Bill Gates kicked off the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas by
unveiling the first products based on a futuristic technology that
can turn everyday items into "smart objects" that receive wireless
information.
Three leading watch makers will offer wrist watches by the end of
the year that make use of the smart technology, which uses a part
of the FM radio spectrum to feed the devices with a low-bandwidth
but continuous stream of data, the Microsoft chairman and chief
software architect said.
The technology can deliver what Gates termed "glanceable"
information to the devices such as a weather and traffic report and
text messages. He also showed a magnetic device that can be stuck
to a refrigerator or a car dashboard to display sports results or a
stock ticker.
"It gives you only the information you've selected," he said.
"We're not trying to put a PDA on your wrist."
Called Smart Personal Object Technology, or SPOT, the technology
was developed by Microsoft's research group and is the culmination
of developments in silicon chips, networking and software
technologies, Gates said.
The technology could lead to a host of new services that would be
beamed to devices running Microsoft's .Net Compact Framework
software, he added.
The chip used in the devices runs at just 28MHz, and the watches on
show at the exhibition also have 512K of ROM (read only memory) and
a small amount of RAM (random access memory).
That makes them only slightly more powerful than the components
used in the first IBM Corp. PC, Gates said. The content sent to the
devices is written in "a form of BASIC somewhat like the BASIC that
ran on the early PC," he said.
"That data gets translated into .net byte code and is sent down the
network to the device," he said.
Michael King, a senior analyst with research company Gartner, is
sceptical about the SPOT technology, which was first discussed at
the Comdex trade show in November.
"We spend a lot of time in this industry figuring out how to do
things and showing we can do them, but we have to stop sometimes
and ask whether there's really a need for it," he said.