was posted on Twitter: Update Picture

A few other members on our board have also reported getting the update. It seems that Barnes & Noble stores got an email from headquarters outlining what would be included in the update and Engadget has a report of some of the things that have been reported to be fixed in this update: nook Update

Please let us know if you have gotten your update on the forums: New 1.1 Firmware Update is Out

Hopefully this new update will help many of the consistent issues users have been having. Please remember though, not all devices that come out of the Barnes & Noble factories are working properly. If you find that your device has issues that other people don’t seem to be having, please consider an exchange. All nooks come with a one year warranty and you should use that if you need to (though getting the exchange may not be as easy as it sounds, but we’ll save that for another post).

Happy Reading!

Rachel

Photo by massdistraction from Flickr

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nook, a Week Later

17 December 2009 By Rachel 2 In Uncategorized

Since none of the “official” reviewers seem to give a product more than a quick glance over and maybe use the product for 1 or 2 days at most, I thought it might be nice to hear a review from a consumer that has been using the nook for over a week now. The best part is, he has been using it for its intended use, reading. Yes, it’s nice to know all the quirks and bugs on the LCD screen when you are jumping around, but, really, how often will you be doing that once you get down to the business of reading? So while we are waiting for those updates and fixes, the nook looks like its doing a pretty good job at delivering a book to you.

This review was typed up by Everyman on Nookboards:

After a week of having my nook, I feel like I have conquered a lot of my misgivings about it. I somehow have entered a new phase of nooking.

Looking back now, even though it is just a week, I can see that those early reviews threw me. They preconditioned me psychologically to me very leery, anxious and suspicious of my nook when I first got it. Every hiccup, every quirk and I was skeptical and frightened that I had a lemon.

Now, a week later, I do not even see any flaws. I just had to accept the way nook does things, rather than comparing it to the way Kindle does things. Or the way those reviewers do things. The nook and the Kindle have different approaches in the user interface. And I kept thinking there was something wrong with nook because it was not being a Kindle. Between those hateful reviews and my own Kindle bias, I was resisting my nook, even though I was trying very hard to love it. I would hit some snag with it, and get very disappointed in it. And so it went for the whole week.

But, I turned a corner today.

Now I am trusting nook’s way. I have surrendered.

I wanted it to render fonts and sizes Kindles way. Uniform and consistent throughout. I was told the publishers set each book the way they want to format it. I thought that was a huge flaw. Then, I realized, well, books have different fonts and sizes. In a way, this is more book like. And it is. Once I accepted that, I kind of like that now. It makes sense to me.

I was having terrible battery life. Kindle is a marvel with battery life. But Kindle also does not have an lcd to deal with. So I gave up on Kindle’s battery life, because I prefer the lcd a thousand times more. It is more fun. It is more beautiful. And I find it much easier actually.

Now I have learned, that if I keep airplane mode on, Wi-fi off and I don’t go jumping around on the lcd as much my battery life has improved greatly. Especially if I stay in book-reading mode. Which is the whole reason I am on nook to begin with. Let me put it this way, my battery was 100% this morning. It is now 93% at 10:15 at night. When I put the nook to sleep, I actually turn it off completely now. So my battery issues thanks to reading this board, and my own intelligence, have become much, much better for me now.

Opening books is now flawless for me. My coverflow truly flows. I mean it is fast and quite beautiful. I love that coverflow. There is not a shred of laggy coverflow on my nook.

And, ta da…I have finally mastered finger swipe. I thought I’d never in a million years be able to do it. But I am nailing it every time now.

Here is how I did it: I was talking to a nook tech guy who told me that everyone in tech support had trouble with it when they got their nooks about a month before release. He said they all can do it like second nature now. I asked for tips. He told me some. And they worked. But I found an even better way.

He said you have to practice. He said you have to start right to left. I was doing it left to right, like a real idiot. But then I saw something that helped me. I put my finger in the middle of the screen and swiped to the left. It is a very short swipe. Not too hard. Not too soft. And I notice that it is more in the middle but lower left quadrant of the lcd. I had been doing it across the entire screen, which just did not work for me. It was inconsistent or nonexistent. I am not saying this is wrong. It just did not work for me. Lower left quadrant. Finger in middle and swiping to the left. I am swipe king now. Practice it for awhile. You will get it perfectly.

I also find myself more easily immersed in the books I am reading. I think it is because nook is a smaller size than the Kindle. I can hold it closer. And the screen is much clearer and more contrast to it. It is easier to read by far. I can read much longer on it. And it pulls me into the reading experience at a deeper level.

There is a learning curve with nook. A lot of us are Kindle users. We have to let go of all that now. My nook is not what I would call laggy at all now. The page turning slightly lags. Although the swiping makes it much faster. But to tell you the truth I could care less about all that.

My nook is cooking now.

I am still reading a book on my Kindle 2 and love using it. But it is very different. It feels different. It looks different. And behaves different.

I love my Kindle 2. But, just between you and me, I am MADLY in love with my nook.

Happy Reading!
Rachel

Photo by Joe Lanman from Flickr

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