The last few weeks have been a veritable smorgasbord of new device releases giving us new Amazon Kindles, the long-awaited iPhone 5, and even a Toys 'R' Us tablet. But there's more to come before the year is up, and next in line in the tablet wars is Barnes & Noble's new Nook HD and HD+.

I've spent a week (and some change) playing around with Barnes & Noble's latest. The Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight adds a feature that before was relegated to the side business of e-reader peripherals: a lit screen so you can read at night. It's a simple change, but it makes all the difference.

Misdirection. While a magician purposely distracts you with a gratuitous flourish or chatter, the Houdini wannabe performs the sleight-of-hand unobserved. Whether on purpose or by accident, I think Amazon is performing an ingenious misdirection in the wake of the introduction of the cheap "All-New" Nook and the cheaper Kobo eReader Touch Edition ebook readers. Essentially, Amazon is engaging Barnes & Noble over how long two months is. Okay, that's probably misleading, but Amazon is managing to misdirect the conversation away from the real difference between the new Nook and the new Kobo from the old Kindle that could threaten Amazon's ebook dominance.

The line between e-readers and tablets just got a lot hazier today, when Barnes & Noble unveiled the Nook Color, a new version of the company's e-reader with a full-color touchscreen and costs $249. It's a sexy device, but the new Nook tastes more like tablet lite than any e-reader that's come before.