Barnes & Noble on Friday promised a "major update" to its Nook e-reader firmware this spring, which will bring new apps, e-mails, and other features.
Those apps will include the popular Angry Birds game from Rovio, Drawing Pad, Lonely Planet Phrasebook, Tikatok, and Wine PhD.
The company did not provide too many additional details on the update, but did announce the addition of new magazines to its e-book store, as well as e-book content from Nickelodeon.
The Nook Newsstand will now include the option to purchase The Economist, Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, ESPN The Magazine, Saveur and PC Gamer, bringing the total number of available periodicals to more than 135.
Barnes & Noble's deal with Nickelodeon, meanwhile, means that customers with the Nook Color or Nook Kids for iPad app can exclusively access digital books featuring popular Nickelodeon characters like SpongeBob Square Pants and Dora the Explorer.
There are currently 12 Nickelodeon titles available, which will expand to more than 20 next month.
On Monday, Microsoft filed suit against Barnes & Noble for patent infringement regarding the Android-based Nook e-readers. Microsoft holds patents relating to navigation and how Web sites display content; technology used on the Android platform, the software giant said.
Earlier this month, Barnes & Noble and Spring Design announced a settlement in a lawsuit over the companies' competing e-book readers, the Nook and the Alex.