pebble

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Help Kickstart a documentary on the cultural impact of "Back to the Future."

- How movie theaters keep cool through summer's scorching months.

- A Web site that exposes Instagram frauds that use #nofilter.

- Kanye, the new Steve Jobs, gets Jobs-signed Apple mouse.

- How Xbox fans in Japan earned the nickname "Gropers."

- Pebble smartwatch coming to Best Buy starting July 7.… Read more

Starting this Sunday, you can have any Pebble you want at Best Buy...as long as it's black.

True to rumors that leaked out yesterday, the Pebble-to-Best-Buy news is true. The Kickstarter-born Pebble Watch receives notifications from Android or iOS devices via Bluetooth and has a growing collection of watch faces and supported apps, including Runkeeper, but it hasn't been easily available to many of those who pre-ordered. Today's announcement that the Pebble will be at Best Buy will hopefully help with supply.

The Pebble will also get new retail packaging, a white box as opposed to … Read more

Pebble was one of the first smartwatches to debut and it looks like the device soon may become more mainstream.

The Pebble smartwatch is rumored to be sold at Best Buy within the next few weeks, according to claims from two employees who said they were briefed on the matter and a leaked document given to 9to5Mac.

The document shows an inventory form for a device classified as a "digital communication appcessory" that is to be in stock as of July 7. As 9to5Mac points out, the date could mean when the device goes on sale or just … Read more

The Pebble smartwatch certainly took its sweet time getting off the ground, but today the people who created Pebble say they have enhanced its application capabilities. Now able to talk in detail between phone and watch, Pebble apps promise true two-way communication. … Read more

When the Pebble watch unveiled its first Kickstarter videos, it seemed like a magic device. Some features, like health-tracking apps, played a major role in that perception. They haven't been available, however, until today, when RunKeeper finally updated its iOS and Android apps to support the little wearable device. It's a small moment for RunKeeper, but a big moment for Pebble.

I reviewed the Pebble smartwatch about a month ago. I was a little hard on it. Why? Because, for all the hype the Pebble watch had received, the actual device couldn't really do all that much. … Read more

From the moment I first looked at the Pebble Watch, it was clear that this was a device designed to be purely about apps. Unfortunately, none were really available until a week ago, when Pebble at last released an SDK, and along with it, updated firmware for the Pebble watch and a revised smartphone app.

Now, the number of user-made indie Pebble apps is steadily growing, and there are even places to go to browse them: Pebble's own watch face community message boards, and sites like My Pebble Faces.… Read more

After reviewing a handful of the latest and greatest smartwatches, I discovered something shocking. Out of my old electronics drawer I pulled out my iPod Nano, the 2011 clip-on MP3 player that's no longer even sold by Apple. It's attached to a Hex Nano metal watchband. I wore this for over a year, and was so in love with the idea of an Apple smartwatch that I was willing to forgive its limitations -- and that it wasn't really all that smart.

All of these smartwatches have arrived, and I've worn them. Yet, when I slip … Read more

Why wear a smartwatch? You might have said the same thing about carrying a smartphone before those got smart enough to be truly useful. Smartwatches are a sort of mini tech trend of the moment, but here's the brutal truth: we wouldn't recommend that our friends buy any of these, unless they're early-adopter watch fetishists. The smartwatches of today have a muddy mix of good, bad, and flat-out ugly features. At best, they're quirky and stylish. At worst, they're hobbled with short battery life or don't work at all.

None of the smartwatches we'… Read more