h a l f b a k e r y"It would work, if you can find alternatives to each of the steps involved in this process."
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Bluetime
a surprisingly simple Bluetooth feature I've not seen or heard about. | |
More and more folks these days are leaving their
wristwatches at
home because they always carry a mobile phone
on their person,
which functions less like a wristwatch than it does a
pocketwatch.
Well
there is a reason the pocketwatch fell out of
mainstream use behind
the wristwatch:
convenience.
Who wants to fish it
out of a pocket
and
flip it open (or light up the screen) every time they
need to check the
time? Not I, says I!
I'm known to folks who know me as a bit of a
gadget freak. I always
have some fancy doohickey with me (portable
battery backup, radar
detector, iPod nano wristwatch, Android tablet,
Android
smartphone,
Bluetooth earpiece, etc.). Despite all this
technology, I still enjoy the
convenience of a wristwatch.
The only downside to the wristwatch comes in
winter when I wear
jackets which cover up the watch. What an
annoyance it is to pull
back
a tight-fitting sleeve just to check the time. But
wait! I shouldn't have
to.... I wear a Plantronics Voyager Pro HD
Bluetooth, which tells me
things like battery life, remaining talk time, and
connection status at
the tap of a button. Even works with gloves on.
There's even a
Plantronics app which displays the battery life on
my phone screen.
Clearly, communication between headset and
phone is not a
problem.
So how about a simple button (or tap sequence) on
the headset
which speaks the time
in my ear? That is all.
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//when I wear jackets which cover up the watch
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Yes, it's really annoying to us people who don't wear watches (allergies to plastic and metal) as we either have to fish out the mobile or wait until spring to find out what the time is, because we can't see yours. |
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This could actually be done quite simply with an app, which
would be compatible with just about any Bluetooth earpiece that
supports streaming media. Configure the app to autorun when
the earpiece is connected to the phone and stream the spoken
time to the earpiece when it detects, say, a half-second press of
the talk button. The actual button used or the tap/press length/
sequence may have to vary depending on the button presets
configured at the factory into the earpiece, but a well-
programmed app ought to be able to work something out. |
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+ This idea is well-baked enough IMHO to warrant a
letter to Plantronic’s customer feedback folk –
seems like it could make enough happy customers
that they’d be inclined to get it into popular
phone app stores PDQ.
It’s niche-y, though.
Around the turn of the millennium, lots of gadget
wisdom predicted that we’d all have “personal
area networks” (Bluetooth was a popular, but not
the only, approach and protocol being discussed)
connecting lots of little gadgets squirreled around
our various pockets and protuberances – a
buttonless wireless network appliance in one
pocket, it’s viewer and keys on a worn
wristwatch, or palmheld size device, something
stuck in our ear for sound and voicepickup. To
these folks’ surprise, the market field was won by
one-piece do-it-all devices – Palmpilots, iPods,
iPhones, etc, the Bluetooth headset being one of
the few predicted pieces that retained some
popularity. Even that popularity is narrowspread –
cellphones with built-in pop-out headsets came
and left the market faster than I could buy one.
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My guess is that this trend will continue, with
convenient do-it-all gadgets dominating over PAN-
connected ones except among eccentrics. Much
current wisdom is eyeing Google Glass as the next
killer gadget class (prototype Glasses are wifi and
Bluetooth-only, but I expect a cellphone to be
offered at or soon after public rollout). I have a
hunch headsets with integral cellphones – either
simple voice or talking/voice controlled
smartphones – without the Glass’s AR eyepiece,
may compete successfully with Glass class gadgets. |
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good in its simplicity. [+] |
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It would be more sensible to wear clothes with a
transparent section in the sleeve. |
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Following that to its logical conclusion, it might well be more
sensible to simply go naked. |
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Or to live in a giant clock and never leave it? |
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//Or to live in a giant clock and never leave it
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