Barnes & Nobles Launches "Nook Study" for Students

As you may know, the digital book war between Amazon and Barnes & Noble has been heating up. Last week, Barnes & Noble announced an important move it is making, adding Nook boutiques to its brick and mortar stores across the country.

Today, Barnes & Noble announced its next move, launching NookStudy, a software solution that gives students access to eTextbooks and other digital content and organizational tools for learning. The company also launched a textbook rental service. Barnes & Noble claims it is now the first and only major online retailer giving college students textbooks in new, used, rental, and digital formats.

"As leaders in the college bookselling arena, we aim to deliver college students the greatest choice, flexibility, savings and value when it comes to their textbook, reading and study needs," said Tracey Weber, Executive Vice President, Textbooks and Digital Education for Barnes & Noble.com. "With new, used, rental and digital textbooks, we offer students across the country the ability to choose the formats that are best for them – whether they prefer digital, physical, renting or owning."

"And we're thrilled to roll out our revolutionary NOOKstudy application to provide higher education students with unprecedented freedom to access their eTextbooks and other resources on their PC or Mac anytime and anywhere to make it easy to study smarter," added Weber.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/08/03/barnes-noble-launches-nookstudy-for-students

Which Payment Platform Will Dominate Mobile?

A recent study found that consumers are getting more comfortable with mobile shopping, and you best believe that will only continue, as people continue to spend more of their web time on their phones. So as everybody reaches for their mobile devices to make payments, which platforms are they going to use?

PayPal hopes to stay in the drivers seat in this area. WebProNews interviewed Francesco Rovetta, director of business development for PayPal Mobile at SXSW a couple weeks ago, who talked a bit about PayPal's vision for mobile.
PayPal is certainly not the only player in this space though.

O'Reilly Media Founder Tim O'Reilly has posted a fascinating piece on the "State of the Internet Operating System," which explores in depth, just what the phrase operating system means in the age of the cloud, and the mobile web. While he talks about this with regards to search, media access, communications, identity, advertising, location, and a slew of other categories, one section of this lengthy article talks specifically about payments.

"Payment is another key subsystem of the Internet Operating System," he says. "Companies like Apple that have 150 million credit cards on file and a huge population of users accustomed to using their phones to buy songs, videos, applications, and now ebooks, are going to be in a prime position to turn today's phone into tomorrow's wallet. (And as anyone who reaches into a wallet not for payment but for ID knows, payment systems are also powerful, authenticated identity stores - a fact that won't always be lost on payment providers looking for their lock on a piece of the Internet future.)"

"PayPal obviously plays an important role as an internet payment subsystem that's already in wide use by developers," he continues. "It operates in 190 countries, in 19 different currencies (not counting in-game micro-currencies) and it has over 185 million accounts. What's fascinating is the rich developer ecosystem they've built around payment - their recent developer conference had over 2000 attendees. Their challenge is to make the transition from the web to mobile."

UPDATE: PayPal contacted me, pointing out errors in O'Reilly's numbers. "We now have 81 mil active registered accounts and 210 million accounts, in 190 markets and we support 24 currencies."

O'Reilly also mentions Google and Amazon as key players in the mobile payments space, with the Android Market giving Google Checkout a boost, and Amazon having only recently opened theirs up a bit to developers.

Adobe Goes Open Source With Two Media Tools

Adobe has announced that is has taken another two of its products targeted specifically at the media and publishing industries and gone open source with them.

Open Source Media Framework (OSMF), which was originally launched as Strobe last April, gives developers the ability to easily assemble pluggable components to develop better media players at lower costs and quicker turnaround.

Text Layout Framework (TLF) gives developers and designers support for complex languages, bidirectional text and other advanced typographical features.

Adobe says its went open source with OSMF because open source will facilitate cheaper and less complex development histories for video players, while in the case of TLF it doesn’t appear to have said anything at all and gone open source just because…
http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-development/adobe-goes-open-source-with-two-media-tools-005091.php

EU Calls For More Privacy On Social Networks

The European Commission is reminding teenagers to "Think before you post!" on social networking sites as Europe marks Safer Internet Day.

The Commission said 50 percent of European teenagers give out personal information on the web, which can remain online forever and be seen by anybody.

At last year's Safer Internet Day, 20 companies signed the Safer Social Networking Principles, including YouTube and Facebook, but a report from the Commission says more measures need to be put in place to protect children's privacy online.

"If we want children to think before they post, social networking companies should post the right information using the right language. Last year the European Commission urged companies to act, and I am glad that many have heeded this call," said EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media, Viviane Reding.

"However I expect all companies to do more. Minors' profiles need to be set to private by default and questions or abuse reports have to receive quick and appropriate responses. The internet is now vital to our children, and it is the responsibility of all to make it safe."

Highlights from the report include:

* Only a third of social networking sites responded to user reports asking for help
* 40% of social networking sites assessed make minors' personal information visible only by their friends by default
* Only 11 out of 22 make it impossible for the private profiles of minors to be found through search engines