Dick Tracy's MP3 Player
TechnOTunes MP3 Watch: Introduction
Well, it's been about 50 years, and we still don't have watchband communicators. Heck, my cell phone still loses signal in parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, supposedly the hotbed of technology for the world! However, thanks to New York-based Technotunes, Inc., we do have a watchband music player. The company offers a MP3-playing watch. I must admit, when I first heard the concept, it sounded a little on the janky side of the street. I may have judged too soon.
When we opened the packaging, we were nicely surprised to see the high quality of the materials, and the size of the watch itself. I think our expectations were a cheap overseas design with a standard cardboard box, no manual whatsoever, and pleather. Instead, the box looks good, and all the components are worthy of a $199 watch. Nice.
Now we naturally ignored the manual, and went straight to the task of trying to listen to our music. We pulled out the USB cable, and noticed right away the unique (or unique to us, I should say) adapter which appears to convert USB to... headphone! I plugged the cable into my laptop, and two things happened: (1) a light on the watch lit up, and (2) my PC automatically recognized a new USB drive. Both were fantastic news, let me tell you why.
The light on the watch lit up to inform me that the watch was charging over USB. I love this. To all product developers out there: if you make a portable gadget with USB support, it should be chargeable by USB! There is nothing I hate more than carrying extra power adapters on business trips, and if I'm going to have a watch that needs recharging, the LAST thing I want to have to do is remember my charger!
The fact that Windows was able to communicate with the watch as a USB drive meant that not only did I not need to install any special drivers or software, but I can simply drag and drop the MP3 files I want straight to the watch. Which is exactly what I did, and even though the device used the older USB 1.1 technology (which means a much slower transfer rate), filling 256MB with music was quick enough for me.
NEXT... listen to the music
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