Barnes & Noble and Best Buy have teamed up to sell B&N’s Nook ereader on April 18, just as we predicted. As the press release states, this is just in time for Mother’s/Father’s Day, graduation, and the Feasts of St. Apollonius the Apologist and St. Wicterp. The Nook will cost $259.99 and will be available in Best Buy stores.

As you recall, the Nook has generated quite a bit of buzz but folks across the country have had trouble finding them in the wild. By selling them in Best Buy, B&N is at least assured of a relatively larger audience of tech-savvy consumers walking past its displays. However, because Best Buy is also selling the iPad, I suspect those same consumers will find the Nook – heck, even the Kindle – a hard sell after eying Apple’s latest creation.

As we mentioned before, Kindle and Nook are excellent ereaders with great battery life. However, I’m concerned that smaller, cheaper ereaders, some without eink screens, will be taking their share of this sub-$300 market from Amazon and B&N.

Best Buy to sell NOOK by Barnes & Noble in stores and at bestbuy.com
beginning April 18

Best Buy to feature BN eReader software
on PCs, netbooks, tablets and smartphones

New York, NY – April 12, 2010 –Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller, and Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY), America’s leading consumer electronics retailer, today announced an exclusive partnership to distribute Barnes & Noble’s popular NOOK eBook Reader and accessories, as well as free BN eReader software through Best Buy in the United States. NOOK is expected to arrive at Best Buy beginning April 18, just in time for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and graduation gift season.

Through the partnership, the award-winning NOOK eBook Reader and stylish accessories along with NOOK and Barnes & Noble eBook gift cards will be prominently featured in Best Buy’s 1,070 stores nationwide and online at www.bestbuy.com. As with Barnes & Noble stores, NOOK at Best Buy will be featured at a special in-store display where customers can see, try and buy a NOOK for $259.99 with the guidance of a trained Best Buy Blue Shirt.

In its growing eReader selection, Best Buy named Barnes & Noble a preferred eBookstore solution, offering more than one million eBooks, magazines and newspapers for download and enjoyment within seconds. Best Buy will feature Barnes & Noble’s free BN eReader on select PCs (laptops and desktops), netbooks, tablets and smartphones sold at Best Buy and supported by its Geek Squad Agents, giving customers access to shop Barnes & Noble’s world’s largest eBookstore (www.bn.com/ebooks) and enjoy their Barnes & Noble digital library anywhere they go.

“To date, we’ve limited NOOK distribution to Barnes & Noble retail and online stores and the customer response to our eBook Reader has exceeded our expectations. We have enormous respect for the Best Buy organization and its focus on providing technology solutions for millions of customers. We’re thrilled to bring NOOK, the BN eReader and our digital content expertise to Best Buy and its loyal consumer electronics-focused audience as a perfect complement to the book-loving Barnes & Noble customer,” said Kevin Frain, executive vice president of e-commerce, at Barnes & Noble.com. “Through this partnership, Best Buy customers will now have new and easy ways to access our expansive digital library on a variety of computing and mobile devices through BN eReader software and the Barnes & Noble eBookstore.”

“Barnes & Noble long ago established itself as a premiere bookseller and more recently as a genuine innovator in the digital content space. Our two companies share a clear vision for creating tools that give people the content they want, when and how they want it,” said Chris Homeister, senior vice president and general manager of the Home Entertainment Group at Best Buy. “We look forward to showcasing NOOK within our growing eBook Reader collection, and to helping customers discover the special appeal of this distinctive reading device and eBookstore solution.”

NOOK marries innovative technology and sleek minimalist design with access to Barnes & Noble’s digital store of over one million eBooks, newspapers and magazines. NOOK’s color touch screen for navigation along with a best-in-class E Ink® display offers an immersive, enjoyable e-reading experience. It offers both free 3G wireless and Wi-Fi access and is the first eBook Reader to offer digital lending for a wide selection of eBooks through Barnes & Noble’s breakthrough LendMe™ technology. In Barnes & Noble stores, all NOOK customers (regardless of where the device was purchased) can also enjoy fast and free Wi-Fi access to shop, exclusive More in Store content from leading authors, promotional offers and, coming soon, they’ll be able to browse the complete contents of many eBooks or periodicals in the vast Barnes & Noble catalog.

Good morning. We have a week until Christmas and we’ve been pounding out giveaways left and right. We’ve had Smart Pens, Olive Hi-Fis, and your own personal Ninja for a year (didn’t see that one? There’s a reason.) But today we’re here to announce the final big giveaway: a $500 gift card towards anything you want from the kind folks at Lottay.com.

Here’s what’s up.

First, a bit about Lottay:

The Lottay online gift-giving and wish-list service helps individuals and groups give and receive better gifts. Lottay gifts are money, wrapped in the emotion of the occasion via e-greeting cards, personalized messages, images and pictures. Givers can specify the gift they would like the money to buy — from a cup of coffee to a Caribbean cruise and beyond — while receivers are free to use the money to buy the intended gift or anything else they want.

The gift is sent instantly and securely, delivered as a surprise via email and Facebook. Unlike gift cards and physical gifts, there are no hidden fees or shipping and handling charges with Lottay gifts. The entire Lottay.com experience is online, safe and secure thanks to PayPal. There is no cost to gift givers and recipients using the Lottay service.

So what’s going to happen? Well, you’re going to head over to Lottay and make a wishlist. Put whatever you want into it. Down at the bottom of the page, over “Add Your Wish” will be a secret code. Cut and paste that into comments. Bingo. That’s it.

Good luck, happy holidays, and thanks for reading.

By Andrew Liszewski

Gift cards are kind of a mixed bag, on one hand it ensures you can get exactly what you want as a gift, but on the other hand, it’s not the most exciting thing to unwrap. Thankfully, Target is still doing whatever they can to make gift cards slightly more exciting, and this year they’ve got what is probably the world’s first remote control gift card. It comes with a tiny Christmas mouse inside a miniature red Target shopping cart which can be controlled via the antenna and button-equipped remote, which also happens to be the gift card. Buying it online requires you to put at least $25 on the card, though I’m not sure if the same minimum applies when buying it in-store.

[ Target RC Gift Card ] VIA [ Chip Chick ]

You may wanna jump on this Best Buy iTunes deal if you drop serious coin on iTunes. It’s kind of like when restaurants and gas stations offer specials when you pre-pay for their services. Except this time you get music, movies, and apps.

Too bad that this deal has been floating around the cesspool that is the Internet for a while because the cards are back-ordered a couple of weeks from the Internet Warehouse. Thankfully Best Buy gives you the option of in-store pickup. It’s kind of ironic that you have to go to all this trouble to buy these cards that gives you credit on an on-line store, but whatever saves some cash.

[Best Buy via GamerHotline]

Starting this Sunday, Target will be offering a Buy 1, Get 1 half-off all regularly priced Xbox 360 games. Target will also be offering gift cards for certain Xbox wares purchases: “$50 GiftCard with Xbox 360 hardware (Pro or Elite), $10 GiftCard with Xbox 360 wireless controller in black or white, or $5 GiftCard with 1600 point Xbox LIVE card.” Not a bad deal.