AllThingsD » Dick Tracy

Behind the Pebble Smart Watch That's Smashing Kickstarter Records

Ina Fried — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 21:50:26 +0000

A start-up called Pebble is breaking Kickstarter funding records with promises of a watch that can share information with an iPhone or Android-based device. As of Monday afternoon, more than 20,000 people had pledged upwards of $3 million toward the watch.

Back when he was a Canadian college student, Eric Migicovsky came up with the idea while biking in the Netherlands. He found he was constantly pulling out his iPhone just to see who was calling or texting.

“Why couldn’t I just be able to look down at my wrist so I could make a better decision of ‘Do I want to pull out my phone?’” Migicovsky said in a telephone interview on Monday.

So when he got back to university in Waterloo, Canada, he started working on such a product. But given that it was 2009 and he was in Research In Motion’s hometown, the first watch was designed to talk to a BlackBerry.

“The world has changed and that’s why we have changed with it,” Migicovsky said.

Migicovsky created about 1,500 of the first-generation watches and got funding last year through Y Combinator along with some angel funding.

But when no venture capital firms wanted to back Pebble, Migicovsky turned to Kickstarter, hoping to raise a modest $100,000.

“That was our estimate,” Migicovsky said. “It proved to be wrong and we’re happily incorrect.”

Pebble gained a further bit of attention as Sony decided to announce its SmartWatch just as the start-up hit Kickstarter.

With the staggering response, Migicovsky is working to staff up and secure enough components to start shipping orders in September. The staff, which was five people heading into the weekend, has now doubled, Migicovsky said.

“We’re still modifying the plan to account for the wild success,” he said, but added, “We know what we are doing.”

The Pebble itself uses an e-paper screen similar to the kind used in e-book readers and works with the iPhone 3GS and newer models or Android devices running version 2.3 or newer, using Bluetooth to communicate with the phone. Features vary somewhat depending on the kind of phone connected to the watch.

With the iPhone, for example, Apple doesn’t offer a way for developers to access text messages, so there is no way for the watch to display that information.

No iPhone 4S at CTIA Show, but Plenty of Fun iPhone Accessories (Video)

Ina Fried — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 17:00:49 +0000

Wandering the show floor at the CTIA trade show on Tuesday, there was no sign of the iPhone 4S — though there were several options if you wanted to take Apple’s latest creation for a swim.

A North Carolina company called Dry Case sells a universal bag that can be used to take most phones or cameras underwater, while Vermont-based Drisuit Technologies had a waterproof case designed just for the iPhone.

In addition to waterproof cases there was an assortment of add-ons to show off, protect and accent the iPhone and other smartphones.

What the show floor lacked was a whole lot of whizbang new hardware. The spring CTIA show, Mobile World Congress and even the Consumer Electronics Show are far better venues for that.

Samsung and Google had been slated to introduce the first device running the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android, but that launch was scrapped. Among the few new products at the show were Huawei’s tablet for T-Mobile and Samsung’s keyboard-equipped Stratosphere for Verizon. AT&T also announced the coming arrival of several Android phones, including the Motorola Atrix 2.

It’s probably not destined to be a bestseller, but one phone that caught my eye was a device from a little-known company called Burg — a $200 unlocked watch phone. Eat your heart out, Dick Tracy.

[ See post to watch video ]

Justice Department Googles Google?

Kara Swisher — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 10:01:43 +0000

Calling Dick Tracy! Guess what the U.S. Department of Justice noticed yesterday?

Google is really, really big and powerful.

Thus, the Feds are casting a gimlet eye on an online ad partnership Google (GOOG) is considering with Yahoo (YHOO), which is trying to goose its value in the face of an unwelcome takeover bid from the last century’s monopolist Microsoft (MSFT).

It was widely reported yesterday that the Justice Department was looking into the recent outsourcing ad sales test by the search giant and No. 2 Yahoo, to see if it squares with antitrust law.

According to both Yahoo and Google, they lobbed in a call to regulators in advance of starting the test of a possible partnership, just to give them a heads-up, so this look-see was fully expected.

How nice that the two dominant companies, whose share together closes in on 80% of the market in search, can police themselves.

Is everyone relieved? We thought not.

While BoomTown has now moved on to figuring out if Google will become self-aware in 2012 and begin building Terminators to take out the future leaders of the human race, we would like to reiterate what we noted in a previous post:

And while it might be a long-cherished dream of Google’s to take over Yahoo search–and also get the chance to return to the scene of the crime, since Google got its first big push from doing Yahoo search, before Yahoo wised up too late–there is simply no way this will be allowed by regulators nor should it.

Still, you have to almost admire the chutzpah of the search giant in making this move, if the sheer and unadulterated arrogance of it wasn’t so distracting.

Because, while Google has almost none of the obvious menacing aggression that characterized Microsoft when it thoroughly dominated tech (although all those beach bikes on its campus inexplicably creep me out a little bit), the company still cannot be allowed to have a monopolistic share of the market.

It is bad for advertisers, it is bad for consumers, it is bad for innovation, no matter how well-intentioned Google is.

And no matter how many flashy moves Google and Yahoo make, it is flat-out wrong for one player to so dominate such an important sector.”

And whether the Feds decide if a union between Google and Yahoo is legal or not, let me repeat: It is dangerous and anticompetitive.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.