You may have heard of Pebble, the Bluetooth-enabled line of watches that connect directly to your smartphone. You know, the one that raised nearly $8 million (and counting) on Kickstarter? Well, they’ve announced their first app partner, and it’s RunKeeper.
That’s right, as soon as the watches are available you’ll be able to use them with RunKeeper to track your workouts. Here’s how it works: since Pebble has no GPS, you can’t leave your phone at home. But whether you store it in a bag, in a pocket, on an armband, or wherever else, you’ll be able to quickly see your progress by glancing at your Pebble watch. Pretty slick.
As CEO Jason Jacobs wrote in a blog post:
Well, when Pebble approached us about integrating with RunKeeper, we loved the idea. We know that many of you are always looking for ways to make your fitness tracking easier, and with Pebble integration, you won’t ever have to pull the phone out of your pocket or armband – you can just see and do everything you need right from your watch (which connects with the phone via bluetooth). Not to mention that quite a few of you have been requesting it in our support forum as well.
We are pleased to announce that, when the Pebble watches are available, they will be integrated with RunKeeper! We are also super honored to be the very first app integration partner that Pebble chose to work with. It will likely be a few months until the watches are ready, but when they are, you will be able to see your in-activity display and control RunKeeper right from your wrist.
This should be a big attraction for more serious RunKeeper users who want to monitor their workouts more closely and maybe will even draw in runners who currently use a GPS-enabled watch rather than the app.
The Pebble team has been designing smart watches for three years, including the inPulse for Blackberry, and you can pre-order the Pebble for iOS or Android on Kickstarter.
Beyond RunKeeper, this points to the growing centrality of the mobile device in the computing ecosystem. A watch isn’t a watch anymore; it’s something to connect to your smartphone. That trend is likely to ramp up in general. It might not be long before your TV fills the same function. You might even see tablets, laptops, and desktops going the same way, with personalized computing centered on the mobile device and other computers connecting to mobile in order to personalize your experience.
If you haven’t seen the Pebble video yet, take a look. It’s a beautiful product, and a great fit for RunKeeper.
