Like all of the MSN Direct watches, the 2006 Abacus uses FM radio technology to communicate updates to the device.

ENGADGET: Switched On: The gist on your wrist

The information, which can include traffic information, weather, stock quotes, news, sports and dozens of other snippets, would be transmitted to the watches not by any fancy third-generation wireless phone technology, nor via satellite, but rather by FM radio signals using a technology called DirectBand.

FORBES: Magazine Article

We had heard this rumor on the internets a little while ago, and now it looks like Swatch is really going to come out with a SPOT watch (SPOT, of course, being Microsoft's Smart Personal Object Technology that uses FM radio signals to send data to watches, like news, stocks, instant messages, etc.).

ENGADGET: Swatch Paparazzi SPOT

Robert Struble , IBiquity's president and chief executive, says the technology will be incorporated into digital AM and FM radio systems that should start showing up in six cities around the U.S.--including New York and Los Angeles by January.

FORBES: Radio's Smarter Future

But more than helping to make consumers healthier, MyFit is a full-featured portable music player that features an FM radio tuner and Samsung's DNSe 3.0 sound enhancement technology, which helps to overcome the inefficiencies and limitations of compressed audio files and generate a more realistic stereo sound.

ENGADGET: Samsung announces two PMPs, one for fitness gurus, one made of glass

The new technology will finally let AM stations, long limited by bandwidth one-tenth the size of FM, broadcast in stereo at a quality equal to that of analog FM.

FORBES: Big Audio Dynamite