Freelancer has optimised its Messenger app to work on the Android Wear platform, with the hope freelancers and employers will use it to communicate more effectively when working remotely on a project together.
Nikki Parker, Freelancer regional director, North America and Oceania, says wearable technology has the potential to have a huge impact on the way people work, particularly for freelance workers who enjoy increased flexibility with their work schedule – often working from random locations.
The enhancements for Android Wear allow anyone with a compatible watch to speak into a smartwatch, with the app transcribing that into instant messages for forwarding on the Freelancer platform.
The app has multilingual support, so users can simply speak in any language that their phone is set to and the messages will get converted to text in that language using the Google Voice API.
Matt O’Kane, Freelancer’s director of products, says they will be creating a core Android Wear experience with a Wear app to add additional features in the coming months, such as bidding for projects directly from Android Wear devices, which streamlines the user experience on Freelancer.com.
Freelancer joins leading developers including Evernote, Trello and Duolingo, who released updates adding support for Android Wear since its release last week.
Matt Barrie, chief executive of Freelancer, believes wearable computing is the next frontier of mobile. Freelancer Messenger Android app is available on Google Play.
Image credit: Flickr/androidPT.Oficial
Bronwen has extensive experience in startups having run her own, worked at Australia’s leading startup incubator and as digital director at a local VC fund. She’s the vice-president of the Public Interest Journalism Foundation with a keen interest in digital media and the future of journalism. She has over 15 years experience as a journalist and is also a popular columnist with The Guardian.
