The smartwatch-maker Pebble has revealed how its first native fitness-tracking app work and also released a mood tracker called the Happiness app.
According to Engadget, following the launch of its crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter for three new fitness smartwatches - the Pebble Core, Pebble 2 and Time 2 - Pebble has a few health-related updates to share. The company published the algorithms behind its first native-fitness-tracking app, published the results of a sleep study and launched a mood-tracking app.
A Stanford University Ph.D. student in Neuroscience, Nathaniel Stockham, is the developer of the app's algorithms. He explained their details in a blog post on Medium. According to him, one of the algorithms can distinguish if the user is walking or running and counts steps while the other detects and measures motion.
According to Pebble's Kickstarter page, algorithms can make wearables relevant to healthcare researchers and useful to developers. By making its own fitness algorithms available to the public, the company aims to attract third parties to expand upon its offerings. But other manufacturers are not so willing to share their secrets.
Pebble has also released its Happiness app that is a mood tracker. The application asks its users how they are feeling every hour you're awake. It also asks users who they are with, what they have just done and what they are doing. This way, the Happiness app can evaluate what affects users' moods.
Susan Holcomb, Pebble Head of Data, has described in a post on Medium her personal experience with the Happiness app. According to her, the application helped her realize that when she interacts with other people her mood gets better.
According to The Verge, Pebble's collaboration with Stanford University goes deeper than its algorithms and the development of its new mood-logging Happiness app. All the company's moves suggest some serious fitness-tracking ambitions. Perhaps Pebble wants that its algorithms to become a standard for everyone developing fitness apps.
