January 10, 2004
a tale of two time pieces....
so i need a new watch anyway, but i can't decide between which one to get....<whisper> may have to get both</whisper>
spot watch
microsoft finally announced the availability of their spot watches initially announced at comdex in 2002, which utilise the msn direct service at ces the other day
the ability to get news, weather, sports, stocks and travel info (to name a few) along with messages from ms messenger and sync'ing your watch with your outlook calendar is a pretty amazing step forward in portable connected devices...
now i know everything i have just mentioned i can get on my mobile phone, but until my mobile phone is sitting on my wrist and i can access all this information with only one or two button presses and it automatically changes its time based on where i am at that particualr moment (as long as i'm in the US...obviously)....the spot based watch is a jump in the right direction..
the guys over at Mobitopia and a number of other places are giving the spot watches and the msn direct service a bit of a bagging at the moment, but i think given a bit of time, the issues they have with the service not initially being what it was promised to be will be just a case of launch time bugs...saying that it will flop because all the services it has are primarily available via SMS i don't think stands up.
in australia we have had sms up and running for a while longer than the US and though it is hugely popular i don't find that myself or any of my friends (or anyone i know for that matter) use sms to get weather reports or any of the other services that you can, or will be able to get with spot/msn direct. i think the primary reason comes down to the percieved cost of sms, because even though you are paying for the msn direct services, because its a monthly (or yearly) fee and more to the point, because it comes straight to your watch, the perception will be different....but think it also goes beyond perception...
your average person just does not know (or care) how to set their mobile phone to receive additional info...if you can't do it via a wap or gprs connection....go to your service providers web site, find the right page, work out the individual prices, send an sms message to subscribe, wait for an answer, send an sms message to confirm subscription...and if your lucky, the info will come through....travelling to another state??....lets go through the process again...travelling overseas???...does you provider even work properly....all inall, to much of a hassle even for me....
the biggest issue that i agree with everybody on is the time between needing to charge the battery in the watch....then again...i charge my mobile phone, my bluetooth headset, my blackberry, my tabletpc, my ipod, my gps, my digital camera...who says i can't get used to charging my watch...i don't exactly wear it for up to 6-8 hours a day when i'm in bed which is when i charge everything else....
mars standard time
a small master watch maker Garo Anserlian of Executive Jewelers tool an unbelivebale order from NASA JPL staff who are involved on the Mars Rover "Spirit" crew to create a watch which lost 39 minutes a day (the martian day is 24 hours and 39 minutes long) so that they could be synchronised with the rover while it is operational on Mars...
as it turns out, Cory Doctorow (of "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" and "A place so foreign and 8 more" fame) is about to release another book called "Eastern Standard Tribe" about a group of people bound together by a sleep schedule based on the east coast of the US....
either way...gotta get me a watch when i am in the US for etech (or maybe two ;) along with Cory's new book.....
Posted by SplaTT at January 10, 2004 06:20 PM