Time is not on this watch's side
The new Abacus Wrist Net is the ugliest watch you ever saw -- a heavy chunk of plastic and stainless steel that hangs so heavy on the arm that typing becomes an aerobic workout. Then there's the watchband -- coarse black rubber with a metal clasp that offers two basic settings: Too Loose or Too Tight.
It's all Microsoft's fault. After all, Fossil Inc. which makes the Wrist Net watch, knows how to make a svelte and stylish timepiece. But along came Microsoft Corp., which asked for a watch that features more computing power than a 1980s desktop computer, and an FM radio receiver to boot. All this, so that the watch can pump a stream of news, stock prices, and weather to our unusually well-informed wrists.
Fossil wants $179 for a Wrist Net watch; Microsoft requests an extra $59 a year to keep it pumped full of news headlines. A Finnish company called Suunto offers a similar timepiece. They're the first applications of a technology that Microsoft would like to embed in quite a few other gadgets in years to come. They call it SPOT -- Small Personal Objects Technology -- and while it's hard to see much need for it, it's easy to be impressed with its sheer cleverness.
Why build an FM radio into a watch? Because there's a lot more on the FM band than mediocre Elton John tunes. FM stations can broadcast not only on their main frequency, but also on an extra chunk of radio spectrum called a subcarrier. For years these subcarriers were used by Muzak LLC to pump bland, soothing musical mush into elevators and dentists' offices. But the frequencies can work just as well for distributing bursts of digital information. And there's no need to build a new infrastructure, as companies are now doing with WiFi wireless networking. There are FM radio stations pretty much everywhere in America, and they're happy to pick up some extra money by leasing the use of their subcarriers.
Meanwhile, silicon chips keep getting smaller, cheaper, and more powerful. Microsoft got together with chipmaker National Semiconductor Corp. to create a silicon package that can receive, process, and display a stream of data broadcast on the FM band. It's all small enough to fit into a watch. A big, ugly watch with a thick, ugly strap that also serves as its radio antenna.
The Wrist Net watch delivers a stream of news headlines, but they're rendered meaningless by the truncation needed to fit them onto the screen: "Italian and US investigators," for instance, or "Jury deadlocks in assault case against." Want to know more? Start pushing buttons on your watch for the "full" stories, which are only slightly more detailed than the headlines themselves.
The weather feature works much better, if you just want simple temperature and precipitation information. The same goes for stock quotes. Once you've paid your $59 a year for access to the Microsoft data stream, you can use a Web page to program the stocks you want to track and the cities whose weather matters to you.
In addition, users of Microsoft's Outlook information manager can relay their appointment calendar to the Wrist Net, so it'll beep for your 10 o'clock. And people who use Microsoft's instant messaging service can send a text message to your watch, though it'll take about five minutes to arrive.
But forget about messaging back. The watch can't transmit data. Chris Schneider, program manager of the Microsoft SPOT team, said that consumers want it that way.
"The people we've spoken to -- 12,000 people -- told us they don't want to talk to their watches," Schneider said.
As soon as they told him, Schneider should have scrubbed the entire idea. Who needs another wireless device that can't holler back? That's what pagers are for. Besides, there are personal digital assistants like the Blackberry PDA, and of course our good old cellphones. These can do anything the SPOT watch does, and they allow two-way communication as well.
Frank Romero, director of watch technology at Fossil, said that these other gadgets are vulgar.
"It's . . . not very polite to pick up your phone or your vibrating PDA when you're in a meeting," Romero said. "The watch is a form factor that is discreet and pretty much accepted in all places."
Well, not all places. Certainly this watch won't be accepted on the arms of the fashion-conscious, despite assertions from Microsoft and Fossil that big watches are in this year. Romero admitted that few women will buy SPOT watches until more elegant versions come to market.
Besides, Microsoft says that the SPOT watch is just a first effort. Eventually, they want SPOT devices cheap enough to fit inside disposable refrigerator magnets. Such gadgets would cling to our iceboxes, displaying cryptic headlines and the stock price of Whirlpool Corp. "When the power goes out," Schneider said, "you'd throw them out."
But why would you obtain such a device in the first place? SPOT lacks a reason to exist in any form, at any price. Most of us can pass an hour or two without reading the latest stock quotes. The few who must have a constant flow of information also need the ability to act on that information, an ability that SPOT doesn't provide. So these news junkies don't need it either.
Above all, nobody needs a watch this ugly. Nobody.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.
