NewsFlash

Inspiration

We wanted a way to keep up with the news, and we wanted a way that fit into our everyday busy lives. We came up with NewsFlash to get the information conveyed faster, better, and more permanently, so that at any moment in his or her life, a person can be up to date with the world around them.

What it does

When the watchapp is run, the user is given the choice of what topic they want to read about. They choose a topic, and a random article off the topic news of the New York Times concerning that topic is brought in front of the user. The abstract of the article is flashed one word at a time, allowing the user to easily understand information in a shorter period of time.

How I built it

We used CloudPebble, an online text editor and emulator of the Pebble watch, to write the code. We had one code in C and one code in JavaScript. We tested it every once in a while on the Pebble watches we borrowed.

Challenges I ran into

Retrieving the abstract, dividing it into a bunch of one word long strings, and displaying one word at a time was the hardest part. The Pebble watch we were lent had a lot of hardware limitations, and the Pebble C libraries were lacking. There was so little at our disposal to use in terms of using C.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

When we got the first image to display on our watch, we were very proud of ourselves.

What I learned

I learned that it's very difficult to code for hardware that you've never had experience with in languages you haven't had much experience with at all.