Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - Microsoft "MSN Direct" and Wrist.NET applied to "Wearables"

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Microsoft "MSN Direct" and Wrist.NET applied to "Wearables"

Posted 2004-01-08 01:49 PM in Musings.

One of the reasons I want Wrist.NET to succeed is my belief that the only jewelry (stuff you wear all the time) that will be worn all the time in my lifetime is watches, rings and to some degree, necklaces. Perhaps will see some displays in glasses but that's 10 years+ out and iffy at best. A watch is a perfect size to provide me with more than just the time, and I don't carry my phone with me everywhere.

However, a comment in my last post about the watch said that it was too much of a 'gadget' and possibly too large. He said:

"That's why I'm more interested in the smartphones or maybe even some wearables."

I'm not sure about this whole vagueness of wearables. I'm not sure there's as much of a market for a "Flava Flav" style SPOT device, do you?

Sunday, January 11, 2004 6:31:45 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I thought I was looking at a glitch in reality or something when I saw this picture. For the last couple of months I had this (un-edited) picture of Flava Flav as my windows desktop and only recently changed it to something else. I thought it had magically "come back" somehow. I mean...I'm browsing Scott Hanselman's programming weblog and there it is ...who would have thought.

JosephCooney

Wednesday, October 06, 2004 3:42:39 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

For many, many years I wore an OnHand PC watch (aka Ruputer). I loved the fact that it came with gcc so you could write your own apps for it. I ignored the snide comments about how large my watch was, the questions about what it did, if it got TV. I wrote apps for it. But you know what? A PDA the size of a watch is never going to be as good as a Pocket PC. It doesn't have the memory, the extensibility, the audio, the speed, the display size, and especially the ease of input. After a while, I started to ask myself why I had a computer on my wrist when my Pocket PC was always with me (which it is). I can understand cellphones that are PDAs, but the watch seems too small to be valuable. You need something with a display at least the size of a credit card, methinks. I'd rather have a watch that gives meteorological readings, or maybe an arrow pointing which way to turn next based on GPS readings. But that's just me.