Beepwear: A multiporpose watch
By Zatni Arbi
JAKARTA (JP): Think of wristwatches that are made in the U.S., and Timex comes to mind. While watches from this watchmaker may be perpetually on sale in stores like Woolworths and Longs & Drugs in the U.S., you'll also be able to find its line of "high end" and "high tech" ones.
Do you remember DataLink, the watch plus organizer that can synchronize its data -- phone numbers and appointments -- with the one stored on your PC? It is also a Timex product.
So what do you get when Timex works together with Motorola? It is Beepwear, a watch that is also a pager. Courtesy of PT Sky Telindo Services, I was able to play around and have a lot of fun with a Beepwear.
This wearable pager has all paging capabilities that you would expect from a full-featured pager, complete with different beep sounds and a silent mode operation. It can receive and store as many as 16 alphanumeric messages of up to 104 characters each. It uses the 900 Hz Flex technology from Motorola, and it is available here for US$129. Here, as well as in the U.S., SkyTel is the exclusive service provider for Beepwear. While it commands such a steep price in rupiah terms, if you have money to burn and you have always lost your previous beepers, you may like this one.
The display is sharp and the text is easy to read. Beepwear will sound a distinct alarm when it receives a paging message. The screen will say "1 New Message". Press a button, and the message will scroll from right to left. If it's too dark to read the LCD, you can press another button and the INDIGLO night lighting will make the screen far more readable.
The watch can also function as a 100-hour stopwatch and can display two different time zones, making it a good companion for international travelers. In the U.S., Beepwear also displays news, weather and sports updates from SkyTel. In Indonesia, SkyTel provides these updates through its SkyInfo service.
There are still some problems that need to be addressed, though. In my test, the battery did not last as long as the more usual types of pagers, although the information on its Web site claims that it should last two to three months. Fortunately, replacing the standard hearing-aid battery is not difficult to do.
The watchbands also need some design work; they are too bulky for those with less than macho-like arms. Luckily, Beepwear comes with accessories to transform it into a cute pocket pager. Disassemble the bands, which is easily done, and place the watch in its cradle. You can even attach the belt clip to it to make sure it will not be lost. Or hang it around your neck like a pendant.
The watch itself may not go very well with your business attire, and Timex should work on making it sleeker. Yet it is a very practical solution, especially for absent-minded people like me who often realize we have left our pagers somewhere -- usually at home -- when we are already too far on our way to turn around just to fetch it.
Those who use personal organizers can opt for the upcoming Beepwear Pro, which is a combination of a watch, a Motorola pager and an organizer that can store up to 150 contact numbers.
E-mail Paging
Here's a very useful service that SkyTel is making available to its customers. It's not officially launched yet, as Ade Meyliala, the company's marketing executive, has informed me, but her customers can already use it.
This service allows anybody from anywhere in the world to send a page to a SkyTel pager in Indonesia by e-mail. All you have to do is send an e-mail to sendpage@skytel.co.id. You have to leave the cc and bcc lines blank, add the pager ID number in the Subject line, and type in your message in the usual place. You can send the same message to up to four pagers at the same time. All the ID numbers should be added to the Subject line, separated only with a space.
I like the service very much, because it allows me to send unlimited number of pages to my wife when I'm on an overseas trip without having to pay for any international call. The message will be sent to her pager the moment the e-mail reaches SkyTel's server. In addition to being able to get my message across quickly, I can also send her personal messages that I might find difficult to dictate to an operator. Furthermore, those who prefer to use their own mother tongues will also appreciate the ability to send pager messages by e-mail.
However, according to Ade, your pager needs to be activated before it can receive messages sent through e-mail, and you have to contact the company to request the activation.
Now, what about the possibility of receiving harassing messages through e-mail? Not much, because when you receive the message by e-mail, the identity of the e-mail sender will automatically be included as part of the message and will appear on the pager's screen. But there will still be a possibility that a hacker will be able to forge his own e-mail address and dump all kinds of junk on your pager.
Still under construction is the facility to send messages to pagers from several of our Web sites, including indosat.net, vision.net and wasantara.net. When the facility is there, you can fill in a form and click a button, and the message will be send to the pager. Other pager services such as Multipage and StarPage are also working with these Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to provide this service.
Notification
Wouldn't it be nice to get notified by the beep of your pager every time you receive an e-mail? Some ISPs have already included this capability in their services. You can request that each time an e-mail arrives in your mailbox, your ISP sends a notification to your pager. The message itself will not be forwarded, though. You will know who the sender is and what time he sent his e-mail.
Unlike in Singapore and even the U.S., the pager is still not very much in use in Indonesia because it is not really a status symbol. Besides, as Megawaty Khie, SkyTel's marketing manager, reminded me, people prefer using their cellular phones because finding a working public phone is quite difficult, even in Jakarta. She definitely has a point there.