Running joke: That fitness gadget? It's, er, run out
- Reference: 1607085008
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/12/04/something_for_the_weekend/
- Source link:
I know, I know. Call me a [1]Moaning Minnie . Call me a Moaning Lisa, if you like. [2]Call me Kenneth . [3]Call me a cab . [4]Call me (Call me) .*
Yet another sports fitness wearable I was using has just given up the ghost... or should I say base-jumped off the suspension bridge of angel investment. The product didn't break; the city-based startup that designed it (albeit manufactured in China) and maintained its associated tracking app simply went out of business. What a pain in the neck.
Well, when I say I was using this sports fitness wearable, I mean I was right on the verge of putting it to a full testing regime. That is to say, it was next on my product reviewing list. OK, I was about to take it out of its box that had been sitting unopened on my spare desk for the last five months since it arrived. But still. Infuriating.
"Spare desk?" I hear you cry. Don't cry, he's not worth it. But just over 20 years ago I was passing through Ikea Croydon in order to acquire yet more Billys for the new house and noticed they were selling untreated pine desks for about £1.50 a pop. I bought three. One small problem – three in total, then – was that the desktop surface on each isn't particularly expansive. The stuff on my desk that I never quite get around to sorting out just ends up spilling across the second desk, and from time to time Mme D has to push some of it back from tumbling onto hers.
Oh and two decades later, the Billys look great when I'm Zooming. Who'd have thought it?
Now that the company has ceased trading – not Ikea, I mean the sports app startup – I will now have to sort out its disposal. Being a tech device, it will need separating into packaging, plastics, metal and electronics down at the local dump. I suppose this will give me an opportunity to find out what the product actually is and where on my person it would have been worn, as I have forgotten what it is and have lost the press release.
Still, what a pain in the neck these startups are. Typical bloody fancy fly-by-night jokers in foolishly huge city-centre lodgings, totally unsustainable financials; no wonder they went bust. They probably had ping-pong next to the kitchen, a slide coming down from the mezzanine, swings in the toilets and a bouncy castle in the boardroom.
Talking of fitness gadget startups and pains in the neck, I read this week of a fitness gadget startup that sells a product to [5]stop you getting pains in the neck . "YOU SLOUCH? IT VIBRATES" shouts the catchline for the Upright Go 2, a device that buzzes on your back if it thinks you are starting to hunch over.
If nothing else, the messaging is clear. I appreciate clear messaging, especially in the COVID-enhanced era of fake fake news and unspun spin respun. Here's some excellent clear messaging I spotted on a wall as I was passing through town the other day.
Vibrates? Pah! What the device ought to do is belt out a recording of my mum shouting: "Sit up straight! Stop slouching! Pull your shoulders back! You'll look taller!"
Still, I can see an expanding market for this type of nag-gadget. Perhaps a boxing glove that automatically punches users in the mouth if they leave their mic on during a webinar. Or a mouse that says, "Well, derrr?! " sarcastically when a user tries to drag and drop in a single gesture and runs out of deskspace – partly their own fault for buying a cheap untreated pine desk from Ikea.
My last sports fitness device that stopped functioning because the company stopped functioning was a pair of training insoles that measured gait and footfall technique. The one before that was an uncomfortable strappy thing that monitored heartbeat and respiration while playing aerobic sports or working out on the machines. A common aspect to each was that every product had its own dedicated app that was incompatible with everyone else's.
Worse, the apps would provide inconsistent and often contradictory reports. When I complained in a company's support forum that I was getting different figures than with other devices-with-apps, despite using the same heart and lungs for all of them, I was assured that everyone else's products were inaccurate and that I should put my trust in them that theirs told the truth.
Sod's law duly kicked in later that day, the device failing to record my workout heartbeat or respiration data at all for some reason. Putting my trust in them, I returned to the support forum to ask the technicians to confirm whether or not I am dead.
Not that I can make a great deal of use for these devices at the moment. Outdoor exercise is severely restricted, amateur sport is banned and gyms are locked up. Going for a little jog when you live in town is a pavement-beating affair which means having to wear a facemask. Only a complete snowflakey weed finds a facemask intolerable to wear but it does cause an imbalance during aerobic exercise: 40 per cent calorie-burning, 60 per cent gagging on the material sucked onto the back of your tongue with each in-breath.
Like most people I got used to this and of course there are advantages in being able to hide one's face. I hear that growing weird and unusually groomed facial hair behind the mask is de rigueur , not that I would indulge in such a thing. You won't find me sprouting a General Custer or a Terry Thomas, oh no.
Ultimately what's bugging me is that a whole bunch of startups have been sweating over their laptops to create proprietary sports fitness products with testosterone-enhanced levels of incompatibility, then gone bust and left us wondering why.
What if other fitness gear manufacturers did this? Imagine if I had to bring five sports bags with me to the gym because my trainers could only be carried in their own dedicated box, my shorts stored independently in a special flight case, socks de-creased overnight in their own bamboo holdall, T-shirt rolled into a patented flatpack, and my shreddies set to charge in a branded USB 4 recharging unit replete with a row of LEDs to indicate odour levels. And I could no longer spray antiperspirant under my arms because its app requires Android 11.
That said, my Huawei smartwatch is compatible with Google Fit. Oh the irony.
Given the parlous state of similar cross-product interconnectivity in other market segments such as domestic IoT, I don't expect much guidance from that direction either. Compatibility? Standards? Brand longevity longer than a yawn?
I'm told these things are coming and I should look forward to them with optimism. I suspect it's going to be a long while before I can leap for joy… followed by 20 star jumps and a sprint to the off-licence to celebrate.
But even just one of those commitments listed above would make this Moaning Lisa smile.
[6]Youtube Video
Alistair Dabbs is a freelance technology tart, juggling tech journalism, training and digital publishing. He would like it to be known that he has deliberately overplayed the idea that he is a fitness nut which might make him sound more interesting. He is not and he is not. More at [7]Autosave is for Wimps and [8]@alidabbs .
* Gratuitous recurring Blondie reference; last churned [9]in February .
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[1] https://youtu.be/8nQ80PQ4pMY
[2] https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Call-Me-Kenneth
[3] https://www.foodahead.com/2019/05/call-me-cab-vodka-lemonade-wine-cocktail.html
[4] https://youtu.be/DQF0daByNhM
[5] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/dec/02/instagram-life-hacking-gadgets
[6] https://youtu.be/z71df68qLp0
[7] https://autosaveisforwimps.substack.com
[8] https://twitter.com/alidabbs
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2020/02/14/something_for_the_weekend/
[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Bastard Progremmer From Hell
BPFH: "We've built the new product, it's got a little blue light, looks great, and is ready to go..."
PHB: "Great we'll get it on the market tomorrow!"
... two days later.
PFY: "I tried it and there's a bug that causes it to lose connection occasionally."
PHB: "STFU, your fired, we're selling them in batches of 10,000 every hour, get out of here."
Funnily enough I have an "Activity Tracker Pulse Fit" mint in box on my desk right now. It was a free gift from Nutanix for attending one of their webinars, but the Nutanix logo didn't survive the single time it's been out of the box as the logo is printed on the strap at the exact point you need to yank it to seperate it from the watch to reach the USB port.
Think I'll stick to my TomTom, who, although they've exited that market, haven't gone Pete Tong at time of writing.
To its credit, Call Me Kenneth was one piece of tech that dealt with fleshy users pretty effectively.
Apple Watch. Job done.
obsolete in 3... 2... 1...
As in, "And now his watch is over"
why?
Why would I upload my personal health info to an app? And we all know the security of these kinds of apps... You got the clap?? Yeah, found out on pastebin...
Re: why?
Strap the device onto your dog. It's in these small acts of rebellion that life expresses itself.
Re: why?
Ian Marshall was a half decent footballer, played for Leicester, then Bolton. He was excused going all the way to Bolton to train when he still lived in Leicester, but had to wear a training app for his runs round the park etc. You can guess the rest - he got a bit bored with it but kept sending his numbers, in till Sam Alladyce phoned him one day to check why they were off the scale. He had to confess that he'd fitted the gear to his dog. Busted...
Re: why?
We see you have been 'marking your territory' at least 6 times today and you were not in the vicinity of a proper facility.
Can we interest you in a [1]real bathroom ?
[1] https://www.pcs-systems.com/community/home-office-tips/andrew-hobbs/
Re: why?
My wife is diabetic and uses the Libre Flash sensor to measure her sugar levels - about the size of a £2 coin and can be scanned with an NFC reader or phone instead of using finger prick strips.
Out walking and saw a dog that had the same sensor!
Collection of insolvent/sold out fitness startups.
I don’t suppose Amiigo is on that list Dabbsie?
Who you gonna call?
What, no [1]Call Me ?
-> Well, it's a (mega)phone
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8c04XHCF8k
Pine from Ikea?
Are you sure it's not just pine "effect", with the ever present chipboard underneath?
Much like the one I have in my study, which is just about big enough to hold a PiTop Ceed and a laptop, if you don't mind one hiding the other.
Not sure I'd want to work at it for any extended period of time though, and it certainly cost more than £1.50 from self-same Croydon store...
Re: Pine from Ikea?
Back in the mists of time, IKEA stuff was mainly pine. MDF gradually became more prevalent (even in the early days kids furniture was heavily MDF for ease of making silly shapes, and it gradually spread).
We had a pine dining table from IKEA that we used for many years until we moved house (& with more room could get a bigger table, old one went to a furniture charity so probably still in use by someone)
Caveat: I hate IKEA, other half does not, so I ahve had far too much experience of that store & its products over the decades.
Re: Pine from Ikea?
Apologies to anyone who has already worked this out but:
"Old-style" Ikea = solid wood or high-density chipboard held together with dowels, screws, metal bolt-and-toggle devices and metal bolt-and-cam devices. Lasts a lifetime, almost endlessley dismantlable / remantlable and because it's solid wood it's also customisable.
"New-style Ikea" = chipboard, or more recently that very low-density more-air-than-wood product that looks like ordinary chipboard which has been left out in the rain, laminate surface, held together with some chunky bolt-type thing, maybe some dowels, plastic cams. Will last a good long time if you don't constantly move it about but often begins to chip or crumble if you try to dismantle it, wherupon you will probably also find that the plastic cams are all chewed up and the things from Screwfix which look exactly the same don't quite fit properly.
"Ikea metal" - anything made mostly from metal at Ikea, short of perhaps some kitchen implements or some light fixtures - should be avoided. Screws and bolts are constantly coming loose and the stuff is so thin that it'll bend as soon as you hang that winter coat or load up the tray with today's bag of potatoes.
"Ikea plastic" - short of toys and desklamps, best avoided. They have some lovely-looking drawer units where the unit is made from wood but the insert "school type" drawers are soft plastic and bend just enough if you put anything more than a few socks in them that the drawer will fall out of its runners.
Can you tell we have quite a lot of Ikea stuff at home? Wife has been a fan since before we met, living within easy reach of both the Leeds and the Nottingham stores. I do (or did when I last fitted one) like an Ikea kitchen though. Everyone else moans that there's no "service gap" behind the units, but it's not usually a big problem to re-arrange surface-run pipework to go underneath and as a bonus you get an extra 4" of drawer depth. Don't like the sinks, especially now that they've discontinued their insanely deep "laundry sink".
M.
Re: Pine from Ikea?
"within easy reach of both the Leeds and the Nottingham stores"
I don't know about the Nottingham store but I don't associate "easy" with the Leeds store. The last straw was a notice forbidding taking trolleys up to the top deck of the car park. What do the stupid idiots think I'm going to do when the car's up there? Normally I'd have brought the trolley back down but in the circumstances left it up there for badness' sake.
Incompatible because..
I may be wrong (I usually am) but my impressions is these gadgets are all initiated by a "Let's think of something we can make money on" process rather than an "I've thought of something good, let's see if we can make money on it".
It's a subtle difference, perhaps. But I think important. Because it means hat the product doesn't start with an actual good idea (beyond the generic one of gathering some dosh).
Call me Ishmael
> Call me a Moaning Lisa
My wife is a primary teacher. There is a girl in her class called Monalisa
Amateur move
"Being a tech device, it will need separating into packaging, plastics, metal and electronics down at the local dump"
Eh? You just go to the local supermarket and leave the whole shooting-match in the small appliances bin. The one next the old bulbs and batteries bins.
The dechetterie is just for big items you can't fly-tio at supermarkets. Like vacuum cleaners, CRT TVs and ovens.
Tried and tested model
Develop a product, service or app in a hot emerging trend such as fitness
Produce a great kickstarter-style video and make a presentation to one of the numerous vc funders/incubators who will introduce to you some angels after tweaking your plan a bit (for a fee/percentage)
Get angel capital, launch your venture, and hire the expertise you thought you had, but didn't
Get traction and then the first round of venture capital from one of the top VC funds
2 years down the line realise that you can not support the product but you are tied into a 5 year support plan and can not move on to the exciting new COVID-19 tracking app that you are building.
What bothers me is the nagging thought that in the not too distant future such gadgetry will be nano-scale and consumers (sorry, product), will be encouraged to have such devices implanted in suitable places around their bodies! (with price reductions / loyalty bonuses offered to those willing to have a sponsors tattoo branded above a given bodily location!). In such a scenario quite what you do when fly-by-night outfits go bust and or security / program updates cease,
Elon Musk
Have a chat with him @Scott.
He is already down that road.
The headline
Reminded me of one of my favourite Bestie cartoons (SFW, if you're wondering): [1]https://twitter.com/bestie_art/status/1044253915506790400
[1] https://twitter.com/bestie_art/status/1044253915506790400
More Dave Bedford than Terry Thomas
I'm surprised you didn't make a reference to the British athlete who 'inspired' the 118 118 runners. You'll have to get a stripey tee-shirt and the goatee will have to go, but at least everyone will see you coming and cross to the other side of the street.