At first I thought it was an umbrella...<p>Than I thought it was an app that tells you when it's going to rain...<p>Which led me to believe it could be some sort of satire...<p>Then at the bottom is an actual umbrella, so now I'm thinking it's a weather app AND umbrella? and NOT satire?<p>No idea, but I already have numerous weather apps, and an umbrella in my car.
I'm skeptical of any product page that uses the word 'perfect' too many times:<p>"We're big fans of perfectly crafted products."
"built with a perfect opening and closing mechanism"
"built using perfect stitching"<p>Especially when high quality umbrellas tend to cost more than this without the app or tracking technology.<p>I think this product could definitely be useful, but it is all about the clean, minimal experience to make it so.<p>Instead, I envision this product doing really well as an impulse buy at Macys, Sharper Image, and similar stores around Christmas. Parents and grandparents will buy this for their younger family members thinking it is cool. Then the young people will forget it at the bar anyway because the reason they forgot their cheap umbrellas was not the lack of reminder, but because they were drunk.
I can't love this. It seems there is a flood of new products that allow you to track or remember them. This can't be sustainable in the long run, as each product uses it's own proprietary technology, that requires you to use a specific app. Fast-forward 5-10 years. Do I want 30 apps on my phone that track the various things I may or may not bring with me? Nope. That would be very annoying, indeed.
"100% windproof"<p>Downtown in any big city would probably prove that to be wrong very quickly. Toronto destroys umbrellas.<p>They make some nice claims WITHOUT any warranty at all.
Is this a problem people are willing to pay to solve? Is the fact that it's raining outside a good enough reminder not to lose your umbrella? Just curious.
As a habitual umbrella-loser, this is an <i>awesome</i> product :D<p>A bit of copy-editing:<p>'percepitation' in all the screenshots should be 'precipitation'. Or possibly just 'rain' / 'snow' / 'hail' ;)<p>'It doesn't bother you if leave one of your safe locations' -> 'It doesn't bother you if [you] leave [it in] one of your safe locations'<p>'It works in the buildings' -> 'It works in buildings'<p>I'll also second "too many uses of perfect". If it's perfect, why does it come with a warranty? ;)
Isn't this just putting a Tile [1] (or any number of other BLE devices) on an umbrella?<p>[1] <a href="https://www.thetileapp.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.thetileapp.com/</a>
"Here at fadgadg.et, we are making the internet of things a reality. Our beautiful SmartFondue comes with a exquisitely-designed iPhone 6 app that subtly notifies you when your cheese is ready. Integrating perfectly with the iOS UI, the app adjusts the lock-screen and main UI colour in perfect synchronicity with the SmartFondue itself, transitioning delightfully from virginal white to the deep golden yellow of perfectly-cooked cheese."
Products like this make it hard to argue we're not in a bubble right now. An umbrella with bluetooth and a smartphone app? Seriously?<p>The idea of taking a mundane household object and adding bluetooth + app support to it is not a sensible formula for innovation. I can think of a hundred products that follow from this formula, and they're all terrible:<p>* Coffee machine + App. Tells you when coffee is ready. Tell coffee machine to start making coffee as you wake up.<p>* Vacuum cleaner + App. Tells you when the bag is almost full, sends automatic push notification when you haven't vacuumed a room for too long (using GPS and artificial intelligence!)<p>* Phone charger + App. Send a push notification to your tablet when your phone is done charging and vice versa.<p>* Water dispenser + App. Lets you know when your plants need water.<p>* Sandwich + App. Will send you a push notification when you've eaten the sandwich and final push notification when the sandwich has left your body.<p>These innovations are just gimmicks, and have no hope of ever becoming more than that. A shame, because launching any kind of product takes a tremendous amount of effort, and I'd rather see people put that effort into something more productive.
I'm curious what issues of false-positives and false-negatives this might have. Did I actually remember my umbrella, but the app hasn't updated the location it knows of the umbrella yet, so it starts bugging me to go back? Did I forget to turn the app on, so I leave my umbrella behind, feeling secure that I'll receive a reminder that is never going to come? Do I just plain forget my phone sometimes?<p>Without some way to guarantee a low failure rate, I can see something like this getting so annoying that I'd just turn it off completely.<p>And besides, I thought only people who rarely needed rain gear used umbrellas. The last time I visited Portland, or Ireland, I didn't see anyone with umbrellas. Everyone wore rain jackets. Incidentally, they keep your hands free.
I think a better product would be to create a band you can wrap around your own umbrella that does the same thing. Of course, it could be for anything at that point and that is often more difficult to market whereas losing an umbrella is a fairly normal problem.<p>Just my (unrequested) two cents.
Seems it only comes with a 3 year warranty even though it claims to be 100% windproof / corrosion proof. I was hoping it would at least be lifetime like totes.
I have enough apps on my phone I don't need to pay $60 to have it more clogged up so I don't forget an umbrella that I overpaid for to begin with.