January 12. 2013 CES Las Vegas, Nevada
Definition: Lifelogging is the activity of producing a continual record of your everyday life by carrying a portable camera and/or other digital device around with you.
Seems a bit Seinfeldish, “a show about nothing” but anything that can recreate our activities and help us find our glasses, phone, keys, purse … is worth investigating.
So in our search of lifelogging interests and products, we had the recent pleasure of talking with Oskar, Marketing Manager of Memoto. We hoped we would find Memoto at CES but since they weren’t here we tracked them down in Sweden.
Memoto is a tiny 5 MP automatic camera that you clip on and wear and together with its app gives you a searchable and shareable photographic memory. It’s an entirely new kind of digital camera with no controls. Instead, it automatically takes photos as you go with up to 2 photos per minute 24/7/365 geotagged if you want. The camera is always on, until you put the lens facedown or place it in a dark place such as your pocket. And it’s weather protected, so you don’t have to worry about it in inclement weather. The Memoto App then organizes them for you.
Judging from their past exploits co-founders Oskar Kalmaru and CEO, Martin Källström are serial entrepreneurs. So strap in and get ready for the flight.
We asked where did this idea of documenting ones every move come from? Oskar told us, “Martin noticed how nice it is to have memories from the past but how troublesome it is to capture those memories, keeping a diary can be a drag, it requires frequent writing, so with Memoto you can augment this so you could photo recall your memories in the future without spending so much time creating them in the present.”
Oskar went to explain, “Memoto’s goal is to create an everyday device for every person who finds a need to capture their memories in an easier way. Viewed from ground level its a device for anyone, with niche markets on top of that, both in terms of consumer markets: parents, people traveling a lot, and also in professional services: security, travel industry and so on.”
Not wanting to get too technical but curious of how we might mess things up if we don’t manage to keep ourselves upright at all times we were pleased to find out Memoto has thought that out.
Easy starts with the built-in accelerometer whose job is to get the pictures aligned in the proper orientaton and upright everytime as there is no up or down; but tech specs always make us dizzy no matter what so enough of that. On to more important things.
Do you think in a bar on a girl’s night out Memoto will work? Oskar, “It closes off when its’completely dark but in bar light it will still work but as in any other camera in dark light it will be grainy. The huge challenge for us is to position the camera so that it will always be the right way and take shots that are useful and useable. It’s not like a point and shoot where you evaluate each picture as perfect focus or color to be hung on on your wall. There you can plan exactly how the photo will look. For this camera that is not the goal, the goal is for the camera to take a series of photos to represent that moment in your life. So each photo separately may not be that good looking but put all together they will help you recall that moment from your past.”
We are always busy documenting our favorite moments with photos taken with our smartphones but it will be interesting with the Memoto to document the unexpected, to have many snapshots of what our day really looks like. When we really start using this innovative technology odds are we will discover a use or benefit that we cannot possibly conceive until we start lifelogging with the Memoto. We can’t wait to get started.
Memoto is in production as we write and will ship the first batch for the very early Kickstarter backers in late February 2013. Next batch in March and April 2013. If you place the order today online, you can start documenting every detail of your life in April. www.memoto.com
