Hello, Watch - now, a cellphone on your wrist (almost)

By Vasudev Ram

Seen via this TechCrunch post: InPulse Adds A Smartphone-Like Experience To Your Wrist Watch.

Th idea seems rather cool and useful.

InPulse is a Y Combinator-backed startup. It's been reviewed by the New York Times, Engadget, GigaOm and WIRED, according to their front page.

It can be used in a hands-free way to check your email messages, SMS and calls, and that is just a few of the many possibilities.

Excerpts from the InPulse site and/or the TechCrunch article:

[ The device connects via Bluetooth to your phone and will deliver email alerts, SMS messages and calls directly to the watch. The watch can connect wirelessly to all kinds of host devices: computers, laptops, and smartphones and works best with Android, Blackberry, Mac, Windows and Linux (adding iPhone support is in the works, but Apple requires special chips to be built into the watch.) It’s a two way connection, so inPulse can send packets back to the host based on user interaction. ]

[ InPulse has opened up it platform to developers and so far over 30 apps have been created for the watch. These range from making your watch into an iTunes music controller to becoming a PowerPoint presentation remote control (Migicovsky used his InPulse watch to present and pitch during Y Combinator’s demo day a few weeks ago). You can also check-in to Facebook Places from the watch. The beauty of the device is that you can program it to display anything via apps. Another popular use case is to programmers is display real time server stats for programmers on the go. There’s even a site devoted to featuring the watch’s apps. ]

About InPulse

And for why I titled this post "Hello, Watch ...", see here.

Make sure to scroll down a bit on that page ...

Update:

1. The name of the company behind the InPulse product is Allerta, from Waterloo, Canada.

2. Some people may remember that IBM had put Linux on a watch some years ago, after they started getting into Linux in a big way. Here are some links about that:

http://www.research.ibm.com/WearableComputing/linuxwatch/linuxwatch.html

http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/An-interview-with-IBMs-Linux-Wrist-Watch-project-leader/

CNET News - IBM clocks in with new Linux watch:
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1040-254658.html

Papers published about the IBM Linux Watch:
http://www.research.ibm.com/WearableComputing/linuxwatch/papers/papers.html


- Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises

Twitter: @vasudevram

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