Hasta La Gadget!

A year ago today, Barnes & Noble presented its Nook e-reader. Yesterday, the book retailer sent media invitations for an October 26 event at their Union Square store in New York. Next week, we might see the next generation of the Nook.

Here’s what we know: A Nook 1.5 firmware update is coming out late next month for current-generation Nooks. It promises faster page turns, better search, custom library organization, password protection and the ability to sync last page read between the Nook and all Nook mobile and desktop apps.

This gets the Nook close to feature parity with Amazon’s Kindle. It also means Barnes & Noble has done some investment, both in developing new software and on its backend services. And that suggests that it might be ready to announce a new device.

This summer, Amazon rolled out a 2.5 firmware update for Kindle 2 users. Then a month later, it unveiled the new Kindle 3.

Last October, Barnes & Noble announced the dual-screen, Android-powered Nook, promising preorder delivery and in-store sales before Christmas. The company wasn’t able to ramp up production to meet demand and had to fix immediate firmware bugs, delaying some preorders and pushing back in-store availability to February.

I doubt Barnes & Noble wants that scenario to play out again. There’s a chance that a next-generation Nook will be available right away, but I would expect that new devices would ship around the same time as the 1.5 firmware, either in late November or early December — or Barnes & Noble will give a more conservative delivery date of early next year.

Although the Kindle has captivated mindshare, the Nook and its bookstore has been tremendous hits for Barnes & Noble, boosting revenues through strong e-book sales, particularly among Barnes & Noble members, both for the Nook and for its mobile and desktop apps. It has a 20% share of e-book sales — higher than its share in sales of printed books.

The bookseller spent the last year reoutfitting its retail stores to show off the Nook. It dropped prices and offered a Wi-Fi only model before Amazon matched them with Kindle 3. Now it’s B&N’s move again. No company is more ready to deliver a next-generation e-reader than Barnes & Noble.

See Also:

• Despite Reports, B&N Nook Competes Just Fine, Thank You
• Barnes & Noble Unveils Kindle-Killing, Dual-Screen 'Nook' E-Reader …
• Nook Software Update Adds Web Browser, Chess
• Wi-Fi Only Nook for $150 in Best Buy
• How to Root Your Nook and Run Android Apps
• Barnes & Noble's Nook E-Reader To Hit Stores

PayLo by Virgin Mobile offers cheap prepaid voice-centric plans. It has just introduced a $30 for 1500 minute plan.

Originally posted at Dialed In

This is a call to arms, a plea for all you lovely Gadget Lab readers to do your sacred nerd-duty. Head over to the Tokyo Flash blog right now and vote for this amazing Tron-inspired watch. Did I just say “Tron” and “watch” in the same sentence? Yes I did. Off you go now, but hurry back.

The watch is called 7R0N, neatly sidestepping trademark troubles, while clearly signaling its inspiration. Designed by Scott Galloway in Yorkshire, England, it has bioluminescent strips that represent the trails of the Lightcycles in the movie, and the hour and minute “hands” are replaced by the frisbee-like light-discs the battling computer-dwellers hurl at each other when enacting their deadly video-games.

Scott says “I tried to think of a way to get the watch noticed. I have several light-up LED watches, but as cool as they are, it’s always been about the clock face with little attention to the strap itself. I wanted a watch where the strap was just as important as the face itself.”

Your watch, Scott, is awesome, and we want to send everybody we can to the Tokyo Flash site to vote and hopefully get this thing made. There’s just one problem: It’s actually pretty easy to tell the time on this thing, in contrast to pretty much any watch made by Tokyo Flash. The outer ring shows minutes, and the inner ring indicates hours. Thus you can quickly and easily decipher the times in the picture above: 8 o’clock, 4 o’clock and 4 o’clock. Simple.

Seriously, people, go vote on this thing. Even if you don’t want it, we need some for office Christmas gifts. Obviously, fop-haired Daniel Dumas will be needing one to keep his Tokyo Flash collection complete, but even the normally punctuality-challenged Gadget Lab slave driver Dylan Tweney wants one of of these. And what Dylan wants, Dylan gets.

Tron-inspired LED Watch [Tokyo Flash. Thanks, Scott!]

See Also:

• Peugeot Concept Bike Channels Tron
• Recumbent Trike is Less Portland, More Tron
• Lazer Bike Helmet Turns You Into a Space Pilot
• Pimp Your Ride: Cyglo Bike Tires with Embedded LEDs

The Hövding is an airbag for your head. Mounted in a bulky collar, which can be disguised as a stylish scarf, the bag explodes on when you crash and surrounds your delicate melon with an inflated hood. I know there are some drivers out there who hate cyclists, so here’s a video of the Hövding in action, with a sneaky car-driver mowing down an innocent biker.

Hövding means “chieftain” in Swedish, and the air-helmet was designed by Swedes Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin as a university thesis project. The collar contains the bag itself, helium to inflate the airbag and sensors which tell the Hövding when to fire. The sensor unit consists of gyroscopes and accelerometers which constantly monitor movement and deploy to bag when you’re in danger. The Chieftain is charged by USB (firmware can also be updated via the same port) and you switch it on by zipping the collar shut around your neck.

With a car airbag, the time to fire is obvious – when impact is detected. But as you see in the video, there are many ways a cyclist can fall that look similar to normal, safe activities in other contexts: going over the bars and falling forward is a lot like bending down to lock a wheel, for instance. To eliminate false positives, Haupt and Alstin carried out extensive testing with both dummies and – amazingly – stunt men and women.

So why wear this instead of a helmet? Style is the first thing that comes to mind. You can change the covers of the collar to match your outfit, and you won’t muss your hair while you ride. I’d probably feel less safe in this active scarf than I would in a passive, always-on helmet, but the Hövding seems to be reliable, and I don’t wear a helmet anyway.

There’s one more thing that this protector will do: adapt. When you hook up the hood to a USB port, you can choose to upload your “chiefs”. The unit contains a “black-box” which keeps the last ten-seconds of sensor info in a buffer and saves it on impact. This information is then aggregated to improve the performance of the software.

Bonus: fall off a bridge on the way home and you won’t drown, however drunk you are.

How the Hövding works [Hövding via David Report]

See Also:

• Explosive Dog Collar Keeps Heads Above Water
• Prototype Bike-Helmet Stinks When Damaged
• NYC Giving Away Cool Bike Helmets
• Bern Brentwood: The Only Bike Helmet You'll Ever Need
• Lazer Bike Helmet Turns You Into a Space Pilot

Apple is hosting a special press event Wednesday focused on the Mac, which CNET will be covering live. There will also be a preview of the next version of Mac OS X.

Originally posted at Circuit Breaker