TALK about being mobile. Technology has advanced to a point that we can now carry on our wrist a device with processing power and data storage many times that of the guidance system that brought man to the moon. It boggles the mind to have such capabilities on a gadget worn on the wrist, formerly called a watch.
Millennials, of course, are blase to the wonders of technology. They grew up with them and in an environment with everything working on tap. But to people who knew a world without computers, it’s almost magical.
Smartwatches appear to be the next iteration of personal computing. Today, we are in the early and heady days of the inevitable move of computing from mobile to wearable.
I got a Sony Smartwatch 3 recently and experienced the promise of wearable computing. Yes, it’s still mostly a promise, albeit one that is in the immediate future. Moore’s Law, which stipulates that devices increase in power and go down in cost at a clockwork rhythm, will make it happen sooner than you can say Seiko.
I got the device for two reasons: 1) to serve as GPS tracker for my runs and 2) to experiment with using it for news or “glance journalism,” as industry wonks call it. If it weren’t for these, I would never consider buying such a device today. For a watch, it’s way too expensive. For a GPS tracker, it’s cheaper compared with existing stand-alone running watches. For a wrist computer, it’s priced just about right at the current industry trend.
I chose the Sony Smartwatch 3 because among available devices, it is the only one with on-board GPS. This means you can use it without having to bring along your phone. With a free app like RunKeeper, you can track your runs from pace to distance to actual map locations.
With other units, you need a phone with you because the watch will need to use its GPS capability to track location. Compared with Garmin watches popular with runners, the Smartwatch 3 is cheaper and provides more functions. You can, for example, listen to music stored on the watch via a Bluetooth-connected headset. You also have the bonus of being able to use the Smartwatch 3 even while not running.
As a news device, smartwatches shine. It’s a great device on which to read short text content like breaking news headlines. This without having to pull out your phone every so often. Only a few news apps currently support it. But if you use APIs or application programming interface, it’s easy to add the capability to your application. Our news app MyCebu.ph, for example, now supports Android Wear and can send headlines to smartwatches.
I don’t know if it is the journalist in me but I see smartwatches as news gadgets. They display a steady stream of the latest news headlines and quick updates relevant to your interest and other context such as current location, weather, time, etc.
One capability offered by a personalization app for Android Wear devices is truly astonishing. Smartwatches that run Android can have their watch faces personalized and one app you can use for this is WatchMaker. The app is trivial to use and yet so powerful.
You can completely customize your watch and add data points like time (in various formats), date (also in various formats and options), battery levels of the phone or watch, the number of steps you’ve taken throughout the day, and weather today and in the next few days.
You can do all these without having to program using actual codes and all in real time. After you finish your design, you just press a button and it is rendered in your watch. Again, without coding and compiling.
In the future, this capability will improve even more. People can program data feeds, from news streams to health information like blood pressure and sugar levels, on their watches and phones by just tapping things around to make these devices serve each person’s singular information needs. It’s truly magical.
(max@limpag.com / http://max.limpag.com)