Abacus WristNet watch (Fossil)

Arlene got me a SPOT watch for Christmas, and I picked it up yesterday at CompUSA. Here are some of my impressions from a day’s use– but first, a primer on SPOT technology. Microsoft’s trying to build objects like watches, alarm clock, etc. that deliver useful information at the point of use. This watch is a good example: it can give me local weather information for wherever I am, along with other preprogrammed channels. You can send calendar events from Outlook to it, and MSN Messenger users can send messages to it.
The watch was $129, plus $59/year for the MSN Direct service. There are other, more expensive, watches from Fossil and Suunto, but they don’t add any functionality, just nicer cases and bands. The watch itself is relatively large, but it feels lighter than my Citizen Titanium even though it’s quite a bit bigger. Included in the box is a little inductive charging stand; you put the watch on it every few days to charge its battery. This is a little weird, since most of us don’t have to recharge watches, but I’ll just set up the charger next to my cellphone charger and start a volt farm.
The watch display is clear and bright, but there’s an included backlight for low-light situations. This is one of the things I missed most on my previous watch; since it was unlit, it was impossible to tell the time in a darkened area. There are five buttons: two small ones on the left side for activating various modes, and two small ones and a large one on the right side.
The service itself works very well. The watch has multiple “channels”: one for the time, one for news, one for stock information, and so on. You go to the MSN Direct website to customize which channels your individual watch gets; this includes telling MSN where you live so that you can get local weather information, You can also specify a list of cities (in the US and worldwide) to get weather information for them. After I activated the watch, it only took an hour or so to get a full load of channels. When the watch is on the “glance” channel, it sequences through content from all the channels you get, including stocks, headlines, and weather. A travel feature allows you to specify where you’re going to be, and when; this is required so that your personal information (like IMs and calendar events) can be broadcast only in the area where you are. There are still some things I have to check out, like whether I can send calendar events from more than one Outlook profile and whether there’s any way to develop my own custom channels. Overall, though, it’s a neat gadget, and I’m excited about its future potential and about its current capability.