I got a Narrative Clip (nee Memoto). It's pretty cool.
It's a little clip on camera that automatically takes a photo every 30 seconds and has enough battery and capacity to last a day.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/martinkallstrom/memoto-lifelogging-camera
http://getnarrative.com/
Hardware: Very good, wish the lens was wider angle. Meets or exceeds expectations.
Software: Very disappointing, hopefully it will get better. Misses my low expectations.
Delivery/fulfillment: A year late, but it's new hardware development. Meets or slightly misses expectations.
Actual Usage: Not bad.
Delivery/fullfillment
I backed in late 2012 on Kickstarter. It was nominally scheduled to arrive in March 2013, which seemed insane, so I expected it to be late. In the end it was almost exactly a year late of their original forecast, which isn't bad for new hardware development, but is even later than I expected. I figured they'd slip by 6 or 9 months. That said, I have a hard time getting too worked up about it, though many people were more agitated than I was.
Hardware
The hardware is fairly good, and the photos are great in bright light, but there's a few qualifications. Also, the software goes and "ruins" some things. The good things about he hardware:
- The clip is light, compact and attractive. I actually expected them to have to stretch the specs on size a bit, but it's a nice small clip.
- The camera, in bright light, takes quite nice pictures, comparable to cell phones of a year or two ago.
- There's nothing major "wrong" with it. This is the kind of product where there's so many details that could have been messed up in one way or another that I am impressed there's no major hardware flaws I've noticed.
But, some nitpicks:
- The clip, while easy to attach, works it's way loose too often. I am scared of losing the device.
- The camera lens should have been even more wide angle.
- Because of the geometries, a lot of the pictures are "upward angled" which is annoying, and a tilted/rotatable mount might address it.
- The fact that I have to plug it into my computer feels a little archaic, which means I guess we live in the future. My phone, Google Glass, and my DSLR (with Eye-Fi card) all just upload automatically without being plugged in.
Software
The software will hopefully get a lot better, but the current state is really disappointing.
The Good:
- Download to computer is fast and automatic.
- Has some raw metadata files that might mitigate the other problems, but the .snap files aren't in a obvious format.
The Bad:
- Clipping/rotating is awful. I understand the desire to be clever about rotation, but it too often crops out the good parts of a photo, and the resulting photos are 640x480 which is awful. The field of view ends up being narrow enough that they aren't effective "lifelog" photos, and the size is small enough that they aren't great photos either.
- There is no EXIF data in the raw files (the only ones that are any good). The filename is a timestamp, but no EXIF data?
- And, by timestamp, it's a time in Sweden, I assume.
- The "Moment selection" is bad and doesn't add any value yet.
- Uploading images requires desktop, but no thre's no way to view the moments/collection in a web view. At least there's no reason to.
- The uploader crashes a lot.
- The uploader gets stuck a lot, requiring manually pausing and unpausing it.
Actual Usage
Over an hour hike, I got 127 photos with Narrative, several of which are quite nice. I took 32 with Glass over the same hike.
One afternoon, out doing errands, I wore the clip and ended up with several nice photos while I took only 2 with Glass in the same interval.
Another day, I just set it pointing out the window and afterward just grabbed on photo every 10 minutes and manually put it together and it yielded a nice animated gif.
Overall, I'm optimistic that the software will improve, especially if they think they're eventually offering it as subscription service, but that's one of the great things about software and web-based software in particular: it can get better without me doing anything. That said, I'm pretty happy with it so far as just a hardware device, but hoped their initial software release would have some value.
It's a little clip on camera that automatically takes a photo every 30 seconds and has enough battery and capacity to last a day.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/martinkallstrom/memoto-lifelogging-camera
http://getnarrative.com/
Hardware: Very good, wish the lens was wider angle. Meets or exceeds expectations.
Software: Very disappointing, hopefully it will get better. Misses my low expectations.
Delivery/fulfillment: A year late, but it's new hardware development. Meets or slightly misses expectations.
Actual Usage: Not bad.
Delivery/fullfillment
I backed in late 2012 on Kickstarter. It was nominally scheduled to arrive in March 2013, which seemed insane, so I expected it to be late. In the end it was almost exactly a year late of their original forecast, which isn't bad for new hardware development, but is even later than I expected. I figured they'd slip by 6 or 9 months. That said, I have a hard time getting too worked up about it, though many people were more agitated than I was.
Hardware
The hardware is fairly good, and the photos are great in bright light, but there's a few qualifications. Also, the software goes and "ruins" some things. The good things about he hardware:
- The clip is light, compact and attractive. I actually expected them to have to stretch the specs on size a bit, but it's a nice small clip.
- The camera, in bright light, takes quite nice pictures, comparable to cell phones of a year or two ago.
- There's nothing major "wrong" with it. This is the kind of product where there's so many details that could have been messed up in one way or another that I am impressed there's no major hardware flaws I've noticed.
But, some nitpicks:
- The clip, while easy to attach, works it's way loose too often. I am scared of losing the device.
- The camera lens should have been even more wide angle.
- Because of the geometries, a lot of the pictures are "upward angled" which is annoying, and a tilted/rotatable mount might address it.
- The fact that I have to plug it into my computer feels a little archaic, which means I guess we live in the future. My phone, Google Glass, and my DSLR (with Eye-Fi card) all just upload automatically without being plugged in.
Software
The software will hopefully get a lot better, but the current state is really disappointing.
The Good:
- Download to computer is fast and automatic.
- Has some raw metadata files that might mitigate the other problems, but the .snap files aren't in a obvious format.
The Bad:
- Clipping/rotating is awful. I understand the desire to be clever about rotation, but it too often crops out the good parts of a photo, and the resulting photos are 640x480 which is awful. The field of view ends up being narrow enough that they aren't effective "lifelog" photos, and the size is small enough that they aren't great photos either.
- There is no EXIF data in the raw files (the only ones that are any good). The filename is a timestamp, but no EXIF data?
- And, by timestamp, it's a time in Sweden, I assume.
- The "Moment selection" is bad and doesn't add any value yet.
- Uploading images requires desktop, but no thre's no way to view the moments/collection in a web view. At least there's no reason to.
- The uploader crashes a lot.
- The uploader gets stuck a lot, requiring manually pausing and unpausing it.
Actual Usage
Over an hour hike, I got 127 photos with Narrative, several of which are quite nice. I took 32 with Glass over the same hike.
One afternoon, out doing errands, I wore the clip and ended up with several nice photos while I took only 2 with Glass in the same interval.
Another day, I just set it pointing out the window and afterward just grabbed on photo every 10 minutes and manually put it together and it yielded a nice animated gif.
Overall, I'm optimistic that the software will improve, especially if they think they're eventually offering it as subscription service, but that's one of the great things about software and web-based software in particular: it can get better without me doing anything. That said, I'm pretty happy with it so far as just a hardware device, but hoped their initial software release would have some value.
It yields way too many photos, and the software will organize/slect the best, or at least that's the theory. In practice, I just scroll through them in Finder, copy the ones that look good/interesting, and leave the others for eventual deletion.
The software that I griped about so much does correct the orientation quite well, but more often than not, that ends up cropping out all the interesting parts.
I don't mind the jaunty photos though :)