“Watches” that do more than just tell time
So the other day, I was thinking about things that I want to remember, but always forget. Things like “treat yourself well, or you will die faster”, “a penny saved is a penny that could be wasted later”, and “ensure all voices have a source”.
I considered ways to keep these things with me. Storing them on my phone or a piece of paper is no good since it’s still easy to forget about them. Writing them on my hand seemed okay, but then I wondered about the health concerns of letting ink sink into my skin all the time. There was also the issue that having notes scrawled all over my hand would mayhaps cause me to appear a tad insane.
Then I remembered watches. They were those digital timepieces that you used to strap to your wrist before cell phones made them irrelevent. This fact still renders them useless, but they would be awesome for uses other than timekeeping. Things like storing things I wanted to remind myself of. The display could rotate through them, and could be used for other things as well, like grocery lists. A button could scroll through list contents, or lists of different types.
And there are other things it could do for me as well, like store people’s names and their relation to me (I am horrible with names). Also, if I could get it to sync with my phone over bluetooth, it could pop up notifications when I receive a text message, an email, a phone call, or a twitter mention. Heck, if it can connect with my phone, it could just be treated like a widget that I can always see. It could show me weather, stock market updates, anything. The possibilities are endless.
The only issue is that there would be no room for a full keyboard, only a few buttons. However, that could be fixed by just hooking it up to a computer to add content, or perhaps even through a smartphone.
If anyone is thinking “this is ridiculous”, I offer that if Apple can make those little ipod nano‘s with touchscreen display and up to 16GB of memory that can clip onto my belt for $189, then some Chinese company can make my watch for like $20.
I considered making it myself, but I don’t have any idea what I would be doing with something like this. I might buy a book on microcontrollers or something though, we’ll see.
If anyone wants to steal this idea, I would be flattered, but please let me know so I can be an early adopter. Or, if this already exists, please place a link in the comments so I can buy it.