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Smart Tampon? The Internet of Every Single Thing Must Be Stopped


JorgeA

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http://www.wsj.com/articles/smart-tampon-the-internet-of-every-single-thing-must-be-stopped-1464198157?mod=ST1

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Let’s play a game. Which of the following is a real smartphone-connected product?

A) A bottle that tracks your H2O intake
B) A bowl that tracks your dog’s H2O intake
C) An umbrella that reminds you not to leave it behind
D) A tampon that reminds you when it is time for a change

It is actually a trick question. All four of these “smart” items have either been announced by startups or are already shipping.

The article gets better and better from there. It was tailor-made for jaclaz's IoT thread.
 

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My egg tray doesn’t like my Wi-Fi network. That may sound like a Mad Lib, but I’m serious. It took me 15 minutes to correctly pair Quirky’s $15 Egg Minder with the iPhone app, which gives you a count of remaining eggs. Yet when I removed eggs from the tray to make breakfast, one of them remained virtually present. I guess you could say the app was... scrambled.

I washed down that delicious breakfast with nearly 15 ounces of water. But it happened to be one of the times the Hidrate Spark water bottle didn’t record it. What a waste of hydration!

and:

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And I haven’t even gotten to the notification overload. Like the connected toothbrush and fork, it took some time to get used to my phone yelling at me to drink every few hours. Leave my living room just to go to the bedroom and my phone blares with alerts that I’ve left behind my connected $125 Davek Alert umbrella.

(One quick, slightly OT thought: do you really have to take your phone with you everywhere you go in the house? :whistle: )

Finally,

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Some smart product makers are starting to leave the smartphone integration on the table. Take the high-tech Juicero juice maker. “We decided turning the juicer on and off with the phone wasn’t necessary,” Juicero CEO Doug Evans says. Of course, he did still think it was necessary to build a $700 juice machine that won’t make juice if your Wi-Fi is down. I repeat: No juice if your Wi-Fi is down.

--JorgeA

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On Saturday, May 28, 2016 at 11:57 AM, Tommy said:

If you can't even count how many eggs you have left....you have PROBLEMS.

LOL, good one!  :D

There CAN be such a thing as too much automation. I remember when the phone company started offering Speed Dial -- you could program the individual numbers on the phone to stand for a full-length phone number, so that you could dial just 1 (for example) to call your mom. I thought it would be a time-saver and programmed several important numbers into my phone (landline; back then, cell phones were rare and the size of bricks). Over time, though, I realized that I was forgetting the full phone numbers and that if I ever needed to call family or friends from anywhere other than home, I would be unable to! So I stopped using Speed Dial.

Technology can be helpful, but it can also make us dumber and leave us helpless.

--JorgeA

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