Barnes & Noble is launching the latest Nook e-reader with a color touch screen in time to compete with the e-reader creators stirring up holiday gifts ideas. For $249, the Nook Color, running on Google Inc.’s Android operating system, can be used for viewing digital books, newspapers, magazines, and children’s books.

The company stated Tuesday that it will begin pre-orders at its stores on Wednesday and begin shipping in mid-November.

“With NOOKdeveloper, we’re opening our doors to content providers and developers to change the future of reading together,” said Jamie Iannone, President of Barnes & Noble Digital Products. “We invite developers across all platforms to join us in growing our eReading ecosystem by creating engaging content and reading-centric applications for our millions of customers to enjoy on NOOKcolor and beyond.”

NOOKcolor comes with a full load of extras such as a full Web browser, free word games and chess, Pandora(R) internet radio, allowing a stream of tunes from favorite artists over Wi-Fi(R) while reading, Quickoffice(R) for viewing Microsoft(R) Office files, and a whole lot more.

Going beyond the printed word, content providers and developers can also build a variety of other ways upon Barnes & Noble’s open eReading ecosystem like enriching a book content with audio, photos, and videos, or other reference material, Web links, plug-ins, and more to help readers experience more out of their digital books. This could also be used to extend the book content with applications like cooking to travel to science and nature, all in helping readers to go beyond mere interests and expand learning without the extra cost. Furthermore, word games, puzzles, and other fun applications also make wise and enjoyable break from a favorite book or magazine.

“The speculated move could position the Nook at the forefront of an e-reader market that remains surprisingly robust just months after some analysts predicted Apple’s iPad would squash interest in the electronic devices … . A color Nook would certainly make the e-reader market more competitive going into the holiday season.” — Doug Gross, CNN.

E-readers are seen to be trendy holiday gifts as competition has blown up this year with current models and price slashes for Amazon.com’s Kindle and other promotional offerings from Kobo, Sony and others.