There have been some rumors lately that Barnes & Noble wouldn’t be accepting its own gift cards for ebook purchases, but the company now denies those claims. The company says that they will be accepting physical gift cards and online gift certificates as payment for ebooks very soon.

The cards will work on purchases made on B&N’s website and also for sales through the Nook itself. It also applies to other devices that use B&N’s eReader software. The new policy goes into effect in “mid-December.”

We’ve been waiting for this one for awhile. Remember that bendable Readius ebook reader we showed you back in January of 2008 from Polymer Vision? Sadly for this bendy device it suffered delays which then turned into bankruptcy and dashed our hopes.

Now however it’s Wistron’s turn. According to Brian Chong, head of Wistron’s product planning, a similarly designed 5-to-6 inch device with a pull-out flexible e-paper display will launch in 2010. We can’t wait to see what the finished device includes.

If you want to get a Nook for this holiday season, you better get on that right away. The Nook is proving so in demand that they are pushing the second wave of pre-orders into the first week of December.

Many customers are delaying their order until they see the e-book reader in person at Barnes & Noble. Apparently display units should start arriving at the end of November, but it looks unlikely that there will be any units to sell. That means that you may have to get it sight unseen if you want delivery before the holidays. The cost is $260.

Many are predicting that some of the most popular gadgets this holiday season will be eReaders. With a wealth of new devices like the Kindle, Nook and others on the market, many will find a new eReader under the tree this year. Dulin is now offering a couple new eReaders in America.

The readers are the Pocketbook 360 with a 5-inch e-ink Vizplex display and a 400Mhz Samsung processor. Memory for the device is expandable to 32GB and it comes in black or ivory colors. The PocketBook 301+ is very similar.

You might recall that sweet Android-powered eBook reader from Spring Design called the Alex that we talked about last month. Spring Design has filed a suit against Barnes & Noble over its recently announced Nook eReader for alleged IP infringement.

According to Spring, it was in talks with Barnes & Noble to partner to distribute the Alex when executives at Barnes & Noble misappropriated the trade secrets and violated the non-disclosure agreements in place between the two firms. Spring claims that Barnes & Noble made no indications of using the features of the Alex reader in its own product until the Nook was officially announced.

We adults have the Kindle and the Nook, along with other e-readers. But what about the kids? It’s the kids who we want to get reading. Nokia is at least thinking about the children.

The Storyplay e-reader is a new take on storytelling and reading. It will feature Elmo from Sesame Street on a removable paper book that’s attached with magnets. The reader has two screens. One will display Elmo and his antics, while the second screen will display a live video screen. (Displaying what?)

We had heard that Asus was planning some ebook readers and now some new details have emerged. Executives from the company apparently confirmed that WiFi, 3G and WiMAX versions will be announced before the year is out. The ebook readers will apparently hit carrier partners in the US and Europe in March 2010, with prices that will be “competitive” with what’s offered from Amazon and Sony.

Previous rumors have ASUS readying two different sized readers, one with a 6-inch e-ink display while a second model will have a larger 9-inch panel. WiMax seems like overkill, but Asus apparently thinks it will sell well.

Most of the eBook readers on the market have a lot in common. They have the same types of screens and sell for very similar prices. The Barnes & Noble Nook has that color screen and the Kindle has 3G connectivity with both selling for $259. A new eReader from a company called ECTACO was announced today with a significantly lower price of $149.

The reader is called the jetBook-Lite and it sports a 5-inch screen and gets power from normal AA batteries rather than a rechargeable. The device can read the eReader DRM file format that Barnes & Noble uses in its online bookstore.

Back in April we heard that Bridgestone was getting into the e-paper biz and it looks like they are still making progress. The company’s all-color touchscreen e-book reader is based on what Bridgestone calls Quick-response Liquid Powder and is about 5.8mm thick.

It features a 13.1-inch touch-sensitive e-paper display with 4,096 colors that has a refresh rate of about 0.8 seconds. It also boasts mobile phone connectivity. The biggest news here is that the entire thing is designed to bend. Everything from the circuit board, touchscreen, and housing.

We’ve been waiting for more info about Barnes and Noble’s new color e-book reader and it looks like we have some. According to the Wall Street Journal, they’ve seen an upcoming ad for Barnes & Noble’s e-book reader.

It’s called the Nook. And according to the article, you can expect it to be out on Tuesday, when it will retail for $259. Interestingly, the device will let users “lend e-books to friends.” That last bit is intriguing. More tomorrow.

The Alex looks similar to the Android-powered Barnes & Noble reader, but this one sports a 6-inch display using monochrome e-ink (not color), but it also has a secondary 3.5-inch color touchscreen that lets you browse the Web.

Yeah, VERY similar to that Barnes and Noble reader. Spring Design claims that it’s “enlisting major content partners, and plans to release the Alex for selected strategic partners by the end of this year.” Interesting.

We don’t have a ton of details on this one and the official launch won’t happen until January 7 at CES, but Plastic Logic is looking to get into the high end of the e-reader market with its upcoming QUE proReader. The device uses E Ink Vizplex tech in a shatterproof display the size of a regular piece of paper at 8.5 x 11-inches.

It also features 3G wireless capabilities thanks to AT&T and a business-minded ebook store at QUEreader.com to be powered by Barnes & Noble. And yes it has a touchscreen interface, but we aren’t sure if that means the entire display or not. The unit is “less than 1/3-inch thick,” and plays nice with PDF, Word, PowerPoint and Excel, including tools for “interacting with and managing the content,”.

Looks like we have some early images of Barnes and Noble’s e-book reader. As we covered before, this thing is supposedly set for a Spring 2010 release, with a color display.

Then there was word that it would not have a color screen. But it looks like there is truth to both of those rumors. Apparently the dual-panel device will feature a typical e-ink display on top with a multitouch panel underneath. Think of it as a Kindle/iPhone mashup.

Your choice of e-reader devices continues to grow rapidly. And now LG is showing off its Solar Cell e-Book reader. The prototype has an energy conversion efficiency of about 9.6 percent. That means that it gives you an extra day’s worth of power to continue reading on that 6-inch TFT-LCD after four to five hours in the sun.

LG is working on getting that solar cell energy conversion efficiency rate to 12% by 2010 or up to 14% by 2012. Great news for bookworms, not so great if you have to read for your homework.

Plastic Logic’s e-book reader, all set to roll out in spring next year, will power the Barnes & Noble e-book reader application. Looks like this is basically an older model with a color display. It sounds like the B&N application will also be available for cellphones including the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android devices.

Plastic Logic is also boasting that their next color reader is about to hit the market soon, where it will be the “first to market with a large, flexible color display”.