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AnchorDesk

David Coursey
Why Microsoft's SPOT is such a dog

David Coursey
Executive Editor, AnchorDesk
Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2004
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Microsoft's new SPOT wireless data watch, being introduced this week at the Consumer Electronics Show, is not a finished product. In fact, in terms of fit and finish, it is the worst new Microsoft product I have seen in many years. Microsoft should not be asking people to pay for a product that's simply not ready.

It tells time, too
If you want mobile data that works now, and you're wedded to all things Microsoft, why not just go with a MS-powered smart phone like Motorola's MPx200?
Why isn't the watch ready? Because the value-adds that are supposed to make SPOT more than just an expensive watch are, at this point, either missing or poorly implemented. The news feeds are useless. There are no traffic reports or weather warnings. The minute-by-minute sports scores have yet to appear and initially will be available only for college basketball. And the software that's supposed to link my Outlook calendar to my SPOT watch is currently broken because Microsoft killed the old version without posting the new.

In short, this initial implementation is thoroughly amateurish and disappointing. For that reason--and, yes, I'm front-loading the conclusion here--don't even think about looking at a SPOT watch until Microsoft gets it right. I plan to wait three months, then come back and reconsider SPOT in this column.

BUT I'M GETTING ahead of myself. For those of you who've missed the hype, SPOT stands for Smart Personal Objects Technology. In this case, the personal object is a watch that uses software and chips designed by Microsoft and licensed to the watchmakers; Microsoft also created the wireless network used to send information to those watches. And watches are only the first devices to be SPOT-enabled; the infrastructure could support many others.

Several vendors are bringing these watches to market. I've tried out products from Fossil (the $129 Abacus) and Suunto ($299), and more are on the way. Microsoft says the watch manufacturers will accept 30-day returns so unhappy customers won't be out any money if they decide SPOT isn't for them.

The goal of SPOT gadgets is to present useful information at the point/time of interest or need. This includes common stuff like the weather forecast, the value of your portfolio, calendar items, traffic reports, reminders, news, up-to-the-second sports scores, lottery picks, Amber alerts, terrorism warnings, and other information that can be consumed in the bite-sized morsels these devices can display. And, oh yes, this is probably the most accurate watch you'll own, including those "atomic radio" watches you've seen advertised.

All this information is supposed to be delivered in a form that is readily "glanceable." This is a term Microsoft made up (and has hired a psychologist to study) that describes a way information is consumed.

Think of those news tickers that send headlines scrolling across the buildings in Times Square. Or those crawls on news channels that send story briefs across the bottom of the screen. Both are examples of glanceable information. The goal of glanceability is to present information without user intervention and to do so in an immediately useable form.

WHERE SPOT MISSES the mark is in implementing glanceability on a tiny watch screen. In my test-drive of those two SPOT watches, the content seemed ill-tailored for the watch's tiny screen.

That means, for example, that news headlines can be impenetrable: "Pakistan angrily denies newspaper," "Democratic senator urges White House," "Synthetic snail venom might relieve." The worst so far was the headline that read, "Prosecutor: Cult leader coerced." When I pressed the button to call up the rest of the story, it read, "children to have sex with him." Reading to the end, through four tiny screens of text, I still wasn't entirely sure where this all happened or who the bad guy was.

You can also receive news in the form of News Flashes, which appear in your inbox, announced by a beep. Unfortunately, those flashes must then be deleted--violating a cardinal rule of glanceabilty. And I have yet to figure out how to delete them. So I have a bunch of old "flashes" lying around.

Another gripe: News and weather aren't time stamped, so it's hard to tell what's current and what isn't. For example, the screen right now says it's "currently" 48 degrees in my city. But why can't it just say, "at 9:00 a.m." (this is a watch, after all), so I'd know what "currently" means?

THEN THERE'S the software problem. Outlook recently surprised me by telling me the plug-in used to connect my desktop calendar to MSN Direct was no longer functional and needed to be replaced. It directed me to the MSN Direct site where the new plug-in was to be found. Except that the updated version wasn't there. So now my Outlook calendar will no longer update my SPOT watch. This is the sort of stupid bug that Microsoft should have fixed a long time ago.

To specify the information you want your SPOT device to receive, you go to the MSN Direct site (where you can also get a demonstration of how a SPOT device works and see the types of information available). MSN Direct costs $10 a month or $60 per year; the first month is free.

This site has problems, too. For example, users can select a "home" area and an area to which they commute daily. The user's personalized information--news selections, calendar, messages--will be available in both areas, but nowhere else on the national network.

For some idiotic reason, Microsoft has decided that people in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I reside, only commute north/south and never east/west. For that reason, I can tell MSN Direct that I commute from Stockton (my home market) to Sacramento, in the north, but not to San Francisco or San Jose, both to the west.

Too bad that, when I travel for business, it's usually to San Francisco or San Jose.

I haven't checked to see whether such idiocy reigns in other markets. But if Microsoft doesn't understand commuting in the Bay Area, why would it be expected to understand it elsewhere?

That said, when I recently landed in Washington, D.C., the watch automatically changed time zones and weather forecast, but continued receiving my news choices, stock selections, calendar, and messages.

I'VE SPENT several hours discussing these issues with Microsoft people. Bill Mitchell, the SPOT VP, and his boss, Rick Thompson, are uncommonly smart folks. Mitchell tells me that SPOT, after 40 months in development, is perhaps Microsoft's best-researched product launch.

To give the MS folks credit, SPOT clearly aims toward excellence. The SPOT user interface--which uses just four buttons--is very nice, almost sublime, and achieves glanceabilty, even if the content as yet doesn't.

The network of FM radio stations Microsoft has strung together, if it lives up to the technical discussions I've had, is impressive. It has redundant transmitters in every market and more can be added to increase capacity. SPOT data is carried on subcarriers of music stations, in case that wasn't clear.

With a 12kbps data rate and advanced receiver design, SPOT ought to be very reliable. Microsoft is loathe (blame the lawyers) to make reliability claims. But messages are expected to be received in five minutes or less from when they're sent. The network is also supposed to have coverage superior to pager networks.

Microsoft is careful, however, not to promote SPOT as a pager replacement. Actually, they don't promote it as anything beyond being a "better watch."

On that count, SPOT devices should be extremely accurate, as the network transmits a synchronization pulse every 1.88 minutes. This signal is supposedly traceable to the NIST's atomic clocks, representing the official time standard of the U.S. Compare that to consumer atomic clocks, which are lucky if they synchronize every week or so.

BUT IS THIS a better watch than your Timex? Well, the LCD display allows it to have a half-dozen selectable faces and many are dual-zone displays. The watch sets itself and resets as you change time zones.

All the software in the watch can be updated over the air, meaning the entire feature set can be changed. Because the code is written in C#, third parties should be able to write apps for SPOT devices when (or if) Microsoft releases the API.

In other words, SPOT's damnation should be temporary, not eternal. I believe SPOT has a lot going for it, but suffers from initial sloppy execution. I think this will be fixed. Does this mean everyone will want/need a SPOT watch? No, but it does mean that devices could be more than mere gadgets, destined to be left in a drawer somewhere.

My bet is that Microsoft will get this right eventually. But until they do, SPOT must remain in the dog house. Check back in 90 days.

What do you think? Would you be interested in a SPOT watch, if/when Microsoft gets the kinks ironed out? TalkBack to me below! 

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