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Mother

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Re: Mother

#91

Post by jlgaddis »

bluejellybean wrote: post #59
woofyman wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll save you money. I'll be Dad. Stop drinking soda and walk more.

This 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 - O…

> All the ‘problems’ Mother solves are not really problems and it doesn’t seem to serve any truly useful purpose.

Having just returned home from visiting my grandmother a few moments before I looked at this, the first thing that jumped out at me was "Did you take your pills?"

Fortunately, she is in good health but, like most elderly folks, I imagine, has a number of medications that she takes. Some are taken once a day, others twice, and there might even be some taken more frequently.

I, myself, am still in "recovery mode" after being on the losing end of a head-on motorcycle vs. Jeep collision. I'm not several different medications any more but I was for a good while and it was difficult for me to keep track of them.

I'll grant you that there are alternative solutions to these problems -- a family member who lives with my grandmother simply writes down (on paper!) when she takes what, for example, and you mentioned another (weekly pill container) -- but for the busy/active/always on-the-go person, I can certainly see them filling a need.

Re: Mother

#92

Post by arlyle-leth »

The 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.

Re: Mother

#93

Post by pcurve »

We 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?

Re: Mother

#94

Post by krz »

pcurve wrote: post #93

We 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?

It's all about measurable goals and improvements, not about importance.

Re: Mother

#95

Post by aray »

I'm surprised it doesn't have wireless. Places I've lived always have the router tucked away in some inaccessible closet.

Re: Mother

#97

Post by Whitespace »

rosser wrote: post #26
CodeMage wrote: post #20

That 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

Better Pink Floyd's "Mother" than Danzig's, which is where my poor brain went.

It's been 3 hours and I'm still singing Danzig.

Re: Mother

#98

Post by paul9290 »

This 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.

Re: Mother

#99

Post by jrochkind1 »

jlgaddis wrote: post #91
bluejellybean wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 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 - O…

> All the ‘problems’ Mother solves are not really problems and it doesn’t seem to serve any truly useful purpose. Having just returned home from visiting my grandmother a few moments before I looked at this, the first thing that jumped out at me was "Did you take your pills?" Fortunately, she is in good health but, like most elderly folks, I imagine, has a number of medications that she takes. Some are taken once a d…

"Okay, now I want to bring it back home. My mother's eighty-one. She doesn't get around as easily as she once did. A year ago she broke her hip, and since then I've been concerned about her. I asked her to have some security cameras installed, so I could access them on a closed circuit, but she refused. But now I have piece of mind. Last weekend, while she was napping--"

A wave of laughter rippled through the audience.

"Forgive! Forgive me!" he said, "I had no choice. She wouldn't have let me do it otherwise. So I snuck in, and I installed cameras in every room. They're so small she'll never notice. I'll show you really quick. Can we show cameras 1 to 5 in my mom's house?"

A grid of images popped up, including his mom, padding down a bright hallway in a towel. A roar of laughter erupted.

"Oops. Let's drop that one." The image disappeared. "Anyway. The point is I know she's safe, and that gives me a sense of peace. As we all know here at the Circle, transparency leads to peace of mind."

Re: Mother

#100

Post by zb »

rawicki wrote: post #60
forgotprevpass wrote: post #18

Does 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.

The 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.

It's almost certainly ZigBee then:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZigBee#Radio_hardware

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