I recently received my Pebble Smart Watch from the Kickstarter campaign. From just a few days of using it, it is clear to me that products like the Pebble or Google Glass are going to change the way we interact with the digital world, and could ultimately replace smart phones. After all, I use my phone mostly to receive or send short messages, make phone calls, and poll for information — I do not need a large screen most of the time to accomplish my daily tasks. I thought I’d share some nifty uses I’ve come up with so far for the Pebble with an Android device.

Get Apps to Push Notifications

The first app you should install after the official app is the Pebble Notifier. Pebble Notifier provides a plugin for Tasker (which I will talk more about later) and allows you to select some or all of your apps to push notifications to your wrist. This allows you to extend your notifications beyond texts, phone calls, and email messages. What is more, the Notifier application lets you pass your Gmail notifications without authenticating again within the Pebble application.

So far my favorite notifications to receive have been from Google Maps/Navigation application. Because the navigation app updates the notification bar with the latest turn-by-turn directions, you get those same directions on your wrist! A quick glance at my wrist helps me keep my eyes on the road as I drive, and the watch vibrates more frequently as the turn approaches.

Get the Tasker App to Automate all the Things

The Tasker application for Android allows you to automate all sorts of day to day operations on your phone. As you drive home Tasker can adjust your ringer, switch on your bluetooth, and put on some music based on your location. The Pebble Notifier app provides a plugin to Tasker so you can push notifications to your watch. You can use this to stay on top of the latest Tasker run.

Be sure to check out the beta Tasker app if you have Android 4.0+ to get the full benefits of the holo redesign.

Get the NFC Launcher App

Grab some NFC Tags and the NFC Launcher app to automatically launch Tasker tasks. Put one on your front door to automagically configure your phone and push the results to your Pebble.

Get the Pushover App and use the API

The Pushover app allows you to send messages directly to your Pebble. Pushover also has a robust API so you can hook up your Pebble to your custom applications and scripts. I’ve added Pushover support to my blink(1) monitoring scripts, and now when a server goes down it gets pushed straight to my wrist!

Connect Pushover to IFTTT

Pushover also connects to IFTTT.  IFTTT  is a service that automates tasks between different services. Publish a new blog post? Have it pushed to your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts. Want to know if it is going to rain or snow tomorrow? Have the alerts pushed right to your wrist if the weather turns bad.

Wait for the SDK

Pebble has yet to release their SDK, but entrepreneurial users have already started reverse engineering the Pebble.

Read the Reddit Thread

Watch for updates and user content on the Pebble reddit thread.

 

I’d be curious to hear about others’ use cases in the comments.