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MP3 Player in a Watch
Myriad writes "Casio has announced a new wristwatch that doubles as a MP3 player. Set to begin shipping in summer, it will initially be available in 16, 32, and 64MB versions. All versions use a built in USB port for transfer. Another new watch sports a built in 120x120 16-grayscale digital camera and LCD display. It uses an infrared port for communication, and can store 100 images. Click here for the rundown with picture from ZDNet, or here for all the specs from Casio."
I think that they need to make a scientific calculator version of the Data-Bank series. Graphing optional. I love MP3s and all, but I think Casio skipped a few steps when they never released something that had the caliber of the TI-85. :^)
-- Does Rain Man use the Autistic License for his software?
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Not at all --- it is the speakers that are the weakest link here, whereas the quality of cheap audio amplification is comparatively superb. The car is *not* an audiophile environment, and $10 is ample nowadays for all the integrated components needed to provide perceptually reasonable in-car sound, far better in fact than the quality of the original speaker installation. ($10 audio component cost for a built-in amplifier easily maps to a $100-$150 typical radio-cassette player cost.)
Furthermore, there must be plenty of people (I extrapolate from myself) that would spend quite a lot of money on an MP3 in-car player just for the convenience while being perfectly happy with the "hifi experience" provided by the car's default sound installation, so Empeg definitely *has* lost a potential market segment by that decision.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
The kicking that Casio are getting in this thread may be well deserved, if for no other reason than that they don't seem to have woken up to the fact that Microsoft is no longer the only game in town. Their search box returns nothing for "Linux" anyway.
Looks like there's a good opening here for a more progressive competitor in the gadget world.
Does anyone know who their main competitor is currently?
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
The in-car unit from empeg.com has a few problems.
It's far too expensive, it's a closed system at the present time (though they say they'll open it to techies eventually), and rather incredibly, it doesn't have an audio amplifier built in so that it can't simply replace a normal integrated car entertainment unit. That decision must have saved them less than $10 while totally destroying their chances in the market.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
It seems that Casio still hasn't figured out it's possible to be both functional and stylish at the same time. Look at the pictures - the thing is butt ugly. I wouldn't be caught dead wearing, not to mention the possible ergonomic issues of bead offbalance and heavy to one side from wearing it. Guess I'll just have to wait for my Rolex gold MP3 watch - it's already in the mail.
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Clinton wears Timex :)
:(
Just yesterday my Casio G-shock died after being bashed against the wall
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I think I am going off hold off getting another MP3 player until I can get one embedded in my skull.
The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you've got it made. (Marx)
exactly, that empeg is not a car stereo, it's a car Jukebox. Your entire CD collection, enough music for a week long car ride, no changing media, ever, no skipping, random selection, playlists, Linux. It offers a lot and costs a lot, wait 2 years, it'll be $250.
:)
And if you really need something to do to stop bitchin', build one yerself
+&x
The title says it all: how much would it suck to have your headphones anchored to your wrist? Imagine the tangling, tripping, and yanking. Imagine putting a coat on, or taking it off. Imagine riding a bike and signalling. Imagine smoking. Imagine typing at a keyboard. Imagine carrying a briefcase, or adjusting a knapsack's straps. Damn, would that ever suck.
Yup all the mp3 player makers are pretty clueless.. Hmm.. I can only think of ONE good design for a portable mp3 player.. built it into the frigin headphones! It's not like it needs to weigh anything and the buttons can be designed so that you can find theem without looking at the player.
Now, there are all sorts of things which is is good to include mp3 players in via software.. cellphones, PDAs, car sterios (removable like you were talking about would be very cool), etc. Also, you could make a case that a dual mp3 player / low bit rate voice recorder should probable not be a pair of head phones too.
Jeff
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Memo to Casio: invent the Human Bus. MP3/whatever player on the belt, watch on the arm, no wires linking them, but the watch is the controller. Why? So you can control something that's easily accessible (it's on your wrist) rather than fumbling around blindly at something on your belt. Also, something on your belt could be a lot bigger and heavier (look at pagers/cellphones) as compared to something on the end of your arm.
I agree completely. Another advantage to this is that you wouldn't have to take off the watch to recharge the batteries. You could still wear the watch while the MP3 player recharges.
How legal could this watch be, as they even advertise it as "to get a camera past security"..
:)
I'll get one if they get to sweden of course
From the Empeg website
Cost: projected price US$1099 (excluding shipping) for 4Gb version.
This implies that not only is the player not available (actually it does seem to be available as beta, whatever that means) but it's going to cost more than 3 times the cost of an average MP3 player. The purpose of my post is that there should be more companies working on car MP3 players (Sony, Pioneer, Rio, etc.) instead of 1 company selling an overpriced buggy product.
PS: Check out MP3Car.com if you're interested in finding out about playing MP3s in your car.
Why is this a 5?
:)
I dunno ask the moderators...I'm at 2 now so I guess more people agreed with you. I'm kinda surprised at the total of 9 moderations I got.
Sounds more like a troll to me, I think this is a great idea and I'm planning on getting one
I'm sorry I have to disagree with you here... this is not a great idea. It's probably not even a good idea. My objection to the device is that it pursues convergence for convergence's sake and does not add utility to the consumer experience (this is similar to why PalmOS is beating Windows CE in the handheld market). The watch is a "build it and they will come" device. It is a neat but rather impractical gadget, it is cumbersome to walk around with headphones sticking out of your watch and secondly the controls would be have to be small and thus difficult to manipulate.
This seems to me like a bid by Casio to jump on the "internet-enabled" bandwagon without doing research to see if this is a needed or wanted device.
Besides you aren't supposed to listen to it with speakers, you're supposed to use headphones.
Yeah, I missed that when I read the article the first time.
And why the hell are you listening to rap?
'cuz it's tha muthaf***ing sh*t dawg
Oh, this is too cool. I am ordering one right away! I hope it comes with good sound though. Hopefully tiny little Bose cube speakers would be ideal :)
When you put on a jacket, the headphone cable simply goes up the jacket sleeve. No fuss, no muss, and it's actually LESS likely to catch on things than a regular headphone cable.
The biggest difficulty was the controls -- the dials were so small you basically ended up selecting a single station, and leaving it at that. I expect that the MP3 watch will be similar -- people will just press PLAY and nothing else.
I have no
I've owned a numerous deal of gadgety watches from Casio, as several co-workers of mine. They're truly ingenious little wonders, and we often do make excuses to justify purchases, but they never seem to last long.
First I had a watch with a calculator. The buttons were minute but I got used to them after a bit. It was a nice device, and fairly solid. This is the only Casio I've owned that's managed to last. It was annihilated by a racquetball that hit me in the wrist. I mean, no way it could've been saved. I give this one credit though, as it held up through years of showers, swimming, and abuse.
Then I moved onto the Databank 150. It was a nice watch, and it really was quite useful, freeing me from carrying around a small notebook for phone numbers and reminders. Unfortunately, one of the buttons had a habit of sticking inside the watch, which would drain the battery in 2-3 days. Friends reported that small bumps and even a decent static charge would knock out their organizer for good.
Then I moved to the touchscreen version. Ah, no more square inch keyboard. It was great, until a static discharge from a combination of a monitor and the fiber/cat5 switching system knocked it out. Being under warranty I shipped it out to Casio in which its currently being repaired.
The other thing that was often a nuisance is getting a battery replaced. No shop in the area was Casio certified and had the battery replacement tools, except one. I went in asking to see if they replaced the batteries in a Casio and they told me to come back the following day around 6, in which her brother with his special tool would replace it for me. I wanted my info back, so I came back and he gladly took my watch and used his special tool -- a paperclip which he masterfully bent and shaped to remove the covering -- and replaced the battery. What can I say, it worked damn well.
Currently though I have a pretty stock $18 Timex w/ Indiglo. It gets me by. These new watches look keen, specially the mp3 watch, and the new organizer, but I have some reservation in buying yet another watch to again handle and lose important information.
I think I'll just wait until the color Palm Pilots come along and just use my watch as a watch. =)
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They Casio site wouldn't let me in until I allowed HTTP_USER_AGENT through my proxy. The dastards! We should all nuke their site for having the temerity to invade our privacy like that!
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Seriously though, with all these single function wrist gadgets, you'd have to be an octopus to have everything: PCS phone (Swatch), Camera (Casio), MP3 player (Casio), AM/FM Radio (various), TV (Casio), PIM (Casio). Why don't they combine them all into one uber-gadget that you wear like a bracer. That way, not only do you have all your toys, you also have AC +1 on one arm!
www.eFax.com are spammers
I don't understand why Casio is advertsising their PIM watch as "being able to syncronize with a Palm device". Aren't the functions of these devices identical? I mean, either you carry around the watch or you carry around the Palm...but never both. How annoying would it be to have to mute two alarms every time you had an appointment?
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And as far as the MP3 watch goes, I don't understand the point of having rechargeable batteries. I have owned Casio watches for years, and the main reason I buy the waterproof ones is so I never have to take it off. If I have to take the MP3 watch off my wrist every night to recharge the batteries, then I'm going to be walking around my house staring at the blank wrist where my watch is supposed to be.
The wrist camera, however, is a totally cool idea that has almost 1000 possible abuses. It's small enough for perverts to embed in their shoes for crystal clear upskirts. Take off the bands and then you can wedge it into a crack in a changing room. If Casio is truly sick, they'll link the timer to the camera so you can program the watch to take pictures in X minute intervals.
Way to go, Casio!
- JoeShmoe
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-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Perfect for those of us who are tone deaf. Always keeps you in time with the music. Don't play anything too fast though...
I like that camera watch.. I see two good uses for it, snapping pictures where you aren't supposed to and those candid moments where you wish you had a camera and don't. The pictures will be low quality, read fun snaps, but it's a picture where you otherwise would have none. I'm guessing the actual model will make the avocet vertech alpine look like a feather. It will be a great watch if you wear it every day but it will be too big to wear every day. In my weakness, I could see my self forking over the cash even though I know it won't work so well. I suspect this watch will end up being outlawed in a few places.
The MP3 watch is also a wicked cool idea but I just don't see the practcality in it. I'd rather go buy a rio and then have a watch that doesn't run out of batteries and lose the time. I'm betting this one will be a real piece of junk.
Then the palmpilot watch is cool but I've got a palmpilot. Watches aren't terribly good interfaces for a lot of stuff, I think my palmpilot will be magnitudes easier to use and it's small enough. Probably the best functioning one of these watches but it will be a pain to use it and it's not nearly as cool as the camera.
Why no cellphone watch yet? I would think that Casio's number one competition with this stuff is the integrated PCS phone market, if palm signs a deal with Ericson or something and integrates a pilot into a cellphone that would be a pretty killer product.
I'm betting that all of them will be junk but at least the camera will be cool enough that people will buy them.
More info from ZD-Net.