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Timex Datalink

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Timex Datalink or Timex Data Link is a line of early smartwatches manufactured by Timex and is considered a wristwatch computer. It is the first watch capable of downloading information wirelessly from a computer. As the name implies, datalink watches are capable of data transfer through linking with a computer. The Datalink line was introduced in 1994 and it was co-developed with Microsoft as a wearable alternative to mainstream PDAs with additional attributes such as water resistance, that PDAs lacked, and easy programmability. The watch was demonstrated by Bill Gates on 21 June 1994 in a presentation where he downloaded information from a computer monitor using bars of light and then showed to the audience the downloaded appointments and other data. The early models included models 50, 70, 150 and model 150s (small size). The model numbers indicated the approximate number of phone numbers that could be stored in the watch memory. These early models were, at the time of their introduction, the only watches to bear the Microsoft logo. The watches have been certified by NASA for space travel and have been used by astronauts and cosmonauts in space missions . There had been an evolution over the years as to the number and type of entries that can be stored in the various watch models as well as the mode of data transfer between computer and watch. At the time of its introduction the watch was considered high-tech .

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100-681: There is also the Timex Beepwear Datalink series, featuring wearable pagers using the Timex datalink platform which also function as electronic organisers. Although there are other watches capable of storing all kinds of data, most had either a small keyboard or buttons, which could be used to input data. In most cases data was lost when the battery expired. Upon introduction of the Timex Datalink models, "data watches" such as those from Casio were noted as selling for "between

200-565: A computer keyboard . The actions in a GUI are usually performed through direct manipulation of the graphical elements. Beyond computers, GUIs are used in many handheld mobile devices such as MP3 players, portable media players, gaming devices, smartphones and smaller household, office and industrial controls . The term GUI tends not to be applied to other lower- display resolution types of interfaces , such as video games (where head-up displays ( HUDs ) are preferred), or not including flat screens like volumetric displays because

300-469: A tongue in cheek "[dis]honorable" mention in PC World 's "25 Worst Tech Products of All Time" list in 2006 and were inducted in "the high tech hall of shame", with the rationale that "It looked like a Casio on steroids " and "To download data to it, you held it in front of your CRT monitor while the monitor displayed a pattern of flashing black-and-white stripes (which, incidentally, also turned you into

400-474: A GUI and some level of a CLI, although the GUIs usually receive more attention. GUI wrappers find a way around the command-line interface versions (CLI) of (typically) Linux and Unix-like software applications and their text-based UIs or typed command labels. While command-line or text-based applications allow users to run a program non-interactively, GUI wrappers atop them avoid the steep learning curve of

500-532: A button until the changeover was effected. All Datalink models had the Indiglo night light. The earlier models included many PDA-type functions such as anniversaries, appointments and phone directory, but did not have functions such as stopwatch and countdown timer. They had five alarms. To add functionality, in 1997 Timex introduced the Ironman Triathlon Datalink series with features of

600-410: A combination of technologies and devices to provide a platform that users can interact with, for the tasks of gathering and producing information. A series of elements conforming a visual language have evolved to represent information stored in computers. This makes it easier for people with few computer skills to work with and use computer software. The most common combination of such elements in GUIs

700-705: A dedicated communications link. Automated monitoring and escalation software clients, often used in hospitals, IT departments and alarm companies, tend to prefer direct connections because of the increased reliability. Small paging systems, such as those used in restaurant and retail establishments, often integrate a keyboard and paging system into a single box, reducing both cost and complexity. Paging systems support several popular direct connection protocols, including TAP , TNPP, SNPP and WCTP , as well as proprietary modem- and socket-based protocols. Additionally, organizations often integrate paging systems with their Voice-mail and PBX systems, conceptually attaching pagers to

800-508: A grid of items with rows of text extending sideways from the icon. Multi-row and multi-column layouts commonly found on the web are "shelf" and "waterfall". The former is found on image search engines , where images appear with a fixed height but variable length, and is typically implemented with the CSS property and parameter display: inline-block; . A waterfall layout found on Imgur and TweetDeck with fixed width but variable height per item

900-402: A household name", although this robustness was reported as making the product more like "the kind of "chunky, clunky watches that divers prefer", being around one-and-a-half inches in diameter and standing "over half an inch proud of the wrist". The Timex Datalink watches downloaded data wirelessly by illuminating a computer screen with a changing display encoding information to transfer, which

1000-430: A local base station, or through a telephone number assigned to each individual pager. In the 1990s, pagers became popular among the general public as a cheaper, smaller, and more reliable alternative to mobile phones . Bell System Bellboy radio pagers each used three reed receiver relays, each relay tuned to one of 33 different frequencies, selectively ringing a particular customer when all three relays were activated at

1100-443: A message has been successfully delivered to a pager. Because of this, if a one-way pager is turned off or is not receiving a usable signal at the time a message is transmitted, the message will not be received and the sender of the message will not be notified of this fact. In the mid-1990s, some paging companies began offering a service, which allowed a customer to call their pager-number and have numeric messages read back to them. This

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1200-605: A mild disappointment for the wireless datalink purists, it gained widespread acceptance, because, although now tethered to the computer through the USB port during data transfer, the new watch featured greatly improved data transfer rates, greatly increased memory capacity and many additional and customizable modes of operation, as well as two way communication between the watch and computer. Its modes are user customizable, with hundreds of phone numbers, alarms and timer settings. It also features three time zones, each of which can be chosen as

1300-411: A minute. However, the mechanism required the use of a cathode-ray tube monitor, as opposed to a liquid-crystal or other kind of display. Transfer of data from the watch to the computer was also not permitted by this mechanism, but entries could be deleted on the watch or, in the case of to-do items, marked as done. When the watch's battery expired the data would be transferred again after replacement of

1400-499: A notebook adapter that incorporated a red LED and connected with the laptop through the serial port . During download, the LED flashed and the flashing programmed the watch much like the horizontal bars of the CRT. For systems without a serial port, a USB to serial adapter can be used to connect the Timex adapter to a USB port . Alternatively, DIY Notebook Adapter emulators can be used with

1500-416: A one-way pager is a passive receiver only (it sends no information back to the base station), its location cannot be tracked. However, this can also be disadvantageous, as a message sent to a pager must be broadcast from every paging transmitter in the pager's service area. Thus, if a pager has nationwide service, a message sent to it could be intercepted by criminals or law enforcement agencies anywhere within

1600-490: A paging network and are less subject to these delays. For this reason, older forms of message submission retain their usefulness for disseminating highly-important alerts to users such as emergency services personnel. Common paging protocols include TAP , FLEX , ReFLEX , POCSAG , GOLAY, ERMES and NTT. Past paging protocols include Two-tone and 5/6-tone. In the United States, pagers typically receive signals using

1700-435: A paging system which includes one or more fixed transmitters (or in the case of response pagers and two-way pagers, one or more base stations ), as well as a number of pagers carried by mobile users. These systems can range from a restaurant system with a single low power transmitter, to a nationwide system with thousands of high-power base stations. Pagers were developed in the 1950s and 1960s, and became widely used by

1800-466: A portable receiver that would usually vibrate, flash, or beep when a table becomes free or when their meal is ready. Pagers have been popular with birdwatchers in Great Britain and Ireland since 1991, with companies Rare Bird Alert and Birdnet Information offering news of rare birds sent to pagers that they sell. Today, companies like Visiplex offer similar solutions for onsite pager systems in

1900-506: A program was busy. Additionally, it was the first GUI to introduce something resembling Virtual Desktops . Windows 95 , accompanied by an extensive marketing campaign, was a major success in the marketplace at launch and shortly became the most popular desktop operating system. In 2007, with the iPhone and later in 2010 with the introduction of the iPad , Apple popularized the post-WIMP style of interaction for multi-touch screens, and those devices were considered to be milestones in

2000-474: A retail store, airline self-ticket and check-in, information kiosks in a public space, like a train station or a museum, and monitors or control screens in an embedded industrial application which employ a real-time operating system (RTOS). Cell phones and handheld game systems also employ application specific touchscreen GUIs. Newer automobiles use GUIs in their navigation systems and multimedia centers, or navigation multimedia center combinations. A GUI uses

2100-414: A short sequence of words and symbols. Custom functions may be used to facilitate access to frequent actions. Command-line interfaces are more lightweight , as they only recall information necessary for a task; for example, no preview thumbnails or graphical rendering of web pages. This allows greater efficiency and productivity once many commands are learned. But reaching this level takes some time because

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2200-475: A simple chronograph could be added as an external application also known as a wristapp. The wristapps also included a notepad capable of storing forty words. The time and date parts of the digital display of the Datalink watches consisted of two main rows of seven segment displays , while the lower portion was a dot matrix display with scrolling capabilities. In time display mode, the dot matrix portion of

2300-496: A single transmitter tower. The system was manufactured by the Reevesound Company and operated by Telanswerphone. In 1960, John Francis Mitchell combined elements of Motorola 's walkie-talkie and automobile radio technologies to create the first transistorized pager, and from that time, paging technology continued to advance and pager adoption among emergency personnel was still popular as of July 2016. In 1962,

2400-428: A system or moved about to different places during redesigns. Also, icons and dialog boxes are usually harder for users to script. WIMPs extensively use modes , as the meaning of all keys and clicks on specific positions on the screen are redefined all the time. Command-line interfaces use modes only in limited forms, such as for current directory and environment variables . Most modern operating systems provide both

2500-422: A telephone extension and set up web portals to integrate pagers into other parts of their enterprise. A paging system alerts a pager (or group of pagers) by transmitting information over an RF channel, including an address and message information. This information is formatted using a paging protocol, such as 2-tone, 5/6-tone, GOLAY, POCSAG , FLEX , ERMES , or NTT. Two-way pagers and response pagers typically use

2600-407: A third and a half the price" of such models, but the "fiddly little buttons" (having to be pressed repeatedly to select letters from the alphabet) were regarded as less convenient and largely only appealing to those used to "doing things the hard way". The Datalink models also offered water resistance to a depth of 100 metres, Timex's Indiglo backlighting, and "the build quality that helped make Timex

2700-443: Is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and visual indicators such as secondary notation . In many applications, GUIs are used instead of text-based UIs , which are based on typed command labels or text navigation. GUIs were introduced in reaction to the perceived steep learning curve of command-line interfaces (CLIs), which require commands to be typed on

2800-464: Is a pretty good argument for training like you are going to fly-we should have caught this one ourselves in our training work on the ground. In another part of the January log it is mentioned: Missed a whole comm. pass over White Sands. We need to get the timex watches working so we don't overlook these calls. while in another segment of the same log: As 5A is now delayed, we would like to request

2900-674: Is a related technology that promises to deliver the representation benefits of 3D environments without their usability drawbacks of orientation problems and hidden objects. In 2006, Hillcrest Labs introduced the first ZUI for television. Other innovations include the menus on the PlayStation 2 , the menus on the Xbox , Sun's Project Looking Glass , Metisse , which was similar to Project Looking Glass, BumpTop , where users can manipulate documents and windows with realistic movement and physics as if they were physical documents, Croquet OS , which

3000-402: Is compatible with Windows versions Windows 3.1 to Windows XP . The watch was compatible with Microsoft's Schedule+ time management software. For the Datalink 70 model, the time needed to download seventy phone numbers was about twenty seconds. On the resin strap of the Timex Datalink 50 model 70301, there is a print with binary numbers which are actually ASCII . The numbers on one half of

3100-417: Is especially common with applications designed for Unix-like operating systems. The latter used to be implemented first because it allowed the developers to focus exclusively on their product's functionality without bothering about interface details such as designing icons and placing buttons. Designing programs this way also allows users to run the program in a shell script . Many environments and games use

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3200-669: Is represented by rotating a cube with faces representing each user's workspace, and window management is represented via a Rolodex -style flipping mechanism in Windows Vista (see Windows Flip 3D ). In both cases, the operating system transforms windows on-the-fly while continuing to update the content of those windows. The GUI is usually WIMP-based, although occasionally other metaphors surface, such as those used in Microsoft Bob , 3dwm, File System Navigator, File System Visualizer , 3D Mailbox, and GopherVR . Zooming (ZUI)

3300-440: Is the windows, icons, text fields, canvases, menus, pointer ( WIMP ) paradigm, especially in personal computers . The WIMP style of interaction uses a virtual input device to represent the position of a pointing device's interface , most often a mouse , and presents information organized in windows and represented with icons . Available commands are compiled together in menus, and actions are performed making gestures with

3400-440: Is the case with many new technologies, the functionality of the pager shifted from necessary professional use to a social tool integrated in one's personal life. During the rise of the pager, it became the subject of various forms of media, most notably in the 1990s hip-hop scene. Popular artists from the era, including Ice Cube , Method Man , and A Tribe Called Quest , began referencing newly developed mobile technologies such as

3500-555: Is usually implemented by specifying column-width: . Smaller app mobile devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) and smartphones typically use the WIMP elements with different unifying metaphors, due to constraints in space and available input devices. Applications for which WIMP is not well suited may use newer interaction techniques , collectively termed post-WIMP UIs. As of 2011, some touchscreen-based operating systems such as Apple's iOS ( iPhone ) and Android use

3600-538: The Manchurian Candidate )", referring to the earlier, flashing CRT method of data transfer, adding that "Depending on your point of view, it was either seriously cool or deeply disturbing". Timex Datalink watches are referred to as "classics" and as "worn by astronauts to the moon" in Jeffery Deaver 's crime thriller novel The Burning Wire . They are also featured at the online exhibit of

3700-654: The Bell System , the U.S. telephone monopoly, presented its Bellboy radio paging system at the Seattle World's Fair. Bellboy was the first commercial system for personal paging. It also marked one of the first consumer applications of the transistor (invented by Bell Labs in 1947), for which three Bell Labs inventors received a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956. Solid-state circuitry enabled the Bellboy pager, about

3800-529: The FLEX protocol in the 900 MHz band. Commercial paging transmitters typically radiate 1000 watts of effective power , resulting in a much wider coverage area per tower than a mobile phone transmitter, which typically radiates around 0.6 watts per channel. Although 900 MHz FLEX paging networks tend to have stronger in-building coverage than mobile phone networks, commercial paging service providers will work with large institutions to install repeater equipment in

3900-470: The Ironman series , such as a choice of timers, multi-lap stopwatches , and customisable display appearance. The number of alarms increased to 10 in the new series. Messages could be displayed during an alarm, and they could be downloaded to the watch or input manually through scrolling characters, activated by two forward/reverse buttons. The new features came at the expense of some older ones. For example,

4000-478: The National Museum of American History . The Timex Beepwear Datalink series features wearable pagers , using the Timex datalink platform. These watches also function as electronic organisers. The Beepware series is patented and was the product of a joint Timex- Motorola effort which resulted in a new company called Beepwear Paging Products . The Beepwear marketing motto was: "One beeping great watch". It

4100-1185: The ReFLEX protocol. Modern paging systems typically use multiple base transmitters to modulate the same signal on the same RF channel, a design approach called simulcast . This type of design enables pagers to select the strongest signal from several candidate transmitters using FM capture , thereby improving overall system performance. Simulcast systems often use satellite to distribute identical information to multiple transmitters and GPS at each transmitter to precisely time its modulation relative to other transmitters. The coverage overlap, combined with use of satellite communications, can make paging systems more reliable than terrestrial based cellular networks in some cases, including during natural and human-made disaster. This resilience has led public safety agencies to adopt pagers over cellular and other commercial services for critical messaging. Pagers themselves vary from very cheap and simple beepers, to more complex personal communications equipment, falling into eight main categories. Pagers have certain privacy advantages and disadvantages compared with cellular phones. Since

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4200-709: The Xerox Star . These early systems spurred many other GUI efforts, including Lisp machines by Symbolics and other manufacturers, the Apple Lisa (which presented the concept of menu bar and window controls ) in 1983, the Apple Macintosh 128K in 1984, and the Atari ST with Digital Research 's GEM , and Commodore Amiga in 1985. Visi On was released in 1983 for the IBM PC compatible computers, but

4300-501: The cursor (or rather pointer ) control: mouse , pointing stick , touchpad , trackball , joystick , virtual keyboards , and head-up displays (translucent information devices at the eye level). There are also actions performed by programs that affect the GUI. For example, there are components like inotify or D-Bus to facilitate communication between computer programs. Ivan Sutherland developed Sketchpad in 1963, widely held as

4400-415: The phase of the moon . It is accurate to within one day in 500 years. In the future, it will also be able to calculate the sun's position in the zodiac and upcoming eclipses . Timex Datalink is flight certified by NASA for space missions and is one of four watches qualified by NASA for space travel. The various Datalink models are used both by cosmonauts and astronauts. For instance during Expedition 1

4500-524: The "Anniversary" and "Appointment" modes of the previous Datalink models were no longer available, and the number of phone entries for the Ironman Datalink was reduced to 38, from a maximum of 150 of the older Datalink model 150. The "Make a List" function of the Datalink 150 model was also gone. This feature enabled the user to create short lists for various tasks, and import wristapps, special programs with custom applications which could be added to

4600-546: The "timex" watch software if it is available on the ground-a file that can be uplinked to us. This will help us manage our day as we can load comm. passes into the watches. and from the February and March crew log of Expedition 1: We copy the request from Houston on the timex watches. We will keep using the ones we have onboard-there are some workarounds we can apply that will help the limited "alarm" situation. We don't request any more watches be sent up on 5A, but thanks to all

4700-627: The 1970s, Engelbart's ideas were further refined and extended to graphics by researchers at Xerox PARC and specifically Alan Kay , who went beyond text-based hyperlinks and used a GUI as the main interface for the Smalltalk programming language , which ran on the Xerox Alto computer , released in 1973. Most modern general-purpose GUIs are derived from this system. The Xerox PARC GUI consisted of graphical elements such as windows , menus , radio buttons , and check boxes . The concept of icons

4800-734: The 1980s through the late 1990s and early 2000s. Later in the 21st century, the widespread availability of cellphones and smartphones with text messaging capability has greatly diminished the pager industry. Nevertheless, pagers continue to be used by some emergency services and public safety personnel , because modern pager systems' coverage overlap, combined with use of satellite communications , can make paging systems more reliable than terrestrial based cellular networks in some cases, including during natural and human-made disasters . This resilience has led public safety agencies to adopt pagers over cellular and other commercial services for critical messaging. The first telephone pager system

4900-553: The 1990s to conduct commerce, using them to arrange meetings with buyers. Associate superintendent for Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida Gul James Fleming once called them "the most dominant symbol of the drug trade" and schools have previously forbidden students from carrying them because of the ease with which they could be "used to arrange illegal drug sales." GUI A graphical user interface , or GUI ( / ˈ ɡ uː i / GOO -ee ),

5000-426: The 1990s. While Motorola announced the end of its new pager manufacturing in 2001, pagers remained in use in large hospital complexes. First responders in rural areas with inadequate cellular coverage are often issued pagers . The 2005 London bombings resulted in overload of TETRA systems by the emergency services and showed that pagers, with their absence of necessity to transmit an acknowledgement before showing

5100-513: The GUIs advantages, many reviewers questioned the value of the entire concept, citing hardware limits, and problems in finding compatible software. In 1984, Apple released a television commercial which introduced the Apple Macintosh during the telecast of Super Bowl XVIII by CBS , with allusions to George Orwell 's noted novel Nineteen Eighty-Four . The goal of the commercial was to make people think about computers, identifying

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5200-574: The UK National Health Service was thought to have been using over 10% of the remaining pagers in the world (130,000), with an annual cost of £6.6 million. Matt Hancock , (then) Secretary of State for Health and Social Care , announced in February 2019 that the 130,000 pagers still in use were to be phased out. NHSX announced plans in May 2020 to replace pagers and bleepers with "more modern communication tools," accelerated by

5300-512: The United States, pagers using the commercial FM band receive a subcarrier, called the Subsidiary Communications Authority , of a broadcast station. On-site paging systems in hospitals, unlike wide area paging systems, are local area services. Hospitals commonly use on-site paging for communication with staff and increasingly for contacting waiting patients when their appointment is due. These offer waiting patients

5400-537: The battery. The watch had a small lens at the top of its face used for data transmission by visible light. Data was transmitted from the CRT of the computer through a series of pulsating horizontal bars, that were focused by the lens and written to the watch EEPROM memory through an optoelectronic transducer operating in the visible light spectrum and employing optical scanning technology. The original Timex Datalink software with CRT synchronization support

5500-401: The class of GUIs named post-WIMP. These support styles of interaction using more than one finger in contact with a display, which allows actions such as pinching and rotating, which are unsupported by one pointer and mouse. Human interface devices , for the efficient interaction with a GUI include a computer keyboard , especially used together with keyboard shortcuts , pointing devices for

5600-457: The command words may not be easily discoverable or mnemonic . Also, using the command line can become slow and error-prone when users must enter long commands comprising many parameters or several different filenames at once. However, windows, icons, menus, pointer ( WIMP ) interfaces present users with many widgets that represent and can trigger some of the system's available commands. GUIs can be made quite hard when dialogs are buried deep in

5700-413: The command-line, which requires commands to be typed on the keyboard . By starting a GUI wrapper, users can intuitively interact with, start, stop, and change its working parameters, through graphical icons and visual indicators of a desktop environment , for example. Applications may also provide both interfaces, and when they do the GUI is usually a WIMP wrapper around the command-line version. This

5800-448: The crew equipment folks for asking. As a heads-up to Exp 2, any plans to use the timex download capability should include more laptop IR transmitters. We have 1 onboard, but more will be required if the next crew wants to fully use this capability. The laptop IR transmitter mentioned in the February and March crew log is the Timex notebook adapter. "Exp 2" refers to Expedition 2 , and the log mentions they may need more notebook adapters for

5900-418: The crew log for January mentions: We have been working with the Timex software. Many thanks to the folks who got this up to us. It seems we each have a different version of the datalink watch, and of course, the software is different with each. Yuri and Sergei are able to load up a day's worth of alarms, but Shep has the Datalink 150, and this has a 5 alarm limit. So 2/3 of the crew are now happy. All this

6000-571: The designer's work to change the interface as user needs evolve. Good GUI design relates to users more, and to system architecture less. Large widgets, such as windows , usually provide a frame or container for the main presentation content such as a web page, email message, or drawing. Smaller ones usually act as a user-input tool. A GUI may be designed for the requirements of a vertical market as application-specific GUIs. Examples include automated teller machines (ATM), point of sale (POS) touchscreens at restaurants, self-service checkouts used in

6100-485: The development of mobile devices . The GUIs familiar to most people as of the mid-late 2010s are Microsoft Windows , macOS , and the X Window System interfaces for desktop and laptop computers, and Android , Apple's iOS , Symbian , BlackBerry OS , Windows Phone / Windows 10 Mobile , Tizen , WebOS , and Firefox OS for handheld ( smartphone ) devices. Since the commands available in command line interfaces can be many, complex operations can be performed using

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6200-435: The display represents a desktop, on which documents and folders of documents can be placed. Window managers and other software combine to simulate the desktop environment with varying degrees of realism. Entries may appear in a list to make space for text and details, or in a grid for compactness and larger icons with little space underneath for text. Variations in between exist, such as a list with multiple columns of items and

6300-415: The display showed the day of the week to the left, and the time zone to the right. The default time zone was indicated as TZ1 (time zone 1), and was fully user customizable to designate any city in the world, usually using IATA naming conventions. The earlier Datalink models featured dual time zone settings. The secondary time zone had the option to become the local (primary) time by pressing and holding

6400-503: The event that service is not available in needed areas of the subscribing institution's buildings. This is especially critical in hospital settings where emergency staff must be able to reliably receive pages to respond to patient needs. Unlike mobile phones, most one-way pagers do not display any information about whether a signal is being received or about the strength of the received signal. Since one-way pagers do not contain transmitters, one-way paging networks have no way to track whether

6500-611: The first graphical computer-aided design program. It used a light pen to create and manipulate objects in engineering drawings in realtime with coordinated graphics. In the late 1960s, researchers at the Stanford Research Institute , led by Douglas Engelbart , developed the On-Line System (NLS), which used text-based hyperlinks manipulated with a then-new device: the mouse . (A 1968 demonstration of NLS became known as " The Mother of All Demos ".) In

6600-727: The import of any independently developed wrist app into the Datalink USB computer interface, and thus make it part of the downloadable program menu in the GUI of the watch. Unlike its predecessors, the display of the USB series features full dot matrix architecture with no seven segment display sections. Only a small section at the top right corner uses a nine-segment display layout. Many programs have been developed, and their applications include video games, screen savers , golf score keepers, watch display contrast and scrolling speed adjustment, as well as analog watch displays, phase of

6700-487: The individual pixels. Among the many programs and utilities which have been developed for the watch, such as football schedules, weather reports and others, there is also a screen saver which blanks out the display of the watch on the minute or the hour, appropriately called Screen Saver – Blank . Another application called Antikythera emulates some of the functions of the Antikythera mechanism by calculating

6800-485: The interface found in current versions of Microsoft Windows, and in various desktop environments for Unix-like operating systems , such as macOS and Linux . Thus most current GUIs have largely common idioms. GUIs were a hot topic in the early 1980s. The Apple Lisa was released in 1983, and various windowing systems existed for DOS operating systems (including PC GEM and PC/GEOS ). Individual applications for many platforms presented their own GUI variants. Despite

6900-413: The kind of data they hold. The widgets of a well-designed interface are selected to support the actions necessary to achieve the goals of users. A model–view–controller allows flexible structures in which the interface is independent of and indirectly linked to application functions, so the GUI can be customized easily. This allows users to select or design a different skin or theme at will, and eases

7000-611: The last paging provider was closed in November 2021. Many paging network operators now allow numeric and textual pages to be submitted to the paging networks via email. A significant convenience for users given the widespread adoption of email, and commonalities in delivery assurances . This can result in pager messages being delayed or lost. Older forms of message submission using the Telelocator Alphanumeric Protocol involve modem connections directly to

7100-518: The medical, education and commercial sectors. By early 2002, pager usage was rapidly declining in places like North America. The U.S. paging industry generated $ 2.1 billion in revenue in 2008, down from $ 6.2 billion in 2003. In Canada, 161,500 Canadians paid $ 18.5 million for pager service in 2013. Telus , one of the three major mobile carriers, announced the end to its Canadian pager service as of 31 March 2015, but rivals Bell , Rogers and PageNet intend to continue service. In 2017

7200-425: The message, and the related capability to operate on very low signal levels, are not completely outclassed by their successors. Volunteer firefighters, EMS paramedics and rescue squad members usually carry pagers to alert them of emergency call outs for their department. These pagers receive a special tone from a fire department radio frequency. Restaurant pagers remain in wide use since the 2000s. Customers are given

7300-435: The methods of 3D graphics to project 3D GUI objects onto the screen. The use of 3D graphics has become increasingly common in mainstream operating systems (ex. Windows Aero , and Aqua (MacOS)) to create attractive interfaces, termed eye candy (which includes, for example, the use of drop shadows underneath windows and the cursor ), or for functional purposes only possible using three dimensions. For example, user switching

7400-470: The moon calculations and associated display graphics and others. The wristapps are written in assembly language . Invasion is an example of a game developed specifically for the watch. It is designed along the lines of Space Invaders , created by Jordi Perez. The game has been developed to showcase API instructions for primitive pixel displays such as the one used in the watch. The term primitive refers to displays of low resolution where one can discern

7500-577: The nationwide service area. On September 17, 2024, a massive attack against Hezbollah members in Lebanon and Syria was allegedly committed by Israel, who simultaneously detonated pagers that they were using. Lebanese Health authorities confirmed at least nine deaths and over 3,000 injuries as a result of the explosions. In February 2024, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had told the group's members to use pagers instead of cell phones, claiming that Israel had infiltrated their mobile phone network. As

7600-838: The opportunity to leave the waiting area, but still be contacted. Paging systems are operated by commercial carriers, often as a subscription service and they are also operated directly by end users as private systems. Commercial carrier systems tend to cover a larger geographical area than private systems, while private systems tend to cover their limited area more thoroughly and deliver messages faster than commercial systems. In all systems, clients send messages to pagers, an activity commonly referred to as paging . System operators often assign unique phone numbers or email addresses to pagers (and pre-defined groups of pagers), enabling clients to page by telephone call, e-mail and SMS. Paging systems also support various types of direct connection protocols, which sacrifice global addressing and accessibility for

7700-606: The original and third-party software, like timex-datalink-arduino . The Datalink USB was introduced in 2003. It included the Timex Ironman Datalink USB (sport edition) and the Timex Datalink USB (dress edition) models. Apart from their external appearance, and the fact that the sport edition is water-resistant to 100 metres, while the dress edition is water resistant to 30 metres, the two models had identical specifications. Although initially

7800-519: The pager. A Tribe Called Quest's single "Skypager" directly speaks of the importance of such a wireless communication device, with group member Q-Tip stating that the Skypager "serves an important communicative function for a young professional with a full calendar". Three 6 Mafia 's "2-Way Freak," Sir Mix-A-Lot 's " Beepers " and " Bug a Boo " from Destiny's Child also make reference to pagers. Illicit drug dealers used pagers to great effect during

7900-403: The pointing device. A window manager facilitates the interactions between windows, applications , and the windowing system . The windowing system handles hardware devices such as pointing devices, graphics hardware, and positioning of the pointer. In personal computers , all these elements are modeled through a desktop metaphor to produce a simulation called a desktop environment in which

8000-631: The pressure placed on the service by the COVID-19 pandemic in England . In August 2020, a new procurement framework for clinical communications was launched which was intended to phase out pagers by the end of 2021, replacing them with "dedicated clinical-facing communication and tasks management tools" from 25 approved suppliers. In Japan, more than ten million pagers were active in 1996. On 1 October 2019, Japan's last paging service provider shut down radio signals and terminated its service. In Russia,

8100-626: The primary time display with the press of a button. The Datalink USB also introduced data protection through the use of a user generated password , a feature that the earlier models did not offer. The USB models also feature a rotating crown known as the Timex i-control . The Datalink USB supports software programs developed specifically for the watch similar to its predecessors. These programs are called wrist applications or wrist apps for short, and they are created by independent software developers . Timex has developed an application called WristApp SDK Installer . This application can facilitate

8200-534: The same time—a precursor of DTMF . The ReFLEX protocol was developed in the mid-1990s. As prices for mobile phones declined, small form factor phones like the Motorola StarTAC and the Nokia Series 40 line came on the market, cellular connectivity expanded, and digital phones adopted text messaging , most pager customers outside of specialist fields migrated to mobile phones toward the end of

8300-524: The size of a small TV remote device, to fit into a customer's pocket or purse, quite a feat at that time. The Bellboy was a terminal that notified the user when someone was trying to call them. When the person received an audible signal (a buzz) on the pager, the user found a telephone and called the service center, which informed the user of the caller's message. In the mid-1980s, tone and voice radio paging became popular among emergency responders and professionals. Tone and voice pagers were activated either by

8400-411: The strap encode, including capitalization, the text 'Listen To The Light'. The numbers on other half of the strap encode the text 'If You [ASCII-24] See', which, given that ASCII-24 is the 'Cancel' character or just 'CAN', makes the complete message 'Listen To The Light If You Can See'. The earlier models were the Datalink 50, Datalink 70, Datalink 150 and Datalink 150s, where the "s" was for small and it

8500-517: The system never reached commercial production. The first commercially available computer with a GUI was the 1979 PERQ workstation , manufactured by Three Rivers Computer Corporation. Its design was heavily influenced by the work at Xerox PARC. In 1981, Xerox eventually commercialized the ideas from the Alto in the form of a new and enhanced system – the Xerox 8010 Information System – more commonly known as

8600-505: The term is restricted to the scope of 2D display screens able to describe generic information, in the tradition of the computer science research at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center . Designing the visual composition and temporal behavior of a GUI is an important part of software application programming in the area of human–computer interaction . Its goal is to enhance the efficiency and ease of use for

8700-446: The time could be set through normal use of the watch, the software also permitted the time to be updated using the transfer mechanism. Selecting the "Send to Watch" option in the Datalink software and pointing the watch face towards the screen at a distance of between six and twelve inches, guided by beeping sounds from the watch, resulted in the transfer of data at a rate that permitted around 1 KB or 70 entries to be sent in less than

8800-456: The underlying logical design of a stored program , a design discipline named usability . Methods of user-centered design are used to ensure that the visual language introduced in the design is well-tailored to the tasks. The visible graphical interface features of an application are sometimes referred to as chrome or GUI . Typically, users interact with information by manipulating visual widgets that allow for interactions appropriate to

8900-451: The upcoming expedition. Due to its unique features and long tradition of innovation and utility, the Datalink watch line has achieved cult-like status among technically minded people. In addition, many websites are dedicated to the programming and information exchange among its many fans. Yahoo groups also exist for fans and software developers alike, especially for the latest Datalink USB series. The early Datalink 50/150 models received

9000-415: The user was prompted to choose the relevant watch model number. The menu choices were the same for all models. The only differences were the amount of available memory in the watches, and the quantity of phone numbers, appointments, lists etc. which could be downloaded to each model. At the time of their introduction, these watches were known as "PIM" watches, i.e. personal information managers. Bill Gates

9100-470: The user-friendly interface as a personal computer which departed from prior business-oriented systems, and becoming a signature representation of Apple products. In 1985, Commodore released the Amiga 1000 , along with Workbench and Kickstart 1.0 (which contained Intuition ). This interface ran as a separate task, meaning it was very responsive and, unlike other GUIs of the time, it didn't freeze up when

9200-603: The watch. The optical sensor and the method of data transfer were retained. The display of the new series had the same architecture as that of the older models. As with the earlier models, the Triathlon Datalink included dual time zones with local time selectability. Its battery life was approximately three years under normal use. With the advent of portable computers which use active matrix LCD screens which did not refresh like CRT monitors and therefore could not be used for data transfer, in 1997, Timex introduced

9300-463: Was detected by the watch's sensor. Data to be transferred to Datalink watches was held in a database maintained by the Datalink software running on a Windows-based host computer, with alarms, appointments, anniversaries, phone numbers, reminders (or to-do items) being the supported categories of data for transfer. Textual labels for various categories could be up to 15 characters in length, with such text scrolling across an eight character display. Although

9400-432: Was intended to be a lady's watch. The 150 and 150s models are essentially the same, except that the 150s, having a smaller display, has different display addresses from the 150, and thus it needs its own programming code. The programming code is provided in the Timex Datalink software v 2.1 for all models. These watches were programmed using the same software and computer GUI . To download the settings to these early models,

9500-546: Was known as an owner of one, and had also shown the capabilities of the watch on television. The Datalink 150 was also offered as a mail-in gift upon purchase of Office 95 . The model number indicated the maximum number of phone numbers that could be downloaded to the watch. For example, the model 150 could store a maximum of 150 phone numbers if nothing else was stored. Available storage was shared by phone numbers, appointments, anniversaries, lists, wristapps and watch sounds. These models lacked countdown timers or chronographs, but

9600-399: Was later introduced by David Canfield Smith , who had written a thesis on the subject under the guidance of Kay. The PARC GUI employs a pointing device along with a keyboard. These aspects can be emphasized by using the alternative term and acronym for windows, icons, menus, pointing device ( WIMP ). This effort culminated in the 1973 Xerox Alto , the first computer with a GUI, though

9700-588: Was never popular due to its high hardware demands. Nevertheless, it was a crucial influence on the contemporary development of Microsoft Windows . Apple, Digital Research, IBM and Microsoft used many of Xerox's ideas to develop products, and IBM's Common User Access specifications formed the basis of the GUIs used in Microsoft Windows, IBM OS/2 Presentation Manager , and the Unix Motif toolkit and window manager . These ideas evolved to create

9800-488: Was patented in 1949 by Alfred J. Gross . Intended for the use of physicians, there was initial resistance to the idea of being permanently on-call, according to Gross. One of the first practical paging services was launched in 1950 for physicians in the New York City area. Physicians paid US$ 12 per month and carried a 200-gram (7 oz) pager that would receive phone messages within 40 kilometres (25 mi) of

9900-695: Was the first watch/pager able to receive alphanumeric messages. It operates in the 900 MHz band. Beepware also featured FLEX time which, if supported by the service provider, could synchronise the time of the watch with that of the network. It could also automatically adjust to the time zone of the wearer. Pager A pager , also known as a beeper or bleeper , is a wireless telecommunications device that receives and displays alphanumeric or voice messages. One-way pagers can only receive messages, while response pagers and two-way pagers can also acknowledge, reply to, and originate messages using an internal transmitter. Pagers operate as part of

10000-589: Was useful for times when the pager was off or out of the coverage area, as it would know what pages were sent to the subscriber even if the subscriber never actually received the page. Other radio bands used for pagers include the 400 MHz band, the VHF band and the FM commercial broadcast band (88–108&MHz). Other paging protocols used in the VHF, 400 MHz UHF and 900 MHz bands include POCSAG and ERMES. In Canada and

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