Hasta La Gadget!

Archos just dropped a huge smattering of CES news in advance of the huge annual tech show, which kicks off next week in Las Vegas. Among the various announcements, tucked away near the bottom, is the revelation that it will be introducing a “selection of smartwatches” for 2014, which will start at under £50 (roughtly $82 U.S.).

Archos doesn’t go into much detail about its smartwatches, saying only that they’ll have a “pebble-like” design and will work with both Android and iOS smartphones and tablets. The “pebble-like” seems like a blatant shot across the bow of Pebble, the Kickstarter-backed hardware startup that began building smartwatches under that name this past year, though it’s probably meant on the surface to indicate the things will look somewhat like rocks.

The Pebble is arguably the current leader in the smartwatch space, having sold somewhere around 300,000 units to date according to the latest official figures released by the company. Archos, the French company behind a line of moderately successful media players, and subsequently many Android-based tablets and gaming gadgets of questionable quality, looks to be trying to exploit the opportunity exposed by newcomer Pebble with cheaper devices in a range of options to suit the needs of various consumers.

Archos is targeting “simplicity and function” with its smartwatch designs, the company says, which could actually seem to be at cross-purposes. Maybe they’ll have some feature heavy designs, more like the Samsung Galaxy Gear, and some that are essentially just streamlined data delivery devices, more like the Pebble itself. Either way, I highly doubt Archos will find a red-hot seller in any smartwatch design – but that doesn’t mean it can’t meddle with the grand plans of Pebble and other startups.

Pebble is currently running a lot of sales and promotions, and giving away a good number of devices. This means that either A) it’s finding interest is dropping off after initial demand has been satisfied; or B) it’s gearing up to release second-generation hardware. Regardless, I still think we’ve yet to see any proof that watch-based computing is something that’s feasible as a mainstream device, and entrants from Archos are unlikely to provide said evidence.

The first big update to the Pebble ecosystem is about to hit inside early 2014 in the form of the Pebble appstore. This portal for Pebble apps and companion apps … Continue reading

Today, Pebble announced its app store and we are very happy about this news, this will make the process of finding and installing the applications more friendly for new users. When I tried the Pebble, I found it a little complicated to find good applications easily.

Right now, there are many places where you can download Pebble apps and watch faces besides within the Pebble app, the Google Play store and the Apple App store. PebbleBarn and MyPebbleFaces.com are the most popular third party app and face stores and they are recommended on the Pebble Support Center.

The Pebble App Store will go live early next year alongside the SDK 2.0 that was announced a month ago. According to the company, the app store will include 7 categories for Daily, Remotes, Games, Notifications, Tools & Utilities, Sports & Fitness and Watchfaces.  In each category, users will find a selection of the best apps.

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Pebble App Store Announced original content from Ubergizmo.

Pebble today revealed a new project aimed at education in which it will donate over 4,000 smartwatches to higher ed schools including Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Stanford, Virginia Tech and many more. The donation is worth over $600,000, according to Pebble’s own estimates, but it’s clearly designed to make sure Pebble and the Pebble SDK are in the hands of the next generation of top-tier developers before they ever even hit the job market.

Now that Pebble has released its official app creation SDK, and unlocked many of the dormant features of the platform, it needs developers to get on board and start pumping out creations that really show off the potential of wrist-worn computing to push the Pebble’s appeal beyond the early adopter and gadget loving crowd who’ve already purchased one, and into the mainstream. Software sells hardware, and developers build software. In school, they’re often more willing and able to experiment with platforms that don’t necessarily have a proven ability to pay the bills, hence why it’s a good idea to give these things away to engineering students as development hardware.

Pebble only recently hit the tipping point in terms of having stock on hand in stores and online, but current inventory levels seems strong, and there’s also a sale on right now offering a $10 discount on new units. As 9to5Mac’s Seth Weintraub noted on Twitter, this sale and education donation could be taken as evidence that the company is looking to offload stock ahead of some kind of refresh.

Pebble donating watches blog.getpebble.com/2013/12/16/peb… + Big $90 Sale 9to5toys.com/2013/12/15/peb… +CES = Update coming soon—
Seth Weintraub (@llsethj) December 16, 2013

Pebble is also offering a special discount through its institutional partners to anyone who wants to order a personal device through them, it notes in its announcement today, which could also be taken as an indication that it’s offloading on-hand stock. This is a key time to watch the wearable computing manufacturer, since at the very least it’s clear it’s through the frenzy and supply catch-up process that it faced while Kickstarting the project and quenching initial demand.

Are you feeling sore that as a Windows Phone device owner, your handset does not support the Pebble smartwatch? Well, there is a ray of hope at the moment which while, it is not official, it will still be able to play nice with the Windows Phone 8 platform. If you have an idea as to how download as well as install an app over from the Windows Phone Store, you would be able to enable your Windows Phone-powered device with your Pebble smartwatch.

The app’s name is Pebble Watch Pro, and after it has been installed on your Windows Phone 8 device, you should be able to check out your tweets, calendar notifications and network alerts right there on the Pebble smartwatch itself. Not only that, why not use the app to alert you whenever your smartphone’s battery drops to levels such as 50%, 40%, 30%, 20% or 10%. Not only that, you will also be on the receiving end of a notification whenever you lose or regain access to your 3G, 4G or Wi-Fi connection. The app itself will cost $1.99 on the Windows Phone Store, and there is also a free version of it if you like, known as the Pebble Watch Lite, but the functions on that would be extremely limited, as in, to control your music playback only.

Pebble Watch Pro Offers Unofficial Windows Phone 8 Support original content from Ubergizmo.