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Live from the Engadget Stage: Narrative CEO Martin Kallstrom
Here's another interesting take on the push toward wearable technologies. The Narrative Clip (formerly Memoto) lives on your lapel, taking pictures at intervals throughout the day for a little lifelogging action. The company's CEO will join us on stage to discuss the device. January 10, 2014 6:00:00 PM EST
Narrative Clip lifecasting camera finally heading toward a lapel near you
You know a product has had a few production roadblocks when a company sprinkles phrases like "today it's actually happening" into a shipping announcement. It's not like the Narrative Clip (Memoto) is the first Kickstarter project to miss a goal or two, of course, but according to the product's crowdfunding page, early backers were supposed to start receiving their units in April of this year. When we saw the thing at SXSW in March for the first time, it was pretty clear the company still had a ways to go. Now in early December, believers will finally get their wearables, just in time for the holidays. According to the company, the delays were caused by issues with printed circuit boards, camera modules and certain colors of plastic -- so, just about everything involved. Issues still persist, however, meaning that cameras ordered on or after November 1st won't start shipping until January -- and hey, what better way to start the new year than with a little lifecasting?
Narrative Clip lapel camera shows up at Expand in its final form, we go hands-on
The last time we saw the Narrative Clip lifecasting camera, it had a see-through casing allowing you to see the circuitry within. Heck, it even had a different name. As it happens, though, the company's co-founder, Oskar Kalmaru, stopped by Engadget Expand this weekend, so we got a chance to see the lapel camera in its final form. If you choose to shell out $279 to buy one, you'll see it has a metal clip and lightweight plastic housing, with black being the color of choice for everyone who pre-ordered on Kickstarter. (If you were to buy it now, you'd have a choice of gray, white and orange.) Since our first look, however, the functionality has remained exactly the same. Which is to say, the camera automatically takes a photo every 30 seconds, but you can tap the housing to take a snap at any time. Inside, there's 8GB of internal storage; to upload your pics to Narrative Clip's cloud service, you'll need to plug the camera into your computer using the built-in micro-USB port. Once you upload your photos, you can choose to share just individual shots if you like, or what the company is calling "moments" (i.e., groups of shots). That's all she wrote -- if you want more of a refresher, check out our earlier hands-on video after the break.
Narrative Clip now the new name for Memoto wearable lifetracking camera
About a year ago, TUAW highlighted a Kickstarter project aimed at making a tiny wearable camera that would take photos about once every 30 seconds for upload to a website where they'd be condensed into a continuous lifelog. The project was delayed, but now the Swedish developers behind the project report that they've received new funding, that they've changed the name of the device and their company and that first deliveries will take place on November 1, 2013. The company's new name is Narrative, with the former Memoto camera now being called the Narrative Clip. According to Narrative VP of Marketing Oskar Kalmaru, "We've quickly grown to love the new name, Narrative, and it is one that describes what we've been trying to do all along –- help users tell the stories of their lives. We called the camera 'Narrative Clip' to reflect its attributes of being wearable, quick and tiny." The Narrative Clip is available for pre-order on the Narrative website for $279. As noted in our 2012 post: The Memoto camera measures 36 x 36 x 9 mm, captures 5-megapixel images, keeps a log of GPS positions and timestamps and has an accelerometer to ensure that photos are always oriented correctly. There's a micro-USB port for charging the device's battery, which is expected to last for two days per charge. Once the images are uploaded, software works to "organize the photos to work as a photographic memory that can be accessed at any time, even after many years, without the user ever feeling overwhelmed or disorganized." The images are catalogued by time, date, place and lighting conditions.
Memoto is now Narrative Clip, shipping November 1st
The Memoto wearable lifeblogging camera was one of the darlings of March's South by Southwest Interactive, garnering some notice from movers and shakers at the event. The name, however, apparently still needed work. The company announced today -- one month ahead of product launch -- that it's changing its name to Narrative. The camera, meanwhile, is becoming the Narrative Clip. Why? According to a press release, the name "describes what we've been trying to do all along – help users tell the stories of their lives. We called the camera 'Narrative Clip' to reflect its attributes of being wearable, quick and tiny." Fair enough. The company's also scored $3 million in VC backing from True Ventures, which had previously backed MakerBot and FitBit. Press release after the jump.
Memoto lapel camera turns your life into one big photoblog
There likely aren't too many people in the world crying for ways to exponentially increase the number of digital pictures in their collections, but Memoto's hoping to help wearers rethink picture taking as they know it. The device, which is roughly the size of an SD card case, clips on a shirt collar, taking five-megapixel pictures every 30 seconds without prompting, running on a battery that'll last around two days. The idea is to create a lifeblog -- an encapsulation of what you did during a given day, told through still photos. Those images are served up to the company's proprietary software application, which uses an algorithm to group them into clusters. Visiting a user's page presents a sampling of photos from throughout the day. From there, you can drill down into the clusters to see the group of shots taken 30 seconds apart. And, of course, there's sharing on the thing, letting you post those images and groups to places like Twitter and Facebook.%Gallery-181391%
Memoto camera wants to capture your life -- every 30 seconds
Perhaps you saw my post last week about Lightt, a new social app that allows you to capture highlights of your life in 10-picture snaps and share that stream with friends. Now a new Kickstarter project from Swedish company Memoto wants to create a photographic record of your life by giving you a postage-stamp sized wearable camera coupled with an iPhone app to send a photo to a web service every 30 seconds. The act of capturing your life in this manner is known as lifelogging, and has been going on for some time. The idea of making lifelogging technology affordable and inconspicuous is what Memoto is all about. The Memoto camera measures 36x36x9 mm, captures 5-megapixel images, keeps a log of GPS positions and timestamps, and has an accelerometer to ensure that photos are always oriented correctly. There's a micro-USB port for charging the device's battery, which is expected to last for two days per charge. Once the images are uploaded, software works to "organize the photos to work as a photographic memory that can be accessed at any time, even after many years, without the user ever feeling overwhelmed or disorganized." The images are catalogued by time, date, place and lighting conditions. The team expects the Memoto camera to be available in early 2013 at a price of US$279, but backers who pledge $199 or more through Kickstarter will get a camera (in graphite grey, arctic white or Memoto orange) and a one-year web service subscription.
