I've been interested in the collision of watches and computers for ages. I've wasted a lot of money. This is an early example - an enormous MP3 playing watch from Casio. It came with an enormous charging station and I seem to remember it could hold almost a whole album. I can't get it to work any more.
Or this is a more recent example - a Suunto fitness computer / watch which crashed and won't restart. Somewhere I also have bunches of those Casio calculator watches, at least one Fossil MSN Spot watch and - my proudest possession - a Swatch The Beep watch featuring Internet Time. Remember that?
Like I say, I've wasted a lot of money. This is why I need a big corporate job.
I mention this because smart watches are cropping up again, and I'm convinced they're going to be more meaningful than internet fridges, but right now they don't seem to be.
I know this is a thing because Ben Bashford's mentioned it and his antenna are exquisite.
I've been mucking about with the Nano as a watch too. And am equally frustrated by how much it could do, but doesn't.
You've got a moderately powerful computing device on your wrist but it doesn't do anything. Agh.
The new Nike+ GPS thing works really well though. I think because it doesn't try to be a General Purpose Computing Device, it just does a few, very specific things.
And I'm really impressed by the possibilities of this thing - the inPulse. It's Linux based and a cleverer developer than me (ie any actual developer) could probably do all sorts of clever things with it.
What I love most about it though is a really simple thing. It connects to a Blackberry and when you get an email you get a single discrete vibration - then a quick glance at the watch tells you whether that email or tweet is worth paying more attention to. You don't have to get your phone out of your pocket and poke at it a bit to unlock it, read the mail, etc. It gives you back a little bit of time and attention.
What I don't like is that I can't get the battery to last more than about 8 hours. Which isn't enough. Even with the screen off most of the time. But, you know, battery life is hard.
I think this all connects to the measuring pebbles thought somehow and the idea that as we move "post PC" then we'll start to develop little networks around our mobile devices. Notifications will be distributed around our bodies where they make sense. In our earphones, on our wrists, perhaps a little speaker in our collars or an LED on our laces.
This Eye-Fi card is the latest thing to make me think this. It creates a connectivity hotspot around your camera, connects to your mobile device and access 'the cloud' directly. So every picture you take gets uploaded - you're saving direct to flickr (if you want.)
You're surrounded by a personal area network of connectivity. Your Object Formerly Known As A Phone is the centre of that, providing access to the Data Centres In Fields and your other devices - cameras, watches, whatevers - can be tuned to be good at what they're supposed to do, but still be connected and smart.
Anyway.