Microsoft are quietly pulling the plug on their SPOT watch project, which aimed to bring real-time weather and schedule updates to the wrists of the populace. According to Microsoft’s Jon Canan, the technology will no longer be built into any new watches, and the most recent examples have sold out. However, the MSN Direct service itself will continue, meaning anybody still wanting to use their SPOT watch will be able to for the foreseeable future.
So you put a couple of AA lithium batteries thing and then you start hiking and the folks back home can follow your trip up Mount Everest. There are 4 buttons on this little bugger, Help, ON/OFF, OK/Check, and 911.
If I said “MSN@Direct” to you, what would you say? How about SPOT? Would you look at me, blink slowly and then walk on by, or would you snigger something about craptastic wireless information services and dance the jig of market failure as a fitting coup de grace? Well Microsoft obviously haven’t got the message yet (I assume the message contains a link to the YouTube version of that jig) because they’re still producing watches that can wirelessly update you with news, stock information and Outlook reminders.
Oh yes, so the screen is higher-resolution and it’s apparently “on-demand” rather than “when the system wants to tell you”, but is anybody really convinced – outside of Seattle – that this is a needed product? I ask you, who wouldn’t be better served with, say, a Treo or other smartphone, maybe even a Bluetooth-enabled watch for those moments when whipping out your cellphone isn’t prudent but you still want to check your schedule.
Sorry guys, but I think you should let this one just die.
Remember SPOT, Microsoft’s wireless information service that has been built into a number of mediocre watches? It was heralded as the best thing since sliced yams; instant updates on stocks & shares, weather, news and information from your Exchange server, delivered to your wrist in the “100 top US metropolitan areas” for a monthly fee. Yet to take off, SPOT is surreptitiously making its way into another area of your life – your morning brew, via the Milette Smart Mill & Brew “intelligent coffee pot”.
JP
