The Ultimate MO-MO stock? - put this on your list...it's way off its highs and the timing might be close.
USA Today article....
By Kevin Maney, USA TODAY
FAIRFAX, Va. — In 1979, when Sony
created the Walkman, its inventors realized
that most people would feel like absolute
imbeciles walking around in public wearing, of
all things, headphones.
So they famously put two headphone jacks in
the first Walkman, thinking the device would
only be used by two people sitting in a room
listening to music together.
Obviously, they were wrong about all this, to
the extent that these days, children are born
wearing headphones acquired in utero, never
taking them off until they get jobs in corporate
management, and perhaps not even then.
The lesson: Never underestimate how stupid we're willing to look to
accommodate technology.
I'm trying to keep this in mind as I'm standing in the boardroom of wearable
computer maker Xybernaut, wearing — well — a wearable computer.
I'm doing this because wearable computers are just now entering the
consciousness of the general public — kind of the place where portable music
stood in 1979. And I'm wondering just how stupid I'm willing to look.
The breakthrough for wearables really started last year when IBM aired a
commercial showing a manic young guy on a bench in a pigeon-filled piazza.
The guy watches stock market information on a wireless screen attached to
his eyeglasses and startles the pigeons as he shouts trades into his
speech-recognition microphone.
Everybody wanted one of those gadgets, a quest complicated mainly by the
fact that they didn't yet exist.
Xybernaut does sell a wearable, called the MA4. In May, Xybernaut, IBM
and Texas Instruments will unveil a jointly developed wearable computer for
commercial use. Perhaps by Christmas, Xybernaut and Hitachi might
introduce a consumer wearable computer.
Xybernaut is pretty much considered the
leader in this space, in part because it has
locked up a big chunk of the patents.
But current models aren't much like the one in
the IBM commercial. It's hard to imagine
anyone walking around with what I'm wearing
and not causing parents of small children to
dial 911.
Around my waist is a fat belt that looks like
Batman's utility belt. The computer — about
the size of 2 pounds of ground chuck —
nestles in one compartment on my right. In a back compartment is a battery,
about the same size as the computer. In a left pouch is a handheld screen.
The belt is one thing. What's on my head is quite another. It's a headset built
on a big cushiony set of earphones. An arm sticks out from it, hovering in
front of my right eye. In the arm are a microphone and a screen about the
width of a quarter.
Looking at the screen is like taking one of those eye tests where the
optometrist puts the big lens wheel on your nose and asks you to say when
things look blurry. Except when I peer into the Xybernaut screen, I see —
Windows!
So I'm here speaking with the Xybernaut folks and feeling like I'm some
combination of an airport tarmac worker and RoboCop.
As I alternately talk to the Xybernauts and use a tiny mouse to click through
things on my tiny screen, I feel as rude as someone who talks to you in a bar
while never taking her eyes off the TV in the corner. If I were seen in my local
grocery store in this get-up, the neighbors would avoid me for months.
But Xybernaut isn't deterred by the apparent ridiculousness of wearing a
computer.
"It's taken 8 or 10 years for the market to catch on," says CEO Ed Newman,
a sparky, balding guy who seems like he might've been an Army colonel, but
wasn't.
"Every bone in my body says we are on the verge."
One reason his bones are talking, he says, is that wearables are getting out
there in business. It seems that it's easier to persuade somebody to slap on a
big ol' headset when his or her boss deems it good for productivity.
Federal Express this month ordered $1 million worth of wearables from
Xybernaut. FedEx plans to give the devices to its aircraft maintenance
workers.
That way, they can have digital manuals and diagrams with them as they crawl
around an aircraft, using the microphone to guide the computer by speech
recognition.
Bell Canada is trying out wearables for workers who climb poles or go down
manholes. That allows the workers to have their computers right on them.
They used to have a laptop in the truck, which meant they'd have to go back
to the truck to look up anything.
I imagine workers who climb poles in Canada are really happy about a
development that spares them from ducking into their nice warm trucks
several times an hour.
The Xybernaut crew is full of interesting ideas. "Gate agents could just
descend on passengers at the airport," Newman says. This would cut
check-in time, he says.
My guess is that first you'd see a big clump of travelers milling around a gate.
Then you'd see a squad of uniformed agents striding toward them with these
contraptions on their heads. Then you'd see half the passengers run away,
making it possible to complete check-in procedures much more quickly.
Once consumer versions come out, one big use might be manuals, says
Xybernaut chief technology officer Mike Jenkins.
"Like for putting together a swing set," he says. Wear the computer and it
could walk you through the process, leaving your hands free to hammer and
turn screws and otherwise gesture angrily, all of which are essential to
swing-set assembly.
As for social acceptance, Newman points out that, like Walkman
headphones, wearable computer displays will get smaller and cooler.
Already, companies are working on building them into normal-looking
eyeglasses or wristwatches.
"I prefer a watch display," Newman says. "Eventually, we'll all have Lasik, so
we won't need glasses."
And the computers themselves, like everything electronic, will get smaller and
lighter and cheaper. In years to come, wearing a computer — or more likely a
combination computer and cell phone — will be as common as wearing a
stereo is today. I'm looking forward to walking the aisles at the grocery store
while flipping through Alice Cooper Web sites, and having it seem perfectly
normal. |
