ReadWriteWeb

Barnes & Noble, the beleaguered online bookstore, opened its eBook store yesterday. That, by itself would be a major news story, but B&N also announced that it has partnered with Plastic Logic, which is expected to release a highly anticipated Kindle competitor soon. For now, eBooks bought through B&N can be read on PCs and Macs, as well as on iPhones and Blackberries. While iPhone and Blackberry apps are nice, though, no eBook vendor can really compete with Amazon without a good hardware eReader that is integrated closely with an eBook store. Given that B&N seems to have all of the necessary pieces in place, however, we think that the the company can indeed challenge Amazon, especially given that it offers a larger selection of books and plans to offer a device that is more open than Amazon's Kindle.

When it comes to eReaders, Amazon's Kindle is obviously the largest player in the U.S., with Sony's eReader being a distant second. A few days ago, though, we got a chance to talk to Hans Brons, the CEO of iRex. IRex is a company worth watching closely, as it is a spin-off from the e-ink research group at Philips that developed the screen technology that is being used by most current generation eBook readers. Philips decided that it didn't want to pursue this line of research in 2005 and decided to license the technology to other vendors.

We all love to flip through a glossy, interesting magazine on the plane, in the dentist's waiting room, or stretched out on the sofa in the evening. However magazines have not been isolated from the troubles that print media are having due to the online world. Many magazines are struggling to survive and some of them are moving completely online in order to stick around. In November we reported that leading tech magazine PC Magazine would go 100% online from February 2009, after 27 years of existing in print form. Let's look at how PC Magazine is doing, along with another digital magazine that we like called Avantoure.