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The Internet of Things Just Found Your Lost Wallet
Nerval's Lobster writes Ever forgotten your wallet in a coffee shop or restaurant? Now there's a way to ensure it'll never happen again: Woolet, which its creators bill as a "smart wallet." It features a rechargeable battery, Bluetooth support, and the ability to synchronize with a smartphone app; if you walk 20-85 feet away from your wallet, the app will make a sound and guide you back to it. The platform's being financed on Kickstarter, and attracted attention from TechCrunch and some other places, but it begs the question: is this yet another example of connected devices run amok—shiny and interesting as a concept but not nearly useful enough for the population at large? What would it take for a connected device, whether a wallet or a smoke detector, to gain mass appeal?
Helps me track the position of my wallet in real-time.
probably doesn't even have a wallet
keys, credit card, id, etc.: there's an app for that
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
... this is where this idea always falls apart.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
... you can use your wallet to find it? Anyway, this is more a solution in search for a problem.
I've forgotten my phone occasionally but never my wallet. While YMMV, I just don't see this as something that needs to happen.
I also don't see why Dice is advertising it (bloody Nerval). What does this product got to do with you? Do you really need to link to your own site?
Now if you leave the wallet and the battery dies it can't alert you but the fact you aren't being alerted leads you to believe you have your wallet on your person and you continue on your merry way.
I'll stick with my dumb wallet.
Internet of Things and a Kickstarter Slashvertisement combined. For the nitpicky, we can even debate the proper use of "begs the question". All it really needs is something about 3D printing and some angle about getting more women into technology, and it would be perfect. Something for everyone!
Also... wait, did they just describe this as a "platform"? People are going to write apps for this or something?
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Or you could just use one of those combined wallet/phone cases if you're losing it all the time. Either way, your wallet is going to be a little bigger.
Like this epipen smart case http://gizmodo.com/a-smart-epipen-case-lets-family-know-youre-having-an-al-1677633589 or this real-time parking assist http://techonomy.com/2014/12/streetlines-zia-yusuf-using-data-take-pain-parking/.
With the dollar getting stronger and the euro weaker, people with money will flock to the old world for cheap vacations. It also so happens that's the prime location for pick pockets so having an aliens style movement detector to help locate your wallet and the little shit that sole it will come in handy.
The big problem I see with IoT devices is focusing on the sizzle... and there is little, to any effort focused on security. With how inexpensive 3G boards are, it is easy to get a device online with its own Internet connection... but why should it be connected even in the first place?
What is wrong with having devices in a house communicate to a central server that has a hardened Internet connection, and that communicates out/in? This way, it lowers the attack surface from being able to nail the device from anywhere on the Internet to having to be in radio range of the item.
Even with that, there is really no point for most of the uses of Internet connected items in the first place, and because budgets usually place security dead last, they are just disasters waiting to happen, especially when the only way to fix the security exploits would likely be to replace the entire device.
OR how about just get a chain for your wallet? Sometimes low tech is the best tech. Don't lose your shit in the first place.
I already can't leave the house without charging my Bluetooth headset, my Fitbit, my iPhone, my iPad, my Kindle, my iPod, my MacBook, and my iWatch. Now I'll need to charge my wallet.
What would it take for a connected device, whether a wallet or a smoke detector, to gain mass appeal?
It will take a few billion more in marketing campaigns to get people to care.
Once they do you have a short while until your customers begin notice how worthless and or dangerous their purchase turned out to be.
Unless you want to be the next victim of a Stuxnet-like attack, do not connect your Things to the internet. What you want is LAN of things, under your control, and airgapped from any computer owned or controlled by non-you persons.
Yes, I know Stuxnet breached an airgap. That's because an airgap is necessary, not sufficient.
There's a cheaper solution. I believe it's called a "trucker's chain." Even if your wallet falls out of your pocket, it just dangles a foot or two below your belt loops.
It never runs out of batteries, doesn't require installing an app, doesn't require a smartphone, and doesn't let the whole world know you forgot your wallet by blaring sound effects.
What I really have to laugh at is the fact that now you have to carry both your wallet and your smartphone with you all the time for this concept to work. I don't mind carrying my wallet all the time, but being forced to carry the smartphone just to keep the wallet quiet seems kind of asinine to me.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Give me a way I can link my smartphone to my prescription sunnies (without compromising their use as sunnies) and I am very much interested (says the guy who has lost many pairs of sunnies over the years and only recently lost yet another pair)
oh you mean the IoT!
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Maybe it'll spawn the retired metal detector dude of the future. He could use a device to comb beaches for lost wallets.
I get why many people will probably see this as a gimick but as someone who loses fucking everything, I think this is _really_really_ cool and after reading in to it, seems like the guys behind it know their shit. It is certainly a well thought out design. Sure I can wear a truckers chain, as other people have mentioned but I'm in my 20's - I could never imagine wearing one of those. While practical, they are clunky and would only serve to annoy.
Just fess up. You carry a purse.
on a public bus, library, restaurants, even was stolen, tossed along the road later. Some ppl found my license and called me back. It's survived with me over 15 years. And that's special. I don't want biker intercourse to ruin that, but it will just like it will ruin everything else.
FTFY
Captcha: tolerate
No can do I'm intolerant when it comes to intolerant people.
Apart from being wallet-specifc, seems similar to lapa-app.com (the latter offers tiny devices that you can attach to things you might lose so you can be alerted if you're in the process of losing said things.. bung one in a wallet, job done)
And I never in my life would leave a bunch of money lying on the counter anywhere.
This must be for girls, they have more like a big leather 3 pound photo album/scrapbook thingie that they name 'wallet'.
If my wallet would vibrate when it's away from my phone, that'd be just as good.
Create an app that tracks the actual money once they leave your wallet instead. ...
It would change people's world perspective once they see how their tax money gets used or all those paychecks to charity or those irritating hidden taxes on various services that grow crappier and more expensive at the same time
if you walk 20-85 feet away from your wallet, the app will make a sound and guide you back to it.
85 feet? So, far enough to be out of earshot thanks to walls and other obstructions, and even if you do hear it you might not make it back in time before someone else has been attracted to the sound and stolen your wallet.
And if you're so forgetful that you need this, you're probably forgetful enough to leave your phone behind too.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
'Begging the question' is a logical fallacy related to circular logic. "The bible is true because the bible says it's true," is begging the question.
The Internet of Things just found my lost wallet. So did the NSA, which is why it's empty now.
I don't want to have to cancel my planetarium membership.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
The Internet of Things can kiss my ass. Every day, I come to appreciate the things that are not connected to the Internet more and more.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The product would be a RFID tag reader that attaches to your keychain, rather than being embedded in one personal item like Woolet, and stays connected to your smartphone with Bluetooth. The device would read passive RFID tags in its vicinity, the simple stick-on tags with a range of a few meters.
In the accompanying app, you would build lists of items you need to have with you on a series of given named occasions. When you leave the house to do something important, you scroll to, say "See Mistress" and the app has the device tell you of some tagged item you placed on the list is not right near you. Of course, your keys, with the device itself, would be the first thing checked. The app would display messages for any item on the lt that you don't have with you. "Forgot condoms!" would be a reminder on the example list, for instance.
So when I'm home and leave the wallet in one place my phone is going to make an alarm when I move about the house as it gets out of range or am I going to have to carry my wallet around with me all of the time now too? Or is there an geographic area that it turns off? Because when I head up to bed and take my phone it's more than 20 feet away from my wallet which could trigger the alarm.
Now all I need is an app to find where I left my phone! ....has anyone seen it?
...you lose your smartphone, eh?
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
There's nothing I want more than an Internet-connected phone keeping a record of my location and sharing it with some random app publisher. Nothing could go wrong.
> What would it take for a connected device, whether a wallet or a smoke detector, to gain mass appeal?
A front-page ad on Slashdot, obviously.
I have on my keys right now :)
When my kids were younger, they tended to get lost at theme parks. I wish I had been able to get some kind of warning whenever they drifted too far away from me. So maybe this wallet solution can be adapted to other uses as well? Giving the wallet to the kids is not an option, :-)
http://www.microsoft.com/en/mobile/accessory/ws-2/
empowers data mining companies to track and correlate your cash purchases with your credit card purchases.
At least of I were CTO of a company developing something like this I'd be talking with one of those big consumer data aggregators that has everyone's data but almost nobody has ever heard of. Which is why I'd never work on something like this. I wouldn't want the conflict between public responsibility and duty to the shareholders.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Just wait: in our new everything-is-cloudy age, you will have to keep your money recharged or have it deflate to worthless within a day or two.
What would it take for a connected device, whether a wallet or a smoke detector, to gain mass appeal?
For it to only be connected to devices I own. I am sorry, but I just do not get the "Internet of things".
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Does anybody remember Tile? I chipped in when they were doing their initial fundraising, but I never heard back from them. Anyway, it was pretty similar to this. But it would even work if your lost thing was far away, as long as enough people use the Tile app. The idea was to turn everybody's iPhone into a thing finder for lost stuff. Pretty ingenious, but it delves a little too far into the creepy realm for most people. "You want to use *my* phone to find *your* stuff?!"
...why not just create a credit card-sized device that fits in *any* wallet? It would be be more useful and could be used with non-wallet objects.
Mobile payments are here. It will take some time to become ubiquitous to the point where you no longer need a wallet, but it's coming. Digital IDs (i.e. digital drivers license) are the next step. Once we have these, wallets will no longer be as common. Why carry a wallet and a phone with you if you only need the phone?
Sates working on Digital IDs:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
if you walk 20-85 feet away from your wallet, the app will make a sound and guide you back to it.
More specifically, if your wallet/keys and *phone* are separated by 20-85 feet. So now I have to carry my phone *everywhere* I take my wallet or keys? Like using my keys to get something from the car in the driveway or shed in the back yard - or running out to get some milk. There are numerous activities for which one wants to use keys or a wallet, but doesn't need their cell phone.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Isn't this just a Tile?
https://www.thetileapp.com/
Before they go any further, they had better make sure that tile doesn't have any patents...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Now just have the wallet tell me where the hell I left my phone and we can talk.
Seriously, shouldn't this be a credit card instead of a wallet. Normally I favor dedicated devices but this is a bit to far.
...a battery charge that lasts forever - or the device is useless once it's juice dies.