Barnes & Noble Outs The $119 Nook GlowLight, We Go Hands-On

For better or worse the holidays are right around the corner, and that can only mean one thing: consumer electronics companies are slaving away on new hardware designs and trying to get those final products onto shelves in time for an annual feeding frenzy.

Barnes & Noble is no different. Well, it’s a little different — when I sat down with Digital Content EVP Doug Carlson earlier today he was eager to paint a picture of a savvy bookseller that’s still aware of the human elements of peddling tomes (digital and otherwise). But it wasn’t long at all before he got down to the business at hand and revealed the $119 Nook GlowLight, a new e-reader the company will start selling today.

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iPad Air Review: Apple Makes Big Tablets Beautiful All Over Again

Apple introduced two new iPads this month at a special event in San Francisco on October 22, and the first of those to go on sale is the iPad Air, which is in stores and on virtual shelves this Friday, November 1. After a week with Apple’s newest 9.7-inch device, it’s clear there’s a new champion of the large tablet market, and one that breathes new life into Apple’s original slab-style game-changer.
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Cloud-Based Device Management Startup Soluto Getting Acquired By Device Insurers Asurion For Up To $130M

Looks like another exit for an Israel-based startup — this one straddling the worlds of cloud services and hardware control.Soluto, a service that lets users manage PCs and other connected devices remotely, is getting acquired by Asurion, a company that offers device insurance services. The news is being reported as a work in progress by TheMarker andCalcalist. Globes, meanwhile, is reporting this as a done deal. Meanwhile, we have confirmed the sale through two separate sources. We’re hearing reports of up to $130 million, specifically between $100 million and $130 million.

You can see where a deal with Asurion makes a lot of sense.

The latter company, based out of Nashville, Tennessee, partners with carriers like Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Clear to resell its services to consumers. Those services include physical replacement of broken devices — consumers can file and track claims — but there are also a suite of services that are software-based, such as the ability to locate lost devices and back up content. Soluto will help Asurion extend and improve the latter part of the service, perhaps as a way also to offset some of the insurance risk around losing and replacing faulty or broken handsets.

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Motorola unveils Project Ara for custom smartphones

Motorola has announced a new initiative to help smartphone users take handset customization beyond ringtones, wallpaper, and body colors to its very form and function.
The Google-owned handset company on Monday announced Project Ara, a free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones. An endoskeleton, or structural frame, holds the smartphone modules of the owner's choice, such as a display, keyboard, or extra battery. The approach should allow users to swap out malfunctioning modules or upgrade as innovations emerge, providing a handset that stays up-to-date much longer than today's smartphones.
"Our goal is to drive a more thoughtful, expressive, and open relationship between users, developers, and their phones," Motorola wrote in a company blog post. "To give you the power to decide what your phone does, how it looks, where and what it's made of, how much it costs, and how long you'll keep it."
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Android, the world's most popular mobile platform

Android powers hundreds of millions of mobile devices in more than 190 countries around the world. It's the largest installed base of any mobile platform and growing fast—every day another million users power up their Android devices for the first time and start looking for apps, games, and other digital content.

Android gives you a world-class platform for c apps and games for Android users everywhere, as well as an open marketplace for distributing to them instantly.
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For Mobile Developers, iOS 7 Is Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts

Editor’s Note: Semil Shah works on product for Swell, is a TechCrunch columnist, and an investor. He blogs at Haywire, and you can follow him on Twitter at @semil.

Leading up to last week’s Apple event and the unveiling of the iPhone 5s, the Internet may have led you to believe that “Android is better.” The reality for startups, however, is more nuanced. When it comes to the first choice developers have for starting in mobile, Apple still leads the competition, as mobile expert Steve Cheney asserts these advancements place iOS roughly 18-24 months ahead of Android. (If you haven’t read this post from early August 2012 by Cheney, please do – he called much of this months ago.)

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