The Hard Edge
COMMENTARY--Wearable Computing Gets Real; Introducing the AliceCam; and Bill's Surprisingly Simple Online-Catalog Solution.
Alice was never the type to dream of sporting a wrist communicator, or one of those weird eye computers. It's hard enough placing a cell-phone call in public these days, and without a getaway jetpack and laser gun for protection, there's no way she'd ever brave unruly mobs with a sophisticated wearable device.
Until now. Every morning Alice clips a coin-size device called a SportBrain onto her waistband and then forgets about it. Unlike the pedometer, which is like an abacus in comparison, the SportBrain rides along and records a wealth of data about Alice's day: how fast she walked, her peak hours of activity, the number of miles she covered, the calories she burned, and even her top speed in miles per hour. (My top speed is 174mph, even though the speedometer's numbered all the way up to 200mph. —Corvette Bill)
Truth be told, like most writers, Alice isn't much of an athlete. She has a natural disdain for perky gym people and their array of stopwatches, water bottles, and headbands, but the SportBrain is the first product with genuine crossover appeal. The ultra-athletic can use it for serious training, while even the dangerously sedentary (like Bill!) can increase their activity level, because reviewing your numbers each day has a way of motivating you to do a little better the next.
The SportBrain is also the first truly Web-based product Alice has seen. There's no software disc to lose, no boring installation program to sit through. You simply attach the unit's SportPort to a phone line, pop the little SportBrain into the port, and when the port's green light flashes a few times to initialize the device, go to www.sportbrain.com to set up a free account and password.
Using your SportBrain's unique serial number, the SportPort uploads your data every time you insert the SportBrain. The upload process takes about two minutes, and you don't have to be online or even near a computer to do it. You can upload data from any SportPort you find while traveling, in the gym, or anywhere else. The data is added to your online database, and you can view it from any Web browser, anytime, anywhere.
And oh, what data you'll find. Billed as a personal-fitness assistant (PFA), SportBrain's true power is in the number of charts it has waiting for you in your SportFolio. You can go data-crazy combining your own stats, such as weight, calories consumed, body measurements, and alcohol intake. But even if you never type in a number, the stats you'll see are fascinating.
On the opening page, each day's activity is summed up as a total number of steps. You set a daily step goal (SportBrain recommends 10,000 steps, or roughly five miles), and each day's total shows you how close you came to hitting your goal. For further motivation, you can sign up for the rewards program and earn points for every step you take. Hit the necessary point level, and you can win SportBrain accessories, discounts on running shoes, and other sporty items. Alice was so crushed one day when she did 9,874 steps, she began walking around her block one extra time to be sure she hit her 10,000-step goal. (No wonder "The Hard Edge" was late! —Nose-to-the-Grindstone Bill)
That's the magic of the SportBrain. The simple notion that you hit 98 percent of your goal is enough to get you to take those few extra steps. It won't turn a couch potato into a power jogger, but you'd be surprised how motivating it is to check your stats each day and see if you can do a little better the next day.
Alice was especially pleased the product worked so seamlessly with the online world. The software-free setup, plus the ability to upload from any SportPort or view data from any browser, makes the SportBrain a true next-generation product. For $100 you get the SportBrain and a SportPort. A couple can buy two Buddy Brains and a SportPort for $150; a family of four can buy a Family Pack for $200; and a sports team can buy a whole Bucket O' Brains with 18 SportBrains and two SportPorts for $899. Getting one on Bill will be the ultimate challenge, but Alice is taking things one step at a time.
(Hey, Alice? How many people have access to the personal data you upload? And aren't we all being just a little too quick to upload chunks of our personal lives to this ubiquitous Internet that operates in an essentially unmonitored and uncontrolled fashion? —Conspiracy Theorist Bill)
Note to e-tailers
With dot-coms continuing to fall like overwatered daylilies, you might think brick-and-mortar retailers would be coming into their own on the Web. Not so. Most don't have a clue. Take the king of catalogs, Sears, for example. Embattled Montgomery Ward may have been first, but the Sears Catalog has probably achieved the same level of Ameri cana as the bald eagle. Sears has a Web site (www.sears.com). You might think the company has managed to adapt its catalog for the Web. No printing costs, no mailing fees. Shazaam! Just put it on the Web. Have you been to e-Sears lately? Painful, very painful.
It's not an isolated incident. Some of Bill's favorite hangouts—J.C. Whitney, Summit Racing, Jeg's—have online catalogs that look like some fifth-grader designed a Sunday-paper insert and diverted it to the Internet.
Here's a clue: PDF. Just convert your paper catalogs to PDF format in sections, and let consumers download what they want. Adobe Acrobat is a given these days for anyone with a browser. SLP Engineering did that at one point, and so did General Motors for its Performance Parts catalog. It was great. Then they decided things should be more interactive. Forget it. A catalog isn't an interactive tool. It's one-way. We love catalogs, and we like it when they don't talk back to us. If we wanted someone to talk to, we'd be on the phone, not the Web. Got that clue yet?
RIP
Back in April, Alice and Bill said 3Com's Ergo Audrey Internet appliance was intriguing but not quite ready for prime time. We guess 3Com took the two high judges of the Supreme Court of Computing to heart. It canceled Audrey along with Kerbango. (The latter is understandable. You couldn't say the name without giggling.) Bill lived through the demise of the Little Audrey animated cartoons and comic books, so he was able to achieve closure.
Bay Watch
Has anyone else noticed that the ATX form-factor cases just don't have enough drive bays? There was Bill, assembling a system over the weekend, and all he wanted to do was put in two optical drives (a DVD and a CD-R, and, yes, he could have used one combo drive, but he didn't have a spare), two 7GB hard drives in a RAID configuration, a 60GB drive for music storage, and an Imation LS-120 SuperDisk drive. He really wanted to install more drives because he was transplanting them from an old Gateway 166MHz system into the new one, but there wasn't enough room.
(The old system had undergone a bunch of upgrades in the interim. The only problem with reusing the roomier chassis was that the power supply had the wrong-style connectors for the MSI BXMaster motherboard, and it was too late in the evening for Bill to run out to look for a new and compatible power supply.)
When all was said and done, there Bill sat, a homeless Zip drive in one hand and a SCSI drive in the other, wondering where all the drive bays had gone.
Could it be that with the advent of gigabyte-size drives to replace the paltry megabyte devices of the past, someone suspected we don't need that many bays any more? Are they crazy? It's bad enough bays are spaced such that stretching the IDE cable between two drives is just short of magic. But don't they know the purpose of computing is excess? People always want more of it, whether or not they need more of whatever "it" might be.
So where are the 10-bay—or more—cases of today? Somewhere down in the subbasement of the Basement of Doom and Pepsi-Cola, Bill suspects there may still be a leftover 13-bay chassis with dual 450-watt power supplies and fan speeds controlled by thermistors. It began life as a Northgate 80486 system with an 80MB SCSI hard drive and an MO drive. But even if Bill dug down through the layers of past technology to uncover that monstrosity, it still wouldn't have the correct connectors.
I feel sick
In "Hard Edge" time, there's a new virus in town called VBS/SST, or, as it's more affectionately known, "Anna." Why Anna? Well, the virus arrives via e-mail with an attachment named "AnnaKournikova.jpg.vbs." Anyone in their right mind, upon seeing a file with a .vbs (Visual Basic Script) extension, would, at least, not open the attachment, and, at best, immediately trash the message. We all know by now that .vbs files are how viruses are transmitted through e-mail. Duh.
Then why, even after Melissa, I Love You, and Chernobyl, were so many corporate Web sites jammed by the resulting spama jamathon Anna caused as it mailed itself out to everyone in everyone's address books? We're not talking about pre-pube baby geeks here. (Okay, maybe some. The ZDNet mail server was slightly abuzz.) This was primarily a corporate America, Australia, and Europe phenomenon. Asia was less affected—apparently, the older generations there had less interest in seeing a picture of Ms. Kournikova.
So what was the reward for tearing down mail servers all over the world for a day and a half? Not as huge as the embarrassment felt by those who helped spread it. The picture itself was rather sedate, probably available from any wire service. It's the prurient interest level of the corporate (and federal) suit-jobs that really made the news in the BofD&PC. C'mon, guys. There are other good-looking tennis stars—and they've probably even won a tournament or two.
The virus was traced back to a source in Holland by Excite@Home, according to reports. When the Dutch police were informed, they said they had no reason to investigate the matter. Isn't Holland the place where drugs are legal and euthanasia is condoned? Were the police too busy passing around a doobie to do anything, or were they hoping the guy would take himself out?
Alice and Bill live?
Alice and Bill get a lot of mail asking them what they look like. From time to time they've published a photo or two in "The Hard Edge" to let people know they're actually real people, but as their ninth anniversary quickly approaches, Alice decided they needed to prepare something more high-tech to mark the occasion.
Late one night, with "The Hard Edge" long overdue, Alice sharpened her Java skills and set up a Webcam so all the world could finally have a peek at her doing what she does best—sitting nearly motionless and staring at a monitor all day. For better or worse, "Hard Edge" readers can view the AliceCam all summer long from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. Pacific time.
Of course, Alice is never satisfied until she gets Bill into the act. She hopes to have a BillCam on the same page in time for the August issue, which marks their ninth anniversary writing "The Hard Edge." In that issue, Alice and Bill will announce a date and time when they'll both be available live doing what they do best—staring at their monitors all day and holding up little signs that say "Hello, Bill," "Hi, Alice," and, of course, "Send Us Money." In the meantime, check out the AliceCam.
Get a glimpse of the Lab of Doom
Let's face it, after nine years, Alice is determined to have a look at Bill's lab. Please help her by prodding Bill to get his Webcam up and running by the August "Hard Edge." Send e-mail or a postcard to:
"The Hard Edge"
Computer Shopper
28 E. 28th St., 10th Fl.
New York, NY 10016-7922
hardedge@zdnet.com
COMMENTARY--Wearable Computing Gets Real; Introducing the AliceCam; and Bill's Surprisingly Simple Online-Catalog Solution.
Alice was never the type to dream of sporting a wrist communicator, or one of those weird eye computers. It's hard enough placing a cell-phone call in public these days, and without a getaway jetpack and laser gun for protection, there's no way she'd ever brave unruly mobs with a sophisticated wearable device.
Until now. Every morning Alice clips a coin-size device called a SportBrain onto her waistband and then forgets about it. Unlike the pedometer, which is like an abacus in comparison, the SportBrain rides along and records a wealth of data about Alice's day: how fast she walked, her peak hours of activity, the number of miles she covered, the calories she burned, and even her top speed in miles per hour. (My top speed is 174mph, even though the speedometer's numbered all the way up to 200mph. —Corvette Bill)
Truth be told, like most writers, Alice isn't much of an athlete. She has a natural disdain for perky gym people and their array of stopwatches, water bottles, and headbands, but the SportBrain is the first product with genuine crossover appeal. The ultra-athletic can use it for serious training, while even the dangerously sedentary (like Bill!) can increase their activity level, because reviewing your numbers each day has a way of motivating you to do a little better the next.
The SportBrain is also the first truly Web-based product Alice has seen. There's no software disc to lose, no boring installation program to sit through. You simply attach the unit's SportPort to a phone line, pop the little SportBrain into the port, and when the port's green light flashes a few times to initialize the device, go to www.sportbrain.com to set up a free account and password.
Using your SportBrain's unique serial number, the SportPort uploads your data every time you insert the SportBrain. The upload process takes about two minutes, and you don't have to be online or even near a computer to do it. You can upload data from any SportPort you find while traveling, in the gym, or anywhere else. The data is added to your online database, and you can view it from any Web browser, anytime, anywhere.
And oh, what data you'll find. Billed as a personal-fitness assistant (PFA), SportBrain's true power is in the number of charts it has waiting for you in your SportFolio. You can go data-crazy combining your own stats, such as weight, calories consumed, body measurements, and alcohol intake. But even if you never type in a number, the stats you'll see are fascinating.
On the opening page, each day's activity is summed up as a total number of steps. You set a daily step goal (SportBrain recommends 10,000 steps, or roughly five miles), and each day's total shows you how close you came to hitting your goal. For further motivation, you can sign up for the rewards program and earn points for every step you take. Hit the necessary point level, and you can win SportBrain accessories, discounts on running shoes, and other sporty items. Alice was so crushed one day when she did 9,874 steps, she began walking around her block one extra time to be sure she hit her 10,000-step goal. (No wonder "The Hard Edge" was late! —Nose-to-the-Grindstone Bill)
That's the magic of the SportBrain. The simple notion that you hit 98 percent of your goal is enough to get you to take those few extra steps. It won't turn a couch potato into a power jogger, but you'd be surprised how motivating it is to check your stats each day and see if you can do a little better the next day.
Alice was especially pleased the product worked so seamlessly with the online world. The software-free setup, plus the ability to upload from any SportPort or view data from any browser, makes the SportBrain a true next-generation product. For $100 you get the SportBrain and a SportPort. A couple can buy two Buddy Brains and a SportPort for $150; a family of four can buy a Family Pack for $200; and a sports team can buy a whole Bucket O' Brains with 18 SportBrains and two SportPorts for $899. Getting one on Bill will be the ultimate challenge, but Alice is taking things one step at a time.
(Hey, Alice? How many people have access to the personal data you upload? And aren't we all being just a little too quick to upload chunks of our personal lives to this ubiquitous Internet that operates in an essentially unmonitored and uncontrolled fashion? —Conspiracy Theorist Bill)
Note to e-tailers
With dot-coms continuing to fall like overwatered daylilies, you might think brick-and-mortar retailers would be coming into their own on the Web. Not so. Most don't have a clue. Take the king of catalogs, Sears, for example. Embattled Montgomery Ward may have been first, but the Sears Catalog has probably achieved the same level of Ameri cana as the bald eagle. Sears has a Web site (www.sears.com). You might think the company has managed to adapt its catalog for the Web. No printing costs, no mailing fees. Shazaam! Just put it on the Web. Have you been to e-Sears lately? Painful, very painful.
It's not an isolated incident. Some of Bill's favorite hangouts—J.C. Whitney, Summit Racing, Jeg's—have online catalogs that look like some fifth-grader designed a Sunday-paper insert and diverted it to the Internet.
Here's a clue: PDF. Just convert your paper catalogs to PDF format in sections, and let consumers download what they want. Adobe Acrobat is a given these days for anyone with a browser. SLP Engineering did that at one point, and so did General Motors for its Performance Parts catalog. It was great. Then they decided things should be more interactive. Forget it. A catalog isn't an interactive tool. It's one-way. We love catalogs, and we like it when they don't talk back to us. If we wanted someone to talk to, we'd be on the phone, not the Web. Got that clue yet?
RIP
Back in April, Alice and Bill said 3Com's Ergo Audrey Internet appliance was intriguing but not quite ready for prime time. We guess 3Com took the two high judges of the Supreme Court of Computing to heart. It canceled Audrey along with Kerbango. (The latter is understandable. You couldn't say the name without giggling.) Bill lived through the demise of the Little Audrey animated cartoons and comic books, so he was able to achieve closure.
Bay Watch
Has anyone else noticed that the ATX form-factor cases just don't have enough drive bays? There was Bill, assembling a system over the weekend, and all he wanted to do was put in two optical drives (a DVD and a CD-R, and, yes, he could have used one combo drive, but he didn't have a spare), two 7GB hard drives in a RAID configuration, a 60GB drive for music storage, and an Imation LS-120 SuperDisk drive. He really wanted to install more drives because he was transplanting them from an old Gateway 166MHz system into the new one, but there wasn't enough room.
(The old system had undergone a bunch of upgrades in the interim. The only problem with reusing the roomier chassis was that the power supply had the wrong-style connectors for the MSI BXMaster motherboard, and it was too late in the evening for Bill to run out to look for a new and compatible power supply.)
When all was said and done, there Bill sat, a homeless Zip drive in one hand and a SCSI drive in the other, wondering where all the drive bays had gone.
Could it be that with the advent of gigabyte-size drives to replace the paltry megabyte devices of the past, someone suspected we don't need that many bays any more? Are they crazy? It's bad enough bays are spaced such that stretching the IDE cable between two drives is just short of magic. But don't they know the purpose of computing is excess? People always want more of it, whether or not they need more of whatever "it" might be.
So where are the 10-bay—or more—cases of today? Somewhere down in the subbasement of the Basement of Doom and Pepsi-Cola, Bill suspects there may still be a leftover 13-bay chassis with dual 450-watt power supplies and fan speeds controlled by thermistors. It began life as a Northgate 80486 system with an 80MB SCSI hard drive and an MO drive. But even if Bill dug down through the layers of past technology to uncover that monstrosity, it still wouldn't have the correct connectors.
I feel sick
In "Hard Edge" time, there's a new virus in town called VBS/SST, or, as it's more affectionately known, "Anna." Why Anna? Well, the virus arrives via e-mail with an attachment named "AnnaKournikova.jpg.vbs." Anyone in their right mind, upon seeing a file with a .vbs (Visual Basic Script) extension, would, at least, not open the attachment, and, at best, immediately trash the message. We all know by now that .vbs files are how viruses are transmitted through e-mail. Duh.
Then why, even after Melissa, I Love You, and Chernobyl, were so many corporate Web sites jammed by the resulting spama jamathon Anna caused as it mailed itself out to everyone in everyone's address books? We're not talking about pre-pube baby geeks here. (Okay, maybe some. The ZDNet mail server was slightly abuzz.) This was primarily a corporate America, Australia, and Europe phenomenon. Asia was less affected—apparently, the older generations there had less interest in seeing a picture of Ms. Kournikova.
So what was the reward for tearing down mail servers all over the world for a day and a half? Not as huge as the embarrassment felt by those who helped spread it. The picture itself was rather sedate, probably available from any wire service. It's the prurient interest level of the corporate (and federal) suit-jobs that really made the news in the BofD&PC. C'mon, guys. There are other good-looking tennis stars—and they've probably even won a tournament or two.
The virus was traced back to a source in Holland by Excite@Home, according to reports. When the Dutch police were informed, they said they had no reason to investigate the matter. Isn't Holland the place where drugs are legal and euthanasia is condoned? Were the police too busy passing around a doobie to do anything, or were they hoping the guy would take himself out?
Alice and Bill live?
Alice and Bill get a lot of mail asking them what they look like. From time to time they've published a photo or two in "The Hard Edge" to let people know they're actually real people, but as their ninth anniversary quickly approaches, Alice decided they needed to prepare something more high-tech to mark the occasion.
Late one night, with "The Hard Edge" long overdue, Alice sharpened her Java skills and set up a Webcam so all the world could finally have a peek at her doing what she does best—sitting nearly motionless and staring at a monitor all day. For better or worse, "Hard Edge" readers can view the AliceCam all summer long from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. Pacific time.
Of course, Alice is never satisfied until she gets Bill into the act. She hopes to have a BillCam on the same page in time for the August issue, which marks their ninth anniversary writing "The Hard Edge." In that issue, Alice and Bill will announce a date and time when they'll both be available live doing what they do best—staring at their monitors all day and holding up little signs that say "Hello, Bill," "Hi, Alice," and, of course, "Send Us Money." In the meantime, check out the AliceCam.
Get a glimpse of the Lab of Doom
Let's face it, after nine years, Alice is determined to have a look at Bill's lab. Please help her by prodding Bill to get his Webcam up and running by the August "Hard Edge." Send e-mail or a postcard to:
"The Hard Edge"
Computer Shopper
28 E. 28th St., 10th Fl.
New York, NY 10016-7922
hardedge@zdnet.com