Smartwatches at the turn of the century were a more motley assortment than today’s, with an even wilder range of functionality. If you had a few hundred dollars or so, there were some interesting options, even back then. But if all you had was $85 (in 2024 dollars about $150), you still weren’t left out, because in 2001 you could get the Web-@nywhere (the “Worldwide Web Watch”). Load up the software on your PC and slap it in its little docking station, and you could slurp down about 93K of precious Web data to scroll on the 59×16 screen — 10 characters by 2 characters — to read any time you wanted!
That is, of course, if the remote host the watch’s Windows 9x-based client accessed were still up, on which it depended for virtually anything to download and install. Well, I want 95,488 bytes of old smartwatch tiny screen Web on my wrist, darn it. We’re going to reverse-engineer this sucker and write our own system using real live modern Web data. So there!
↫ Old Vintage Computing Research
Y’all know the drill by now – I’m a sucker for these kinds of stories. What a great, extremely detailed read, with code to boot.
I still have my shitty (but beloved) 1973 watch. It has no brand, and does not tick so you can sleep with it just fine, completely silent. It is water proof. and i have only had to repair it twice, once i smashed the glass and the other time the frame for the date indicator fell off.
I did ofcourse change the armbad to match to clock’s price…. not. A ruby studded gold armband.