Internet Appliances

The one that got the farthest was the iFax. It was sold in Asia and you could fax via email.

Another one was the iTam or Internet Telephone Machine, which would email you your phone messages as a WAV attachment.

On both of these devices we had what was called the iJack. This idea came out of my work on the internet gameboy. The gameboy protocol that the gamboy cartridge software talked to the internet adapter with the first "iJack" protocol which consisted of a simple set of commands that could be operated over a serial connection that allowed accessing internet resources. So the iFax and the iTam had iJack ports which devices that spoke a very simple language could access the internet. The TCP/IP stack was in the iFax and iTam which offloaded all the complex protocol processing from the iJack device which could be a simple 4 or 8 bit processor enabled toy or other device.

The 900Mhz iTam was very interesting in that you could bring the handset around with you and the handset had an iJack connector on it which you could plug into your iJack enabled product.

The idea was you could update content for you toys, including handheld games or iJack into your appliances like your car (via a cordless phone), washing machine, or refrigerator to let the factory diagnose your problems. We had a stack of ideas that could use the iJack, and I think it still could be useful today.

And Yes I designed and built the famous "Internet Elmo" iJack device. I think this was the first and only Internet enabled Elmo. Check out the video below.

Video