The World At Your Wrist

By Phuong-Cac Nguyen
Associate Editor, Los Angeles Times' Calendar Live!

Got the time? Better yet, got the URL for your favorite web site, a scrolling reminder to "have a nice day," or the area code for England? With more digital memory than you'll know what to do with, these watches feature technological innovations that not only brag "future, future, future" but also "fun, fun, fun."

The Pulsar watch company has its finger — and wristband — on the pulse of America with two new additions to the popular "Spoon" line. The first is "S.A.M." (Secret Agent Man), which ironically enough, is a conspicuous timepiece that boasts a memory so large that you can store 100 memos (including email addresses and URLs, of course) with up to 60 characters each. It also features a selection of preprogrammed messages to appear on any date you specify. A less useful feature includes scrolling text with more than 45 different greetings and proverbs, such as "Good news is no news," "Cheers!" and "Oh, wonderful!" After a while you may feel like you're holding a tiny marquee on your wrist. That aside, the cool thing about S.A.M. is that all the ultrasecret, precious data you've put in will not be lost even when the batteries die. A note to bilingual James Bond wannabes: The watch also uses the Japanese alphabet. Calendar Live's only complaint is that for at a whopping $215, you should be able to use it to contact mission control.

The Michi Tabi's (which means "road trip" in Japanese) Space Age but bulky design is grand for international jet-setter types. With a push here or there, the $145 watch can display the time of any one of 38 cities in the world, along with their respective country codes for overseas calls. So you don't forget what city you set the watch for, the Michi Tabi scrolls the city name across its full-panel dot-matrix LCD screen. An hourly time signal is sometimes annoying (imagine having to wear your own mini techno-clock tower), but the stopwatch addition makes up for it. The watch also holds up to five different alarm settings. We especially like that the Michi Tabi automatically adjusts for daylight savings time.

Both styles contain standard Spoon features (built-in illumination, water resistance to 330 feet and shock resistance). The S.A.M. comes in silver and black, and the Michi Tabi in red, blue, black and silver. Strap it on at Fred Segal.