Barnes & Noble launches iPad app

Grid view of the digital library.

(Credit: Barnes & Noble)

While Amazon had its Kindle for iPad app ready in time for the launch of the iPad, Barnes & Noble decided to take its sweet time before releasing its BN eReader for iPad, which is finally available as a free download in Apple's App Store.

Like Amazon, Barnes & Noble is trying to give its customers access to its e-book store from a wide array of popular mobile devices, including the iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, and next month, Android smartphones. Users can store content in one master digital library and shuffle content between devices.

Barnes & Noble is touting the fact that it's designed this version of its eReader app from the ground up specifically for the iPad. It's also highlighting its e-book lending option, which allows you to lend out certain e-books to friends one time for a 14-day period.

Here's a look at the key features:

• Two options for displaying your library (Library Grid and Library List views)
• Choice of colors for text, pages, highlights, and links
• Eight typefaces and five text sizes
• Variety of margins and customizable spacing options
• LendMe feature (limited lending of certain e-books)
• All e-books and most periodicals purchased through the Barnes & Noble eBookstore are accessible on your iPad
• Built-in dictionary
• Google and Wikipedia integration for quick searches of terms and words

You can sync the last page read of an e-book, magazine, or newspaper opened on your iPad with BN eReader software-enabled PCs. Alas, you'll have to wait for last-page syncing capabilities between your iPad and iPhone (and iPod Touch). Barnes & Noble says it's completely redesigning its iPhone app and will add the syncing feature when it's released later this year.

We'll have more thoughts on the new app once we play around with it for a few days, but all in all, it seems to match up well against Amazon's Kindle for iPad app and Apple's own iBooks app. Feel free to let us know your thoughts after you download it

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New HP monitors, a lot like the old ones

It's been some time since I've reviewed a new HP consumer monitor, but that may be about to change. On Wednesday, HP announced four new consumer monitors; the 2010i, 2210m, 2310, and 2710m. After the jump are specs and features for each monitor, direct from HP.

Last year I tested two of the new monitor's precursors--the 2009m and 2709m--and judging from the initial specs and productshots, these new models don't seem that different. I did notice HP lowered the 2010i's max luminance to 250 candelas per square meter (cd/m2, down from the the 2009m's 300 cd/m2. This may have something to do with the amount of backlight lamps in the 2010i, two, instead of the "usual" four. I can't confirm how many lamps were in the 2009m, though.

All the more reason to get a couple of these guys in and take them for a spin. Look for reviews in the coming weeks. Also, take those dynamic contrast ratios (DCR) with a tub of salt. All monitors should be available onHP's Web site by Thursday. I'll update this post with pricing on the 2710m then.

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Sony unveils ultrathin rollable OLED

Sony's ultrathin OLED prorotype can be bent around a 4mm tube while still producing video.

(Credit: Sony)

Sony on Wednesday unveiled a flexible OLED (organic light-emitting diode) display so thin it can wrap around a 4mm cylinder--roughly the diameter of the average pen or pencil.

The 80 micrometers-thick OLED display (about the width of a human hair) can continuously display moving images even while being rolled up, as Sony demonstrated in a video below.

The working flexibility is possible because engineers have managed to lose the rigid driver IC chips usually used in the substrate of a screen in exchange for a gate-driver circuit with OTFTs (organic thin-film transistors), according to Sony.

The 4.1-inch display, which has a resolution of 432x240 pixels (121 pixels per inch), is not for sale. It's simply a research prototype Sony said it hopes to one day incorporate into products such as screens in mobile devices. Full demonstrations of the screen will be given this week at the SID (Society for Information Display) 2010 International Symposium in Seattle.

The consumer electronics giant has been at the forefront of this technology, showing one of the world's first flexible OLEDs in existence at CES 2009, as CNET has reported. That screen was .2 millimeters thick.

Of course, Sony is not the only one experimenting with thin and flexible screens.

In April 2009, Dai Nippon garnered much attention with its flexible and seemingly animated posters for the Rakuten Eagles, a Japanese baseball team. The screens incorporated both energy-saving OLEDs and LEDs.

GE has also been working on ultrathin OLEDs, but in an effort to apply the technology to its lighting products. In March 2008, GE unveiled thin and flexible lighting OLEDs that can be manufactured in rolls

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