I don't know if it's the same technology, but I had a microcontroller toy as a little kid where you'd 1) write the programs on your computer (or in my case, type them in from the tutorial book, without actually comprehending any of it) and then 2) transfer the compiled program to the device itself via (IIRC) this little puck-shaped thing with a blinking red light. It was pretty cool, I wonder if I still have it stashed away anywhere.
Huh, now I remember a 90's or early 00's watch that has data, and the way to upload data onto it was by running a special Windows program that would flicker an area of the screen black and white. You'd point the face of your watch to it and the flickering had data encoded onto it.
Supported in MS Schedule+ 7.0 included with Office 95.
Very magical to hold your watch up to the CRT monitor, see the monitor go black and flash a bunch of white lines for a few seconds and then look at your wrist to view the downloaded info.
But it was only letters and numbers so the routine got old fast.
Could be a bit finicky to get a successful transfer as well.
I mostly remember infrared transfers in the context of beaming contacts between PalmPilots. It was pretty fast for that, and actually, much more reliable than modern AirDrop.
Raymond Chen is one of the great treasures of the web.
Of course I remember IR file sharing! And contact beaming from Palm devices.
I remember waiting for IR file sharing. It was SLOW.
I don't know if it's the same technology, but I had a microcontroller toy as a little kid where you'd 1) write the programs on your computer (or in my case, type them in from the tutorial book, without actually comprehending any of it) and then 2) transfer the compiled program to the device itself via (IIRC) this little puck-shaped thing with a blinking red light. It was pretty cool, I wonder if I still have it stashed away anywhere.
Huh, now I remember a 90's or early 00's watch that has data, and the way to upload data onto it was by running a special Windows program that would flicker an area of the screen black and white. You'd point the face of your watch to it and the flickering had data encoded onto it.
Since it's 2026, googling brings me nothing... had to ask Gemini: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCHHzw4s5W4
For those that don’t feel like watching a video, it was the Times Datalink.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Datalink
Supported in MS Schedule+ 7.0 included with Office 95.
Very magical to hold your watch up to the CRT monitor, see the monitor go black and flash a bunch of white lines for a few seconds and then look at your wrist to view the downloaded info.
But it was only letters and numbers so the routine got old fast.
Could be a bit finicky to get a successful transfer as well.
And transfer bandwidth was pretty low.
I loved IR contact/note sharing! It was easy, fast, and reliable. It also worked across different types of phones.
There's still nothing comparable :(
I mostly remember infrared transfers in the context of beaming contacts between PalmPilots. It was pretty fast for that, and actually, much more reliable than modern AirDrop.
> The sketch demonstrated infrared file sharing and other mobile scenarios. Remember infrared file sharing? Of course you don’t.
Oh hell yes I do. Dog slow but at least it worked decently well, something I can't say about Bluetooth.