| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : NOVEMBER 13, 2000 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| TECH BUYING GUIDE
Test Drive: 'Turn Off That Coat!' A sunny fall afternoon in Paris. Kids in shorts and T-shirts are zipping along beside the Seine on scooters and skateboards. It's a normal scene, except for a perspiring man frantically shouting into the collar of a winter coat. That bizarre figure is me. The coat I'm sporting is the latest design in wearable computing, a co-production of Levi Strauss & Co. and Philips Electronics ( PHG). The jacket is a geek's delight. Behind one front panel lies an MP3 player, behind the other a Philips mobile phone. Dangling on my chest is a remote-control pad that lets me toggle between music and phone calls. And there's a microphone in my collar--hence the down-in-the-collar shouting. Has the tech industry gone bonkers? Many in the wireless industry believe that eventually we'll be surrounded by information everywhere--in cars, in glasses, in our clothes. ''We'll be doing videoconferencing from our ties,'' says Gartner Group Inc. wireless consultant Nigel Deighton, without a hint of irony. SOARING SPIRITS. With an eye to pioneering this wireless frontier, I signed up to wear a new Levi's prototype in Paris. The company has made just several hundred of these coats and sells them only in Europe, where the mobile standard matches Philips' phones. It felt like an early Christmas when the big box arrived. My spirits soared higher when I opened up the flashy Philips Xenium mobile phone and the MP3 player. Yet I soon discovered that this miraculous coat came with a heavier burden than its $900 price tag: I had to assemble it. The wires, jacks, and plugs at the bottom of the box looked like spillage from a space-shuttle repair kit. Worse, it didn't come with instructions. I called the Levi's contact, and he walked me through the process. If only I had a degree in electrical engineering, perhaps it would have been easier. Fact is, despite endless tinkering, the jacket never fully worked. Later in the day, I walked toward the Seine. The MP3 music could be heard through the earphones, but there was a lot of static. Reaching Trocadero, I got my first phone call. The ringing interrupted the music. I fumbled for the remote control and hit the phone icon. The phone kept ringing. Frantically, I unzipped the phone compartment and hit the answer button. It was my wife. I spoke into the collar microphone, and through a sea of static, she replied: ''Turn off that coat!'' Sadly, the phone-music jacket doesn't appear ready for prime time. And it may even become obsolete. Bluetooth, a low-power radio standard, should make it possible to connect these machines through radio signals instead of wires. Still, I'll be sad to ship that big coat back to Brussels. Someday not too far off, when wireless connections move into clothing and caps and scooters, a few of these quaint jackets will be hanging in museums. By Stephen Baker in Paris _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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