Pebble Donates Watches To Engineering Schools

In an effort to expand the functionality of its smartwatch, Pebble announced its new project aimed at getting the watch and its SDK into the hands of engineering students by donating over 4,000 units to universities like Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Standford, Virginia Tech, and others.  Right now, the market for smartwatches is still made up of early adopters, but by encouraging development of apps via their official SDK, Pebble, a frontrunner in the space, could potentially make the watches attractive to a more mainstream audience.  Only time will tell what comes of increased developer traction for the platform, but Pebble is looking like a strong competitor.

Extreme Reality Wants To Make Regular Webcams Act Like Kinects

An Israeli startup specializing in motion capture technology says it has developed a platform to give any basic webcam or laptop camera Kinect-like capabilities.  The company, called Extreme Reality, aims to give users “a console-like experience without the user having to buy additional hardware.”  So far a handful of game makers like have adopted their technology, including game giant SEGA, as well as a handful of indie houses.  After eight years of closed-door development, this breakthrough is the first taste of what Extreme Motion has been up to, but the future looks bright as there seems to be more where that came from.