| Products like this make it hard to argue we're not in a bubble right now. An umbrella with bluetooth and a smartphone app? Seriously? The idea of taking a mundane household object and adding bluetooth + app support to it is not a sensible formula for innovation. I can think of a hundred products that follow from this formula, and they're all terrible: * Coffee machine + App. Tells you when coffee is ready. Tell coffee machine to start making coffee as you wake up. * Vacuum cleaner + App. Tells you when the bag is almost full, sends automatic push notification when you haven't vacuumed a room for too long (using GPS and artificial intelligence!) * Phone charger + App. Send a push notification to your tablet when your phone is done charging and vice versa. * Water dispenser + App. Lets you know when your plants need water. * Sandwich + App. Will send you a push notification when you've eaten the sandwich and final push notification when the sandwich has left your body. These innovations are just gimmicks, and have no hope of ever becoming more than that. A shame, because launching any kind of product takes a tremendous amount of effort, and I'd rather see people put that effort into something more productive. |