Company offers charming mini mobile devices

By Laurika Bretherton, ITWeb Chicago-based correspondent

Chicago, 13 Jul 2000

One of the hottest companies at this year`s Chicago InternetWorld 2000 has to be MIT Media Lab spin-off, Charmed Technologies. The company is showcasing wearable smart miniature mobile devices.

It has two distinct lifestyle-computing devices in development along with the Nanix operating system, based on Linux.

The first device, Charmed Badge, reads other badges via infrared and can be connected to a PC to generate a list of people spoken to, along with their contact information. It can be seen as a business card transmission and storage device. The badge will be initially marketed to conferences and trade shows where attendees can use their badges to exchange contact information.

The badge can also perform "affinity" matching. This is the ability to determine that two badge wearers have common interests based on data loaded onto the badge. This aims to maximise networking potential.

The second product, Charmed Communicator, is a wearable, broadband Internet device, which can be controlled with voice, pen or handheld keyboard. Communicator modules can provide GPS, MP3, digital photography and voice capture capabilities.

The modules will be available in different shapes, colours and sizes giving consumers a variety of fashion and image options. Numerous display and input options will also be available, including a head-mounted display and wrist microphone. The key feature of this product is its ability to be upgraded via these add-ons to suit the user`s needs.

Through the addition of peripherals, the Communicator may function as a mobile, wireless Web browser, e-mail terminal, video game system or a fully functional desktop computer replacement. The device runs on Nanix, the company`s operating system specifically designed for mobile, on-body, computing devices.

"We want to bring less expensive wireless Internet to the millions of people who are not yet connected because of expensive infrastructure requirements," says Alex Lightman, company co-founder and CEO.