Used to be, if one wanted to receive real-time updates on a smart watch about their e-mails and texts, they would probably have to go Pebble.
No more. A Seattle-area entrepreneur is raising funds for the Cookoo watch on kickstarter. A design project by Peter Hauser from Kenmore, Wash., the Cookoo project has already surpassed it’s initial $150,000 goal, raising more than $200,000 in pledges from nearly 1,900 backers to date. And there are 17 more days to go. (Of course, that’s nowhere near the $10.2 million that Pebble pulled in).
The Cookoo watch’s features will help users manage their social networks, e-mails, phone messages, texts and apps in one place. It need not ever be recharged. It boasts a round face — and a different, and may we say, more stylish look than the square-faced Pebble — and color schemes like green on black, black on black, brushed stainless on black, white on black and blue on black. And it even comes with a box that can be reused as a bird feeder.
Hauser is a former Microsoft employee and joined its hardware division in 1998. He helped develop the first optical mice, first Bluetooth mice and keyboards, and led the Bluetooth HID working group, according to his online bio at kickstarter.
We’re still out on whether smart watches are necessary in our connected age of smartphones — can you remember the last time you wore one? — but it may yet prove to be another handy way to get nagged by your significant other to buy milk.
What do you think? Would you rather sport a Pebble or a Cookoo?
