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Need a bit more evidence that the e-book download business is a whole lot different than the music download business? Then look no further than Barnes & Noble , which has just announced that it plans to make its B&N eReader app available for the Apple iPad “around the time” of the device’s launch. Details are otherwise a bit light, but the app will be free, and is apparently “designed specifically” for the iPad, giving you access to all of the books, magazines and newspapers available in Barnes & Noble’s eBookstore. Could a Kindle app be far behind? Barnes & Noble promises B&N eReader app for iPad near launch originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

Digg, the San Francisco-based social media company, is dropping MySQL and instead betting its future on Cassandra, an open-source data store. It’s just the latest sign of the growing popularity of the software, which was developed (and open sourced) by Facebook to search through its inbox. While Facebook has since backed off Cassandra, Digg plans to open source all its work on Cassandra and champion the software’s development and adoption. In a blog post on the Digg blog, John Quinn, Digg’s VP of engineering, writes : Perhaps our most significant infrastructure change is abandoning MySQL in favor of a NoSQL alternative. To someone like me who’s been building systems almost exclusively on relational databases for almost 20 years, this feels like a…

There’s no denying that the Mini 5 is real , but up until now, we’ve had to provide all of our own promotional material . At long last, it seems as if the suits in Round Rock are finally getting around to crafting the first advertisements for the upcoming slate, and while we knew about the 5-inch WVGA (800 x 480) touchscreen, 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and flash, capacitive touch front buttons, front-facing VGA camera (for video chatting) and the 30-pin docking connector, we weren’t aware of Dell’s plans to reveal a slew of vivacious color options. If this here flyer proves legitimate, we could eventually see the Mini 5 available in an array of premium finishes and hues (thanks, Design…

We published about the new MSI U230 back in November, and today it is official, the MSI Wind12 U230 are available now in two flavors, the 033 is powered by an Athlon Neo MV-40 processor with 250GB storage capacity while the 040 gets the Athlon X2 L335 with 320 GB. Successors of the Wind12 U210 , both models sports a 12.1″ HD (1366

If Dell’s Vostro V13 was Batman’s laptop , it looks like the new Vostro 3000 series might just be Bruce Wayne’s. They’re portable, powerful, and sleek rigs for professionals. But are they a value play, or a luxury item? That’s the big unanswered question right now, though we’ll know soon enough; they go on sale today in the US. If the pricing is in line with the V13, though, these could be worth a closer look. The Vostro 3300 , 3400, 3500, and 3700 range from 13-inches to 17-inches, and all offer Core i3 and Core i5 processor options. For true juiceheads, the 17-inch Vostro 3700 even includes a Core i7 Quad Core option. Even better: a discrete graphics option. You can add an Nvidia Geforce 310M 512MB graphics card to the 3300-3500, …

HTC’s HD2 is a near perfect combination of physical hardware and silicon that delivers impressive performance on a device that’s surprisingly sleek given the display’s massive 4.3-inch exapanse. Even Microsoft’s much maligned Windows Mobile 6.5 is expertly masked by HTC’s Sense interface. So it’s easy to understand the anticipation felt by the HD2’s first US release, questions of a Windows Phone 7 OS upgrade path notwithstanding. T-Mobile has the release honors and is now showing the HD2 as “coming soon” in its phone inventory. We’ve also got the first “in the wild” shots courtesy of TmoNews showing that big Blockbuster shortcut linked front…

Doesn’t look too bad for a $95 Android tablet, huh? Well, there’s plenty more where that came from. Scattered along the main halls of CeBIT are dozens of Chinese and Taiwanese consumer electronics resellers looking to sell products to new customers, and this year they sure loaded up the suitcases with cheap Android / Windows CE tablets. For the most part all these tablets (or small smartbooks) have ARM 9 or 11 processors and 5 to 7-inch resistive touch displays. While some like the FirstView PC607V tablet (pictured above) have attractive skins on top of Windows CE, others from companies like Forsa and Huawei have gone with stock versions of Android. In truth, all of the ones we played with felt chintzy, but it…

AT&T will be selling a couple of 3G LaptopConnect devices in the form of the AT&T USBConnect Turbo and AT&T USBConnect Velocity from March 7 onwwards. The latter is touted to be the first GPS-enabled LaptopConnect device from AT&T with a microSD memory card slot, where it will work in tandem with a free software application. Using the help of the Option GPS Control Panel, alongside location-enabled sites such as Yahoo! Maps and Bing, directions and local points of interest are a snap to read about. As for the AT&T USBConnect Velocity, you get a built-in microSD memory card slot as well, letting you tote around your data anytime, anywhere you go. Here are what most people are looking forward to…

HTC may think the Nexus One shouldn’t go in pockets , but WTFJeans has enough pockets for every gadget you own. Except your laptop. Or your fax machine. iPhones and iPod Touches can be safely contained in the micro-fiber insulated pocket, which has been measured and cut just right so it doesn’t move about, bumping up against your set of keys like it’s a buxom girl at an R&B night. There’s also a special hidden pocket for a USB stick—though as I usually carry around at least five in my handbag, along with a micro and miniUSB cable, I think I’d need a few more …

File this one under “future toys.” We hear about a lot of these super-low-level advances in processing and storage (whenever I see the word “ holographic ,” I reach for the salt), and while they’re usually at best years away from practice and manufacture, they’re good to keep informed on, if nothing else than as cocktail chatter. “Did you hear about those new nanotube speakers? ” Well. The latest advancement is that IBM is thinking of replacing the conductive copper channels in today’s chips with light. But it’s more than a simple fiber-optic setup or something along those lines; the idea is that a single photon would set off …