nook

I run Google Analytics on my nook-look.com nook screensaver and wallpaper site. Here's a few interesting tidbits that some of you other geeks might be interested in.

The average time spent on the site is 10 minutes.
The average user views around 20 pages each visit.
40% of my traffic is from bookmarks.
31% of users run Firefox.
28% run IE.
15% are actually browsing from their nook!
13% are using a Mac. Yeah, nook beats you ;-)

18 visitors this month used a Blackberry. Why?

Google Search provides 85% of incoming search traffic.
Yahoo is in second place with 6% of incoming search traffic.
Bing provided less than 5%. Think about that for a minute.
Ask.com brought 40 visitors this month. And when you consider I'm in second place right behind B&N when you search ask.com for "nook screensavers"... Yeah. Not a lot of market share for "the algorithm," at least among nook users.

Nook-Look.com has reached over 40,000 downloads of screensavers and wallpapers specifically designed for the Barnes & Noble Nook e-book reader.

That's a lot of bits!

Since initial release several backend enhancements of occurred. Images are automatically converted to grayscale and thumbnails are color-corrected to give a truer idea of how the image will look when displayed on the e-ink screen.

My wife picked up the BookArmor High Impact Travel Case for me for my birthday. I'm flying to Atlanta next week and I was looking for something more durable than the neoprene case I'm currently using.

It was $38 from Amazon.

The first thing I noticed was it weighs a ton. Well, 1 pound to be exact. It's basically constructed of two metal plates, a heavy duty zipper and some durable canvas to tie it all together. It reminds me of the cases a lot of people carry their Bible to church in every Sunday, only heavy.

It comes with an alcohol pad and two "Snap-lock" strips that you stick to the back of the nook (or Kindle.) The warning on the instructions states "do not allow regular velcro to come in contact with the snap-lock strips. Regular velcro is impossible to remove from the snap-lock strips." Considering how strong the snap-lock strips tried to grab my bed's comforter, I'm not surprised.

Due to the curve in the back of the nook, I found it difficult to initially snap it down onto the cover after the strips were applied. I really felt to get the leverage I needed I should push in the middle of the screen, which obviously is not an option. Once it starts to snap in though, it's easy to complete.

As an owner of a new nook e-book reader, I've been watching the related boards somewhat.

Occasionally the issue comes up of "if I buy a book from Amazon can I read it on my nook?"

Unfortunately with rare exception the answer is not really.

There are technical ways to make it happen. You'd think it would be fine to download a book from Amazon, run a conversion and upload it to your nook reader. Technically you can. It's also a violation of the letter of the DMCA though more than likely it will be unenforceable in that context if it ever made it to court.

The simple act of having the decryption program on your computer to allow this is a violation of the DMCA. Helping someone find a copy of it is considered "distributing circumvention tools." First time offenders may be subject to a $500,000 fine, imprisoned for five years, or both. That's the criminal penalties. Civil penalties may also be incurred. All because someone wanted to read a book that they bought.

I've recently launched a wallpaper and screensaver sharing site for the nook called Nook-Look.com.

It allows you to upload, download, rate and comment on images to enhance your nook's overall appeal.

Wallpaper groups can even be uploaded as a zip file, and it will automatically generate animated thumbnails from the uploaded zip file.

I'm still working on it in spare time, so expect the features and design to continue to evolve.

If you have a nook (or even one of those Amazon thingies) check it out!

www.Nook-Look.com

Here's a screensaver pack that displays puffy white clouds on a dark background for your Nook. Just extract the directory and place in your screensaver folder on your Nook.

Here's my second (and larger) pack of images for use with the Barnes & Noble Nook. Each image is 16 shades of grayscale, so it should render quickly on the Nook.

After seeing the screen, I thought that more high contrast line drawing type images could make a much better screensaver than my photographs, so here's a collection of 20.

Note: Updated to remove black borders

NOTE: Please visit www.nook-look.com for these and more.

Here's a small pack of background / screensaver images for your Barnes & Noble Nook.

Enjoy!

Also get my second pack