After the fire: When Barnes & Noble launched the Nook Tablet last fall, it did so at a higher price and with more storage space than the rival Amazon Kindle Fire. But on Tuesday, Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet emerged as a level competitor with Amazon’s tablet, The Los Angeles Times reports. Barnes & Noble announced a new version of its Nook Tablet, with 8 gigabytes of storage and a price of $199, matching the Kindle Fire on both points. The previous version of the Nook Tablet, released in November, is exactly the same as the new lower-priced offering, except it has 16 gigabytes of built-in storage and sells for $249. Get a detailed comparison of the tablets in the full story here.
A vision of the future: People who constantly reach into a pocket to check a smartphone for bits of information will soon have another option: a pair of Google-made glasses that will stream information to the wearer’s eyeballs in real time. Quoting several Google employees familiar with the project who asked not to be named, The New York Times reports the glasses will go on sale to the public by the end of the year. The sources say the glasses are expected “to cost around the price of current smartphones,” or $250 to $600. They also said the glasses will be Android-based and will include a small screen that sits a few inches from the wearer’s eye. Read the full story here.
Showdown on the horizon: Microsoft lodged a formal complaint today with the European Union’s competition regulator against Google’s Motorola Mobility, saying the company’s aggressive enforcement of patent rights against rivals breaks competition rules. The complaint follows a similar step by Apple against Motorola last week. Motorola is in the process of being taken over by Google for $12.5 billion, the biggest acquisition in the California company’s history. The Associated Press has the complete story here.
