Many of you know Memoto, the hot Swedish startup that decided to take the quantified self concept to the next level by sticking a camera on you and taking 2 pictures a minute. They gathered over $550 000 during the Kickstarter campaign from 2 871 backers.
They have later raised an impressive €2.2 million investment round and rebranded to Narrative, over naming issues with Motorola. Today, the company announced that they are finally shipping and I personally can not wait to get mine, which is set to ship on the 16th of December.
The real story here is the journey that Narrative had to go through in order to make it happen, and how they actively took part in the quantified self movement. For instance they made a movie about it, were constantly blogging about different initiatives raging from smart Bra’s to smart Wigs.
Moreover, it is often a problem when you back a Kickstarter project, that you have very little idea of what is happening behind the scenes and what stage the product is at. Especially if there is a delay. With Narrative – you knew everything.
There were constant updates on the product and they went into very specific details of their problems and provided pictures of the different parts such as the PCB’s and battery units.
With all of that behind them, they are finally shipping. Now, the most important part for me personally is if this will make a difference to my life.
Now, I am not a huge quantified self person at the moment, but I think that I am about to become one. The fact that you get your life archived through pictures is great, but what does it mean on a grander scale?
For instance, because my now one year-old son will probably be able to see the images some 18 years from now, what do I want him to see? Do I want to show him that every evening I spent 2 hours on playing DOTA 2 and CIV 5? Do I want him to know that my only friend was ArcticStartup and that 75% of the pictures included a computer screen in front of me?
Perhaps I will want to spice up my life with new hobbies, traveling, extreme and dangerous/manly sports and show my kid how much of a bad ass I was back in the day.
Will I be able to detect other patterns that I want to change? Sleeping behavior, efficiency at work, number of meetings and new people in my life? Those are the questions I cant wait to answer for both myself and for our readers.
So the moment we get the camera, expect a full out review on it and I promise to stick the camera on my kid for a day, on one of the cats for a day and then wear it myself as much as I possibly can – to see if it makes a real difference to my behavior.
If you have already ordered, you should get them before/during January and if you buy one today – it should arrive in February.
