9 ms·

With Memoto, Affordable Passive Lifelogging Has Arrived

31 points by dmor 14y ago

gte910h 14y ago
Well it hasn't arrived YET I'm very excited for mine. I don't anticipate wearing it everywhere, but for vacations it will be fantastic.
gallerytungsten 14y ago
Let's not forget that Memeto automatically uploads all your images to the company's servers, with no apparent way to disable this "feature." Creepy.
- dmor 14y ago
  I have to believe they'll figure out a way to do this that makes people comfortable, although obviously it it creeps you out a ton then you probably won't be an early adopter of it. I think it is so funny how people say "creepy" when in reality most of our lives are so vanilla that nothing interesting would come of it, even if someone did spy on us.
  - gte910h 14y ago
    I know wearing it "all the time" is out of the question for cases of catching things like casual nudity or source code that's NDAed due to this feature. Hopefully that conflict makes them make "software in the middle" to allow you to edit before upload.
    - darklajid 14y ago
      I'm confused. Why would 'catching casual nudity' be a problem (unless you're unaware of the camera and think that these things don't belong in pictures, period. Do you?) here?
      - gte910h 14y ago
        I don't think it's a professionally smart decision for most Americans to put naked pictures of themselves on internet sites. I include my wife and myself in that.
        darklajid 14y ago
        Not my native language. What is 'casually nude'? My contact picture (Android/Google) of my wife (with her consent, of course) reminds me daily that breastfeeding changes women.. No nudity, btw. But picking up here, would a picture of my wife breastfeeding cross the border of 'casual nudity'? That would seriously confuse me. It seems that this device is supposed to keep memories for you. That situation is certainly very well worth keeping for me/us, ignoring the required nudity to prevent your offspring from starving.. I guess I cannot understand limits based on nudity alone, since a good deal of nice pictures I have/want to keep show a lot of skin, both mine or my wife's (again, no need for anything fancy. Naked son on naked wife is certainly a normal picture to keep and remember). I certainly agree that I wouldn't post the majority to Facebook, of course. Bit if this product is supposed to replace other ways to keep your special moments with you, I see no way to exclude all nude content.
        gte910h 14y ago
        By "casually nude" I mean a person walking to the shower, getting dressed, changing, walking around in their underwear for some random reason etc. The fact the device goes straight to their servers means those pictures are out of my strict control (I don't even take pictures of those things and keep pictures IN my control). So while it's not the same as publishing to facebook, if they are ever hacked, we'll, that's a total loss of control of a serious aspect of my families financial life. Morality clauses in company rulebooks alone can make nude pictures = fired. Even if they didn't they could be humiliating to have co workers/ex associates pass them around, or new employers finding them before a job search occurs.
- timbre 14y ago
  From Memoto's FAQ (http://memoto.com/pages/faq http://memoto.com/pages/faq): > Will it be possible to use the camera without ever uploading any photos to Memotos cloud storage? > Yes. You can use the camera with local storage only if you want. You will however not be able to use the data from the GPS and you will have to manage and organize all the photos yourself. The data from the GPS is not converted into a useful position in latitude and longitude until it has been processed in our cloud service.
  - TannerLD 14y ago
    I don't see why disabling their cloud storage disables geotagging.
    - martinkallstrom 14y ago
      Memoto founder here, it's because the GPS radio data is converted to lat/long in the cloud. Before that it's just a radio sample. Normal GPS chips that compute the lat/long on the fly drains the battery very quickly since they need to wait for a fix. Which basically means that they wait to download the ephemeris of how satellites are positioned at the moment. By offloading that computation to the cloud, it suffices to get a 200 ms snapshot of GPS radio data. It means we can have a duty cycle of about 500 ms instead of 30s or more, which is how the camera can have such an extended battery life.
      - pcl 14y ago
        That's a neat approach. Is this commonly done by other services? Is there any historical data accessible online, or do you record your own ephemeris data for all the satellites?
        martinkallstrom 14y ago
        It's fairly uncommon since in most cases you actually need the geoposition in real time. We use a third party service for historical ephemeris.
      - 14y ago
- ollysb 14y ago
  This is a product that attempts to log every moment of your life. It's going to be pretty useless without images...
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
alanctgardner2 14y ago
I know it's late in the game, but is there no switch to turn it off if you're not wearing it, or you're doing something you don't want to record? It looks pretty smooth and button-less to me. That would be a major deal-breaker, in addition to the fact that 98% of my life is terribly boring, and they don't appear to offer any suggestions on how I could only record the interesting parts. I'd be more interested in a device that buffers the last hour, and lets me store it if something important - accident, surprise party, any random, cool thing - happens. I don't need 50 billion gigs of pictures of my desk, but there are definitely times when I wish I could travel back 20 minutes and remember to take a picture.
- martinkallstrom 14y ago
  You switch it off by putting it somewhere dark or flat (in your pocket, bag or on a table). If there was an on/off switch and you switched it off before going into a dressing room or similar setting where it's inappropriate to take photos, other people will still be uncomfortable. By making the the on/off switch equal to taking the camera off, we make people more comfortable with the concept of a wearable camera. A similar line of though went into design of the camera itself. We made sure through user testing that most people recognizes it as being a camera, and not as something else. But also that it is subtle enough to not be distracting. It was a fine balance to find between the two, but with the current design most people find it appealing.
  - CWIZO 14y ago
    What if I'm laying on the grass looking at the sky?
    - martinkallstrom 14y ago
      It takes a few frames for the camera to switch off. Even flat on your back it would be a one in a million chance that your camera ended up being perfectly still with the front axis aligned with the gravity vector for any prolonged period of time. You are breathing and shifting slightly even when relaxed.
kingkool68 14y ago
Can't wait for mine to get here!
personlurking 14y ago
Not sure this will catch. When thinking of the act of taking photos, an important part of that act is pointing and shooting in any given moment and it seems that will not be possible with the Memoto. Of course, you can unhook it, point it and wait up to 2 minutes to make sure you have the shot but it's not exactly practical. On the other hand, this isn't a replacement for pointing and shooting with a normal camera. With more and more lifelogging devices coming, I hope someone will make a device similar in size to the Memoto that I can wear on my collar which blurs out my face when I'm being lifelogged by someone else.
- martinkallstrom 14y ago
  Hi, Memoto founder here. You can in fact double-tap the camera to have it take a photo at once. It will also be bookmarked for easy retrieval. If you want a viewfinder as well, the Memoto app allows you to take photos the normal way which end up in the same timeline as the rest of your pictures.
bbx 14y ago
I've always wished for a device that would seamlessly log the things that I do, but in a text format. I'd call it "Log of my life" (and I hear the Queen song "Love of my life" when I think about it). It wouldn't take pictures like the Memoto but rather keep track of the places I've been (restaurants, museums, bars, cities) and the stuff I've read, listened to, or watched. I love lists, just plain lists. I already manage lists of books, articles, albums, tracks and films, but I use a Google Document for that and it something is hard to remember everything. I don't know how such a device would work but I think there'd be a market for that.
summerdown2 14y ago
> All the pictures are safely stored on Memoto's remote storage service. We know what you're thinking... two photos a minute is a whole lot of photos Apparently you don't know what I'm thinking. I was thinking that a whole host of minor crimes like reaching 35 in a 30 zone or downloading copyrighted files can suddenly be data mined. Or computer passwords. Or pin numbers off a cash point, or confidential documents like passports, or credit card numbers ...
madethemcry 14y ago
This project always reminds me of "The Final Cut" with Robin Williams. A somewhat disturbing near future scenario about life logging with an a brain implant and the social consequences http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364343/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364343/
subpixel 14y ago
Hopefully Ghostery [http://www.ghostery.com/ http://www.ghostery.com/] will start tracking Referly -- I prefer to know when a site is saying nice things about an affiliate who will pay them money if they turn me into a customer. I'm not saying all affiliate revenue is distasteful. But affiliate links that aren't identified as such are, in my opinion.
- dmor 14y ago
  You can tell which links are affiliate because they are orange and say "buy". Non-affiliate links are grey and say "view".
  - subpixel 14y ago
    Users could tell which links are affiliate if there was copy on the page making it clear that "orange links that say 'buy' are affiliate links - if you click them and make a purchase Referly will make a commission on the transaction. That's the business we're in. Thank you!" I don't think you have anything to lose by being upfront with your audience - they'd probably appreciate it.
ommunist 14y ago
This is a creepy device idea. Imagine someone with 24/365 access to your data and some ideas of enhancing your life or redirecting it to someone's purpose. Automagically, like the software does.
codex 14y ago
There are some legal issues to be aware of here. Taking photos in a public bathroom (such as in an airport or restaurant) is illegal. Make sure you don't forget you are wearing the device as you wander around. Photos on private property can be restricted by the property owner (shopping malls, casinos, private residences, etc.). If you do not comply, you can be kicked out and possibly charged with trespassing, and could even be injuncted or sued for damages in a civil court. Note that video surveillance in private or semi-public places may get you in trouble with the law too. Presumably this is one reason why this device does not have a microphone--laws regarding un-consented audio capture (wiretapping) are even more severe in many states and countries. And I hope that refer.ly gets popular, if only to reduce the level of refer.ly traction-whoring-growth-hacking here on HN.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

31 points by dmor 14y ago

Well it hasn't arrived YET I'm very excited for mine. I don't anticipate wearing it everywhere, but for vacations it will be fantastic.

gallerytungsten 14y ago

Let's not forget that Memeto automatically uploads all your images to the company's servers, with no apparent way to disable this "feature." Creepy.

dmor 14y ago
I have to believe they'll figure out a way to do this that makes people comfortable, although obviously it it creeps you out a ton then you probably won't be an early adopter of it. I think it is so funny how people say "creepy" when in reality most of our lives are so vanilla that nothing interesting would come of it, even if someone did spy on us.
- gte910h 14y ago
  I know wearing it "all the time" is out of the question for cases of catching things like casual nudity or source code that's NDAed due to this feature. Hopefully that conflict makes them make "software in the middle" to allow you to edit before upload.
  - darklajid 14y ago
    I'm confused. Why would 'catching casual nudity' be a problem (unless you're unaware of the camera and think that these things don't belong in pictures, period. Do you?) here?
    - gte910h 14y ago
      I don't think it's a professionally smart decision for most Americans to put naked pictures of themselves on internet sites. I include my wife and myself in that.
      - darklajid 14y ago
        Not my native language. What is 'casually nude'? My contact picture (Android/Google) of my wife (with her consent, of course) reminds me daily that breastfeeding changes women.. No nudity, btw. But picking up here, would a picture of my wife breastfeeding cross the border of 'casual nudity'? That would seriously confuse me. It seems that this device is supposed to keep memories for you. That situation is certainly very well worth keeping for me/us, ignoring the required nudity to prevent your offspring from starving.. I guess I cannot understand limits based on nudity alone, since a good deal of nice pictures I have/want to keep show a lot of skin, both mine or my wife's (again, no need for anything fancy. Naked son on naked wife is certainly a normal picture to keep and remember). I certainly agree that I wouldn't post the majority to Facebook, of course. Bit if this product is supposed to replace other ways to keep your special moments with you, I see no way to exclude all nude content.
        gte910h 14y ago
        By "casually nude" I mean a person walking to the shower, getting dressed, changing, walking around in their underwear for some random reason etc. The fact the device goes straight to their servers means those pictures are out of my strict control (I don't even take pictures of those things and keep pictures IN my control). So while it's not the same as publishing to facebook, if they are ever hacked, we'll, that's a total loss of control of a serious aspect of my families financial life. Morality clauses in company rulebooks alone can make nude pictures = fired. Even if they didn't they could be humiliating to have co workers/ex associates pass them around, or new employers finding them before a job search occurs.
timbre 14y ago
From Memoto's FAQ (http://memoto.com/pages/faq http://memoto.com/pages/faq): > Will it be possible to use the camera without ever uploading any photos to Memotos cloud storage? > Yes. You can use the camera with local storage only if you want. You will however not be able to use the data from the GPS and you will have to manage and organize all the photos yourself. The data from the GPS is not converted into a useful position in latitude and longitude until it has been processed in our cloud service.
- TannerLD 14y ago
  I don't see why disabling their cloud storage disables geotagging.
  - martinkallstrom 14y ago
    Memoto founder here, it's because the GPS radio data is converted to lat/long in the cloud. Before that it's just a radio sample. Normal GPS chips that compute the lat/long on the fly drains the battery very quickly since they need to wait for a fix. Which basically means that they wait to download the ephemeris of how satellites are positioned at the moment. By offloading that computation to the cloud, it suffices to get a 200 ms snapshot of GPS radio data. It means we can have a duty cycle of about 500 ms instead of 30s or more, which is how the camera can have such an extended battery life.
    - pcl 14y ago
      That's a neat approach. Is this commonly done by other services? Is there any historical data accessible online, or do you record your own ephemeris data for all the satellites?
      - martinkallstrom 14y ago
        It's fairly uncommon since in most cases you actually need the geoposition in real time. We use a third party service for historical ephemeris.
    - 14y ago
ollysb 14y ago
This is a product that attempts to log every moment of your life. It's going to be pretty useless without images...

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

alanctgardner2 14y ago

I know it's late in the game, but is there no switch to turn it off if you're not wearing it, or you're doing something you don't want to record? It looks pretty smooth and button-less to me. That would be a major deal-breaker, in addition to the fact that 98% of my life is terribly boring, and they don't appear to offer any suggestions on how I could only record the interesting parts. I'd be more interested in a device that buffers the last hour, and lets me store it if something important - accident, surprise party, any random, cool thing - happens. I don't need 50 billion gigs of pictures of my desk, but there are definitely times when I wish I could travel back 20 minutes and remember to take a picture.

martinkallstrom 14y ago
You switch it off by putting it somewhere dark or flat (in your pocket, bag or on a table). If there was an on/off switch and you switched it off before going into a dressing room or similar setting where it's inappropriate to take photos, other people will still be uncomfortable. By making the the on/off switch equal to taking the camera off, we make people more comfortable with the concept of a wearable camera. A similar line of though went into design of the camera itself. We made sure through user testing that most people recognizes it as being a camera, and not as something else. But also that it is subtle enough to not be distracting. It was a fine balance to find between the two, but with the current design most people find it appealing.
- CWIZO 14y ago
  What if I'm laying on the grass looking at the sky?
  - martinkallstrom 14y ago
    It takes a few frames for the camera to switch off. Even flat on your back it would be a one in a million chance that your camera ended up being perfectly still with the front axis aligned with the gravity vector for any prolonged period of time. You are breathing and shifting slightly even when relaxed.

kingkool68 14y ago

Can't wait for mine to get here!

personlurking 14y ago

Not sure this will catch. When thinking of the act of taking photos, an important part of that act is pointing and shooting in any given moment and it seems that will not be possible with the Memoto. Of course, you can unhook it, point it and wait up to 2 minutes to make sure you have the shot but it's not exactly practical. On the other hand, this isn't a replacement for pointing and shooting with a normal camera. With more and more lifelogging devices coming, I hope someone will make a device similar in size to the Memoto that I can wear on my collar which blurs out my face when I'm being lifelogged by someone else.

martinkallstrom 14y ago
Hi, Memoto founder here. You can in fact double-tap the camera to have it take a photo at once. It will also be bookmarked for easy retrieval. If you want a viewfinder as well, the Memoto app allows you to take photos the normal way which end up in the same timeline as the rest of your pictures.

bbx 14y ago

I've always wished for a device that would seamlessly log the things that I do, but in a text format. I'd call it "Log of my life" (and I hear the Queen song "Love of my life" when I think about it). It wouldn't take pictures like the Memoto but rather keep track of the places I've been (restaurants, museums, bars, cities) and the stuff I've read, listened to, or watched. I love lists, just plain lists. I already manage lists of books, articles, albums, tracks and films, but I use a Google Document for that and it something is hard to remember everything. I don't know how such a device would work but I think there'd be a market for that.

summerdown2 14y ago

> All the pictures are safely stored on Memoto's remote storage service. We know what you're thinking... two photos a minute is a whole lot of photos Apparently you don't know what I'm thinking. I was thinking that a whole host of minor crimes like reaching 35 in a 30 zone or downloading copyrighted files can suddenly be data mined. Or computer passwords. Or pin numbers off a cash point, or confidential documents like passports, or credit card numbers ...

madethemcry 14y ago

This project always reminds me of "The Final Cut" with Robin Williams. A somewhat disturbing near future scenario about life logging with an a brain implant and the social consequences http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364343/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364343/

subpixel 14y ago

Hopefully Ghostery [http://www.ghostery.com/ http://www.ghostery.com/] will start tracking Referly -- I prefer to know when a site is saying nice things about an affiliate who will pay them money if they turn me into a customer. I'm not saying all affiliate revenue is distasteful. But affiliate links that aren't identified as such are, in my opinion.

dmor 14y ago
You can tell which links are affiliate because they are orange and say "buy". Non-affiliate links are grey and say "view".
- subpixel 14y ago
  Users could tell which links are affiliate if there was copy on the page making it clear that "orange links that say 'buy' are affiliate links - if you click them and make a purchase Referly will make a commission on the transaction. That's the business we're in. Thank you!" I don't think you have anything to lose by being upfront with your audience - they'd probably appreciate it.

ommunist 14y ago

This is a creepy device idea. Imagine someone with 24/365 access to your data and some ideas of enhancing your life or redirecting it to someone's purpose. Automagically, like the software does.

codex 14y ago

There are some legal issues to be aware of here. Taking photos in a public bathroom (such as in an airport or restaurant) is illegal. Make sure you don't forget you are wearing the device as you wander around. Photos on private property can be restricted by the property owner (shopping malls, casinos, private residences, etc.). If you do not comply, you can be kicked out and possibly charged with trespassing, and could even be injuncted or sued for damages in a civil court. Note that video surveillance in private or semi-public places may get you in trouble with the law too. Presumably this is one reason why this device does not have a microphone--laws regarding un-consented audio capture (wiretapping) are even more severe in many states and countries. And I hope that refer.ly gets popular, if only to reduce the level of refer.ly traction-whoring-growth-hacking here on HN.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]