10 ms·
Mother
- diu_9_commerce 13y agoBad name - I hate the fact that mother knows everything.
- jds375 13y agoSeems like a pretty cool product. They have an amazing design and a beautifully done website too. Only thing I am a bit concerned about is the price. It costs 222 USD for a base unit and 4 cookies (sensors). Here's a video from CES2014 about it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=024OPHSgOqo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=024OPHSgOqo
- usablebytes 13y agoI could find almost nothing on this thread to agree with. None of the other comments here make sense. I have high respect for HN community but this page make me doubt it. Why should we discuss the name? Apple, Windows - aren't they funny product names? How does it matter? What matters is a new product is launching - our community's criticism should help the product owner. If there are things that we believe won't work - give reasons. Appreciate what's good about it. Name, too, can be criticized but don't make fun out of it. Somebody has worked so hard on making that product a reality; respect that hardwork. What I like about the product is the very idea. And also the way they have explained it on the website, the graphics, text everything. Really appreciable.
- michaelwww 13y agoFirst I've heard of it, but I had the same reaction as Cringley. Maybe it's an age thing. "Imagine v1 of Big Brother's -- or NSA director Keith Alexander's -- most inflamed fever dream: a sensorbot shaped like a Russian nesting doll wearing a Hindi-cow smile. Then terrifyingly name it "Mother" and build it specifically to monitor as many facets of your personal life as it can. Are you schvitzing yet?" http://www.infoworld.com/t/cringely/sense-mother-may-i-the-most-disturbing-tech-of-ces-233998?page=0,1 http://www.infoworld.com/t/cringely/sense-mother-may-i-the-m...
- joelrunyon 13y agoWell "small [caring] mother" certainly sounds less intrusive than "big [intimidating] brother".
- michaelwww 13y agoFor some people it's "small [caring] brother" vs. "big [intimidating] mother"
- rosser 13y agoI can't dispute the age thing, given that I'm in the oldest 5 or 10% of the community according to the various age polls we've had over the years, but my reaction (not having read Cringley's review) was, "Can this thing get any creepier? Oh, look; it can."
- michaelwww 13y agoI'm in the older age group and afaik so is Cringley since he's been around forever (if it's still him writing under that name.) I thought, well, maybe the kids will like it.
- SiVal 13y agoThe writer is not Mark Stephens, the PBS Cringely whose name is the first Google hit, but a current InfoWorld staff writer. I suspect they would share this opinion, though.
- 9999 13y agoYeah, the product name, copy, and the router design are pure nightmare fuel.
- darklajid 13y ago"schvitzing"? There are certain stylistic choices a writer can make that labels him as an instant idiot in my world. I chose not to read that link in full due to the word chosen here.
- state 13y agoI like how open-ended this thing is. I wonder if the market is actually ready to move beyond domain-specific sensor hardware and in to something broader. The aesthetic isn't quite my taste, but I'm very curious to see how their users react.
- EdZachary4 13y agoThey need the companion "Father - Common sense" to tell you not to waste your money on nonsense like this.
- pasquinelli 13y agosounds great. the only real question i have is, is this a nightmare i'm having right now?
- anonu 13y agoI think this is really cool and definitely brings us closer to the Internet of Things. I don't think I would have anthropomorphized the system by calling it "Mother" and putting an eerie LED smiley face on the base station. I can't seem to find any technical info on the "cookies". Are they similar to the technology in the Fitbit Flex, ie Bluetooth Smart coupled with some sort of accelerometer. If that's the case, do the cookies need to be charged every week. This remains the single massive downside to widespread adoption of such devices.
- orillian 13y agoApparently they capture movement and temperature, and they can detect when they are near their mother or not, they can store up to ten days worth of data, and they have a one year battery life, using cell batteries. Not rechargeable from what I gather.
- marianov 13y agoWhat kind of processor and transmitter do they use to get such a long battery life without sleeping device?
- cracell 13y agoCool product but very creepy branding. Might be ok to keep the name Mother but shouldn't be emphasizing it as a "mother" on the site at all.
- RexRollman 13y agoI think the product is creepy too. Maybe Google or Facebook will buy them.
- woofyman 13y agoIt may be an age thing, but it find it creepy and useless. I haven't needed a Mom since I left home at 18.
- dictum 13y agoMothers watch their sons out of love and genuine care for their wellbeing. Mine did a bad a job and that's why my next sentence will be bitter: If a company wants to make me use a telescreen, they might as well make it a suppository.
- cromwellian 13y agoThe way the thing is filmed with the smiley face and lighting up eyes, I could easily imagine a sci-fi horror film being based around it. :) More seriously, the idea of using cheap motion trackers to track usage of things in the home is very interesting. When Google acquires this, it'll make the Nest complaints pale in comparison. :)
- crbnw00ts 13y ago> The way the thing is filmed with the smiley face and lighting up eyes, I could easily imagine a sci-fi horror film being based around it. :) Like this? http://i.imgur.com/W1s9crO.jpg http://i.imgur.com/W1s9crO.jpg In all seriousness, I feel it is only a matter of time before someone dies as a result of their home automation being hacked.
- mdigi 13y agoCheck this out http://vimeo.com/21216091 http://vimeo.com/21216091
- ameswarb 13y agoTheir tagline "Mother knows everything" is terrifying.
- vertex-four 13y agoAs a young person who wants to remember to take her pills, to cut down on her soda consumption, to track how much she exercises (and maybe turn it into a game of walking further every week), and no doubt some more that I can't think of right now, this product sounds like it'd be amazing. The video is a brilliant marketing asset. It showed me some very real problems of mine, and how it could help me solve them (by tracking things that I want to, and gamifying them). The only issue is cost. As a young, single person, £166 is prohibitively expensive. It's likely not worth it for me. Is it worth it for people with families and kids? If they had £166 to spend, could they find something more pressing to spend it on?
- woofyman 13y agoI'll save you money. I'll be Dad. Stop drinking soda and walk more.
- vdaniuk 13y agoYou're really bad dad if that is the best advice you can give.
- woofyman 13y agoFloss twice a day and buy a pedometer.
- bluejellybean 13y agoThis comment is fantastic! The trend in pointless analytics is annoying and isn't solving any real problems. All the ‘problems’ Mother solves are not really problems and it doesn’t seem to serve any truly useful purpose. Wakeup times - Already solved by the alarm on your clock. Managing drink consumption - Drink more or less than you currently do. Staying fit/active - Go workout/exercise once a day. Step tracking - One of the more silly trends lately. Does it honestly matter how many steps you took today? No, not really. Pill taking - A weekly pill container solves this already for a few dollars and is old person friendly. Check-ins - Have your kid text/call you when they arrive home. Can’t use a phone? Don’t leave them alone. Brushing teeth - Does anyone here not brush their teeth? Anyone at all? Guess that problem doesn’t really exist. Temperature - Look at your thermostat. If you really care, go buy some nest products, they got you covered. This product tries to make you feel like you have no idea what is going on in your everyday life (but don’t worry, they can help!). You have your own daily pattern and I guarantee you know what happens in it already. Don’t get me wrong, this thing has potential in other specialized areas but for its intended purpose and what most people will end up using it for, it’ just more gadget bloat.
- lcasela 13y agoThe son could have easily tricked the sensor.
- forgotprevpass 13y agoDoes anyone know how the signals are being sent from the cookie to Mother? The company mentioned in a CES video that they werent using the traditional bluetooth, wifi, etc.
- rawicki 13y agoThe webpage mentions 915 MHz (America) / 868 MHz (Europe) radio. This is a part of ISM band and the most popular radio for low power internet of things. There are some microcontrollers with those radios integrated, for example TI CC430. As far as I recall, there is no standardised protocol stack on top of that.
- zb 13y agoIt's almost certainly ZigBee then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZigBee#Radio_hardware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZigBee#Radio_hardware
- jnardiello 13y agoBeside the branding thing, i've lost my fitbit one in less than 2 weeks. How long till i lose one of the cookies? Dongles are not for me.
- CodeMage 13y agoThat was a really poor choice of a name. It took me less than 10 seconds to start hearing Pink Floyd's "Mother" [1] in my head. Once that started happening, I just couldn't stay objective while looking at the pitch. [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0HrrR9QDQU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0HrrR9QDQU
- rosser 13y agoBetter Pink Floyd's "Mother" than Danzig's, which is where my poor brain went.
- Whitespace 13y agoIt's been 3 hours and I'm still singing Danzig.
- jitl 13y agoI went right to Pink Floyd playing over my imagined scenes of Huxley's Brave New World... the face itself is terrifying. https://twitter.com/jitl/status/423241986267557888/photo/1/large https://twitter.com/jitl/status/423241986267557888/photo/1/l...
- croisillon 13y agoI went straight to John Lennon's
- lylejohnson 13y agoAlso the name of a song by The Police, also with decidedly negative sentiments.
- PavlovsCat 13y agoI skipped right past even trying to be objective and thought of this Body Count song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3CYTwpLhVY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3CYTwpLhVY
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
- buro9 13y agoThe sync module reminds me of the Nabaztag ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabaztag http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabaztag ) and I wondered whether Mother was going to have signals and indicators so that you didn't have to use a mobile device for insight.
- Timothee 13y agoThat's the first thing I thought about and when I saw above that Sense was a French company, I thought it might actually be related. Well, it is: https://sen.se/about/who/ https://sen.se/about/who/
- rglover 13y agoWill it send me a notification that says "don't disappoint mother" if I forget to do something?
- dmazin 13y agoGod, the future is so fucking weird.
- dennisz 13y agoIf you scroll down far enough, you get to the 'technical details', where the device is described as 'a white mother'. I just found that funny, haha.
- devindotcom 13y agoI played with this at CES. The "mother" bot is basically just a router. The little things only sense motion, and when I asked the lady said they had no plans to add any other types of sensitivity - temperature, moisture, light, current, etc. Compared with the other 'internet of things' kits out there battling for visibility, this one doesn't seem original or more useful, only visually striking. The tags are also pretty big for what they do. A useful thing for $50 maybe to buy once, but really doesn't seem like a worthwhile 'ecosystem' to buy into in any big way. Also, I was unhappy to learn upon close inspection that the face is a sticker.
- jfoutz 13y agoweird. the webpage says the motion sensors also sense temperature.
- devindotcom 13y agoReally? I asked specifically about temperature and the lady said nope. Maybe she wasn't aware. Well at any rate I take that bit back. But I still think these things are multiplying and buying into this one would be extremely premature.
- giarc 13y agoI'm sure they debated adding light sensors, but perhaps they figure that adopters of this may have also adopted wifi connected lights which could be built into the software.
- krisoft 13y agoThat makes sense. The bias which affects the measurements of MEMS based gyroscopes and accelerometers, has a temperature dependent component. Because of this the two sensor is commonly packaged together with temperature sensing elements. Since it's already there on the IMU chip, why not use it?
- manmal 13y agoThere's also a temperature display in the video on the landing page.
- nostromo 13y agoWait, is this real? It seems like commentary on the current zeitgeist, not a real product. > Mother. Mother knows everything. > She's like a mom, only better. > Sense: the meaning of life® edit: I see they are based in France, so perhaps the branding didn't translate well.
- mortenjorck 13y agoEven allowing for a language barrier, this has to be the most overtly Huxleyan branding I've seen on a consumer product. It's unnerving.
- catshirt 13y agoconsidering Futurama's "Mom" character, it's even more uncanny.
- allochthon 13y agothis has to be the most overtly Huxleyan branding I've seen on a consumer product Which isn't necessarily a bad thing for the product they're selling, which is both cool and odd in a 1984 kind of way.
- mmanfrin 13y ago1984 was Orwell. Huxley was Brave New World.
- sneak 13y agoAlso, it seemed to me that the dichotomy set up in BNW is that "natural is good and right, artificial or new is bad" - one that has soured me on Huxley basically since when I first read it.
- romaniv 13y agoThe author commented on that in his foreword of later editions of the book. He said something along the lines that if he was writing the novel later in his life, the dichotomy wouldn't be as pointed.
- nilkn 13y ago> we reinvented mothers > Mother knows everything (in red text at that) > She's like a mom, only better The branding of this is either creepy or crazy. Maybe it's a bit of both. But I'm certainly not going to forget it, and the idea itself seems pretty interesting.
- Schwolop 13y agoIf this gets popular, I wouldn't be in the slightest bit surprised if Coca Cola sues them. That logo is a very similar red, and a similar "dynamic ribbon device".
- croisillon 13y agoGoing through the website, I kept seeing "coca-cola" in the corner of my eye. Probably too far from the original for suing though?
- meandyounowhere 13y agoConcept is stupid as FK. Why you need sensors just to know some basic stuff such as taking pills, tracking health etc. You can use app also. All they are doing is using sensor( motion sensors in particular) and send message to your phone. So why would I spend $222 for something where I could just it with $10 reminder app ?
- woofyman 13y agoExactly correct.
- gjm11 13y agoThis is the single creepiest thing I have seen in the last month.
- pyrocat 13y ago...creepy...
- MartinCron 13y agoJust yesterday I posted a quasi-luddite rant about how these smart devices and services are infantalizing. And now they're naming one Mother? I can't tell if I should feel vindicated or offended.
- ksowocki 13y agoPerhaps you should ask mother what to feel.
- woofyman 13y agoA spanking peripheral would be huge !
- michaelwww 13y ago"All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace" http://allpoetry.com/poem/8508991-All-Watched-Over-By-Machines-Of-Loving-Grace-by-Richard-Brautigan http://allpoetry.com/poem/8508991-All-Watched-Over-By-Machin...
- voyou 13y agoWhich poem (as you may well know) provided the title for Adam Curtis's interesting documentary about what happened when this cybernetic pastoral utopianism began to interact with politics and industry: http://vimeo.com/38724174 http://vimeo.com/38724174
- michaelwww 13y agoI'd love to see the series updated. This would be a good opportunity for a young filmmaker because the technology has advanced so much and the issues are more relevant now than ever.
- themoonbus 13y agoI was hoping for news about an Earthbound sequel, and instead I got this weird little smiling pod.
- Yetanfou 13y agoApart from all the other emotions which this plastic big sister evokes, I wonder what it is that makes so many of these startups reach back to the crib when it comes to branding their products. From this bastardized matryoshka doll through Snapchat's Miffy-like ghost to Twitter's tweety to just about half the iconography on tablets and smartphones, they all have one thing in common: the more infantile the logo and/or branding, the better it is. Is this idiocracy at work or are they all following some celebrity psychomarketeer's edict about successful marketing to the attention-span deficient generation?
- xianshou 13y agoWho knows you better than your mom? From this marketing, I'd answer...Big Brother.
- Jun8 13y agoSame French company that created the successful Nabaztag rabbit and then couldn't cope with the traffic. I had my wife buy me one of those for Valentines Day (stupid, I know) and after trying to do something useful with it and getting frustrated I tossed it somewhere in my cube where it remains to this date. Apart from the super bad naming and Branding, this is another reason for me to stay away from this mother rabbit.
- hartator 13y agoI have one too and Mother definitely make me remember that. Shitty product that looks good but neither useful or worked properly. In the end, they filled bankruptcy throwing away their servers and I can't even turn it on to make it work again. Funny part, my mother bought it to me! [edit] and yeah it's obviously creepier than the rabbit
- joseph_cooney 13y agoYeah, it looks just like a nabaztag without ears.
- pnathan 13y agoLike other people: it's an interesting idea, but the branding is dystopian.
- michaelrhansen 13y agomakes me want to go bowling
- tomphoolery 13y agoThis is fucking creepy. But like most creepy things, the idea is also kinda neat. :)
- carls 13y agoThis seems to be a herald to the situation described in the poem All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace (1967) by Richard Brautigan. I like to think (and the sooner the better!) of a cybernetic meadow where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony like pure water touching clear sky. I like to think (right now, please!) of a cybernetic forest filled with pines and electronics where deer stroll peacefully past computers as if they were flowers with spinning blossoms. I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace. And yes, incredibly creepy.
- Fasebook 13y agoAlso a British documentary from 2011, very good, imho: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_%28TV_series%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of... http://vimeo.com/38724174 http://vimeo.com/38724174
- nathan_f77 13y agoThis is horrible marketing. Seriously, who came up with this creepy design and name.
- dpweb 13y agoExpected Pink Floyd link..
- aeno 13y agoexactly my thought :D
- xname 13y agoWatching the video. First I liked it..... Then I hated it. It's too much. I don't want that kind of life. I don't want Mother to watch at me everyday every moment.
- notlisted 13y agoI like the concept. Surprised so many here are bugged by the marketing and/or the technology. Maybe you don't have kids (yet)? Above all, I like the neat interface of the apps (mockups?) and simplicity of the cookie sensors. No charging nonsense, because they measure and buffer stuff but don't transmit. 1yr battery life. 10 day memory. Sure, I'd love to see additional, more advanced cookies that would require charging, e.g. with built-in LED or vibration (reminding me when I enter or leave, though my phone could serve that purpose), Data, GPS (though my phone could serve this purpose, need an app that intercepts an SMS after presence is detected to auto-upload GPS data), multi-mother stuff (one at work, one at home), integration with home automation systems (someone below mentioned frequencies indicate zigbee), Zapier/IFTT support and above all some sort of data input/output API so I can import my own data points. By the way, $222 for a mother and 4 sensors seems quite affordable to me. The only thing that prevents me from pre-ordering a set is that the NaBazTag history doesn't exactly instill much confidence in the makers' ability to support this thing in the long run; I also wonder where the data is stored and if it's remotely future-proof (data import/export/backup).
- treenyc 13y agoVery nice, however unless all the hardware and software are open sourced. I will not use it in my real life.
- treenyc 13y agoFYI, check out http://openrtms.org http://openrtms.org for more open source alternative for this. Many of these products are nothing innovating in technology. However, I do think the maker should be rewarded for design, packing (meaning putting everything together).
- arlyle-leth 13y agoThe webpage showing this off is impossible to read without watching animations to get the full content. It is downright obnoxious. Summary for those who don't want to sift through the reams of PR: It is a set of fitbits that communicate with a device about the size of a tennis ball that is turns communicates with your phone. Instead of just tracking you; you "stick" the things to random stupid things like your toothbrush or fridge. Why? Because we apparently need to know how many times our obnoxious kids leave the fridge door open, and we want people to base their brushing worth on weather they brushed off their enamel or not. This reminds me of something my mother said about 1 week ago. She said "Why don't they just make it so your shoes weigh you whenever you are standing up?" That would be more useful than this.
- pcurve 13y agoWe all may be suffering from a case of Fortune 100 CEO syndrome. That is, we all wish our lives are so busy and important that we need personal assistants managing our lives. So we buy these products that make us feel more important. It documents what we do, and it tells back our story through a dashboard, in an autobiographical way, as if we're some kind of celebrities. But are we that important?
- krz 13y agoIt's all about measurable goals and improvements, not about importance.
- pcurve 13y agoGoals and improvements are important, but are these tools really effective, or are they praying on our vanity? How effective can this possibly measure how many cups of coffee or water I am drinking, how many steps I'm taking, if I'm medications or not, etc. This one takes the cake. "Get notified if the fridge door is left open and it gets warmer. At the same time, keep track of your snacking between meals."
- nilkn 13y agoI think his point is that this doesn't provide much in the way of meaningful measurements or analytics. It's not actually a better way to, say, track soda consumption--it's just more self-aggrandizing.
- Houshalter 13y agoI don't know if that's actually true, I would like a tool to keep track of this stuff for me but I don't at all feel some "desire to be a celebrity with assistants." Yes I suppose I could carry a notebook everywhere. I have failed doing that in the past though and I don't know anyone that keeps such detailed statistics. Especially on things like the exact time they wake up, come home, get coffee, etc. I imagine it would be a hassle to manually keep track of it all.
- aray 13y agoI'm surprised it doesn't have wireless. Places I've lived always have the router tucked away in some inaccessible closet.
- jrochkind1 13y agoAre they TRYING to scare me?
- paul9290 13y agoThis looks really cool, though I had no idea what this product did based on their bloated landing/homepage. Just a few picture examples with blurbs of text & a demo video would suffice rather then an infographic type of website.
- grumbles 13y agoI got confused for a second and thought I was still reading 'The Circle' while reading this page.
- elwell 13y agoDoesn't look ready.
- protez 13y agoThis is one of the most horrendous brandings I've ever seen. Maybe, the horrible branding is intentional, but it's damn too creepy for sane users who dare using their product.
- Houshalter 13y agoCan people please come up with better names for things, especially not common English words?
- avighnay 13y agoThis thread is a good example why name matters. If the same product was given any other name, perhaps it would not have been noticed that much. A set of motion sensors with a central comm hub. The makers perhaps thought that the name 'Mother' would evoke care and love in the minds of their users. To their agony, it is revealing in the thread that though most people love their mom, they really do not want to be a 'watched over' kid. I guess it gives all of us that creepy feeling of guilt as kids when we stole from the cookie jar and kept turning our heads with fear of being caught by mom :-) Note to self: keep relationship names away from product names, too much friction ;-)
- brazzy 13y agoActually, branding and marketing something like this without invoking fears of total surveillance seems almost impossible, especially right now.
- mbrock 13y agoWell, you could maybe do something open for tinkering, and that doesn't broadcast your whole life to a central server -- but is there any money in that?
- Houshalter 13y agoI can't wait to have an AI virtual assistant that can keep track of and manage all these mundane statistics for me.
- dlsym 13y ago> Mother. Mother knows everything. I guess it's "Big mother is watching you" then.
- hrktb 13y agoThey would have called this little sister, they would avoid so much of tastelessness surrounding their current branding...that put apart, what it's doing is already 50% doable by current smartphones + an arm band eventually (alarm , podometry, sleep control), and the other things it's trying to solve doesn't seem to be solved in a reliable enough fashion. You'll have to update your coffee capsule count every time you buy them. Buying new packs when the opening the last set of capsule is ny far the easiest way to manage I think. You'll have to put the sensor on every bottle you drink. If you care that much about toothbrushing, buy an electric toothbrush. A timer will be integrated telling you when you pass the 2 pr 3 min mark. Central temperature management would need a programmable device anyway, you'll basically need a Nest I guess. At the end, It doesn't seem so easy to use in practice, it will forward every life information to an external server, and half of what it does is better solved an other way.
- mscarborough 13y agoNo kidding. Sorry Nest, but programmable based-on-your-schedule thermostats have been around for a long time. Can't do it with your smartphone, but it's really not hard to use the settings. Coffee? Buy beans when you're running low, what about any of these things are complicated?
- Geee 13y agoWhat's going on in here? I don't get the negativity. I think the branding is great, and I realized the function of the product immediately. Also I think they presented it in a funny way (programmable mother). It's obvious that it doesn't 'know everything', that was a joke. It has simple sensors and you can collect data from those, there's nothing scary about that. The product is interesting, but however not useful at least for me.
- sifarat 13y agoI don't how I feel about this, right after watching the 'her' trailer. I am speechless.
- girvo 13y agoSo, Defcon last year had a talk where they hacked things (including a Bunny ostensibly for watching your baby in another room) like this. And it was super easy. I wouldn't out this anywhere near my house or life.
- MiWDesktopHack 13y agokill it. kill it with fire. this product collects the kind of personal data that should not be handed to third parties. too ripe for abuse. too much insight into your existence. a scary Orwellian nightmare.
- 75lb 13y agoadvertising slogan: "It's not enough to pipe every move, call, text and click you make from your smartphone? Mother's sensors are cute, small and funky. Collect more data for US spies today!"
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- Shtirlic 13y agoLooks like this was done before in Green Goose project in 2011 http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/23/green-goose-sensors-monitor-your-life-you-earn-experience-point/ http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/23/green-goose-sensors-monit...
- jawr 13y agoDid anyone notice this: "Cookies immediately send everything they capture to the nearest Mother." For me, that's a bit of a scary statement considering how intimate the product is meant to be in someone's life.
- atmosx 13y agoApart from the privacy issues, which the community already raised here, there's another fact that bothers me: Applications do can not discipline yourself for you. I have tried many applications which should increase by productivity, sleep quality, or you-name-name-it. I don't recall a single one that managed to do so in the long run (most not even in the short run...). So either one is open to change and that has little to do with technology or... You're toasted anyway. But even when you decide to change for yourself and not because a notification tells you to do so, these technologies become time consuming and troublesome to use. Of course they look nice on TV and ads, but in real life, most of them are frivolous IMHO.
- Roelven 13y agoHappy to see the guys behind Violet are not giving up. I believe they're on to something but the branding / language choosing is indeed poor. Whatever they launch with now will surely be extended, I'm hopeful that they've learned a great deal with the Nabaztag (which I've owned one back in the days).
- fab13n 13y agoI haven't been so creeped out by an ad for quite some time. This looks like a solution desperately looking for a problem; that is, unless your problem is "I want to spy every single step of everyone in my family". And seriously, "mother"? Do they even ever had one, to be that much off-mark? The very first quality of anything motherly is to be human; this is a wireless log collection system. Call it a "warden", or at best "coach", if you really need an anthropomorphic comparison.
- MartinCron 13y agoI could totally get behind calling something like this "coach".
- cm2012 13y agoTo me, this is pretty awesome and not at all creepy (22). A friendly UI and ease of use for life tracking? Yes please. Attach it to barbells to track workouts.
- indigromer 13y agoI know I'm an unfortunate case but as someone with a recently deceased mother I do not like this one bit.
- RutZap 13y agoI want everything Mother knows/finds out, to be stored locally (i.e. on my pc, not in the cloud), to be kept secure, private and I want to access it at any time from anywhere.... can Mother do that? I don't think so. Still pretty good but as long as there isn't a privacy promise that would satisfy the basic security principles (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability) I don't see it as a successful device.
- mikegriff 13y agoHmm, Ireland doesn't exist. I guess they don't want me to get one, or find out about it.
- TeeWEE 13y agoSo when I'm living in the Netherlands I cannot continue? (its not in the list)
- sheraz 13y agoMore technology where none is needed. How about just being responsible and accountable for our own actions? Want to improve ___ about yourself? Just do it(tm). Get it done(tm). Do what it takes. I don't need devices and a dashboard to tell me I'm winning at life. Fuck this arrogant and stupid product.
- ilitirit 13y agoWhat does this gadget do?
- zxcvvcxz 13y agoAs I saw it popping up, I thought "wow that looks like a sex toy." Freudian slip, whoops. "Sense Mother is at the head of a family of small connected sensors that blend into your daily life to make it serene, healthy and pleasurable." You never know.
- webXL 13y agoCheese.... wait for it... E! And can I see the product without having to hunt down my country in a gigantic freaking select box first?? Isn't it fundamentally the same in every country?
- thatthatis 13y agoWhat does it do? I scrolled to the bottom of the page expecting some kind of explanation of what it is and why I would want it or what need or want it solves. Nothing that I could find.
- samolang 13y agoInteresting concept. Simplify the sensors as much as possible and do all of the work in the software. I'm guessing they have profiles that allow you to determine how a sensor's data is interpreted. I wonder if they allow you to define custom profiles or at least have access to the raw data.
- nfoz 13y agoHave these people ever seen a mother before?
- owenversteeg 13y agoI personally think that I don't need to spend $222 on something that seems to be minimally useful. I don't need to monitor how often I brush my teeth, how often I drink coffee, how often I water the plants, and how often I take medication. For the things on the list that are somewhat useful (like sleep logs + a pedometer + temperature) I have a 1975 pedometer/calculator combo that's worked fine since the day I got it, a notepad, and an infrared thermometer that is a thousand times cooler. I think the only people that will buy this are people that want Google Analytics for their life.
- rambojohnson 13y agoech, creepy.