HP Making a Dick Tracy Watch For the Military 66
eldavojohn writes "HP announced a device like Dick Tracy's watch, with a target user base being the US military. CNN describes it as 'a flexible display that shows maps and other strategic information to soldiers in remote combat fields. The watch's screen will be made of plastic and it will run on solar energy, making it less likely to malfunction or run out of power in a tense scenario.' HP says a prototype will be done within a year. This new device hinges on recent display technology that HP says it has been developing for 10 years. The flexible displays are a mere 50 microns thick."
Re:First Post (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, HP just bought Palm. Use your imagination.
WebOS based flexible low-power display smart "phones" that can either be wearable, or as a small carryable.
Translate the same tech over into the WebOS based slate, and you have a revolution in computing.
iPad nothin'. WebOS is the future. HP and Palm are going to take us there.
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Well, HP just bought Palm. Use your imagination.
Ok, I did and I come up that maybe they will use some palm style interfaces on the watch.
Now what? :D
He asked about a consumer version.
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Palm OS on a watch? Already done ...
http://www.gizmohighway.com/personaltech/fossil_palm_watch.htm [gizmohighway.com]
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Except that is PALM OS, not WEBOS.
Pay attention.
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You're absolutely correct. Been there, done that [amazon.com] with all but the flexible screen and data in the cloud. I wonder if the GP has even seen the iPad TV commercials? You're not going to want to share your photos, watch a movie or read a book on a watch-sized screen. Commercialization of this device is no threat to iPad.
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I don't watch much TV anymore.
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Not to sound trollish, but if that's all you can come up with you are really lacking in imagination.
If HP can come up with a super-thin high density display that can run off a Watch-sized solar panel, What happens when you blow that same display up to smartphone or Tablet PC size? How about a Smartphone or Tablet PC that uses almost no battery power to run the display, allowing for DAYS worth of unplugged computing instead of hours?
Also note that the screen is FLEXIBLE. What about a pull-out display on a t
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Not to sound trollish, but if that's all you can come up with you are really lacking in imagination.
I'm not lacking imagination.
But I read your post:
"WebOS based flexible low-power display smart "phones" that can either be wearable, or as a small carryable."
Like if it was more or less a fact and that would be what they would release now when they had both technologies.
And I rather thought that was a little over-[word] since I wouldn't want to draw such conclusions and expect such things from so vague information.
How about a Smartphone or Tablet PC that uses almost no battery power to run the display, allowing for DAYS worth of unplugged computing instead of hours?
I assume most phones turn their displays of after a while if you don't use them? For a tablet PC I assume anything worth doing on it will consume the juice quite fast anyway. But anyway, my answer was th
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WebOS based flexible low-power display smart "phones" that can either be wearable, or as a small carryable.
The power of this will be in making "scroll phones", which will have semi-netbook power in a phone size bundle, with a neat pull out screen. Much like a normal phone but with maybe 10" rollaway screens, or firefly-like news sheets.
I can't wait... (Score:1, Offtopic)
"PC Load Letter?" What the fuck does that mean?
Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)
what are you talking about?
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Ah.
Better explanation then the other guy. Now it makes sense, and even though I've seen Office Space, it didn't register as a quote.
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"PC Load Letter" is an error message that certain old HP printers would display when they're out of paper, for instance A4. The entire grandparent post is a quote from the movie "Office Space". We had one of those printers were I worked and we smirked at that message, it was hilarious that they made the same joke in the movie :)
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What does that have to with my original post, though?
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Nothing really, just thought I'd answer your question :)
Nevermind.
At least... (Score:1, Insightful)
At least our yearn to kill each other produces some pretty cool toys every few years.
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At least our yearn to kill each other produces some pretty cool toys every few years.
Now if only we could choose the signal used ...
STOP
...
CONT
How big? (Score:2)
Hey.... (Score:2)
I read the TFA (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, from TFA i understood that so far, they only have a flexible screen.
Plastic screens on a watch are a horrible idea. They scratch much more easily than glass ones.
Wrong reference (Score:5, Funny)
Why don't they call it a Turanga Leela Wrist-Kejigger?
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After all, "You gotta do what you gotta do."
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Because a lot more people who wanted a Dick Tracy Watch as a kid could afford this than people who wanted a Leela wrist device as a kid.
It is all about marketing to the audience who both wants to buy it and can afford to buy it.
Display (Score:2, Insightful)
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It's okay - it'll be a touch-screen display, so you can use your fingers to zoom in and out and to scroll. Give it a day and you'll wonder how you ever did without all of the zooming and scrolling just to see useful stuff!
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How about if it had a laser that can project an image onto the ground or wall?
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Don't worry, I was poking fun at iPhones and the like and the sudden "wow, everything must be touch-screen with gestures" pattern. Given the size of the screen, can you imagine the comparative effect of fingerprints?
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They don't seem to say what size it is. I assume it's larger than an actual Dick Tracy watch, and they simply didn't want to call it a Bracelet Phone for obvious reasons.
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I sure hope so! I've been waiting for forearm computing practically my whole life. It just seems to me the best way to combine a usably sized display with wear-ability. Bonus points if they can make a screen viewable from both sides (sandwiching 2 together would be an acceptable substitution) so you can flip it up to reveal a keyboard.
I've been wondering why nobody has made anything like this yet for some time. How many times have we seen good/bad guys in movies with the gps/vid phone/AI/etc. on their forea
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There should be enough space for 1-way communication (e.g. Command sending coordinates, descriptions of targets, orders, etc)
Woah! (Score:3, Funny)
Solar powered (Score:2)
Since they seem to spend so much time in the desert, this should work out fine.
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Now, I'd like for you to listen to some of my poetry...
Re:Solar powered combat gear? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, if you do night ops, you're generally asleep during the day or doing LPOP. You just want to be careful about leaving a glinty little solar panel out if you're trying to be tactical.
Most military comms are like what you've heard in movies, everyone's basically on one network and takes turns. It's a little more complicated than that, and I won't go into specifics on a public forum, but for 99% of communications, all you need to do is press a button and talk.
My beef is that a watch is just a fucking stupid idea: assuming a rifle, you'd have to take your non-firing hand off your weapon to bring your wrist up to your mouth, then use your firing hand to press the damned talk button. Terrible, terrible idea.
If I were doing it, I'd make it a headset that fit in to the ACH and could be activated by biting, or by a switch you could mount on a standard picatinny rail. It should also use the latest greatest DSP so you don't have to actually vocalize to talk.
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Sorry, LPOP is a bit obscure: listening post / observation post. Basically means setting up a hidey hole and waiting and watching.
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James Bond's watch is better (Score:1)
Great, an NMCI watch... (Score:4, Insightful)
When HP took over EDS, it got the contract for the NMCI [wikipedia.org], possibly the biggest cluster-fuck in DoD history according to my Navy friends.
I wouldn't trust HP to supply soldiers with a working Timex, let alone something with telecommunications abilities.
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Why should they believe NGEN will be any better?
Two-way video phone (Score:4, Insightful)
The "Dick Tracy watch" from the comics (and movie) is a two-way video phone. This isn't a Dick Tracy watch.
Obligatory Dilbert (Score:1)
Reality can inspire art (Score:2)
In 1997, I saw Al Gross [mit.edu] talk at the Vehicular Technology Conference about his history in designing portable radios. He claimed that Dick Tracy author Chester Gould [wikipedia.org] got the idea for the wrist radio from an actual prototype that he had been building (following on from his successful radio designs for the military). It's a very long feedback loop.
Dick Tracy's Kid (Score:2)
great reporting here (Score:1)
A U.S. Department of Defense spokeswoman said she was not familiar with the project, so it's unclear exactly how the watch would be used by the military.
Okay, I didn't go to journalist school, but shouldn't this person have just been crossed off the list and ignored?
We have until 2077 to finish the Pip-Boys before the world ends though, right? Looks like we're on track. I just hope they remember the bomb screensaver this time. I real reporter would have pointed this out.
Talk to me when it is a Lens (Score:2)
Where are you, "Doc" Smith?
Why not make it kinetic powered? (Score:2)
"less likely to run out of power" (Score:2)
touch + flexible screen = ? (Score:2)
How well (if at all) will a touch interface work on a flexible screen?
All this talk about roll up screens and such, but imagine trying to use your iPhone if it was a piece of paper. And its not laying flat on a hard surface.
Solar? (Score:1)