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39-531: The development of the Fossil Wrist PDA began in 1999 when engineer Donald Brewer and Fossil Product Manager Jeff Bruneau licensed a read-only version of the Palm OS from Palm Source and tried to make it work in a watch. For the first year of development, Brewer struggled to make the watch small enough to be wearable. The initial designs looked like "a cell phone glued on one's wrist" and in board meetings

78-478: A "Dick Tracy watch". Reviewers noted that it was able to run a wide variety of software such as DocumentsToGo 6, AvantGo, Palm Games and the freeware Metro Navigator. Reviewers mainly complained about the bulky size and appearance. One reviewer noted that with a weight of 108 grams, it weighs nearly as much as the Handspring Visor PDA, which is 174 g. Reviewers also complained that the screen

117-455: A 100  MHz RF receiver chip . SPOT was unveiled by Bill Gates at the annual COMDEX computer exposition event in fall of 2002. Gates stated that "new devices and technologies will help bring about the next computing revolution" and demonstrated refrigerator magnets that displayed the current time and sports scores , and an alarm clock that could display a list of upcoming appointments, traffic updates , and weather forecasts . At

156-500: A SPOT-powered coffeemaker, for example, would be able to display information such as weather forecasts on an electronic visual display. Smartwatches featured digital watch displays, referred to as Channels , that presented information in a manner that could be customized by a user—a user could also specify the default channel to be displayed; this feature was functionally analogous with a home screen commonly seen in mobile operating systems . Additional channels could be downloaded from

195-510: A consistent navigation experience across Windows -based devices, such as smart phones , tablet PCs , and those powered by SPOT. Microsoft intended for XEEL to create a consistent navigation experience across hardware devices that equaled the software interface navigation consistency introduced by the mouse scroll wheel . In June 2003, Microsoft unveiled its MSN Direct wireless service developed specifically for SPOT, which would be made available across North America. The company stated that

234-515: A culture that punishes failure harshly, because this inhibits a creative process, and risks teaching people not to communicate important failures with others (e.g., null results ). Failure can also be used productively, for instance to find identify ambiguous cases that warrant further interpretation. When studying biases in machine learning, for instance, failure can be seen as a " cybernetic rupture where pre-existing biases and structural flaws make themselves known". The term " miserable failure "

273-499: A failure, Sandage argues, is a relative historical novelty: "[n]ot until the eve of the Civil War did Americans commonly label an insolvent man 'a failure ' ". Accordingly, the notion of failure acquired both moralistic and individualistic connotations. By the late 19th century, to be a failure was to have a deficient character. A commercial failure is a product or company that does not reach expectations of success. Most of

312-654: A loss of social resources (i.e., social esteem)". A failing grade is a mark or grade given to a student to indicate that they did not pass an assignment or a class. Grades may be given as numbers, letters or other symbols. By the year 1884, Mount Holyoke College was evaluating students' performance on a 100-point or percentage scale and then summarizing those numerical grades by assigning letter grades to numerical ranges. Mount Holyoke assigned letter grades A through E, with E indicating lower than 75% performance and designating failure. The A – E system spread to Harvard University by 1890. In 1898, Mount Holyoke adjusted

351-428: A method of data distribution. While several types of electronics would eventually support the technology throughout its lifecycle, SPOT was considered a commercial failure . Reasons that have been cited for its failure include its subscription-based business model , support limited to North America , the emergence of more efficient and popular forms of data distribution, and mobile feature availability that surpasses

390-473: A morally significant omission is one's failure to rescue someone in dire need of assistance. It may seem that one is morally blameworthy for failing to rescue in such a case. Patricia G. Smith notes that there are two ways one can not do something: consciously or unconsciously. A conscious omission is intentional, whereas an unconscious omission may be negligent , but is not intentional. Accordingly, Smith suggests, we ought to understand failure as involving

429-502: A situation in which it is reasonable to expect a person to do something, but they do not do it—regardless of whether they intend to do it or not. Randolph Clarke, commenting on Smith's work, suggests that "[w]hat makes [a] failure to act an omission is the applicable norm ". In other words, a failure to act becomes morally significant when a norm demands that some action be taken, and it is not taken. Scientific hypotheses can be said to fail when they lead to predictions that do not match

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468-455: A situation may be differently viewed by distinct observers or participants, such that a situation that one considers to be a failure, another might consider to be a success, a qualified success or a neutral situation. It may also be difficult or impossible to ascertain whether a situation meets criteria for failure or success due to ambiguous or ill-defined definition of those criteria. Finding useful and effective criteria or heuristics to judge

507-569: A specialized website, and a Glance feature would allow a user to cycle through downloaded information. Manufacturers could also add their own features to SPOT-based devices; as an example, a manufacturer could create its own smartwatch channel in order to distinguish its product from a competitor's product. Each SPOT-based device included a unique identification number used to enable secure authentication and encryption of DirectBand signals. Microsoft also reportedly considered an alarm function for SPOT-based smartwatches that would activate in

546-615: A touch-sensitive 160- by 160-pixel screen. Re-working the code would be a massive undertaking, so engineers began to look for suppliers that could deliver the new technology. An engineering firm in Arizona called Three-Five Systems was able to deliver the display in July 2002. The resulting device was rushed to the COMDEX convention where it won the "best of COMDEX" award for "best mobile device". The original prototype had 2 MB of memory, which

585-399: Is a failure to obtain a good or service at all; a process failure is a failure to receive the good or service in an appropriate or preferable way. Thus, a person who is only interested in the final outcome of an activity would consider it to be an outcome failure if the core issue has not been resolved or a core need is not met. A process failure occurs, by contrast, when, although the activity

624-404: Is completed successfully, the customer still perceives the way in which the activity is conducted to be below an expected standard or benchmark. Wan and Chan note that outcome and process failures are associated with different kinds of detrimental effects to the consumer. They observe that "[a]n outcome failure involves a loss of economic resources (i.e., money, time) and a process failure involves

663-426: Is the social concept of not meeting a desirable or intended objective , and is usually viewed as the opposite of success . The criteria for failure depends on context, and may be relative to a particular observer or belief system. One person might consider a failure what another person considers a success, particularly in cases of direct competition or a zero-sum game . Similarly, the degree of success or failure in

702-522: Is very low in this case. The watch uses a rechargeable lithium ion battery . In standby mode, when it turns off between uses, the battery can last a week or more. The device has a watch program, with several "watch faces" to continuously display the time. When in watch-face mode the battery life is around 1-2 days, depending on the integrity of the battery. Initially, the Wrist PDA received positive reviews. In 2003 Wired.com called it "revolutionary" and

741-588: The Microsoft Research division. SPOT was first announced by Bill Gates at the COMDEX computer exposition event in 2002, and additional details were revealed by Microsoft at the 2003 Consumer Electronics Show where Gates demonstrated a set of prototype smartwatches —the first type of device that would support the technology. Unlike more recent technologies, SPOT did not use more traditional forms of connectivity, such as 3G or Wi-Fi , but relied on FM broadcasting subcarrier transmission as

780-616: The Consumer Electronics Show of 2003, Microsoft announced that wristwatches would be the first type of device to utilize the technology in a partnership with watch manufacturers Citizen Watch Co. , Fossil , and Suunto . Bill Gates also demonstrated a set of prototype smart watches. SPOT was not Microsoft's first foray into the smartwatch business—the company previously co-developed the Timex Datalink with Timex in 1994. During CES, Microsoft claimed that

819-477: The company's competitors; Karr proposed FM broadcasting subcarrier transmission as a method of distribution, technology which would also be used by Microsoft's SPOT. Microsoft Research and SCA Data Systems would ultimately develop the DirectBand subcarrier technology for SPOT. National Semiconductor would aid in the development of device chipsets , which would feature an ARM7 CPU and ROM , SRAM , and

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858-581: The event of theft. SPOT relied on the .NET Micro Framework for the creation and management of embedded device firmware . This technology would later be used for the Windows SideShow feature introduced in Windows Vista , which shares design similarities with SPOT. In 2007, five years after SPOT was announced, Microsoft released the first software development kit for the .NET Micro Framework. Commercial failure Failure

897-478: The features that SPOT offered. Development of SPOT began as an incubation project led by Microsoft engineer, Bill Mitchell, and initiated by the Microsoft Research division. Mitchell would enlist the help of Larry Karr, president of SCA Data Systems, to develop the project. Karr had previously worked in the 1980s to develop technology for Atari that would distribute games in a manner distinct from

936-513: The first SPOT-based smartwatches would be released in the fall of that year; the company would also release a promotional video that displayed an estimated delivery time of fall 2003, but the first devices would be delayed until the beginning of 2004. At the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference of 2003, Gates unveiled a new set of hardware-based navigational controls codenamed XEEL, designed to create

975-507: The first compatible watch to feature a touchscreen , and Swatch would release the first compatible watch, largely tailored towards younger consumers. As smartwatches were the first type of devices to make use of the technology, they became the de facto type of device that represented it. In 2006, Oregon Scientific released the second type of SPOT device, a weather station that displayed regional weather forecasts and other various types of information. A second generation of smartwatches

1014-622: The grading system, adding an F grade for failing (and adjusting the ranges corresponding to the other letters). The practice of letter grades spread more broadly in the first decades of the 20th century. By the 1930s, the letter E was dropped from the system, for unclear reasons. Philosophers in the analytic tradition have suggested that failure is connected to the notion of an omission. In ethics , omissions are distinguished from acts: acts involve an agent doing something; omissions involve an agent's not doing something. Both actions and omissions may be morally significant. The classic example of

1053-537: The items listed below had high expectations, significant financial investments, and/or widespread publicity, but fell far short of success. Due to the subjective nature of "success" and "meeting expectations", there can be disagreement about what constitutes a "major flop". Sometimes, commercial failures can receive a cult following , with the initial lack of commercial success even lending a cachet of subcultural coolness . Marketing researchers have distinguished between outcome and process failures. An outcome failure

1092-489: The most probable origin of this usage is Blazing Star (1998), a Japanese video game whose game over message was translated into English as "You fail it". The comedy website Fail Blog , launched in January 2008, featured photos and videos captioned with "fail" and its variations. The #fail hashtag is used on the microblogging site Twitter to indicate contempt or displeasure, and the image that formerly accompanied

1131-546: The presence of the aether would later provide support for Albert Einstein 's special theory of relativity . Wired magazine editor Kevin Kelly explains that a great deal can be learned from things going wrong unexpectedly, and that part of science's success comes from keeping blunders "small, manageable, constant, and trackable". He uses the example of engineers and programmers who push systems to their limits, breaking them to learn about them. Kelly also warns against creating

1170-561: The results found in experiments . Alternatively, experiments can be regarded as failures when they do not provide helpful information about nature. However, the standards of what constitutes failure are not clear-cut. For example, the Michelson–Morley experiment became the "most famous failed experiment in history" because it did not detect the motion of the Earth through the luminiferous aether as had been expected. This failure to confirm

1209-651: The service would enable the delivery of personalized information on devices and, as an example of this functionality, would allow users to receive messages sent from MSN Messenger or calendar appointment reminders from Microsoft Outlook . MSN Direct would use a subscription-based business model, available through monthly or yearly service plans. MSN Direct relied on the DirectBand subcarrier technology developed by Microsoft in conjunction with SCA Data Systems. The first devices to make use of SPOT were released in 2004 by Fossil and Suunto. Tissot would later introduce

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1248-692: The service would receive additional location-based enhancements. Production of SPOT watches ceased in 2008. In 2009, Microsoft announced that it would discontinue the MSN Direct service at the beginning of 2012. The company stated that this decision was due to decreased demand for the service and because of the emergence of more efficient and popular forms of data distribution, such as Wi-Fi . The MSN Direct service continued to support existing SPOT devices until transmissions ceased on January 1, 2012. SPOT extended functionality of traditional devices to include features not originally envisaged for them;

1287-467: The success or failure of a situation may itself be a significant task. Cultural historian Scott Sandage argues that the concept of failure underwent a metamorphosis in the United States over the course of the 19th century. Initially, Sandage notes, financial failure, or bankruptcy , was understood as an event in a person's life: an occurrence, not a character trait. The notion of a person being

1326-404: The term "boat anchor" was used. He began to talk with Microsoft engineers, who were looking for a wrist-top platform as well and were busy developing Smart Personal Objects Technology (SPOT watches). Once the size was decreased, the next major hurdle was making the screen. The smallest screens available at the time were cell phone screens that had 90 by 126 pixels. Palm OS, however, was written for

1365-479: The watch clasp. Two buttons and a rocker switch on the side assist with navigating lists and menus. The screen resolution is equivalent to a Palm III , and an electroluminescent backlight allows it to be used at night. An IRDA transmitter on the front allows it to communicate with other Palm devices. In addition, there are Palm applications that allow the IRDA transmitter to be used as a TV remote, but transmission range

1404-462: Was also released, and were designed to address the shortcomings observed in first generation models. Later that year, Melitta released the third type of device to utilize the technology: a coffee maker that displayed weather forecasts on an electronic visual display. Garmin released the first SPOT-compatible GPS navigation units in 2007. In early 2008, Microsoft announced that MSN Direct would be available for Windows Mobile , and in early 2009,

1443-424: Was expanded to 8 MB for the commercial release. The price at debut was $ 249 US. The AU/FX series are able to carry out most PDA functions and applications. Like other Palm OS devices, they synchronize or exchange information with a PC, have an infrared port, a virtual keyboard , and a touch screen. It supports most of the features of the graffiti handwriting recognition system. A tiny stylus can be stored in

1482-518: Was popularized as a result of a widely known " Google bombing ", which caused Google searches for the term to turn up the White House biography of George W. Bush . During the early 2000s, the term fail began to be used as an interjection in the context of Internet memes . The interjection fail and the superlative form epic fail expressed derision and ridicule for mistakes deemed "eminently mockable". According to linguist Ben Zimmer ,

1521-540: Was too dim and small to read and use for manipulating text. Other problems included having poor water-resistance, low battery life and an alarm that was too quiet for practical use. Smart Personal Objects Technology The Smart Personal Objects Technology ( SPOT ) is a discontinued initiative by Microsoft to create intelligent and personal home appliances , consumer electronics , and other objects through new hardware capabilities and software features. Development of SPOT began as an incubation project initiated by

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