“UK start-up pitches touch-to-sync tech for watches”

I’ve been using the Casio Data Bank watches since they first came out when I was a teenager, but I have to admit that since I got my first Palm PDA, the only thing I really use it for is to see the time, and occasionally for the countdown timer. Data-watches, never overly popular in the first place, have pretty much gone the way of the dodo… comparing their tiny, hard-to-use calculator keypads, extremely limited display capabilities, and tiny amounts of storage to what you get on even the cheapest modern PDAs and cell phones is like comparing a five-inch black-and-white tube TV to a 42-inch LCD flat-panel — they can both do certain things, but one is ridiculously limited and painful to use. I don’t even use the alarm capability of my watch anymore.

I tried replacing it with a watch that had a built-in voice recorder for a while, and it was useful because the voice recorders on my iPod Touch and cell phone require several touches to get to, and the watch didn’t — I could safely use the watch’s recorder while driving. But that one eventually died, and I haven’t been able to find another like it. I don’t need a voice recorder often enough to worry about it anyway.

I’ve even considered going completely watch-free. I have two other devices, always on me, that tell the time. But the wristwatch format makes it more easily available, especially when the weather requires a heavy winter coat, for example.

On the other hand (or wrist, as the case may be), a watch that I could use to pay for things would still be very useful. Such devices have appeared in several science fiction stories, though I can’t think which ones at the moment. I’ll keep an eye out for something like that, though I doubt it’ll appear any time real soon.