NOOK Color 1.3 OTA update brings more than 200 optimized magazines

NOOK Color owners are about to get a whole lot more reading material. Barnes & Nobles announced today that its 1.3 update, which will be arriving over-the-air, will bring more than 200 magazines and newspapers to the NOOK Newsstand. These new titles include the top 11 magazines such as Fortune, People, Sports Illustrated, and Time.

In addition to having access to all this great content, the magazines will also have special editions for the NOOK Color that adds a bunch of extras built into the pages. This lets you get more out of the stories with embedded multimedia enhancements such as videos, animations, photo galleries, audio podcasts and other bonus features. Some examples include celebrity interviews, how-to videos, and interactive quizzes.

The first special editions magazines will be Fortune, People, Sports Illustrated, and Time, but by year-end special editions will also be available for all 21 titles of Time Inc., including Real Simple, InStyle, Entertainment Weekly, and Cooking Light. Special additons for Better Homes and Gardens as well as a few other titles are also expected this fall.

The NOOK Color 1.3 update is available now via immediate manual download at www.nookcolor.com/update while a free over-the-air update will roll-out to WiFi-connected customers starting this week. The update also brings performance improvements, WiFi connectivity enhancements, and a parental control feature that can disable the built-in web browser.

[via BusinessWire]