CHARMED LIFE TECHNOLOGY COMPANY CREATES A FASHIONABLE WAY TO NETWORK.

Byline: David Bloom Staff Writer

In the future, we may all become part computer, metal and plastic melding with biology, blurring the lines between machine and man.

Or, in Katrina Barillova's vision, and that of Charmed Technology, the company she co-founded with Alex Lightman, we'll see fewer computers than ever in a few years.

But these machines won't be gone. They'll blend, be part of our clothing, our jewelry, our shoes, our space. They just won't be part of our bodies.

``People fear to be less human, to look like Borgs (the half-machine group-mind creatures of 'Star Trek'),'' says Barillova, in a soft voice squared off by the moderate accent of her Slovakian background. ``You need to be able to disconnect from the network.''

So, although the Beverly Hills-based Charmed bills itself as a networking company, it has focused on making smart electronic hardware devices that link people together without looking like, well, smart electronic hardware devices.

``The goal of Alex and me was to connect billions of people to the Net,'' says Barillova. ``We were looking for ways to do that.''

They started with the Charmed Badge, which actually has a lot of looks in providing a nifty way to help people with similar interests find each other in a crowded room.

Its first iteration hit the market in February, was focused on the $2.8 billion trade-show industry and looks a lot like the badge you get when you register for a convention. There's a space in the center big enough for a business card or other basic ``Hello, my name is ...'' sorts of information.

But backing it up is a tiny sensor, information storage, computer brain, four buttons and four lights that together change that process of meeting strangers into a very different experience of matching with people.

Trade shows lease the badges, which then tie their clients - the vendors and the show attendees - into a big network of people and connections, making it easy to follow up with those people who can help you do business.

Each badge stores about 300 names and matches up each person's interests and contact information with those immediately around them, Barillova says.

Say you're a vendor trying to sell widgets. The badge can figure out, based on the information in your and other people's badges, who's looking to buy widgets, who's looking to sell widget-making supplies and who's looking to buy or sell something else you don't care about.

All that information is subsequently fed into the Internet-based Web sites set up by Charmed to tie everyone together, much as Geocities has created a series of online communities that tie together like-minded people.

It doesn't take a genius like MIT grad Lightman or Barillova, who was trained in espionage as a teen in communist Czechoslovakia, to see how this technology can have non-business uses.

One big record company, for instance, has inquired about using the badges to get a sense of what fans at concerts like. Then there are the manifold non-business possibilities in, say, a cocktail party or bar. The badges can trade several tiers of increasingly revealing information, the release of which you control, while simultaneously seeking out those people who match up well with you.

When all four lights go on, you've got a Love Connection, but as Barillova says, somewhat ruefully, ``it's hard to find someone who's 100 percent.''

Of course, wearing a clunky trade-show badge wouldn't necessarily help this process, nor encourage widespread use, especially among fashion-conscious women. But, as Barillova points out, ``With the badges, they only make sense if a lot of people wear them.''

So the company is creating a variety of pins, necklaces and other jewelry that can decoratively hide the badges' simple electronics.

The company is about to release an upgraded version of the badge, with four times the memory at the same $20 cost. Charmed is building another, high-end version that will take advantage of IBM's Microdrive hard drives to provide a whopping 1 gigabyte of on-badge storage.

Video presentations, music, photos and other digital goodies could be stored and swapped on such mega-badges, which would cost around $400, Barillova says. They will probably be available within weeks of IBM delivering its promised 1-gigabyte Microdrives to market this winter.

But for all the whiz-bang nature of this stuff, none of it is supposed to be complex.

``It's very, very simple technology,'' Barillova said. ``We believe in simplifying technology. There's a half-page of instructions that come with the badge.''

Charmed is also working on two other products that are designed to link people together. One is Nanix, a stripped-down, mobile-minded version of the Linux computer operating system.

Creating operating systems isn't very glamorous, but if Nanix is done right, Charmed and its customers could use it to create products smart enough to pick the most efficient way to communicate not only with people, but also with the Internet and other networks and wireless devices.

Charmed will use the language to run its own products, but it also plans to give away the language to non-profits and to sell it to large companies for use in cell phones, personal digital assistants and other wireless gadgets they're creating, Barillova says.

Nanix will be at the heart of Charmed's Communicator, essentially a computer you wear like a small, strap-on puck. The company has made blocky prototypes for some time, an outgrowth of its techno-nascence at the Media Lab of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There, some researchers, who actually proudly call themselves Borgs, have used wearable computer rigs for most of the past decade, living lives jacked into the surrounding network of machines.

The Communicator, however, will have a little more style than those industrial-looking predecessors, which are being ordered by MIT and Georgia Tech among other research facilities.

The new Communicators will feature stylish lines while connecting to any of a variety of devices for both inputting information (chording keyboards, thumb trackballs, ``e-broidery'' sewn with conductive thread into the knees of clothing) and viewing it (the discontinued Sony Glasstron, tiny pop-down eyepieces from companies such as Micro Optical and Olympus).

``The big things that make these possible are the emergence of low-power processors and wireless technologies,'' says Charmed's director of advanced projects Jarrell Pair. ``If you draw a lot of power, you add size and batteries and heat.''

By using extremely efficient new computer chips such as Transmeta Corp.'s Crusoe chip or its new Intel competitor, they eliminate those problems, while making the resulting machine a powerful, flexible device to help a person navigate their world, both real and virtual, Pair says.

The Communicator is designed to handle a range of tasks, from cell-phone calls to wireless e-mail and Internet browsing, to television and radio, even to monitoring the user's pulse, blood pressure and other health indicators, says Pair.

The device would sell separately, depending on the configuration, for $2,000 to $2,400, Barillova says. But instead, the company plans to include it with a subscription for Net, phone, broadcast and other services that will run $60 to $100 a month.

``You can do just about anything you can do on a desktop with this,'' Barillova says. What it won't be, she promises, is a first step to the Borg.

``I really think the world is going to be a totally different place soon,'' she says. ``Now, only 2 percent of the world is connected to the Internet. Imagine if a majority of the whole world is connected. I have traveled a lot, and you see huge differences between countries. You see that the major missing part for people to prosper is knowledge, information, communication. Where that's available, people are prosperous.''

Long-term, the company's operations in London, Slovakia and the Czech Republic are also working on technologies like a special fabric that maintains a constant body temperature, whether it's hot or cold outside, and devices to sense various substances, viruses, poisons and explosives, Barillova says.

All this may bolster what Charmed calls ``on-body networks,'' even if tiny, remote villages in India and China can each afford only one rig. But at least, she says, it will allow people some outside connection, and a chance to help themselves.

``If you bring a person from 200 years ago to today, they would say, 'Where are all the horses?' '' Barillova says. ``The person from today, if you put them 50 years in the future, they'll look around and say, 'Where are all the computers, TVs and phones?' You would say, 'What do you mean? I'm wearing it.' ''

CAPTION(S):

7 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) e-style

Wearable computer connections create a new look and a new link

(2 -- color) Beverly Hills-based Charmed Technology offers the Communicator Eyepiece, which features a sleek design and wireless technology.

(3 -- 4 -- color) The Charmed Badge, left, was the first high-tech product available in Charmed's line of gadgets. The Charmed Communicator, right, is a small strap-on computer that handles phone calls, e-mail, Internet browsing and more.

(5 -- color) Charmed jewelry, such as this necklace, offers an unobtrusive way to wear the company's electronics.

(6 -- color) A model wears the Communicator around her waist and the Eyepiece, above. Charmed co-founder Katrina Barillova, left, displays a decorative necklace and handpiece. ``I really think the world is going to be a totally different place soon. Now, only 2 percent of the world is connected to the Internet. Imagine if a majority of the whole world is connected,'' says Barillova, whose company has operations in London, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

(7) Charmed Technology's Web page features a list of scheduled dates for its Fashion Technology Showcase World Tour 2000.