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Goodbye To the SPOT Watch
Starturtle sends along an Engadget article on the demise of the Microsoft SPOT Watch. We've discussed related devices a few times in the past; here's a picture of one. "After a long, painful, nearly anonymous ride on the wrists of a select few uber-geeks, Microsoft's finally throwing in the towel on one of its longstanding pet projects: the SPOT watch. The writing's been on the wall for some time; the applications and content available to the watches haven't been updated in ages, and indeed, the entire line of Abacus Smart Watch 2006 models — the only type being recently offered — has been discontinued and out of stock for a few months. For what it's worth, MSN Direct's program manager is quick to note that the underlying technology most certainly isn't going away."
Reminds me of the classic Timex Datalink watchs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Datalink
I had the original model, the one with the "Listen to the light" printed on binary on the wrist strap.
Both had the problem of good technology with way to small of an interface. Some day watch designers will realize that a watch size is about big enough for an interface for... a watch. And not much more.
What i'd really love to have is a wristwatch that simply 'speaks' bluetooth, and lets me remote-control any compliant cell phone i have in my pocket. Additionaly, (and that's the catch), it would have to relay the phone's display onto it's own display, so i could use it to rudimentary surf the web, read SMS, use J2ME apps, etc. I wonder when this kind of interchangeable modularization will at last happen: the cell-phone will be the computing and communications module, the watch (or a micro-tablet-pc-like-thing) the display module, the headset the audio module, etc. It really doesn't sound so hard to implement (although i dont know of a bluetooth profile that could forward the display in an efficient manner), and this would IMHO really revolutionize the way that people could use mobile tech.