Barnes & Noble's Kindle Killer Features Adorable Name

Barnes & Noble unveiled its ebook reader today and it's called... The Nook! It's a great name, I think, giving rise to warm associations like nooks, crannies, cozy little spots to curl up and read... a digital book. The name sounds like book, but perhaps that "n" is for new. It's just a short hop to "I'm reading a nook." Where "Kindle" conjured kindling (and paper book burnings?), Nook sounds nice.

The LA Times has a great bullet point review of the Nook's features, which you can also read on this Barnes & Noble product spec page.

The B&N product page offers a side-by-side comparison of the Nook and Kindle 2. Notable Nookish features include:

• both wireless and wifi connectivity
  
• support for the open-source EPUB and eReader formats
• grayscale e-ink and -- taking a page from the iPod's album cover browser -- a 3.5 inch color touchscreen for browsing your library and navigation
• USB connectivity for direct file import
  
• the ability to "lend" ebooks to any friend with a computer or smartphone for 14 days.
  

Combine this with B&N's industry-leading store (over 700K titles), and you've got a pretty compelling device. In fact, the only two features Kindle has over Nook are 4 more days of battery life and the ability to read Word docs.