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Microsoft Corp. unveiled plans for a portable media player and a radio-linked wristwatch on Wednesday as it tries to move its software from desktops to hands and pockets.

Microsoft Chairman and founder Bill Gates said the market for "smart objects" such as watches that can download data was potentially massive.

"The only screen you carry around with you and you can just glance at is a wrist-sized screen," Gates told Reuters ahead of a speech at the Consumer Electronics Show. "If we get five percent or 10 percent of the people who have watches, it's a huge, huge number."

The smart watches, which recall the futuristic designs once popularized by the comic book crime fighter Dick Tracy, will receive data over FM radio spectrum leased by Microsoft, a system the company calls DirectBand.

The announcements are part of a push by the world's largest software company beyond its stronghold in computer operating systems toward a range of devices such as Tablet PCs, cars, monitors and even exercise bikes.

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News source: Yahoo! News

The timing of the outage was particularly bad, coming as it did at the opening of business on the East Coast of one of the biggest business days of the year, as people returned from holiday vacations. "It's a time when people are coming back to work. When systems fail, it's a double insult. This was the worst time for something like this to happen," Gardner said. "There might have been a small technical reason for this that will be easily fixed, but the perception among users will be, `I needed tis, and they weren't there for me.'" Moreover, switching to an alternative instant message provider is easy, Gardner said. "The market will be harsh to those that don't perform well, because the cost of switching is so very low," he said.

Surprisingly, Microsoft agreed.

"We agree that a large degree of reliability is necessary," Grothaus said. "We are taking steps to see to it that we don't see outages like this again."

But Michael Sampson, analyst with Ferris Research, said the impact of the outage on Microsoft will not be significant. He said Microsoft's instant message service had a July 2001 outage that lasted eight days.

"It's certainly not good for Microsoft, but those people that are wedded to MSN will keep using it. If they were paying for it, they would be a bit more annoyed," Sampson said.

It's uncertain just how many users were affected. Sampson said he estimates that Microsoft and America Online are the instant message market leaders, with about 30 million to 35 million active users each. AOL claims it has 180 million registered users, and Microsoft says it has 75 million, but many of those accounts are duplicates -- more than one account per person -- and inactive.

Microsoft will likely become market leader because of its instant message technology being included in Windows XP; when users register XP they are strongly urged to sign up for an MSN Messenger and Passport account, Sampson said.