The startup behind the Pebble smart watch, which interacts with your iPhone or Android device, raised almost $8 million on Kickstarter with weeks to go in its fundraising period. Now it has announced its first app -- with months to go before shipping its first unit.
Fitness-tracking app RunKeeper will be the first outside application to send its notifications and display data on the watch.
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The app is an obvious fit for Pebble. Smartphones already tell the time. Connecting a watch to a smartphone seems most practical in active situations like running or biking that make it hard to reference a full-sized screen.
Through its Bluetooth connection, Pebble communicates with the smartphone in your pocket and lets you interact with apps from its e-paper screen. RunKeeper hasn't been specific about what its integration will look like (probably because, at least for the time being, the product it is working with doesn't exist).
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But the app will likely allow users to control their activity tracking and see their progress dashboard through the Pebble watch face.
Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky told Mashable in a recent interview that the startup will focus on integrating a handful of apps with Pebble before welcoming a wider variety of Pebble-friendly products.
"We basically said, there are all these sorts of people, and being able to not buy a sports watch for sports and then every other time in your life you have to wear a different watch," Migicovsky said. "Just wear one that transforms to all the different things you do."
The examples he suggests at the meeting are running, biking and hiking apps. RunKeeper suits all three of those activities, but the more interesting integrations will likely be less obvious.
"We are open to anything," Migicovsky says.
What app integration would you like to see on the Pebble watch? Let us know in the comments.
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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