71–80 of 92 posts
This may sound like a very shallow comment, but what happens to the Wink stuff? I just bought one of the GE Wink light kits & the Wink hub is a "Quirky" product. It's already been a little buggy, but I figured it'd improve over time. Does GE pick up development/support work going forward?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can this have been a thing? First, eggs don't need to be refrigerated; they keep at least a week at room temperature. Second, they can be bought in lots of 6, 12, 18, and 36 in most supermarkets; choose based on your rate of consumption. Third, they're dirt cheap, typically less than 25 cents apiece. We're talking Vessyl levels of pointlessness here.
Are you European? The reason I ask is because the US and the EU take opposite approaches to the issue of egg safety. In the EU eggs are not allowed to be washed before sale, that means the eggs retain their natural anti-bacterial coating from when they are laid, so they are naturally microbe resistant and that's why European eggs are not refrigerated in the store. In the US they mandate that eggs must be washed befor…
This is one of those stories where I initially go "wait, quirky failed?" and then I think of the Quirky Eggminder that I purchased and realize, "yea, that product really did make me a sad and angry customer." For those who don't know, the eggminder was a wifi enabled egg carton paired with a smartphone app that tells you how many eggs you currently have, how old each egg is, and notifies you when you need more eggs.…
This is the EXACT problem I had when trying to make a "fridge temperature puck" - batteries work less well in very cold situations, probably due to low temperature decreasing molecular reactions. I was planning on having an Arduino collect stats and then display them as a webpage over Wifi. There are basically 2 solutions, and I feel both are inelegant: 1. Use part of the battery voltage in a heater that warms the ba…
> Visionary founder with the perfect background... > Disrupting the incredibly horrible experience of inventing a physical product... > Top-tier investors... > Board of directors stacked... > Crazy high community engagement... > ...an exceptional team of engineers, designers, marketers... > So if everything was so good, how did the company spend $180M of investors’ money, sell very little product, replace the founder…
Exceptional engineers? There's a Quirky cable guide on the desk in front of me, and if the engineers who worked on that were exceptional, then I posit that they didn't get enough time to work on the product. It's a fine concept, no question. But a few more iterations would have helped it. I get an impression that Quirky wanted to push out things quickly, not spend a lot of company hours obsessing over the precise wid…
This may sound like a very shallow comment, but what happens to the Wink stuff? I just bought one of the GE Wink light kits & the Wink hub is a "Quirky" product. It's already been a little buggy, but I figured it'd improve over time. Does GE pick up development/support work going forward?
> Visionary founder with the perfect background... > Disrupting the incredibly horrible experience of inventing a physical product... > Top-tier investors... > Board of directors stacked... > Crazy high community engagement... > ...an exceptional team of engineers, designers, marketers... > So if everything was so good, how did the company spend $180M of investors’ money, sell very little product, replace the founder…
He mentions an air conditioner, for example, that could have been excellent after a few iterations.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wink Inc is up for sale separately from the rest of the Quirky business. There are already offers on the table, and their press releases thus far have said they don't anticipate any interruption to that part of the business -- the team's still in place, maintaining the services and working on improvements. There are so many "Works with Wink" products on the shelves -- not just GE, but Cree, Leviton, Lutron, Chamberla…
I'd be surprised if Google, Apple, or Microsoft didn't pick Wink up.
[0] http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/24/7061557/nest-acquires-rev...
A friend had mentioned Quirky to me as a potential avenue, and I looked into it about 6 months ago. It looked...cute...kind of like an Etsy and one of those infomercials on TV for the Inventors Helpline or whatever it was. The first impression wasn't straight out excitement, and the second impression surely didn't help.
Personally I didn't like the terms of how they wanted to do business. It reminded me a lot of record contracts and rights management, who gets a cut of what, and while I completely understand it's a valid business model, it's not my preferred modus operandi. As in, I prefer independence, even if it means sacrifices in expedience, funding, or even simple encouragement. Quirky offered an avenue that could be helpful to a certain population, of which I was a member, but I still didn't sign up.
Regarding iteration - or more to the point - lack thereof - I almost can't believe it. Every single music project I create and work on goes through versions. Usually I start with drums (even if I have a melody in mind I need the tempo to work with), then add a bassline or keys, then a guitar, then more as needed. While I'd absolutely love to create a piece of hardware that functions perfectly in Version 1.0, I'm too skeptical / influenced by Murphy's Laws that things will take some experimentation. Knowing "nothing is foolproof because fools are so ingenious" helps, but user feedback should be a real priority!