The one thing a wireless smart watch has to do (apart from keep time!) is pick up the news on the radio.

Apparently, SPOT can't do this...

Edited by author 11-18-2003 06:47 AM
They can forget it as far as I'm concerned. If all the thing does is display data, my cellphone can do that. All the thing needs to do, is talk to my phone by Bluetooth. If my lifestyle means I sometimes don't carry my phone but I still want to receive data on my watch - during a squash game, say - that's pretty sad, isn't it?

A useable data /input/ device on my wrist, and now we're talking. Even without radio. Unfortunately, as you said, the Fossil/Abacus PalmOS wristwatch is postponed, and I gather the current release date - did you say this is Q1-2004 as well? - isn't a promise.

FrogPad looks interesting... a (not necessarily so designed) wearable Bluetooth mini-keyboard. Not yet, though, and if it's taken them this long to implement USB, and a partner is helping them Bluetooth-ize it, and if the Bluetooth Tax /plus/ the Disability Funky Keyboard Captive Market Tax both apply - and remember, these metaphorical surcharges are multiplicative - ouch.

OTOH, somewhere I was reading about someone selling a box that converts USB to wireless, not necessarily Bluetooth - I forget - the idea is, box A plugs into USB on the PC or whatever, and box B plugs to your USB peripheral, such as Frogpad... we're there. 'Course, box B you have to tuck under your arm while you walk around typing. ;-)

They think FrogPad is a cute accessory to Tablet PC. I'm not sure, particularly with the cable. I'd rather have software; I'm still writing this on a Tablet using the solution from <http://www.fitaly.com/>; - creatively (two instances, separate clicker instead of pen point). This product is useful and good, on Palm /and/ Tablet (and Pocket PC, etc.), but the implementation is jammed in beta development hell (100,000 Tablets sold worldwide appears to be the whole potential market, so it's on the back burner to say the least) and is too darned small, to which I have no solution yet: if anyone knows of magnifier software which lets you click on the magnified image through to the application being magnified, tell robert.carnegie@seemis.com . Please. Please please.

Of cours, Disability Captive Tax also applies to software. Typists with one working hand can buy a product that flips half the standard keyboard onto the other half, with spacebar as shift key. Price last seen, $400, although I think it's implemented in Linux for free - don't tell SCO, 'cause it's surely patented.

Conversely, when I bought Fitaly for PalmPilot, I benefitted from the PDA Application Price Ceiling, where the price tag of consumer software (1) may not exceed the price of the hardware it runs on and (2) is proportional to device size... something else that I see biting Microsoft over SPOT. $10 may not be much any more, but I still think you'd be crazy to pay even that as a monthly fee on a wristwatch. I predict wearable sundials making a comeback, sunlight is free :-)
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It's true that your cellphone can display the same data as the SPOT watch. But if that makes the SPOT watch useless, then why do people wear watches when they can just get the time from their cellphone?

Some cellphone owners don't wear a watch. Mine, you have to unlock to see the time, and anyway I'm not quite sanguine yet about wearing a microwave antenna on my body every waking hour.

For those less worried, the Japanese keep demonstrating wrist phones, although I don't know if anyone's gotten around to selling them, yet.
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The IXI Mobile design is the way to go, surely?

Edited by author 11-26-2003 10:52 AM
IXI... I think software support is the issue. To be universally useful, a device has to provide access to third-party apps. I want personal databases; a shopping list, a diet calculator, an exercise diary. Some games would be nice. The software doesn't all have to run on the wrist device; it can be an Internet service. Or, with something like Java, parts of it can run in different places.

If IXI can put my phone controls /or/ my PDA /or/ my Tablet PC data /or/ the company intranet on my wrist, or in my hand, I'll take it. If I can mix and match different manufacturers' devices, and change my PMG withoUt replacing aNything else, that's great. But it needs to run applications written for another system, whether that's PalmOS, PocketPC, or Symbian, or Windows XP, MacOS, Linux, or Cybiko.

I wonder if there's a market for a device that you wear on the wrist, but slip off and stand on the desk for a heavy session. Maybe with that projected keyboard idea... and, given my wrist problem, I'd like it with Fitaly, please. ( www.fitaly.com ) Maybe add an audio pickup to help it to distinguish the strokes... or speech control, but that's still unsatisfactory on today's Tablet PC, what hope is there for wearable gadgets in this decade?
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You say /m6 - "what hope is there for wearable gadgets in this decade?"

I suspect there's a "lateral thinking" way around this. I suspect that if we start to look into a future where high-speed broadband, with low latency, is ubiquitous, then you start to ask yourself a different question.

You start to wonder, not "how can I get all these features into a portable device?" but, rather, "how easily can I connect to a server which provides these features remotely?"

There are "degrees of remote" too. Something beyond the capability of a slow, power-miserly wrist-phone may well be easy over Bluetooth, for the processor in your briefcase. Something which your briefcase processor can't cope with, might be easily performed by your PC back at home, over the Internet.

Think of it as "processor cacheing" and see where it takes you?

hi, i'm interested in some advice. does anybody know if one person should reveal their health history on a police application? already applied to one organization, but diqualification may be the result. how can i avoid this from happening. thanks