IBM Offers a Peek at a Bluetooth Future

SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA--IBM is looking into the future, and that future is Bluetooth.

The company is spreading its development resources widely in search of Bluetooth-enabled devices that users will embrace, an IBM engineer told attendees at the Bluetooth Developers Conference here earlier this week. (See "Intel Flashes Green Light for Bluetooth.")

"We can count on a large number of devices showing up on the market in the next few years," said John Karidis, distinguished engineer in the Personal Systems Group at IBM.

IBM is working on a range of innovations including the WatchPad, a wristwatch with a high-resolution touch screen, and CyberPhone-2, a lightweight cell phone that can project data onto a small mirror the user can look at while talking. Karidis showed prototypes of the devices during a keynote address at the conference. (See "What in the World Is Bluetooth?")

The prototype wristwatch, thinner than most current calculator watches, features a 720 dot-per-inch VGA display that makes 6-point type (about half the size of typical newspaper type) legible to the user. This allows the screen to show about as much type as the larger screen of a Palm handheld. Because of the high resolution of the display, the text can be read easily by the wearer, Karidis said. The device would offer organizer and messaging functions and could be navigated by touch, with just four or five touch areas.

"Your watch knows what time it is. It certainly should be able to tell you where your next appointment is," Karidis said.

Using Bluetooth, the WatchPad can communicate with a PC. As a demonstration, Karidis used the touch-screen controls to move through his presentation, which ran on an IBM ThinkPad notebook computer.

The device could be commercialized within two years, Karidis said in an interview following his speech.

Bluetooth Comes Calling

The CyberPhone-2 concept uses the same motherboard and offers a small display similar to those on typical cell phones. A larger display also can be used by projecting the smaller display onto a mirror that flips out of the bottom on the phone, allowing full Web pages to appear legible to the user. A trackpad on the back of the phone, near the user's index finger, controls the device.

CyberPhone-2 could be marketed as a companion to the ThinkPad, as an interface to a Bluetooth-enabled phone carried elsewhere on the body, or as a phone co-branded with a mobile phone maker, Karidis said. (See "IBM Promises Wireless Notebooks.")

Karidis also described devices more similar to current products. He showed the Chameleon, a combination notebook PC and Web kiosk for home use, as well as a "wearable drive" concept in which a Bluetooth-enabled IBM MicroDrive would serve as network-attached storage for a number of personal-area-network devices, and Mica, a notebook PC in a portfolio with a companion pen that lets users automatically input to the PC what they write on a pad of paper.

For frequent flyers, Karidis suggested a couple of odd solutions to the problem of fully reclined seatbacks--the "Monarch butterfly," a notebook with a keyboard that can be reconfigured to be wider but more shallow, and the AirWarrior, with a display that can be raised up to eye level. Although the AirWarrior would allow the user to see the display, the drawback is that everyone for several rows back could also see it, Karidis acknowledged.