Pebble is a fully customizable e-paper watch that interacts with your smartphone.

It’s hard to remember, but there was once a time, at least according to Dick Tracy, when we thought we might be speaking into our watches to communicate with each other. That vision of the future seemed to be a distant memory when cell phones came along.

Pebble, an e-paper watch, might just get us talking into our watches again. Brought to us by the same folks who developed the Blackberry-ready inPulse watch, Pebble is a fully customizable interface that syncs up with an iPhone or Android phone via Bluetooth. The 144×168 pixel display may be small but the device can stream plenty of data, with features to rival its smartphone ‘host organism.’ The developers suggest apps for exercise, among other things, where the e-paper provides a lighter display that is easier to read in bright sunlight. The watch can even interact with your phone’s caller ID or an mp3 player to control music over Bluetooth.

But the killer app is that anyone can make an app, and that’s where the potential lies. Aside from what you can download from their watchapp store, you can create your own functions using if this then that or tap into the full SDK, using a familiar structure from Arduino and simple C. That means savvy developers can customize the four buttons, motor and accelerometer for any number of uses.

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Kickstarted “Pebble” E-Paper Watch Brings Puts Your Smartphone On Your Wrist

We are very happy to present you this new release which is focused on increasing the stability of MediaPortal 1.2.

Some significant improvements include:

• Updated versions of MediaInfo and sqlite. This should give increased stability.
• Updates to TsReader.ax, which should give smoother TV playback.
• Updates to TsWriter.ax which allow decoding of EPG data for DVB-T HD channels.

Full Changelog:

• 0003738: [MediaPortal 1] Operand size mismatch in the ‘PresentImage’ callback parameters from dshowhelper to MP
• 0003737: [MediaPortal 1] Video frame size change on TV channel change fails with some decode filters
• 0003769: [general] Building MediaPortal in x64 environment fails
• 0003804: [TV Full Screen] Under certain circumstances the wrong teletext subtitles are shown
• 0003828: [Videos] Update sqlite to latest version
• 0003827: [Videos] Update MediaInfo to 0.7.54
• 0003733: [Music] Next track skin properties are not updated if playlist is changed
• Continue Reading

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MediaPortal 1.2.3 RELEASED!

An anonymous reader writes “As a proposal to avoid becoming the ‘next Greece’, a Portuguese opposition party has proposed a tax on storage. The party claims that the tax will not effect the average citizen and is mostly levied at business users, but internal storage on mobile phones means a 64GB iPhone could be €32 more expensive. From the article: ‘The proposal would have consumers paying an extra €0.2 per gigabyte in tax, almost €21 extra per terabyte of data on hard drives. Devices with storage capacities in excess of 1TB would pay an aggravated tax of 2.5 cents per GB. That means a 2TB device will in fact pile on €51.2 in taxes alone (2.5 cents times 2048GB). External drives or “multimedia drives” as the proposed bill calls them, in capacities greater than 1TB, can be taxed to the tune of 5 cents per gigabyte, so in theory, a 2TB drive would cost an additional €103.2 per unit (5 cents times 2048GB).”

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Portugal Is Considering a "Terabyte Tax"

Intel is set to roll out its latest generation of processors this spring despite a minor setback affecting ultra low-voltage models — the ones destined for super slim notebooks. By normal standards, the launch should mark a new “tick” in the company’s product roadmap, but Intel is going beyond just shrinking the current 32nm Sandy Bridge processor by introducing some fundamental advancements along with its new 22nm process. More »

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Everything You Need to Know About Intel’s Ivy Bridge [Video]

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Watch Foxconn Workers Make an iPad [Video]

When the Sapporo Gakuin University attempted to transfer their mail system from Hotmail to Windows Live@edu, it looks like Microsoft may have misinterpreted the meaning of the word “Troubleshooting.” After a hiccup in the transfer process, the university’s system engineer followed Microsoft’s instructions, and as a result, ended up deleting the entire university mail system. More »

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How Microsoft *Almost* Screwed Up a Japanese University [Microsoft]

We all blindly agree with those much too long Terms of Service Agreements without even reading them, right? So what happens if you like, do something unagreeable with the TOS? According to the 9th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals… nothing. They’ve ruled that it’s not a crime to break a TOS. More »

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It’s Not a Crime to Break a Terms of Service Agreement (So It’s Okay to Never Read Them) [Law]

Solar photovoltaic cells and solar thermal collectors both capture the sun’s rays. The first one turns the light into electricity, while the other turns it into hot water for heating. They usually battle for rooftop real estate, but Naked Energy has found a way to merge them both into a single solar solution. More »

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Solar Panel-In-a-Tube Generates Power and Hot Water At the Same Time [Science]

Hot on the heels of the antivirus firms targeting Flashback, Apple has released another Java update meant to identify and remove any infections of the malware. The company posted the update on Thursday afternoon both to its website and Software Update, making it the third Java update released by the company in just over a week.

“This Java security update removes the most common variants of the Flashback malware,” Apple wrote in the support document for the update. “This update also configures the Java web plug-in to disable the automatic execution of Java applets. Users may re-enable automatic execution of Java applets using the Java Preferences application. If the Java web plug-in detects that no applets have been run for an extended period of time it will again disable Java applets.”

Thursday’s update is essentially the same version of Java released by Apple last week, but with a Flashback removal tool and a preference to control whether Java applets can run automatically or not. At this point in the game, it seems that most Mac users reading Ars probably already identified any infections and removed them, but Apple’s latest update will undoubtedly cover users who are either still unaware of the infection or unsure of what to do about it.

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Apple updates Java for a third time, this time with Flashback malware removal

A version of the Nook SimpleTouch is now equipped with front-lighting, Barnes & Noble announced Thursday. The new Nook SimpleTouch costs $40 more than the standard version with the light being the only difference; other features remain the same.

Built-in lighting has become the next logical step for e-ink readers. On April 6, TechCrunch found that Amazon had acquired patents for a front-lighting design in 2010. The company has offered Kindle cases with built in lighting for some time, but on this count Barnes & Noble has beaten Amazon to this feature.

The new Nook benefits from “Flex Lighting,” a thin LED lighting film that sits like a skin on top of the e-ink display. The lighting relies on one or two LEDs, according to The E-Book Reader, and its brightness is adjustable. The standard battery life estimate for a Nook SimpleTouch is two months of one hour of reading per day. Barnes & Noble states the device will still last “over one month” if the reader is using the lighting.

Hilariously, Barnes & Noble is marketing the Nook SimpleTouch toward couples beleaguered by a specific situation—where one person wants to read later than the other (“End bedtime reading debate—when you want to read & your partner wants to sleep,” reads the features list). We expect the Nook SimpleTouch will find a much wider audience, though the $139 price tag is a bit steep compared to the $99 regular Nook SimpleTouch. We’d point out that it’s also only $60 less than the Kindle Fire; which reader you’d choose depends on your dedication to e-ink. The device is available for pre-orders today and will ship May 1.

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New Nook SimpleTouch with built-in LED lighting lets you read in the dark