• 1. RF/cellular modem - allows continous online connection. Can run terminal emulation, SLIP, etc. Pretty obvious.
• 2. Sneakernet - use removable media to tranfer files between wearable and outside world. Again, pretty obvious.
• 3. Direct serial cable connection to stationery machine. Can either log in, or use kermit/zmodem/etc. to transfer files. Again, fairly obvious.
• 4. UUCP/SMTP agent running standalone on wearable. (*not* so obvious!) Consider the following environment: most of the time, you have no need for connectivity to the outside world; everything you need to do is on your wearable. But, your mainstay is your workgroup lan type thing. A useful method of interacting with others in your organization, as well as keeping track of random things is with email. How often do you say to a colleague, who may even share your office, "I'll email you the changes we have to make to the xxx design." You're not emailing him because he's far away, you're emailing so you know he has a permanent copy, and so you know he's received it. (assuming you know you have reliable email service).

  Anyway, the idea then is that you run an SMTP agent on your wearable, and as you're taking notes, etc, you send email to your colleagues, yourself, etc. The email isn't sent immediately, because your wearable has no rf link, instead it's queued for mailing in the spool directory on the wearable's file system.

  When you get back to your nonmobile, presumably connected, workstation, you plug the serial cable into your wearable, and it does a UUCP or similar smtp transfer to your host network. The messages you queued up on your wearable's spool directory get sent out over your coporate (or campus) network.

  This allows the user to take notes and stuff, and email them to himself, without a realtime connection to the net. But, since it's email, you know you can't lose your notes. (Gee, now *which* file did I put the notes from this morning's meeting in?)

• 5. Login to *another* wearble. Hey, it's OS-9! I've got two serial ports --- one is connected to my wearable ASCII terminal, but why not use the other one to let other people login to the wearable while you're using it? After all, OS-9 is a multi-user operating system.

  This brings up another issue --- since my wearable is a multiuser box, I have to log into my wearable, and supply a valid password. Nice if you're paranoid unauthorized access. Also --- you can set up "guest" accounts on your wearable for demos, so you don't have to worry about people to whom you're demoing destroying/seeing your valuable data.

  I'm sure there are other issues concerning multi-user wearable computers.

Return to Wearables main page Last modified Wed Nov 22 12:45:01 EST 1995