NOOKcolor For Dummies

By Corey Sandler

NOOKcolor For Dummies provides readers with all the information they need in order to get the most out of their NOOKcolor e-reader.

Key topics covered include:

• Introducing the ebook and e-reader concept
• Navigating the technical aspects of The NOOKcolor, including touchscreen technology, wireless access, software updates
• Downloading and shopping for e-books
• Listening to music on your NOOKcolor
• Powering the NOOKcolor
• Formats
• Reading an e-book on an e-reader, including lighting, font adjustments, and so on
• Using the Android-based applications that come with the NOOKcolor
• Listening to audio books on the NOOKcolor
• Creating your own ebooks
• Personalizing the Nook, including accessories (B&N expects a strong revenue stream from what they call the "NOOKcolor Eco-System," which will include the accessories, personalizations, applications, and more)
• Sharing books on The NOOKcolor
• Internet Resources
• 10 Things Other Than A Book to Keep on Your NOOKcolor

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Feb 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9781118057810

Corey Sandler

Corey Sandler, considered one of the pioneers of computer journalism, was the first Executive Editor of PC Magazine and one of the founding editors of several other national publications. He has written more than 200 books on computer, business, history, sports, and travel topics. 

Book preview

Introduction

The great Roman philosopher Cicero wrote this more than two thousand years ago: A room without books is like a body without a soul. Just about every reader (the human kind, not the computer version) rhapsodizes about the joy of picking up a book. It’s a sensual thing: the glossy colors on the cover, the chiseled black text on fine white paper, the thrill of flipping and committing accidental acts of learning.

And now we are past the dawn of a new era — the day of electronic publishing. Newspapers are dying on the vine, magazines are shrinking, and printed books are under assault from all directions. Why pick up a book when you can watch television, view videos on YouTube, listen to podcasts, send and receive a 160-character tweet from a mountaintop in Greece and receive a smiley-face response from a coffee shop in Cambridge in seconds?

The transition has been going on for all of human existence. Before there were books there were wall paintings on caves. Oracles and prophets and storytellers spread the word in small gatherings. There were chiseled tablets and handwritten scrolls that began to travel. The books as we know it, or knew it, is less than six centuries old. I suppose the teacher and writer Marshall McLuhan had it mostly right when he said, The medium is the message. It’s not that the content doesn’t matter, but as technologies advance and change the delivery system — the medium — becomes inextricably linked with the message it carries.

Enough of the philosophical discourse. Here in this introduction I want to make one important point: forget for a moment about the technology. The NOOKcolor is merely another way to read the printed word and absorb its content into our souls.

About This Book

This book was created specifically as an electronic book. NOOKcolor For Dummies is for people who are smart enough to know they could use a bit of extra explanation, tips, and hints to get the most out of their new device. And also for people who enjoy a bit of humor, or at least light-hearted writing, as they boldly go where they have not gone before.

It is written in what newspapers (remember them?) used to call inverted pyramid style. I start out with the broadest, most general information and then get more and more specific. As an electronic book, you can start at the beginning and read through to the end, or you can jump from chapter to chapter with a few well-chosen clicks. You can even read it from back to front.

Conventions Used in This Book

You’ll need no special instruction to make your way through the book. I use standard book style to help make certain bits of information easier to find and simpler to use:

check.png Numbered lists: Start at number 1 and proceed to the last one in the list, in order, to accomplish a particular task.

check.png Bulleted lists: Bulleted lists (you’re in the middle of one right now) represent things you should know about or do, but that do not demand being performed in a particular order.

check.png Web addresses: The NOOKcolor includes a Web browser with basic access to the Internet. You can use the reader’s browser to visit some of the Web addresses I mention in the book as well as general sites.

When I tell you to tap a menu item, what that means is this: find something you want to open or explore on the NOOKcolor screen and then tap it with a finger. Don’t merely touch the item with a light touch; that won’t work. And don’t pound the screen or poke at it with a sharp object; that just might break the object of your affection. I go through a full list of the gestures you can use on the touchscreen in Chapter 1 of this book. They’re all very polite.

Foolish Assumptions

I assume that you have a NOOKcolor in your hands and are reading this text on its screen. I also assume that you have access to a personal computer, that it has access to the Internet, and that you have at least a basic understanding of how to get about on the Internet. You can make your connection to that computer using the USB cable supplied with the NOOKcolor, or you can visit the Barnes & Noble bookstore (or any Web address) using the built-in WiFi system of the NOOKcolor. Again, I assume you have a basic understanding of how a wireless communication link is established.

Icons Used in This Book

NOOKcolor For Dummies uses a handful of special graphic elements called icons to get your attention. Here they are:

warning_bomb.eps Here be dragons. Watch out. Be careful.

tip.eps Let me tell you something you might not realize about how to use your NOOKcolor.

remember.eps In case you missed something earlier on, here’s a reminder of important stuff.

How This Book Is Organized

In Chapter 1, I give you a guided tour of the NOOKcolor and explain how to lay hands on its very simple controls. I describe the gestures you can use on its touchscreen to navigate through menus, books, and Web sites. Chapter 2 explains how to read a book on an electronic reader. In Chapter 3, you go shopping and hunting. Chapter 4 is where you discover how to set up a WiFi link, use the browser, and connect to e-mail and social media. And then finally, in Chapter 5 you come to the famed Part of Tens, which in this case is the home of tips and tricks to get the most out of your NOOKcolor.

Where to Go from Here

You go reading, of course. And you go out of the house and take your book collection with you. You go on planes, trains, and automobiles (as long as you’re not the pilot, engineer, or driver). And you enjoy this newest version of a way to present one of humankind’s greatest inventions: the written word.

Please note that some special symbols used in this eBook may not display properly on all eReader devices. If you have trouble determining any symbol, please call Wiley Product Technical Support at 800-762-2974. Outside of the United States, please call 317-572-3993. You can also contact Wiley Product Technical Support at www.wiley.com/techsupport.

Chapter 1

Looking into a NOOKcolor

My wife and I once owned a house with a delightful breakfast nook — but that nook did not come equipped with my personal selection of books from The New York Times bestseller list. What you have here is the NOOKcolor Reader’s Tablet, which is one of its official titles from its maker, Barnes & Noble, Inc.

In this book, I explain how to get the most from the NOOKcolor reader, the multicolor touchscreen version of the device. If instead you are looking for explication and exploration of the black-and-white NOOK, check out NOOK For Dummies. Though the two electronic readers are cousins, they are not identical in appearance or operating system.

The NOOKcolor can download and store thousands of full-length books, magazines, newspapers, and other publications. This very same NOOKcolor can then display the material a page at a time, on a sharp screen roughly the size of a paperback book, using a very bright and colorful LCD touchscreen.

Unlocking the Box

remember.eps Here’s what you’ll find upon investigating your newly arrived NOOKcolor: In the lower part you find an AC adapter plus a specially designed USB cable. When you plug the larger connector of this cable into the AC adapter and the smaller connector to your NOOKcolor, it will recharge the internal battery. Later, if you take this same cable and plug the large end into a desktop or laptop computer and the smaller connector to the NOOKcolor, it can transfer many types of files between the devices. These file types include PDFs (documents you have saved in that format, instruction manuals, and other data), PowerPoint presentations, word processing, music, video, and digital images.

The NOOKcolor is a triumph of minimalist design. The screen itself takes up nearly all of the real estate. There is just one button to push on the front. There’s not much in the way of advertising, either: just a simple NOOK symbol below the bottom of the screen. It looks like this: 9781118057827-nk.png and it is the device’s Home button.

When you need to enter characters and numbers (to set up an account or buy books or navigate the Web or any of the many other things you can do with the NOOKcolor), a virtual onscreen keyboard will appear. When it does, you can tap away on the touchscreen. It’s really not a bad keyboard, but I don’t want you to get the idea that you can easily use the NOOKcolor to write the Great American Novel; it is meant to read it. You move from page to page of a book or document with a tap on the screen or a swipe in one direction or another.

technicalstuff.eps As delivered, the NOOKcolor can only read documents. Barnes & Noble intends to open an app marketplace in 2011 to sell reader-centric software. Does that include an app to allow basic editing and saving of files? Stay tuned.

Oh, and there is one other thing in the box: a very basic nine-page Quick Start guide (more of a leaflet actually). It’s enough to get you quickly started but not nearly enough to fully explain the device. The one thing missing is a full manual, printed with ink on paper. The fact that there is no printed instruction manual should not be surprising. This is, after all, an electronic reader. The official manual, written in a near-simulacrum to English, is available right there on your NOOK eReader.

Of course, there’s