SlashGear Japan
We’re ramping up to what looks like the launch of the Barnes and Noble Nook – in fact our own Vincent Nguyen is in New York today for the company’s press event – and as you’d expect the ebook geeks aren’t content to take the news when B&N feed it to them. After the WSJ broke the news that the upcoming dual-display device will be, bafflingly, called Nook, our friend (and general malcontent) Mike Cane dug up the company’s trademark application.
That application describes the Nook as a “portable electronic apparatus for displaying, receiving, reading and storing downloadable electronic publications, namely, books, e-books, magazines, newspapers, text, images, digital web site content and digital media featuring music through wired and wireless Internet access, accessories therefor and instructional manuals, sold as a unit.” That certainly confirms the wireless connectivity – both WiFi and 3G WWAN have been tipped – though makes no reference to the dual-display technology we’re expecting to see.
As of writing this, Nook.com doesn’t load; however, a quick WHOIS search turns up barnesandnoble.com as the domain servers. It seems like this ridiculous name has been around for some time; B&N registered the domain on June 10th.
2 Responses to “B&N Nook ebook reader trademark unearthed, expected later today”
irishangelsong October 20, 2009
LOL I created an account on this site, just so that I could comment on this. It the second article I have read today, by the same author, wherein the name of B&N’s reader is referred to as “baffling” or “ridiculous”. I mean this in all kindness: Chris, it’s “Nook” as in “book nook”. The oo is pronounced the same in both words. It’s a phrase well-known to readers. Check out freedictionary.com, man. Google is your friend.
Or maybe 29 is the new 70, and I’m just too old to understand how this could be “baffling”. . . Nah. :)
NeutralChris Davies October 21, 2009
Thanks for registering, and for the comment. Perhaps “book nook” hasn’t yet reached the UK; my dictionary tells me a nook is either “an interior angle formed by two meeting walls” or “a small often recessed section of a larger room”, which would be the two definitions I first thought of when I heard B&N’s name.
I think it’s one of those cases where the name makes perfect sense in the US, but perhaps less so outside of it :)
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