New Abacus MSN Direct (SPOT) Watch and .NET MicroFramework

Abacus have announced the latest MSN Direct Watch - From the MSN Direct site - The new Abacus® Smart Watch 2006 is better than ever!  It delivers the MSN® Direct content you depend on and it's designed with the fashion-conscious person in mind.  Abacus Smart Watch 2006 includes a 12-month MSN Direct Smart Plan subscription and features doubled storage capacity, better battery life, and improved speed compared to other Smart Watches.

Abacus Smart Watch 2006 also includes six new exclusive watch faces designed to fit your mood and style. What's more is that it's available in five watch band styles, including two metal bracelet options!

The Abacus Smart Watch 2006 includes an AC adapter and charging cord with a unique magnetic connector.

The MSN Direct Watch is running SPOT (Smart Personal Object Technologies), which is the same technologies that can be found in the Oregon Scientific Weather Station.

And, interestingly is the same technology announced at this years Mobile and Embedded Developers Conference under the name of .NET MicroFramework.

The reason SPOT/MSN Direct/.NETMF is interesting to developers (like you) is the upcoming release of the .NET MicroFramework development kit (more information on the NETMF web site). The reason this is interesting is the "o/s" is purely managed, drivers and applications are written in managed code, this means that you use C# and Visual Studio 2005 to develop and deploy your code.

To show some of the capabilities of the .NET MicroFramework the NETMF team hosted a SumoRobot competition at MEDC Las Vegas, MEDC Europe, and will also be hosting a competition at MEDC Malaysia.

Get a feel for the SumoRobot competition by watching this video from MEDC 2006 Las Vegas.

It will certainly be interesting to see where the .NET MicroFramework goes over the next year or so...

- Mike