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Man, I wish my uncle had put up his journals about bringing computers to Africa. He and his partner Donna have spent the past several years collecting unwanted machines (exclusively Macs, since that's what he knows) to bring to South Africa and distribute to schools. He spends a great deal of his time and money collecting and fixing machines, configuring them, shipping them, and then teaching the educators there how to use them. He has written regular emails to freinds and family about his adventures that are riviting, inspiring and sad.

It is a noble effort, but it is a terrifically uphill battle that often ends in disappointment. In this case the cost of the computers is completely free -- but the social structures there just don't make things work. The government is so restrictive it's difficult to get them into the country in the first place. Transporting them results in unofficial payoffs to alleged "inspectors" who will stop transports on quiet roads and threaten to sieze the goods. Once in the schools, few peole know how to make the most of them, and allegedly trustworthy people (teachers and administrators) have been known to steal computers -- not to use them (since they often don't know how) but simply as a status symbol to keep on their desk.

I can't do the adventures justice, but suffice it to say that the cost of software is the least of the problems in Africa, even if we're limiting ourselves just to the discussion of computer usage.

That said, I think it's great work that does touch many people there, opening to them possibilities they would not otherwise be aware of. It is a rough environment for those rare gems, but worth it.

Cheers.

Not just misleading on mpp/cluster. Also dated with respect to Amdahl's law.

William Camp, a center director (http://www.cs.sandia.gov/), from Sandia National Laboratories, says that "contrary to Amdahl's expectation, we can routinely" do better. He also says that "Amdahl neglected the overhead due to communications". From a talk found at http://www.blu.org/meetings/2003/11/NovBlu.pdf and qualified a little more in http://www.top500.org/corner/articles/article_15.p hp.

While it might happen in Cambridge at any time, on September 10th it was supposed to happen in many other cities too -- it was Software Freedom Day.

This was a premeditated event, perpetrated by Mako (as previously linked in this thread) and the BLU crew. Sorry I couldn't be there, maybe next year. (I would suspect there may be some Ubuntu CDs at the Ocbober BLU meeting too, since Mako is speaking on Ubuntu.)

--Bill

While it might happen in Cambridge at any time, on September 10th it was supposed to happen in many other cities too -- it was Software Freedom Day.

This was a premeditated event, perpetrated by Mako (as previously linked in this thread) and the BLU crew. Sorry I couldn't be there, maybe next year. (I would suspect there may be some Ubuntu CDs at the Ocbober BLU meeting too, since Mako is speaking on Ubuntu.)

--Bill

I recommend joining the mailing list here. Search the archives. There are tons of emails that discuss building head-mounted displays (HMDs).

Indeed, where are the HMD's for a video iPod or other player? I don't want to crick my neck peering at a tiny display.

• Sony has more or less stopped selling the Glasstron.
• Olympus may or may not still be selling their LCD glasses
• Microvision is stuck selling advanced displays in tiny quanitities to researchers and the military, and seems to have dropped color.
• Asian companies selling decent resolution LCD glasses come and go

There's a list but nothing you can try and buy at the local computer store.

It's certainly got some history - a copy with some added poetry in the middle dating back to '95...
http://www.blu.org/pipermail/discuss/1995-December /026867.html

There's a few copies out there, but none seem to say who wrote it...
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22Year+after+yea r%2C+Papa+Bell+would+humiliate+itself%22

It's certainly rather splendid, though.

Register.com and Verisign don't control the .name TLD, either. They just resell the third level domains. Just like Sourceforge does.

However, if Sourceforge has been doing this since before November 1999, it's pretty obvious prior art. A search on Google turned up this email, which seems to imply that MediaOne used to assign your hostname based on your email address. Can anyone verify this? If so, it predates the patent, and is demonstrable prior art.

I know that one job I had in the past had a policy of assigning the hostname of your workstation to be the same as your email address. For example, if your name was Bob, your email address would be bob@company.com, and your workstation's hostname would be bob.company.com. And this was in 1997. I can't imagine we were the only ones doing this.

According to this, the current design uses a PC104 100MHz 486 board

And according to this they're not.

I would start looking into (single board computers) SBCs or PC104 solutions. Some of the most common and easily available are made by Advantech.

I would also start checking out wearable computing sites and lists. The list to read is wear-hard.

This went over the Boston Linux User's Group discussion list. Netscape.net and Citigroup addresses are bouncing mail as well. Here's the solution suggested on the list:

With Red Hat Linux 8 running sendmail, setup a mailertable. Create /etc/mail/mailertable and add the following lines:

aol.com smtp:mail.attbi.com
netscape.net smtp:mail.attbi.com
ssmb.com smtp:mail.attbi.com
citigroup.com smtp:mail.attbi.com

Register the mailertable db, stop and restart sendmail.

Well, Linux for 64-bit platforms have existed since 1995. Linus Torvalds spoke about it in Boston in 1995.

"The presentation began with a live demonstration of one of the latest Linux porting efforts, a low-end Digital Alpha system running in character mode showing a demonstration of Towers of Hanoi. Jim Paradis of Digital spoke briefly about the Alpha porting project and gave some references for a planned announcement of a low-end Alpha-based personal computer that should be available in the fall."

Personal thoughts: I got an M1 head-mounted display, but I found it to be too cumbersome (heavy on the head) and it distracted other people. Not a hardware hacker, so I haven't done any of the covert mods. Anyway, I switched to a monaural headset (just a single earphone+mic, looks like a handsfree kit) and am using Emacspeak for sound output. I still occasionally get confused, but it's pretty decent. I use a Twiddler for key input. The whole thing is pretty unobtrusive. I look like I'm listening to music and/or texting.

From what I've seen , and what the guys at wearables it is indeed possible to construct a low power pc that boots off a PCMCIA (adapted CF) card.
Although their end goals are not identical as yours, their immediate needs (low power) are the same.

It's more general than e-mail, but in the wearable computing community, there's a little application called Remembrance Agent, written by Bradley Rhodes that many folks use. In terms of stand-alone UI, it's still quite primitive, but that's because it was built around dynamic hooks into Emacs.

I've been playing around with some Java-based wrapper code, to wrap the ra-retrieve executable in a Server and allow clients to access the data via sockets. I have a Java-based client coded up that hooks into the System clipboard, but it's still in alpha-mode. All GPL'd of course, but needs a little time to mature. It's a proof-of-concept, work in progress. :-)

Check out Brad's site for more insight into the work he did and is doing.

Saw this a while ago on the wear-hard list, but another interesting site mentioned there was www.androidworld.com. Maybe not the best designed site in the world, but some interesting stuff if you like robots ;-)

Or at least, I believe it is. It's been mentioned here before.

The Xybernaut Poma is their OEM version of the direct-from-Hitachi model. Fifteen hundred bucks US gets you delivery before the end of Q1 2002.

It runs Windows CE, has no audio inputs, and I don't think anyone on the wearables mailing list has actually gotten one yet to see what development will be like, but it's very interesting, at least.

Wearables Central is a good place to start. People lookinto wearable computers have been looking for hardware that is both small and low powered. Plus many of them have been interested in sound. Something about needing it for speach recognition and sound output. You don't have a much space constraints so you could go with a dedicated sound board. I'd look into PC-104 based single board computes then add a sound board. For the screen, choose one from those supported by the SBC. For harddisk I'd use two laptop drives used in mirrored mode. That way if one fails, the other can take up the task. Case wise I'd get one of the standard PC-104 extruded AL cases, and add rubber bumpers. Power can come from a wall brick. Check out DigiKey. Personally I'd expect one of them DVD-RAM drives to die from vibration long before a good laptop HD would.

that we've seen similar threads before... I pop this big question.

Most people who want a wearable, at the current time, are complete geeks. Usually these types of people want stuff THEIR way, and they try to be economical when doing it, so why buy something like this?

I too want a wearable, and one that attracts the GOOD kind of attention, not the bad kind.. I decided to set about making one, and learned a LOT from various websites.

Of course, going the PC-104 route will still cost you a pretty penny, you can get a unit with a LOT more storage and custom input and display options. There are several pages on the net that go into detail on how to modify visor type displays and conceal them behind a normal pair of sunglasses.

For anyone serious about making a wearable, I say grow your own. It is a learning experience you can be proud of, instead of a product that you blew a pay check on, and then complain.. "I wish it did this, and that"

-fc

I want one of these for my wearable.

-nukebuddy

I have been wanting exactly what you are talking about for at least 6 years now. I've been looking for off-the-shelf because I've felt that I didn't quite know enough about hardware to build one and really don't have the time. A few years ago when Sun was talking about Java chips that could natively handle the language and perhaps it's own OS I thought they might head this direction with some hardware... but alas.

There are certainly enough (net|sys)admins out there to support a 'community' for this effort. After all this hardware setup is perfect for us at work or on the road. (Even at work we are away from our desks at racks of computers or in foreign data centers!) My company (Steem) will gladly step up the web resources , maybe even hardware purchasing if we could begin producing something 'sell'able. I would even venture to guess that ThinkGeek would support the endevour on some level.

I'll keep an eye on this story and see what develops. Obviously the more off-the-shelf (COTS as the gov businesses call it) stuff we can find the better. I have looked at the PC104 hardware and it seems do-able but we'll need to work at getting all the other pieces together.

BTW, if you haven't read through the MIT wearable web pages or wearables central, I suggest that you should. Lots of good hardware suggestions there.

Neat! I've had a fair bit of experience with EEG and ERP work, (I have worked in a couple of university labs doing just that) and I think it would be no more than making a clean little amp. Check out this email which has actual schematics. Have fun!

If I'm correctly decoding the URL of the pessimistic note, it's a year old.

There is a peer to peer mode in Ricochet modems - at least (here's the catch) the older modems. Some guys on the Wearable Computing Mailing List have gotten them to work in P2P mode without any trouble.

However, Ricochet removed or somehow blocked this functionality in more recent models (those released within the past year). So the newer modems, unless you can figure out what they did and undo it, are useless in P2P mode.

As for your buddy, he must not know about the older models (I've seen them work in a demonstration here in Canada - definitely no network infrastructure).

Hope she doesn't mind - I dug this link up a couple months ago. her site . Think it'd be better to put all that in a backpack.
I was actually considering the cappuccino because its onboard eth it has now but I may more likely go with a sony picture book.

for those interested in other alternatives

http://wearables.blu.org/quickcamir.html

The resoltion isn't that great, but the price can't be beat.

This would be great for people who wear their computers. This should be done for every urban area.

Also for those who care, Handkey corp is taking pre-orders on the new model of the Twiddler, the T2.

Link for handykey.com. I have a T2 on order. Read this wear-hard post from Handykey president (and practically sole employee), Dr. Chris George.

Perhaps this post to the Wear-Hard mailing list (and also this follow-up) contain the crux of Professor Pratt's arguments that you are referring to. However, none of this indicates that he doesn't believe this code-morphing technology couldn't be successfully (and lucratively) applied to emulation of non-x86 architectures (in fact he implies in the second post that he things they might do BETTER in competition with non-x86's). All he asserts is that the CURRENT RUN of chips is tuned solely for x86 emulation (i.e. you go buy a Sony laptop with a Crusoe, open the case and take out the processor; this chip you hold in your hand is only suited for x86 use), and Transmeta's literature is mainly focused on this use/tuning. That's a world away from saying that the code-morphing technology can't be applied to emulation of other architectures; even if the chips you can buy RIGHT NOW don't do it, it would require VERY minor changes in design and fabrication to "tune" the Crusoe to, say, a Sparc-emulating version. "Very minor" as opposed to the amount of effort required for Intel or AMD to design and fabricate chips to do the same.

So I will amend my initial statement slightly. You are correct: "Crusoe" (Transmeta's product as it now stands) can only emulate the x86 arch. However the TECHNOLOGY behind the product (I guess you could look at it as Transmeta's I.P. base, but people get so up-in-arms around here the moment you mention I.P. :-) is such that future generations of Crusoe (or whatever they may call it) may "jump tracks" very easily. This makes Transmeta MUCH more versatile and agile as a chip maker - certainly as opposed to Intel (what's it been, 5 or 6 years now since they've released anything that had any FUNDAMENTAL improvements (molest me not with this SIMD crap) to their architecture?)

Perhaps this post to the Wear-Hard mailing list (and also this follow-up) contain the crux of Professor Pratt's arguments that you are referring to. However, none of this indicates that he doesn't believe this code-morphing technology couldn't be successfully (and lucratively) applied to emulation of non-x86 architectures (in fact he implies in the second post that he things they might do BETTER in competition with non-x86's). All he asserts is that the CURRENT RUN of chips is tuned solely for x86 emulation (i.e. you go buy a Sony laptop with a Crusoe, open the case and take out the processor; this chip you hold in your hand is only suited for x86 use), and Transmeta's literature is mainly focused on this use/tuning. That's a world away from saying that the code-morphing technology can't be applied to emulation of other architectures; even if the chips you can buy RIGHT NOW don't do it, it would require VERY minor changes in design and fabrication to "tune" the Crusoe to, say, a Sparc-emulating version. "Very minor" as opposed to the amount of effort required for Intel or AMD to design and fabricate chips to do the same.

So I will amend my initial statement slightly. You are correct: "Crusoe" (Transmeta's product as it now stands) can only emulate the x86 arch. However the TECHNOLOGY behind the product (I guess you could look at it as Transmeta's I.P. base, but people get so up-in-arms around here the moment you mention I.P. :-) is such that future generations of Crusoe (or whatever they may call it) may "jump tracks" very easily. This makes Transmeta MUCH more versatile and agile as a chip maker - certainly as opposed to Intel (what's it been, 5 or 6 years now since they've released anything that had any FUNDAMENTAL improvements (molest me not with this SIMD crap) to their architecture?)

Perhaps this post to the Wear-Hard mailing list (and also this follow-up) contain the crux of Professor Pratt's arguments that you are referring to. However, none of this indicates that he doesn't believe this code-morphing technology couldn't be successfully (and lucratively) applied to emulation of non-x86 architectures (in fact he implies in the second post that he things they might do BETTER in competition with non-x86's). All he asserts is that the CURRENT RUN of chips is tuned solely for x86 emulation (i.e. you go buy a Sony laptop with a Crusoe, open the case and take out the processor; this chip you hold in your hand is only suited for x86 use), and Transmeta's literature is mainly focused on this use/tuning. That's a world away from saying that the code-morphing technology can't be applied to emulation of other architectures; even if the chips you can buy RIGHT NOW don't do it, it would require VERY minor changes in design and fabrication to "tune" the Crusoe to, say, a Sparc-emulating version. "Very minor" as opposed to the amount of effort required for Intel or AMD to design and fabricate chips to do the same.

So I will amend my initial statement slightly. You are correct: "Crusoe" (Transmeta's product as it now stands) can only emulate the x86 arch. However the TECHNOLOGY behind the product (I guess you could look at it as Transmeta's I.P. base, but people get so up-in-arms around here the moment you mention I.P. :-) is such that future generations of Crusoe (or whatever they may call it) may "jump tracks" very easily. This makes Transmeta MUCH more versatile and agile as a chip maker - certainly as opposed to Intel (what's it been, 5 or 6 years now since they've released anything that had any FUNDAMENTAL improvements (molest me not with this SIMD crap) to their architecture?)

applications are developed to take advantage of the increased capacity of modern drives

Steve Mann wears four Toshiba 18GB laptop drives full time for his wearable computer rig.

I got interested in computers in college. However, my college computer group nearly drove me away from the field.

In the beginning, I could barely use windows. I was fine with being treated as a "newbie" when I actually was a newbie. But when idea after idea was ignored (then approved whenever sonmeone else made the same suggestion), when I was excluded from meetings and officer's functions (I was an officer), when help sessions with the TA included his best friend, I realized I would always be a second-class citizen.

I left the computer club after three years. Last I heard, it was in shambles, which doesn't surprise me. I run linux now, I go to local lug meetings, and I'm planning to go back to school and study technical writing.

Girls are definetly discouraged from studing technical stuff. Being treated like a token, or a novelty, doesn't help. Like anyone else pursuing a "nontraditional" career path, I've had to do a lot of stuff on my own.

• Wearable Computer
• Wearable Computing Intro Page
• Wearable Computing Portal
• Wearable Computing Resource Page
• WearableGear.com
• Wearables Central
• Wearables WebCrawler Search Engine
• Wearables Webring
• WearableTech Corp.
• Wired News: Annotated Reality
• Wired News: Intel Chips In On Future Devices
• Wired News: Waiting For Wearable Wearables
• Wraith Projects
• Xybernaut

Impossible means no one's done it yet.

Here I have a whole bunch of links to further information about wearable computers and "enhanced reality" for anyone interested:

• A Brief History Of Wearable Computing
• Affective Computing
• BBC News: Japan Eyes Wearable PC
• Charmed Technology
• CNET.com: 10 Technologies That Will Take Over - #8
• CNN: Excuse Me, Is That A Monitor On Your Head?
• CNN: MIT 'Cyborgs' Bridge Gap Between Man And Machine
• CNN: Turn On, Jack In, And Geek Out With Wearable PC
• CNN: Wearable Systems May Cut Labor, Save Time
• CNN: Xybernaut Now Has Linux For Wearable PCs
• CNN Poll: Do You Want A Wearable Computer?
• Computer For The 21st Century, The
• ComputerWorld: Wearable Computers - Digitally Attired
• Context-Aware Computing
• CTHEORY: Body Delirium
• DisplayWear Incorporated
• Extreme Computing
• Handykey, Inc. Wearable Computing Page
• Houston Chronicle: Future Phones Home, The
• ICBorg
• Intelligent Information Filters And Enhanced Reality, by Alexander Chislenko
• ISWC- International Symposium on Wearable Computers
• Marvin Elizondo's Wearable Computing Page
• MicroOptical
• MIT-IDEO Wearables Intro
• NetWork Fusion: Armani, Karan, Xybernaut? 02/01/999
• PBS: Scientific American Frontiers Transcripts - Inventing The Future (Aired Fall 1996)
• PC World News: Wearable PC To Debut At Comdex
• PopSci.com Headlines: CyberFashions
• Slashdot Articles: Wearable PCs Under Linux
• Smart Rooms
• TechWearable
• TekGear
• Wearable Computer
• Wearable Computing Intro Page
• Wearable Computing Portal
• Wearable Computing Resource Page
• WearableGear.com
• Wearables Central
• Wearables WebCrawler Search Engine
• Wearables Webring
• WearableTech Corp.
• Wired News: Annotated Reality
• Wired News: Intel Chips In On Future Devices
• Wired News: Waiting For Wearable Wearables
• Wraith Projects
• Xybernaut

Impossible means no one's done it yet.

I'm a Boston-area student taking some time off (returning to classes this summer), and I have had no luck finding anything remotely technical.

I studied Journalism (though my degree will be English with a tech writing certificate), I was webmaster for my school paper, and I worked at a Help Desk for 5 semesters. Appartently, I dont't qualify for anything because I have (a) no CS degree, (b) no "real-world" experience, or (c) no car (I live in the inner city, very close to the T).

I have a portfolio. I belong to a lug . I'm funny. I'm smart. And I'm working as a secretary. Any clues as to what I'm doing wrong?

I cut my graphics-design teeth on Photoshop for Mac, and I've found GIMP easier to work with. Aside from including more filters, it lets you "undo" more.

The author demonstrated some projects from the book last month at my local LUG meeting. He presented without assuming that we had a graphic arts background (I can't draw). I think this is promissing.

So, when will we be able to buy a Transmeta version of what Jumptec has done for AMD with their DIMM PC, and what Cell Computing has done for Intel with their PNR?

I've been resisting buying Cell Computing's latest with a view to buying an equivalent Transmeta module for my own wearable dabblings... But I can only wait so long. :-)

At the last BLU meeting I attended, someone said the desktop queston (whether Linux will ever replace Windows) was irrelevant. I can't help but disagree.

I've been running Mandrake 6.0 since November '99. I've found software to do everything I used to do with Windows except file my taxes (WebTurbotax doesn't like my browser). The only things I miss from Windows are certain plugins (like Quicktime and Shockwave). Plus, my printer(an Okidata) and ex-modem aren't Linux compatible.

Promoting Linux for non-techies is a good thing. I'm a techie, and I'm still learning a lot. My sister, who is definitely not a techie and uses my computer for web surfing, is getting the hang of Linux. It does what she wants it to (except printing), and she's happy.

As far as using computers as an "appliance", both BeOS and Linux are being used in "web appliances" . With their ease of use compared with Linux's stability, Linux may come out on top in a few years.

I'm slightly far-sighted (or long-sighted for those in other countries) - do these things cause eyestrain? - or do they somehow get your eyes to focus at infinity Wearable displays use optics to focus your eyes at somewhere between 3 feet and 25 feet. 4-6 feet typical. The Glasstrons are set at 6.5 feet. wearables.blu.org

Seek and ye shall find... The best portal out there for wearables right now (IMNSHO) is Wearables Central
which links off to MIT's page, various independent pages, and a rather comprehensive list of hardware and
software vendors.

Yummy stuff. I'm still waiting for my M1 to arrive, although I've been seeing more and more about Retinal
Painting displays, like the one Thad Starner is sporting in this picture

Now _that_ is a HUD.

-Justin

Seek and ye shall find... The best portal out there for wearables right now (IMNSHO) is Wearables Central
which links off to MIT's page, various independent pages, and a rather comprehensive list of hardware and
software vendors.

Yummy stuff. I'm still waiting for my M1 to arrive, although I've been seeing more and more about Retinal
Painting displays, like the one Thad Starner is sporting in this picture

Now _that_ is a HUD.

-Justin

That sounds pretty cool. Do you still have any of the old code/hardwear specs around? That would make a great addition over at the wearables newsgroup home page. If you don't have time to put it up there email me the specs, and if I can get it to work, I'll document it and get it up with the credits to you and your friend. Then I'll hack the hell out of it for my personal use :)

I'm on a mailing list of folks who've been hacking wearable computing for quite a while now, and there's a guy by the name of Eric Laforest who's done just that, hacked a netwinder into a portable. You can probably look him up in the mail archives at http://wearables.blu.org/, which, btw, is a damn good source for ANY information on wearable computing.

First, some Wearable computing links:

• http://wearables.blu.org/ (use the static mirror for now)
• wear-hard@haven.org is a moderate traffic, but fun listserv for discussion of wearables by people that actually have wearables (and their admirers)
• http://lcs.www.media.mit.edu/proje cts/wearables/

And now some opinons:

Here are some obstacles to wearable computing by the masses

1. Footprint (wearprint). The size of wearables are still prohibitive. Disclaimer: this statement is a massively erroneous generalization. As most people on wear-hard@haven.org will tell you, the size of your wearable greatly depends on your needs. Are you building a walking workstation or just a custom PDA? Can you get by with CLI or need a graphic window system? Do you need a visual display at all? Nevertheless, I'd say most usefull wearables would still result in prohibitively large (or prohibitively expensive to make small) systems. Prediction: wearables will catch on when they're as inobtrusive as a Sony Discman and a pair of Gargoyle sunglasses.
2. Network. Computers in the future need to be connected (or able to connect) to the Net. Wearables pose some problems. Bandwidth. Need for a wireless infrastructure capable of supporting mobile devices. Fortunately, this nicely intersects with less-fringe technologies like laptops, PDAs and automotive computers
3. Interface. Well, until traditional software and Web site developers start building with Accesability in mind, then you must have either a very custom software environment or a visual display and run a graphical windowing system. Input is another difficult matter. One of the most popular input devices is the Twiddler, a hand held chording keyboard. However, in some circumstances, keyboard input is innapropriate. Speech recognition requires a powerfull CPU. Gesture based input is still an area of reasearch. Brain or nerve input is still Science Fiction. Prediction: non-standard computing I/O will be only be practical when more mainstream networked devices with limited display capabilities abound, i.e. networked Palm Pilots or automobile PCs will drive things like non-visual accessibility and software supportive of speech recognition, etc..
4. Mass Production. Wearables are very custom designed systems and often need to be built custom to the individual to be usefull.

First, some Wearable computing links:

• http://wearables.blu.org/ (use the static mirror for now)
• wear-hard@haven.org is a moderate traffic, but fun listserv for discussion of wearables by people that actually have wearables (and their admirers)
• http://lcs.www.media.mit.edu/proje cts/wearables/

And now some opinons:

Here are some obstacles to wearable computing by the masses

1. Footprint (wearprint). The size of wearables are still prohibitive. Disclaimer: this statement is a massively erroneous generalization. As most people on wear-hard@haven.org will tell you, the size of your wearable greatly depends on your needs. Are you building a walking workstation or just a custom PDA? Can you get by with CLI or need a graphic window system? Do you need a visual display at all? Nevertheless, I'd say most usefull wearables would still result in prohibitively large (or prohibitively expensive to make small) systems. Prediction: wearables will catch on when they're as inobtrusive as a Sony Discman and a pair of Gargoyle sunglasses.
2. Network. Computers in the future need to be connected (or able to connect) to the Net. Wearables pose some problems. Bandwidth. Need for a wireless infrastructure capable of supporting mobile devices. Fortunately, this nicely intersects with less-fringe technologies like laptops, PDAs and automotive computers
3. Interface. Well, until traditional software and Web site developers start building with Accesability in mind, then you must have either a very custom software environment or a visual display and run a graphical windowing system. Input is another difficult matter. One of the most popular input devices is the Twiddler, a hand held chording keyboard. However, in some circumstances, keyboard input is innapropriate. Speech recognition requires a powerfull CPU. Gesture based input is still an area of reasearch. Brain or nerve input is still Science Fiction. Prediction: non-standard computing I/O will be only be practical when more mainstream networked devices with limited display capabilities abound, i.e. networked Palm Pilots or automobile PCs will drive things like non-visual accessibility and software supportive of speech recognition, etc..
4. Mass Production. Wearables are very custom designed systems and often need to be built custom to the individual to be usefull.

Extreme Computing has now partnered with Ricoh to provide the Magio as a base for a wearable kit. Total cost under $2000 including M1 and Twiddler.

I'm not affiliated w/ the company BTW. Saw it on the wear-hard list today.

If you want to make your own, check this out
Looks very similar ..

• MIT Wearable Computing
• Wearables Central - good place to start; lots of related links.
  

You'd have to modify the drivers or have two drivers running mapped to different com ports. If you want to switch hands, there is a keyboard y-splitter, and I'm sure you could find one for a serial port too. Standard typing speed goes from very slow up to 40-50-60+ wpm for the very fast (and those who have nice macro layouts), but those speeds usually aren't reached until months of usage (or so I've heard).


Wearables Central, almost everything you would want to know about wearable/ubiquitous computing (or a link to it).