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Developers Rolling Out Pebble Smartwatch Apps
itwbennett writes "When it first launched, the Pebble smartwatch was a nifty, if pricey, way to get notifications from your phone without having to go to the effort of pulling your phone out of your pocket. As previously posted on Slashdot, the real promise of the watch wouldn't be realized until developers got their hands on the SDK. Now, a few months after launch the apps are starting to roll in and Pebble wearer Kevin Purdy has rounded up some of the best apps and projects — and also where to find them."
... I want one!
Earth "is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea."
or will my gf see every time i get a whatsapp message from the mistress?
Too wordy. How 'bout just "harmless".
Since this seems to be as good a place and time as any to ask, are there any really good 'normal' watches out there these days? I'm looking for a thing I can wear on my wrist and (almost) never have to recharge or change batteries for, that will do exactly two things: tell me the time accurately, and not be awkward to wear.
I've been looking at various automatic watches, but it seems that for most watches the price goes into platinum casings or diamond coverings or something. Are there watchmakers out there with good accuracy/price ratios?
Too wordy. How 'bout just "harmless".
Too brief. How 'bout now "mostly harmless".
Recharge a watch every day? No thanks.
Try to use apps on that tiny little screen? No thanks.
Have to connect it to a smartphone to do anything useful? Wtf??
I'm sorry, how much does it cost?? $150??
If you want a gimmick watch Casio will do you a nice one for about $30 but I have to warn you that the days of digital watches being cool ended in about 1980 so you won't be getting any Hipsters putting down their skinny lattes in shock and envy by buying a Pebble either.
I have been waiting to buy a pebble since Christmas. http://getpebble.com/ has been a static page for the whole year so far. Yes I have signed up for updates but not a peep out of them.
When are they coming!!
Thank you, Miracle Max!
#DeleteChrome
was a nifty, if pricey, way to get notifications from your phone without having to go to the effort of pulling your phone out of your pocket.
Everything wrong with America and humanity in 27 words.
Is it just me or are all the tech companies today having a contest to see who can make the worst hardware user interface controls? It went from desktops to laptops with bad touchpads and bad keyboards with no number pads to touchscreen tablets that are virtually impossible to type on to touchscreen cell phones that are even worse because they're tiny to a watch that's basically impossible to control with anything. Game designers are already complaining that touch and tilt aren't fast enough to control games or other apps in Android. Now they expect them to come up with something for a watch?
Since Google killed it I am keeping my eyes open for the my next smart watch for when this one dies. If it can even do half of what my motoactv can do it end up being my next smartwatch. http://www.motorola.com/us/consumers/8GB-or-16GB-MOTOACTV/79070,en_US,pd.html
Paul: Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! - Dune
that answers you in the voice of KITT?
I'm also getting closer to ten days per charge mainly running the low power Big Time watchface and not receiving too many notifications.
First win: I've programmed my own watchface with a non-standard time coordinate that matters to me.
Second win: I used to take a medication daily that had to be taken at a precise time in the mid-afternoon for optimum effect. Even after more than a year of practice, I still missed one audible watch alarm every ten days to two weeks. I don't wear my phone on my belt (it gets set down across the room when at home), so that wouldn't have been reliable either. Never miss Pebble's wrist buzzer if I'm wearing the watch. Even when I'm in the shower, if the the watch is placed on a hard surface, if makes enough noise to hear over the splashing water. I could wear it in the shower, but I don't wish to expose it to my nasty medicated shampoo.
Fortunately I've been immune all my life to any concern over whether someone out there might think something is cool, so far seeking out my own functionality. I like mine 20" square (in pairs) or small and unobtrusive. I find the 4" lifestyle most awkward of all: large enough to constantly notice you have it, too small to be completely effective. Likewise, I find Twitter completely ridiculous. Either the message should read "Beers 5 o'clock?" or it should be written with full sentences and paragraph units.
I watched a video on illicit cognitive enhancing drugs last night. I can see the appeal for the younger generation. They need to recover the 10% of their brain power they lose by the over-use of these ridiculous tweener form factors which specialize in mental fragments longer than a smoke signal and shorter than a completed thought.
Third win: This morning I received a phone call while I was still in bed. My watch rasped on my bed-side table so I opened one eye, determined it was a call I wanted that could wait for another hour, then rolled over and went right back to sleep. My phone was in the far corner of the house. I'm really surprised it works at all at that distance. (I've also missed a few from this distance. This might depend on charge status of one device or the other.)
Given that I don't actually sleep with my phone (low sex drive, I guess) my Pebble easily earns its keep.
But but now it has a stopwatch!!!!
I have one. Pebble, that is (actually I have two - the other one is a Ferrari -- well, the red-coloured version. Plz don't tell the wife). Right now I am underwhelmed but "hopeful". I have had a day's worth of "fun" fiddling with watchfaces that work as watches and not much more. First User Warning: In the process I discovered that a poorly disclosed detail is that currently it is only possible to add 8 "things" (watch face or app) to the Pebble. Maybe frustrating but at least means you can't load it up with tons of cr*p (like I have my S3!). Right now using the Pebble all feels like the early days of The Web, when you could access very basic information but not much more. Maybe that will improve with a Pebble 2.0 too? So after my "Phase 1: Choose your watch face" I am now into "Phase 2: Decide what notifications will be useful rather than annoying". With all the comms apps on your iDevice/AndroidDevice these days there can be a never-ending series of vibrations going on on your wrist, and they are not as silent as one might think. Did I mention they can be annoying? So, this is a thinking-persons watch, as in "I wonder what I really want/need to use this for?". "Phase 3: What apps shall I connect to other than SMS, WhatsApp, etc.?" is on hold right now as (unsurprisingly) there are not many apps out there, and anyway most are basically of Web 1.0 style. I.e. basic. Very basic. But as the SDK (at least the first one) is out I am "hopeful". I've already had an idea -- wouldn't it be wicked if there was a way to design at least one face/app yourself, one where you can treat the watch as a sort of split-screen device sucking in data from a range of sources (think banking screens with multi feeds) whereby you can select say three or four bits of information (e.g. heart-rate, altitude, and time in Hong-Kong)) and have the Pebble display this as your own home-made screen concoction? One last observation. Unless you like to wear two timepieces, and because by definition this wearable technology MUST be worn to do what it is supposed to do (Hint: The strap -- even the longer iteration -- is NOT long enough to attach diver-style around your thigh) you are going to have to discard your nice Rolex, Swatch, [Other make] watch and keep it safe in your bedside cupboard until you get bored with the "hopes unfulfilled" Pebble. Anyone out there want to buy a Ferrari-red version. Original price plus postage?