Dick Tracy's Wrist Communicator??
by Gary Woods

If you've always got to be up to date with the news headlines, local weather and stock prices you'll love Microsoft's new wrist communicators. The service operates on unused portions of the FM radio band to send out information in a local area. Each watch has a unique ID and pulls in only the information you ask for. The bandwidth is limited, so you get only headlines and short messages

The service is called MSN Direct and costs $9.95 per month or $59.95 per year, plus the cost of the watch. The two watches I've seen are the Fossil Wrist Net which starts at $179 and looks like Dick Tracy's wrist radio, and the Suunto N3 wrist top which costs around $200. Both watches need to be recharged every two days so if you travel a lot you might want to look at the Suunto with its' smaller charger.

You can set up the service to deliver several kinds of information, including national, or sports, news headlines: stock prices of specific companies; and basic market indices. Also, using a desktop utility, you can send calendar items to the watch as well as receive personal message sent via MSN Messenger. It can also receive multiple watch faces with alarms and timers.

Microsoft currently has coverage in 100 of the largest cities in the country including New York and San Francisco but don't expect it to come to Santa Barbara any time soon.

If you have any suggestions or questions for me please drop me a note at garyandlaury@santabarbaraproperties.com or see my column on the Internet at http://www.santabarbaraproperties.com or call me at (805) 729-0910