My Band with some decoration for the upcoming US MVP Open Days
My Microsoft Band arrived last week. I had first tried one out last November at a Microsoft Store and it felt like a handcuff. It turned out I was indeed holding it wrong. I put it on with the face on the top of my wrist, but it’s really designed so that the face of the band is on the inside of the wrist. When I wear as an “innie”, I don’t really notice that I’m wearing anything.
At work, I check the number of steps that it was recorded. It’s a motivational tool for me to get up and walk around the office. I hate running, but I’m looking forward to riding my bike in warmer weather and having it record my rides.
The other thing that I am looking forward to doing is to write some apps that will work with the Band. Microsoft has released a preview version of an SDK that will let you write apps on Windows Phone, Android, and even iOS that can read the sensors on the Band and send notifications back to the band. Xamarin has already released a Xamarin port of that SDK for iOS and Android.
Right now the SDK is limited to apps that running in the foreground, it does not yet support accessing the Band from a background app process. That will initially limit the types of 3rd party apps that can be written for the Band. But I’m confident that will be addressed in a later release.
I was able to use a custom background image and send it to the Band with the app Pimp My Band. I’ll be attending the first US MVP Open Days later this week and it makes for a nice touch to show the MVP logo.