A wristwatch, like any other, except: Voice activated scheduler. The watch contains a standard voice recognition processor (Atmel, et al sell processors with voice recognition and small dictionaries built in), microphone and speaker. The watch would recognize a few words, such as "in", "remind", "days", "hours", "minutes", the days of the week, months, etc. The processor would recognize several types of request, such as: "in 5 days remind me to pay my bills". The voice recognition part would look at the part "in 5 days remind me to". It would parse the 5 days part, and add an entry into a database which would trigger in 5 days. The "remind me to" part would trigger a recording function, which would record your voice and dump the sound into an audio file. In 5 days, it will play the audio file back. This way, it doesn't have to know what "pay the bills" means, you simply hear yourself say it in 5 days. Other phrases include: "in 2 hours remind me to...." "What is happening in 1 week" - would play back anything that occurs in 1 week, etc. use your imagination. Since there would be chance for background noise/annoying co-workers to add things to your watch, a button press would define when it was "listening" for commands, and letting go would signal when you were done adding an entry (since it doesn't recognize the words in the entry). This would also make it more feasible battery-wise, since it wouldn't constantly be recording and checking for key phrases. Additional features could include the ability to check for collisions - i.e. if you are adding an event in close proximity to another, it could point out that you already have something scheduled at that time, and ask if the events can be put in to occur simultaneously. For things that take prearranged amounts of time, you could say "on december 12th, 3pm until 4 pm exclusive, remind me to go to the widget meeting". The exclusive part would force it to prevent any collisions with other activities, such as "play with my kids" or "visit parents in home" The watch will also synch with your computer to provide a more visual calendar when desired. Possible problems include battery life and speaker volume. A small vibrator might need to be included, like in a cell phone, for optional noisy environment notification (side feature: it listens to ambient noise to decide whether or not to trigger the vibrator). A "repeat that last message" button would be necessary.-- ericscottf, Dec 21 2007 It doesn't seem like an invention to me.-- can1073, Dec 21 2007 It does to me. And half-baked at that.
Sure, voice recognition is widely known to exist, even for mobile devices, but this idea is for a very specific limited software and hardware combination that is feasible.
Now, that being said, I'm neutral on it simply because it is overly specific in its application. These days we like a swiss-army-knife approach to our mobile devices, with increasingly diverse functionality. So this wouldn't sell much for its cost to develop.
Just develop the described app for your palm-top or PDA. Many mobile devices come equipped with VR capability now, so such software might even exist, actually. If it isn't widely known to.-- globaltourniquet, Dec 21 2007 I think it's a good idea. I'd buy a watch like this if it worked.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 21 2007 I had thought about making it software for a PDA instead, however, I feel the watch idea is better for a few reasons. 1) your watch is easier to grab a hold of and speak into than a pda, which may be in a pocket or another room 2) cell phones will probably eventually be incorporated into watches - this is nearly inevitable, when batteries and interfaces develop well enough. I figure it is an end-run by putting it on the watch first. No reason it can't be made for the PDA, tho. Alternately, a bluetooth watch that sends the data to your nearby PDA.-- ericscottf, Dec 21 2007 ... or a Bluetooth cochlear implant.
Say, that gives us an idea.....-- 8th of 7, Dec 21 2007 random, halfbakery