Barnes & Noble said today it will begin shipping its Nookcolor ahead of schedule to people who pre-ordered the device. The Nookcolor will begin arriving today and through the week to people who pre-ordered the device online and at Barnes & Noble stores. The e-reader will also start arriving at Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, Walmart and Books-A-Million in very limited quantities this week and will include in-store demonstrations.

AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless have announced the formation of a joint venture called ISIS, a mobile payments network. Discover Financial Services and Barclays Plc are also participating in the joint venture which will allow people to pay for purchases with their smartphones. ISIS is expected to be introduced in larger markets during the next 18 months. Michael Abbott has been named as Chief Executive Officer of Isis. Formerly with GE Capital,

Borders.com has launched a new website featuring discounts on 100,000 bestselling titles, free shipping offers and new product lines. To promote the new website, Borders is offering free shipping on all orders placed on its site today. Borders Rewards Plus members receive free standard shipping on their online orders and an additional 10 percent off the purchase price for most items.

eBay has introduced its Love to Give holiday shopping campaign which focuses on what the company describes as unwrap attacks, emotional moments that happen when someone receives the perfect gift. eBay is calling on people to upload videos of their best unwrap attack moment to its Love to Give gallery. Samantha Bee, correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, will report on unwrap attacks in an original webisode series.

Yahoo has launched the Yahoo Contributor Network, a new platform for people to publish their creative content. Yahoo says its Contributor Network will bring contributions from more than 400,000 writers, photographers and videographers to media destinations, including Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports and the Yahoo homepage. "The launch of the Yahoo Contributor Network is a great example of how Yahoo! is executing against its content strategy, said Carol Bartz, CEO,

The popularity of social networking services, along with changing demographics and work styles, will lead 20 percent of employees to use social networks as a main business communication tool by 2014, according to a new report from Gartner. With Facebook expected to launch its own email service on Monday, analysts at Gartner seem to be right on target. In the past, organizations supported collaboration through e-mail and highly structured applications only, said Monica Basso,

Target has introduced new online daily deals for the holiday shopping season. Target.com's Daily Deals will offer one-day sales of up to 50 percent off regular prices. New deals this holiday season include: *Mega Merry Mondays, beginning each week with deals on 17 popular items. *Total Toy Tuesdays, offering discounts on five popular toys. Shoppers can be notified of the daily deals by signing up for email, text message or Twitter alerts at Target.com/dailydeals .

Tim Mayer, the former head of search product and business at Yahoo, spoke in the keynote session Future of Search: Mobile, Social, and Vertical. Coverage of PubCon will continue at WebProNews Videos . Stay with WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week. Mayer said Bing is gaining ground and Google is responding with things like Google Instant. There have been new and larger changes in search over the last 12 months.

Walmart said today it will offer free holiday shipping on nearly 60,000 items with no minimum purchase through December 20. The free shipping offer includes all electronics, select video games, toys, home appliances, furniture, jewelry, and baby items. "Customers are doing all they can to save money this holiday, so we're excited to offer free shipping to home, with no minimum purchase requirement as an early Christmas present to them," said Steve Nave,

Nearly 1.3 trillion display ads were delivered to U.S. Internet users during the third quarter of this year, representing a 22 percent increase compared to a year ago. Facebook led all online publishers in Q3 with 297 billion display ad impressions, representing 23.1 percent market share. Facebooks market share has increased 13.9 percentage points from 9.2 percent in Q3 2009. Yahoo Sites ranked second during the most recent quarter with 140 billion impressions )11.0 percent(,

AOL said today it has launched an original video program that will be featured on its recently relaunched homepage. AOL's The One, launches today and was created in partnership with Next New Networks, a provider of original video content. The One is a two-minute commentary from a number of contributors including bloggers, journalists, and comedians who share their thoughts on a variety of topics including politics, lifestyle, entertainment and culture.

Amazon.com said today it has reached an agreement to acquire Quidsi, which operates Diapers.com and Soap.com. Under the terms of the deal, which was approved by Quidsi's stockholders, Amazon will purchase all outstanding shares of Quidsi for $500 million in cash, and also take on $45 million in debt. The acquisition is set to close next month. "I'm not sure which is more unpleasant-changing diapers, paying too much for them, or running out of them," said Jeff Bezos,

The Google Chrome browser team said today it has partnered with AirTran, Delta and Virgin America, to provide free Gogo Inflight Internet to travelers during the holiday season. People flying on AirTran, Delta or Virgin America between November 20, 2010 and January 2, 2011 will have free Wi-Fi on any of their domestic flights. We are constantly working to help provide a better web experience to users around the world, said Sundar Pichai,

Ask.com has released its mobile application for iPhone that allows users to ask and answer questions from their mobile devices. Previously only limited to a subset of Ask.com website users, the full Ask.com Q&A experience is now available to anyone who downloads the app. Millions of people come to Ask.com with their questions everyday now they don't have to wait until they get back to their computers to get the answers they need," said Doug Leeds, President, Ask.com US.

Yahoo has introduced Weekend Edition on Yahoo News, a new program offering original video and editorial content sponsored by Buick. "With Weekend Edition, we've established a destination that features lighter lifestyle-oriented news programming, which we already know is more popular with our weekend audience," said Mark Walker, vice president and head of Yahoo News. "This program also aligns perfectly with Buick's target demographics and brand attributes,

Google said today it is introducing a beta version of Google Instant to most iPhone and Android devices in the U.S. Users can access Google Instant on their iPhone or Android the same way they can on a desktop. The Google Mobile Blog has more details. Like the desktop version of Google Instant, when you type on your mobile device youll see predictions of what you might be searching for. If you type [anse], for example,

The global smartphone market reached a new milestone in the third quarter of 2010 )Q32010(, with the top vendors posting significant growth, according to a new report from IDC. Smartphone vendors shipped a total of 81.1 million units, up 89.5 percent from the 42.8 million units shipped during Q309. For the first three quarters of 2010, vendors have shipped a total of 200.6 million units, up 67.6% from the 119.6 million units shipped during the first three quarters of 2009.

The Information Technology Industry Council )ITI( said today that Facebook has joined the Digital Energy Solutions Campaign )DESC( in an effort to develop energy efficient computing systems. "Our ongoing philosophy has been to improve the efficiency of our infrastructure and we continue to invest tremendous resources to improve our own operations, said Jonathan Heiliger, Vice President of Technical Operations at Facebook.

StumbleUpon has introduced StumbleUpon App Discovery, a free beta feature of its Android app that suggests mobile apps based on users' interests. "Currently, discovering apps from the over 100,000 apps available in the Android Market is limited to keyword-based search features," said Garrett Camp, StumbleUpon CEO and co-founder. "With StumbleUpon App Discovery,

Four percent of online adults use a service such as Foursquare or Gowalla that allows them to share their location with friends and to find others who are in their area, according to a new report form the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Location-based services such as Foursquare or Gowalla are significantly more popular with younger internet users; eight percent of online adults ages 18-29 use location-based services,