I was at the thrift store with some friends last night looking for routers to do mesh networking stuff with and came across one of these, I didn't end up buying it but I was very tempted.
The Electrodex Plus by Rolodex
heres a small version of the same sort of computer called the Tele-Art
@liaizon this worked on my Palm V I had in high school to my classmates' Nokias, over IR! we've regressed a lot since then.
@technomancy wow so it was a standard that multiple phone manufacturers agreed on? I had no idea
@liaizon not even just phones, PDAs too.
I also used my IrDA port on the same device to wirelessly connect to a free internet station in the Changi airport terminal in Singapore my senior year of high school to pull in my POP mail, years before I ever even heard of WiFi.
it was magical.
@liaizon bluetooth is garbage on its own merits, but bluetooth is even worse when you consider the fact that it killed an excellent, reliable, and mature protocol and left not even a trace.
@technomancy its still so insane to me how I can't transfer a file wirelessly between an iphone and an android without special software. the companies with the current hegemony on hardware have all regressed in some serious ways
@liaizon PalmOS devices had this dating to the late 1990s / early 20002.
The first Palm Pilot release as March 10, 1997.
They featured IR data transfer, and specifically of contact information. Sender/receiver were located at the top of the devices, so you'd point head-to-head and beam/receive.
@liaizon we do it's just via extremely proprietary, locked down apple & google protocols