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Did your vibrating fitness bracelet wake you up on time? Good, because Jawbone has not one, but two pieces of news to share this morning. First off, getting the corporate news out of the way, the company's buying BodyMedia, perhaps best known for its wearable fitness trackers (yep, similar to what Jawbone's already making). In fact, though, BodyMedia's been in the health-data business since 1999, with a particularly strong foothold in the medical industry -- a market Jawbone hasn't reached yet, but would like to. As you can imagine, once the deal is finalized and Jawbone brings on BodyMedia's 60-odd employees, the plan will be to improve Jawbone's existing apps, and maybe even break into healthcare. In the meantime, we're told Jawbone will continue to sell BodyMedia's fitness monitors, but the company hasn't said either way if it plans to keep them around indefinitely.
Speaking of improving the current Jawbone apps, the company is also opening up its API to developers so that they can use Jawbone stats in their applications, as well as share their own data back with Jawbone. For now, the Up platform is open only for iOS, though a company rep told us an Android version is in the works too. (No exact ETA there, sorry.) At launch, there will be 10 apps on board, including notables like RunKeeper, Withings and MapMyFitness. What's neat is that users can manually disable a connection with these apps anytime they want, and when they do, these third-party developers are required to delete user data from their servers. Again, no word on when this will be available for Android, but for now, at least, the iOS platform is open to developers worldwide. Hit the break for more info, along with a full list of the apps you can sync with your Up band right away.
Filed under: Wearables
So, Amazon has a reading platform called Kindle. Goodreads has a platform that makes fairly excellent suggestions when it comes to reading materials. You probably see where this is going. This evening, Amazon announced that it was acquiring one of the more popular reading recommendation engines, and while the outfit isn't making clear what it plans to do with the technology, it shouldn't take a scholar to see how it'd bolster Amazon's Kindle reader line as well as its array of Kindle apps. (What'll happen to Shelfari, however, is perhaps a bigger mystery.)
Russ Grandinetti, Amazon's vice president of Kindle Content noted that "Goodreads has helped change how we discover and discuss books and, with Kindle, Amazon has helped expand reading around the world -- together, we intend to build many new ways to delight readers and authors alike." It's entirely likely that this will add another social angle to the Kindle framework, further establishing an ecosystem where friends could see suggestions based on what they're independently reading through their own Kindle accounts. The companies are expecting the deal to be finalized in Q2, which suggests that we'll see a proper integration just as back-to-school season begins. Right, guys?
Filed under: Amazon
