Watches getting smarter all the time
By Dean Takahashi
Knight Ridder News Service
My watch told me the weather would be hazy. It was wrong. It was raining. OK, maybe my smart watch isn't so smart. But that's beside the point.
The ability to get the local weather, news, stocks and calendar information in my watch tells me that the watch industry will never be the same. I've been testing a Wrist Net watch from Fossil, which uses Microsoft's MSN Direct wireless service to download information that I can glance at with a push of a button.
It is far from perfect. The watch is huge, like a scuba diver's watch, because it has to accommodate a built-in charger as well as a radio and a microprocessor (from Santa Clara's National Semiconductor) that is more powerful than the one in the original personal computer.
It comes with a manual, and I have to charge it at night. Plus, Microsoft wants me to pay $59 a year for a subscription. And if you aren't careful and give a blast of static electricity, you will have to reset the watch to receive data again by pressing three buttons on the side at once.
But those things aside, there is a certain wow factor about this watch, which I can customize to my own tastes. Microsoft came up with the technology, but it was wise to team up with watch makers like Fossil, which makes 15 million watches a year, and Suunto.
Fossil has four versions available (all silver and black, www.fossil.com/tech). I've been testing the Dick Tracy FX3002 version, which sells for $199 plus the annual service fee. The watch has a cute fake camera and fake microphone on its face, in mimicry of the comic book character's watch. But it isn't really a "two-way wrist radio."
I can see Dick Tracy or other characters from the comic strip announcing the time on the watch face. But if I tire of them I can switch to another face or even download something else.
The square FX 3000 and round FX3001 black-and-silver models sell for $179, and a geek-focused Abacus brand AU4000 sells for $129. There are no models for women yet, in part because the radios are too big to fit into the slimmer style of a woman's watch.
The concept is clever. When you are stuck in an endless meeting, you can look at your watch to get an update on what really matters. I was sitting in a meeting recently when my watch beeped: I learned that Cingular was making a bid to buy AT&T Wireless.
Microsoft set up a wireless network with the relatively small investment it made in the nation's FM radio stations. The MSN Direct network uses an unused portion of the FM radio band to broadcast information to anywhere that can receive radio reception. Microsoft cut deals with radio stations in 100 metropolitan areas so that its network can reach more than 80 percent of the country.
The watch's radio receives its data from the FM signals and displays it on the watch. The cool part is that once you buy your watch, you can customize the data your watch will receive and display.
You go to the direct.msn.com Web site and sign in with your Passport log-in. (If you have a Hotmail account, you already have a log-in). Then you type in your watch identification number and select what you want it to display. You can see if your part of the country is covered by the watch service.
Then you can select which of 20 different channels you want your watch to display. Sports isn't available just yet, but the channels include time, face type, messages, glance, news, weather, calendar and stocks. You can configure the watch to receive MSN instant messages; display your calendar appointments (as long as you have Outlook 2000 mail software); receive local, national and international weather data; and select the type of news and custom stock information that you want.
The watch will pull down and display only the information that you have chosen. It took me just a couple of minutes to set it up.
Within a few minutes, my watch was working and displaying my custom choices. You can tailor your news for local, international, business or front-page U.S. news from sources like Reuters or the Washington Post. You can get it to post closing prices for as many as 15 stocks.
Now, the annoying thing was that my watch was beeping about every 10 minutes with news items that I just didn't care about. The manual didn't tell me how to fix this, nor did it tell me how to set the alarm. But after talking with Fossil, I learned you can turn off the sound and set the alarm with a few button clicks.
One thing I can't get yet is a news alert about a particular company I'm tracking. I may be a news junkie, but there are some things that I need to know now and some things that can wait. I'd rather know before I get into my car that I need to take an alternate freeway. This watch won't tell me that, but it will tell me what events are happening in the Middle East.
The radio-wave receiver also didn't seem to keep up very well inside the building where I work, which is generally impervious to radio signals of any kind. So by Monday afternoon, I was still looking at Friday's stock prices.
The nice thing about the watch is that it is smart enough to know which metropolitan region you are in. If you travel to Dallas, it will display the local weather and forecast for Dallas. If you have an appointment coming up, it will warn you when you have a few minutes to spare. Of course, if you go off into the woods or the mountains, you're on your own.
Charging the watch isn't a problem. It comes with a charger and you just hang it on top to charge it.
I think the watch is far more convenient than trying to download news onto a cell phone, which can take minutes. But now I have another thing that, for the sake of safety, I have to avoid looking at while I'm driving a car.
