Finland's water bottle sensor "The Hug" destined for Skymall, if that

    Do you have a need for more mindless “quantified self” hardware and push notifications in your life? If so, here’s an invention. This Helsinki and California based team invented a motion sensor that straps to your water bottle and connects to your phone, just to bug you to drink more water.

    Its a product with zero use case. Here’s how it goes. First you forget your water bottle clip at home, and your phone explodes with push notifications to drink more water, and you’re like “damnit, I am drinking water”. Then the next day you remember your clip and you’re still getting pissed off because you’re drinking water at lunch and your phone is still getting angry at you for not drinking water with that dumb clip you got off kickstarter. If you do get it to work, you’re then like “wow, look at all this information about me drinking water”.

    There’s more to it though, the sensor and app also integrates with Fitbit and Runkeeper APIs to let you know that drinking water after you work out is a good idea.

    Before you get off thinking I’m anti-hydration, you’re wrong. I have been pro H20 since I was in football pre-season back in 9th grade where Coach White circled us up in the 100% humidity 40°C heat to instruct us about hydration. “Gentlemen!” he roared, “The number one rule on this field is that your piss needs to be clear. I don’t want to see anyone skipping water breaks. What color does your piss need to be?”

    “Clear!” we replied.

    “WHAT COLOR?!”

    “CLEAR”

    And that’s basically all you need to know about hydration, according to Coach White and anyone that was able to survive without a smartphone push notification telling them when they should inhale and exhale to breath.

    I get it to some extent. If right now you’re not kickstarting something, you’re going to look back in 10 years thinking “damn, I should have done something to get some of that kickstarter internet money.” But it’s worrying that Finns are on Twitter like “oh hey! look at this article in techcrunch woo #finlandtech” without any sense of irony that they’re getting excited about hardware that’s packaged nicely, but gives you as much information as staring at your reflection in the toilet.