PEBBLE: An E-Paper SmartWatch

The Pebble E-Paper Watch is a smartwatch developed by Pebble Technology and released in 2013 that was funded by raising money via the crowd funding platform Kickstarter. After raising venture capital for the product under their former name inPulse, the company failed to attract traditional investors under their new brand name, so the company requested crowd funding in April 2012. 

At the end of the funding, Pebble became the most highly funded Kickstarter project to date with $10,266,844 pledged by 68,928 people. In a press conference at CES 2013 on January 9, 2013, CEO Eric Migicovsky announced that the first Pebbles would ship on January 23, 2013 with 15,000 watches being produced and shipped every week.

Pebble Technology say that the E-Paper Watch has a 1.26-inch 144 × 168 pixel black and white bistable LCD (described as "ePaper") display with backlight, a vibrating motor, a magnetometer, ambient light sensors and a three-axis accelerometer. It will communicate with an Android or iOS device using Bluetooth 2.1 but includes support for Bluetooth 4.0 (Bluetooth Low Energy) for a later update when more phones support it. The battery was reported in April 2012 to last seven days. 

Based on feedback from Kickstarter backers, the developers have added water-resistance to the list of features. The watch will be charged using a modified USB-cable that attaches magnetically to the watch so as not to compromise water resistance.

The Pebble will come with apps pre-installed, including a cycling app to measure speed, distance and pace through GPS, and a golf rangefinder app that supports more than 25,000 courses. These apps use data received from the connected phone for distance, speed and range information. More apps will be downloadable from the phone, and an SDK will be freely available. Not all apps will be installed when the watch ships but CEO Eric Migicovsky announced on January 9, 2013 that there will be updates for the watch's OS (which is based on FreeRTOS) every 2–3 weeks until all features are added. 

Pebble will integrate with the web service IFTTT which will allow users to create rules for event that will send notifications to the watch.

Facebook’s New Look May Include Multiple News Feeds

Facebook is planning to make its first major change to the news feed since it launched in 2006, and according to reports, we could see multiple news feeds based on categories, such as Instagram photos and music your friends are listening to and artist updates.

Ahead of the big press event the social network is holding on thursday, TechCrunch is reporting that, in addition to several news feeds, we’ll be seeing larger photos and image-based ads. 

Mashable reached out to Facebook for confirmation: “We don’t comment on rumor and speculation,” a spokesperson said.

If the TechCrunch report is true, the multiple feed feature will be located at the top near the search bar. 

Although the design is expected to include a photo feed — dedicated to only Facebook and Instagram pictures — as well as one for music, there could be other options dedicated just for news, videos and apps. This would also allow advertisers to target specific interests.

This would make it easier for users to sort through the heavy stream of information hitting news feeds, without hitting repeated content posted by friends. By giving members more categories to sift through, 

Facebook gives people a greater incentive to spend more time on the site. Mashable recently reported that a new look for Timeline is already live in New Zealand, featuring a new toolbar at the top of the screen and an about widget below the profile picture. 

Timeline navigation is also re-positioned at the top right of the page, taking the place of current ads, and shared stories get a like button for that site below the post. What do you think of the new multiple feeds and Timeline concept? Let us know in the comments.

Source: Mashable