Slashdot Mirror
More Revealed on the IBM Linux Wristwatch
bitFliper writes: "This site has more information about IBM's Linux wristwatch, including a whole page of pictures here. Linux 2.2 OS with 8MB Flash memory and 8MB DRAM memory. It weigh's in at 44 gms (approximately 1.5 ounces), has a touch sensitive display, IrDA, radio frequency wireless connectivity, and a
rechargeable lithium-polymer battery. Pretty cool."
The iPAQ is pretty much the consumer version of the Itsy. Go get one and hack the hell out of it doing things Compaq never expected.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
so that you can be cool looking AND read your Linux watch's readout.
EMUSE.NET
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
I'd also like them as the brains for a smart clipboard. Talk about reducing paperwork at a plant. Everything else is computerized, it would be so nice for the techs to get a programed schedule and check list to walk around with that could upload the results.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Oh, you'd have to be a geek, but I don't think it's necessarily the ugliest watch I've ever seen.
Style is supposed to convey a message. The people who made furniture for Louis XIV would be puzzled by the modern taste for mission style furniture, where ornamentation is confined to a few artfully placed structural members. Style to them was a demonstration that you had the wealth to use the costliest materials and the labor to work them lavishly. People who use mission furniture in their homes are telling you that they are sophisticates enough to appreciate a more abstract aesthetic tied to simplicity and natural materials and finishes used tastefully and functionally.
Style or anti-style is always about making a statement. I'm trying to decode the iMac's transparency, but its significance escapes me. Perhaps it is supposed to suggest that you aren't intimidated by technology, and so don't need to hide it. Or maybe that you're technological and artistic impulses are balanced and in harmony.
In any case, I personally think that "proto" (as in prototype) is a style that's ready to take off. What the proto style will say is that you are more concerned with having the latest functionality than any frou-frou ornamentation. Imagine you are in a meeting and somebody whips out an oddly shaped block of plastic and starts scribbling on it. When asked, he tells you its one of a dozen industrial prototypes for the next generation Palm Pilot -- would you be impressed? If you saw somebody at LinuxWorld wearing one of these watches, would you be a bit jealous?
Style ultimately is a statement that you possess something that is rare and hard to obtain -- wealth, power, or discernment. Having access to the to technology so new that it hasn't been commercialized yet is also a rare and desirable thing. It's a geek value, but as geeks get more economic clout it will penetrate the general consciousness. It is only a matter of time before designers figure out how to dress up mass manufactured objects to give them the semblance of having this property of extreme newness -- they way they used gold plating, colored plastic, and injection molding to suggest the rare materials or skilled workmanship valued in older aesthetics.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Yes, the watch is as real as the moon landings were.
Though the research done with this watch is more implementation research than marketing research. Chances of this watch hitting the shelves is as likely as getting moon rocks at your grocer.
About two-dozen of the prototypes have been created so far. The watches run on an ARM-based EP7211 processor made by Cirrus Logic and have 8MB of memory to run programs and 8MB of flash memory to substitute for a hard disk. The watches also include an infrared and wireless radio connection and a touch-screen display. The watch can tell time and has a calendar and to-do list that can remind the wearer of appointments, Goyal said
Pretty Cool huh? :) No I am not linking to the article, you can do it from the IBM site (so I am lazy alright!! :))
Gorkman
Speak for yourself. I'm down with geek interests, gadgets, etc. But I'm NOT into looking like some kind of dork or being seen as one. Sorry, I lost interest in wallowing in self-pity a long time ago..
Doesn't the license Gnome uses restrict mentioning the name 'Gnome' in the same sentance as GUIs that haven't begged forgiveness yet?
-Adam
Not only will this device enable me to conquer the world, it also turns kittens into poptarts.
Radio receiver built in for wireless capability. Local range only, perhaps to conserve battery drain it would be activated via a hotsynch button though hopefully it would be able to have it on all the time without too much trouble. Very small bitmapped display which is only used for alphanumerics and special characters that can be used as an abbreviation for full words. Screen space on a watch is valuable. Every character has to count. And a few buttons around it. Not like those old calculator watches, that goes too far. I want buttons around the sides so screen space is maximized as much as possible.
Note there is only receive on the wireless part. This thing is a data display device, and the buttons are for browsing. Just as the Palm people reinvented the user interface from the ground up this watch would have its user interface redesigned from the ground up. One button might be a display time/display pages/access database toggle. Hit the button a few times and you switch between the main common uses of the watch instantly, no fuss, from whereever you are, like the application icon on the Palm. Other buttons would probably be more modal.
This watch would function as a watch, as a pager (and maybe to notify when you have important mail), and a portable phone/email/address list. Maybe a few other things as well like sports scores (not that I'm that big a fan but others are), stock prices (ditto) and so forth. My current pager has a feature where it picks up news headlines. Not all that uninteresting a feature, as long as I had some way to filter for what I was interested in.
The watch has a small screen space, limited control/input capability and the power requirements have to be insanely low. The positive side it has the ultimate convenience factor of being always available, faster than a PDA. The computer watch has to play to these strengths if it is to ever really take off.
I'd like to see them do this like a Basic Stamp. You get the platform, source, insturction manual and modules that you could add onto it. Now that would be fun to play with, and useful.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
What I would like to know is if they have a model for lefties. That dial wouldn't be nearly as easy to use when the watch is worn on the right arm.
Edward Burr
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
Only if they're distributing the watch. Which they don't seem to be (more's the pity).
--
W.A.S.T.E.
i.e if they never release the watch, then the source doesn't have to be released, as no one is actually using it.
Am I correct in my thinking?
-
As cunning as a fox, which has just been appointed professor of cunning at Oxford University. http://www.kinlan.co
This was sometime in the early 1980s.
The month of the issue was April. :-)
Seastead this.
xdaliclock -cycle &
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
Just for starters (my thinking for about 3 seconds), here are a few things you could run on it...
Clock, calendar, stopwatch, alarms, etc... (obviously)
A Notepad
A date book / day planner
Address book
Phone book
Calculator
Currency conversions
GPS
Communication (send data to other watches?)
Email?
visit http://www.wristdreams.com to find out more about the watches like the IBM Linux watch. Casio GPS Watch Casio Wrist Camera Watch Casio MP3 Watch Samsung Watch Phone Spoon Secret Agent Man OnHand PC http://www.wristdreams.com
It's
# cat decss.c
Hm... I suspect this was "inspired" by a post over at Ars Technica. Their article links to this page as well, which has a review of Casio's wrist watch with built-in digital camera. It's pretty cool, too. 20 kpixel 16-level grayscale, 100 pictures storable in the watch. Syncs over IR to a serial-port connected mini-dock thingie. Not comparable in power to IBM's Linux watch, and it doesn't run Linux, but it's still a very cool thing to have on your wrist, IMO. Being a consumer product (~$200 in the US), it has seen a bit more design effort, too. ;^)
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
The point isn't exclusively the OS, its how well the applications match the form-factor of the device you're dealing with. While the article points out the advantages of Linux (for example, large code base available), I'm not convinced that those advantages translate directly to this mostly-unexplored form-factor.
Dealing with limited colors, memory, display size, etc. are special considerations for the wrist-watch even more so than the PDA.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these on a baboon.
Those long arms had to come in useful sometime...
does anyone know how much this will cost when it is out?
Yankees suck. yep you know it.
Just imagine how all those script kiddies would act when the time reached
:)
1:37 pm
or
13:37
-
As cunning as a fox, which has just been appointed professor of cunning at Oxford University. http://www.kinlan.co
Moreover, all watches should be set to display time in GMT only, and you should memorize the offset between GMT and your home! This would eliminate timezone confusion at the expense of a little math that you should be able to do in your head, and further goes to demonstrate my uber-eliteness and the fact that my penis must be much longer than all the rest of you plonkers out there who would never have thought of that!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
How do we let IBM, and others, know there is interest in this product. How many great devises are there that never made it to market because of a perceived lack of interest from the intended market. I think that this would go a lot further than the production data posted so far would show. But, unless there is enough interest from people who would use a multi function device that has ability to sync/communicate wirelessly with other devices. (I can just see having you watch go off when you have an appointment entered in on your palm pilot or laptop.) There needs to be a standard way of communicating with the manufacturers and saying "Yes, if you sell it we will come (and hack the hell out of it doing things you never expected.)" I for one would trade in my Palm Pilot for a Compaq Itsy in a heartbeat, but maybe that's just me.
=================
macbert@hcity.net
macbert@hcity.net
http://www.hcity.net/mac
From the article: "Users interact with the watch through a combination of a touch-sensitive screen and a roller wheel."
Dont any of you watch cartoons? You press the button and desk, monitor, keyboard, and chair pop out for you to ge busy on. IBM has the Linux Briefcase car on the way too!
How about a device that is a mobile phone bike wristwatch potato-baker digicam remote control, powered only by said potatoes that you can be worn on your wrist, hung on your Price Albert and plays MP3s, but only by Metallica...
I've been posting the same thing to people for months. WTF is with people? It's not just repeats on Slashdot either. I've seen posts that look like:
:^P
"Uh, you're lame; this was on Geeknews like yesterday you fucking lamers"
and the poster thinks they're doing the world a service. In most cases, the post is news to *me.* I'm willing to bet that the post is news to other folks, too. Why do I read Slashdot? Because they post stories I'm interested in and I don't have to go trolling the 'Net. Have I seen this submission before? Maybe...but I don't remember it. Maybe the person is thinking of the nice Linux Journal story on an unrelated wristwatch.
So, yeah, I agree: the "this has been posted here/elsewhere sometime in the last 6 months" post is fucking lame, it's pathetic, and the poster(s) guilty need to die. Now.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Gorkman
Bah, missed the roller-wheel part, hence why I said Morse code...
:-)
I'd prefer a knob like the old ones had to wind the watch, so you could look like you're winding it, but actually replying to a Slashdot message!
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
Is anyone else totally chuffed (I think "stoked" is the American equivalent :-) to hear IBM talking about Linux as rapidly becoming an industry standard? Ya gotta love it, this free software thing is actually gunna happen on a massive scale it seems.
Why on earth would you want to read your email, browse anything, or pull up someone in your address book on your watch? Hell, you cna hardly read the things that come over phone without scrolling through ten pages to read a paragraph. There is a use for watches, telling time. Sheesh! Nate
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
XEyes on that!
:wq!
I just had to......
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
# echo decss.c # "Hello IBM Lawsuit"
Sig it.
you'd really have to be a geek to wear something like that... don't you agree?
________
No, I think not.
..
An Omega SeaMaster, maybe. Or Chanel, yes.
Tastelesss lump of plastic with horrid LCD screeen, gimme a break.
.
Heh... We can only hope... But maybe it comes with an IBM needle (tm) to press the keys ?
and an IBM magnifying glass (tm) to read the display ?
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
If this isn't the geekiest thing I have ever seen!
Is it voice-activated? Or maybe you have to tap out shell commands in Morse code?
The Linux shell just seems impractical to use on a device that small. I sincerely hope the end user doesn't have to use it much.
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
Been there, done that, bought the T-Shirt.
It's an old story (Aug 15) and I'm sure it's all been said on here before.
"Information wants to be paid"
... so I can run xclock!
)9TSS
- Obviously, clock, calendar, stopwatch, alarms, etc...
- A Notepad
- A date book / day planner
- Address book
- Phone book
- Calculator
- Temperature conversions
- Currency conversions
- TV remote control (via the IR port)
- Score/stat keeping for my favorite sports (golf, football, baseball stats,
...) - All sorts of specialized calculators for whatever... (Miles/Kilometers per gallon, fuel cost calculations for example)
The list is theoretically endless.My office has been taken over by iPod people.
Think about it, a watch that could talk NTP (admittedly over IrDA), you'd never have to set your watch again. Though I have to admit the display is a little too small to DO much with.
Sanity is a sandbox. I prefer the swings.
As stated on the site, the watch (at least in its current 'ugly' incarnation) is only a research project to test the water for the inclusion of Linux across a wide range of devices. I wouldn't worry too much yet about how it looks.
- They state the watch has "a powerful processor", but don't specify which one. Granted, it's probably an IBM-designed chip that hasn't been released to the public, but they could have at least said something along the lines of "a powerful new processor developed by IBM".
- They claim to have X11 running on it, but don't have any pictures of it running X11.
- 8MB Flash memory and 8MB DRAM seems like rather a lot to put in that watch - especially when it has to share that space with the processor, IrDA and radio communication equipment, and an LCD sreen.
All this leads me to wonder: is this thing for real? I'm not completely skeptical - IBM has created some really cool things that I wasn't sure were even possible - but this one is straining the limits of believability.-Ender
Loose things are easy to lose. You're getting your hair cut. They're going there to see their aunt.
I always wanted a digital version of the old railroad pocket watches. They should get some apple compunter designers to whip up a retro/21st century case for this and make a pocket watch out of it.
The accessory market in gold chains and watch fobs would be huge all by itself.
:)
I'll confess - I'm a gadget freak. I love these little thingies that go beep and do something utterly useless.
Now, listen up IBM and Samsung (and others). I have money, how can I give it to you?
When will we actually see these devices in the shops? I suspect saying "Linux" is so cool these days that companies make these smoke-and-mirror prereleases only so some division manager can claim he made company stock raise a tenth of a point when the next Gartner analysis is out.
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
cat
I assume they have made some modifications, as I don't think even MuLinux could run on something like that with wireless communication and everything
Steven Murdoch.
web: http://www.bigfoot.com/~murdomania/
Steven Murdoch.
web: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/sjm217/
Build in a thermometer (with a thermister)
MP3 player (with a IBM Microdrive on the strap!)
Caluclator (obvious)
Skinable Clock (REAL OBVIOUS! :))
The possibilities are endless!
Gorkman
At the risk of being male-centric, I propose this watch to be the de facto standard of what will henceforth be called WOODWARE. :)
Mr. Ska
So if they gave you one, you'll give it back, right?
An alternative that has been out for a while is the Matsucom onHand PC.
From the spec sheet, 128KB RAM, 512KB ROM, 2MB Flash. 102x64 B&W LCD screen. Infrared and RS232 connections to PCs. An IBM-style nub pointer control, and four buttons. 52 grams and it is water resistant.
A friend of mine has written a few apps for it, the SDK is available.
Of course, since it isn't running Linux, this may not be of interest to some people.
[
The problem I'm having with this piece of technology is that I utterly fail to see any purpose apart from telling the time of the day.
You may rightfully accuse me of being a bit backwards with my choice of gadgetry, but I'm afraid that my present watch, a mechanical Swatch Irony that runs Coil 1.0 and Mechanical Windup 0.99b3, does not do. I realize that the Swatch is not skinnable, though, and not released under the GPL either.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
You probably figured out quite well what I meant. :-) Kinda happens when you don't use Preview.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
What I really want to know is if I can hack this to run Windows CE.
Now that would really make it useful....
Plus, the pretty BSOD could be used as a night light.
Secret Windows Settings
Is it using one of those coin sized hard drives that was mentioned here some time back?
It seems to have the dial on the side...is this doing things kind of like the phone key input, where you press the letter for the key (one..two..or three taps)..then wait a second, then work on the next letter...with this one using the dial to indicate the letter desired. Maybe a shift/shift lock key?
Voice recognization?
BreezyGuy
Eric B
ebresie@gmail.com
with the IR port - exchange business contact info (vcard or so) with someone else wearing one just by shaking hands.
Ch-chuck on remote assignment.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
hmmm, a choice between a huge, heavy, ugly wristwatch or a sleek sexy palmpilot with more features? which one should we pick?
This is like selling a computer to your mother by saying "you could keep recipes on it". What about communication (overt and covert)? What about data gathering and real-time analysis (scorekeeping is a kind of this, but think medical, scientific, etc). What about GPS?
Don't think "Next Generation of Calculator Watches", think "The Power of a PC On Your Wrist". Clearly there are UI issues to be dealt with, but ignore those for now--first comes the apps, then figure out how to interact with it.
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Eat your heart out Dick Tracy.
Ok, so I'm a geek. And I kinda collect watches. But I have to say that I think this is cool.
:-)
;-) (can't find any other pages on it atm)
I've been waiting for a watch with RF wireless connectivity (bluetooth, 802.11, whatever) so that I can use it as an ntp server for all of my other wireless devices which have no need to have an accurate clock in them when I am wearing one on my wrist.. Syncronizing the clocks on my phone, watch, computer, pda etc would be made a lot easier that way. Maybe a radio-referenced watch too, so that I wouldn't ever need to set it
Enough rambling.
As for it being too big and heavy, it's probably lighter than my Casio DEP-600 which I'm wearing now
Ahem, but most of us already have DORK tatooed on our foreheads. Not me, of course. Javier (Can't wait for Ronnie Dobbs the Movie!)
A man, a plan, a canal -- Panama!
You have been able to buy radio-referenced clocks (and watches) for quite a while now, in both the UK and US. I think that a radio-referenced watch running an ntp _server_ would make more sense, and set all of your other devices from that instead of the other way around..
:-)
Btw, it says :
- IrDA, Radio Frequency wireless connectivity
on the site, so you can avoid the line-of-sight problems of IrDA by using a wireless RF link to serve those ntp packets
Fitting Linux+X in 16 MB (8MB flash + 8 MB DRAM) is not very impressive I think.
I'm quite sure that commercial RT OS plus their GUI can be much lighter than this, so...
Don't wait for a Yopy -- get yerself an iPAQ, reflash it with Linux, and start hacking.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I MUST have one of these....Just so I can look like a prick and punch code on the way home from work. Anybody going to port Q3? How about one of those mobile phone clip on keyboards? Either way its running Linux, So it must be pretty cool.
no, i'd just give it to someone more of a geek/nerd than i, someone like mcdougal :)
-
-
This Post has been brought to you by the letter "E".
Although it may not be news well known elsewhere, the watch was actually developed at IBM's India offices where the Linux division is *RATHER* active. The offices also recently got a SEI CMM Level 5 rating!
The Official IBM Website isn't very infomative about this though!.
All weakness is within you, As is all courage.
This is an "Office watch". ;-) :-)
Most people wearing a watch want to keep it in most situations and if somebody wanders in Düsseldorf with one of these, it will sure get drown.
I'd also love if they could embed voice-recognition inside though, imagine in the streets somebody yelling "mkfs" in your back
Well, this'd sure be annoying too.
Okay, I admit I am totally blasted by this cool watch but we also have to find some issues about it or it won't be a discussion anymore.
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.