Back in April 2012 an interesting project was announced on Kickstarter.com. It was the Pebble watch. I’ll let Pebble describe it.
Pebble is the first watch built for the 21st century. It’s infinitely customizable, with beautiful downloadable watchfaces and useful internet-connected apps. Pebble connects to iPhone and Android smartphones using Bluetooth, alerting you with a silent vibration to incoming calls, emails and messages. While designing Pebble, we strove to create a minimalist yet fashionable product that seamlessly blends into everyday life.
In other words, it’s geek-o-riffic.
If you’re not up on Kickstarter, it’s a website that allows projects to be funded through crowdsourcing. Sometimes there’s a little tschotske for the financial backers, sometimes not.
Pebble was different. For $115 you got a watch… when they were made…
ESTIMATED DELIVERY Sep 2012
Yeah — good one there.
Pebble’s logistics problem wasn’t producing the watch as much as it was producing the watch in quantity! The developers were looking to raise $100,000. Instead they collected $10,266,845 from nearly 69,000 backers.
Overfunded is just as big a problem as underfunded, or so I’m led to believe. Production turned into mass production.
Today at CES in Las Vegas Pebble announced they were ready to deliver! The first watches hit the mail within two weeks. Mine won’t be in the very first shipment, but it shouldn’t take long. I’m very excited.
Pebble is just one in a growing number of wrist worn computers on-the-way. The future just keeps on coming.