Created by: Barnes & Noble.

The Barnes & Noble Bookstore iPhone® application gives customers of the store a quick way to find new books, music and movies.

The application has four main features:

• Discover – The Discover feature allows you to see the latest and greatest at the store. It has four subcategories:
• Bestsellers – The Bestsellers tab shows the most popular media currently available for sale.
• New Releases – The latest book, CD and DVD releases can be found on the New Releases tab.
• B&N Recommends – This tab shows what items are highly recommended by Barnes & Noble staff.
• B&N Review – The Review tab features longer essays and reviews on books, CDs and DVDs available for sale at the store.
• Search – Using Search with the camera function is finicky. I tried several CDs, a former bestselling hardcover book and a DVD and it only found the DVD. Fortunately you can do a text search as well based on the title or author/artist.
• Stores – The Stores feature looks for Barnes & Noble locations based on your location. You can input a city, state and zip code to find stores. Once you’ve found the store you want, it will pull up the Maps application on iPhone. The only downside to this is that once you leave the application, you’ll lose anything you had in your cart.
• Cart – Tap here to view the items you placed in your cart. Unfortunately, the app isn’t configured to actually process the sale; instead, it transfers your cart to Safari in order to complete the checkout process.

Probably the best feature on this application is the Find and Reserve In-Store button. Once you’ve found the item you want, you can tap this button to arrange for a local store to hold the book for you. Provide your name, email address and phone number on the Reserve screen and the store will send you an email when the item is ready to be picked up. It will be held for 3 business days.

You can also access your Barnes & Noble account from the application by tapping Account on the About page. As with the Cart feature, this will exit the application and open a new page in Safari in order to view your account information.

Pros: Provides quick info about new books, CDs and DVDs. Can snap pictures of books, DVDs or CDs and have the app look it up. Can reserve in-store via an email component within the application.
Cons: Doesn’t do much beyond help you find books and media for purchase. Camera search feature is limited. Does not have capability to purchase items via application.

Do you like reading and often have a few extra minutes here and there? Then you should try the Stanza iPhone® application. With this app, you can read electronic books wherever you are.

You can purchase popular new books from a selection of over 50,000 contemporary titles or choose from an additional 50,000 free classics and recent original works.

You can purchase from an enormous selection of books, including most books from the New York Times best seller list such as:

• The Accidental Time Machine (Joe Haldeman)
• The Audacity of Hope (Barack Obama)
• Twilight (Stephenie Meyer)
• Blink (Malcolm Gladwell)
• The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)

So get this app and start reading!

Do you love reading? I definitely do! And after some researching, I found the perfect iPhone® app for one of my hobbies—reading.

Classics is an application holding many great books you can read right on your iPhone. You can escape into some of the greatest stories ever written and experience a revolutionary new reading platform, only for iPhones.

The classic books that Classics offers are an excuse to read all of the classic books you never had the chance to read. While most of the books are still under copyright, many older books are not and are thus free to distribute. There are 20 classic books available for you to read for free on your iPhone. The variety and quality of the books are excellent, and the best part is that the collection will keep on growing. Just make sure to keep up with the free software updates.

When you start the Classics application you will see all of the titles right there before you. They are all laid out on an animated bookshelf, as if it’s your own personal library. Have a look through the bookshelf and click on the book you want to read. When you select a book, it pops up in a nice display that actually looks like a book.

When you start reading, you have two options: you can either just tap the page to go back and forth, or, just to add affect, you can swipe your finger across like you’re really turning the page. When you wish to stop reading you can simply click the home button and a little bookmark will pop up marking your spot. You can do this for every book you choose, so you will not lose your spot in one book if you decide to start another. When you go back to view your library, you will see the books you have started as they each have the bookmarks on them.

Here is a list of some books you can choose from in the Classics app:

• Paradise Lost
• The Time Machine
• Hound of the Baskervilles
• Alice in Wonderland
• Dracula
• Gulliver’s Travels
• A Christmas Carol
• Call of the Wild
• Robinson Crusoe
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
• Iliad
• Treasure Island
• The Count of Monte Cristo
• Frankenstein
• Flatland
• Pride and Prejudice
• Huckleberry Finn