Calling Dick Tracy ...

I'm not sure how many people out there remember the Dick Tracy newspaper strip, although I've a hunch that quite a few of you out there have seen the movie with Warren Beatty. Anyway, remember the wrist radio that the detective used to keep in touch with his men?

In the age of the cell-phone, of course, the concept of mobile communications that Chester Gould hinted at in the 1940s is a reality, even if Gould's details aren't quite right. We're not quite at the stage where we can wear wrist radios ...

... or are we?

Check out this story from The Watch Report, a site all about wrist and fashion watches, about the current state-of-the-art in wrist communicators. There's even a gallery showing all the prototypes that have been worked on in the past decade. Some look pretty close to what Gould had in mind, although a few of them look more like a Power Rangers morpher.

Me, I'm waiting for the day when cellphones get small enough to be pinned onto a jacket lapel. As in, "Phantom Observer to Enterprise, come in."