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Microsoft, Partners Delay SPOT Watches

Posted by crusher on 16 November 2003 - 14:09 · 14 comments & 1157 views

Originally slated to launch at Comdex next week, the SPOT watch designed by Microsoft Corp. and its partners has been delayed until the first quarter of 2004 to accommodate further testing.

Executives at Citizen Watch Co., one of the companies slated to manufacture SPOT watches, also said Friday that they may pull out of the partnership and not ship a SPOT watch at all.

The watches were originally supposed to ship this fall, according to a speech made by Microsoft's chief software architect, Bill Gates, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this past January. Partners, including Citizen, Fossil Inc. and Suunto – said they were working with Microsoft to develop and commercialize the new technology.

For Microsoft, the SPOT watches represent another foray by Microsoft into the consumer space, a market that traditional PC companies like Dell Computer and Gateway have also encroached upon. Other future Microsoft-branded devices may also use the SPOT technology, including items like high-tech refrigerator magnets.

News source: ExtremeTech

2.52.71 Version - 11/15/2003

New feature related to the Toast Notifications. You can ask Messenger Plus! to display notifications when your contacts sign in. Just deactivate the native online notification option of Messenger and use Messenger Plus! to get notified only when the contacts you really care about come online.
In the past months, many of you have complained about the sponsor program distributed with Messenger Plus!. A lot of you apparently didn't notice the checkbox in the setup program. Many arguments have been exchanged on the forum and despite everything bad that has been said about me, I've decided to make my users happier by modifying the setup.
- From now on, nothing is checked by default and you must select between "I accept" and "I refuse" before you can click on "Install".
- The "accept" word is in capital letters and clearly specifies that it will install the sponsor program in addition of Messenger Plus! (I always thought that the text displayed in previous versions was clear enough but again, I'm just doing everything my critics have been asking for).
- To avoid confusing people who don't take the time to read anything that's written in the screen, "Sponsor Agreement" is displayed in bold on top of the agreement. There's no way anyone can miss this :).
- I hope that these modifications will prove to some of you that I'm not the kind of person you think I am. Most of the things I've read about the sponsor program itself are written by people who didn't install it and who just assume a lot of things based on the company who's sponsoring me. I never forced anybody to install the sponsor so there's no need to spread lies about my software, and I hope that this new setup will convince you that my intentions are not earn my life in the expense of my users (I don't get paid more when I spend weeks adding new features).
The popup sound is played correctly for custom notifications when a contact changes his/her status to online.
Toast popups are displayed correctly at the top of the screen every time (when appropriate), even when the taskbar is hidden.
A lot of users have been requesting this feature since MSN Messenger 6 was released... custom emoticons can now be displayed in the Quick Icons panel.
- Unlike in the selection panel displayed by Messenger, the Quick Icon panel has no limit on the number of emoticons that can be displayed in it.
- All your custom emoticons are not automatically displayed in the Quick Icons panel. As a lot of people have tons of custom emoticons, I thought it was better to let you chose what emoticons to display (there's although a big technical reason for it so there's no need to ask for this improvement in the forum).
- The Quick Icons panel displays a Customize link that opens the configuration window. You can also configure your emoticons from the Quick Icons section in the preferences.
- For each icon you add in the panel, you have to select a picture and the associated text tag. In most occasions, you'll just want to put the same tag you associated to the icon in Messenger. However, you can enter more than one tag if you want to display simultaneously several emoticons stuck together (this seems to be pretty popular to display large images built from several small emoticons).
- If you have a lot of custom emoticons to display and if you don't really care for the original Messenger ones, you can ask to only display custom emoticons in the Quick Icons panel.
The old name of your contacts should be displayed properly every time in name change notifications.
The parameter of the /persostat command is 1 based, not 0 based.
Using Boss Protect or Lock Station while status is personalized doesn't change the status (when going in or out).
Messenger Plus! has now complete support for multiple monitor systems (finally!). This means that everything will now work fine if you have a monitor with negative screen coordinates. As a result, the SpecialMultipleMonitorSupport registry key has been deprecated.
Because Microsoft recently changed their rules concerning friendly names, a new multi-format coding system had to be created
- You must use /nick to change your name if you want multi-format tags in it. Normal IRC codes are replaces by special ones by this command.
- People who don't have Messenger Plus! 2.52 installed won't see the colors in your name.
- People who want to hide "says:" with some special color tricks can use the new /nick2 command. Note that I do not officially support this command, I just added it to avoid you the trouble to find some hack to go around the protections in /nick :).
Text mess-up bug fixed when using names with multi-format tags in combination of the Name Truncate and Custom Name features (you'll admit that it's not a common situation :p).
Added a /noformat command. This lets you send messages without multi-format tags being parsed (or emoticons). This is useful if you want to send your special formatting attributes to a contact. This command works only if your contact has Messenger Plus! 2.52 installed.
Some other minor bug fixes and improvements.

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(2 replies) #1 Posted by markjensen on 16 Nov 2003 - 14:56: No comments yet?

I guess that no one here was planning on buying one the first week they come out, and has found
that their life is ruined for 3 more months...

#2 Posted by divertom15 on 16 Nov 2003 - 19:54: i was looking forward to a seeing there in action

#3 Posted by IGx89 on 16 Nov 2003 - 21:25: Me too . If Timex would come out with a SPOT watch for their Expedition line, complete with their special indiglo/reflective LCD, I'd buy it in an instant

(2 replies) #4 Posted by Michael Lerner on 17 Nov 2003 - 00:07: If it's over $200 it's a rip.

#5 Posted by warr on 17 Nov 2003 - 03:44: BSOD SPOTted.

#6 Posted by warr on 17 Nov 2003 - 03:45: will Bill Gates or Steve Ballman wear that kind of watch with the executives?

Wouldn't that diminish their status?

#7 Posted by TheReaperMan on 17 Nov 2003 - 11:35: well on the fosil website they have them starting at $199 each, so they aint cheap etc

(1 reply) #8 Posted by rbet on 17 Nov 2003 - 12:24: What the hell are SPOT watches?

#9 Posted by rbet on 18 Nov 2003 - 05:34: OK thanks. If it is over $150, I won't buy one, that's for sure

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