⌠dear god, BB. Donât start âspontaneouslyâ inserting plugs for Uber into your daily parlance. Anyone would think you were trying to normalise the act of hiring a predatory, underpaying, corporate-espionage-engaging, shit-heel of a disruptive start-up (with reams of liquid capital), or something.
Anyway, donât. Totally at odds with your stated ethos.
I was just waiting for another electronic device that could help me be more self absorbed, superficial, and douchey. My iPhone and Bluetooth just werenât cutting it anymore.
No no no, itâs SHARING!!!
Perhaps I can have it update my cary-got-kissed.ods google spreadsheet every time that I do one of these:
Iâd have a lot more sympathy for the conventional taxi-industry if I could count on their drivers being natives of the city and be able to know how to get to point A to point B (or at least invest in a GPS) without my giving directions (which I might not know nor is my reasonable responsibility as a passenger). At least Uber and its clones require their drivers to have GPS-enabled phones and use them for navigation.
Yeah this. Taxi drivers and the taxi industry are fucking shit. I donât care if someone disrupts that market. No one has a gun to the driversâ heads, Iâm sure.
On topic: no on needs this. Itâs a fucking waste of time, money and itâs occupying the space of something else we could all be reading.
Itâs a somewhat pointless but still fun gadget. Illustrates the possibilities of alternative user-interfaces, and is an interesting thing to read about after all the interpersonal internet dramas.
The first-worldiness of it is nausea-inducing IMO. Like⌠every aspect of it.
- disposable income to catch taxis/uber vs public transport
- requires a bluetooth receiver device (smartphone) and internet connection to work.
- requires their âhardwareâ
All because itâs not cool enough to tap the touchscreen of the device youâre already carrying to make this thing work.
Case in point. Hereâs some other things for your smartphone that actually solve a problem or are clever:
Add a physical button to your Android phone via the headphone jack:
Stick this thing under your iphone case to add wireless charging via the qi standard:
Or this sticker inside your s5 case for the same:
Put this sensor tag somewhere and get remote readings of temperature, humidity, air pressure, accelerometer, gyroscope & magnetometer via bluetooth and your smartphone:
Find out what your car is doing live via bluetooth (shows actual speed, not what your lying odometer says) as well as telling you exactly what your car wants when the service light is on.
I could probably come up with a few more, but 'nuff said. People need to stop âinventingâ unnecessary things. We laughed when google did their april fools Gmail Motion bit. This is a far less useful version of a thing that we were joking about a couple years ago - and idiot hipsters are going to be forking money over for the thing.
Save your money idiot hipsters and get some NFC tags which do the same damn thing in 1/3rd the effort. Oh, youâll also have to lobby apple to unlock the NFC chipset in your iphone6.
Public transport is a good thing, but there are times and places when it becomes suboptimal to the point of unusable. Many scenarios here, from hauling a luggage to/from the airport to returning from whocareswhere at 2 am.
Most smartphones these days have both. Whereâs the problem? Besides, the internet connection is the requirement of the app, not of the user interface gadget; that one needs just the bluetooth part.
That comes with the territory. Itâs a novelty item. And fun one.
I can see some additional uses, e.g. initiating a distress call or sending a position marker. Possibly with more combinations of heel-click patterns for more functions.
Later, when augmented reality takes off, this can be an alternative to hands-requiring user-interface operations. Because, face it, with only a single pair, you donât always have available hands.
Why exactly, pray tell? Why shouldnât even the inventors have some fun?
So the inventors will have both the fun and the money. Double dip!
Or collect spent contactless prepaid cards from some cities with public transport using them, and use an app that does not need a special NFC chip to trigger a function but can go with any one with unique ID (in other words, any one).
Apple sucks. For all the problems androids have, they still suck less than the Fruit.
there are times and places when it becomes suboptimal to the point of unusable
True, though I donât know if you can make a practicality argument then turn around and endorse this thing.
Most smartphones these days have both. Whereâs the problem?
My point was: why tap your feet, which requires bluetooth to be activated on your phone constantly (battery drain) to do this when you require an internet connection to talk to uber anyway. The gadget cannot do anything without internet connection except potentially activating local tasks on your device, and how much of the stuff we do on our phones is local only?
That comes with the territory.
Yes but they already did this, way better, years ago: NFC. The chip drains a fraction of bluetoothâs power, can do all the things youâve mentioned as possible applications for this, has been in almost every decent android phone in the last couple of years and has proven its worth through appleâs capitulation to include it (although handicapped) in the iphone 6.
Why shouldnât even the inventors have some fun?
They should, but Iâd rather see more completely idiotic things like the (yes you can actually buy this) smart egg tray that lets you know how many eggs youâve got in the fridge:
Or the custom toaster that cooks a picture of things into your toast (Of course you can pay them with crytocurrency - what kind of two-bit custom toaster operation do you think theyâre running!?):
Apple sucks.
ithings suck imo.
For all the problems androids have
Problems? Iâve never had any 
they still suck less than the Fruit.
Amen, but we do have apple to thank for making their competitors have to step up their game.
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