An exciting milestone

After working on research, product design, and finally development, AlertMe is now taking pre-orders from friends and family for a limited edition release before we launch nationally. This is an incredibly exciting moment for all of us, as the system we've been working on is finally becoming a real product. If you'd like to be one of the first 100 customers of a new kind of home awareness system, email me asap! We won't be billing anyone until we ship kits out, and we'll reconfirm your order before shipping.

After all this time in development, and with so many great features, it's sometimes hard to step back and see the real user value in the system rather than just the overwhelming coolness and flexibility we have to offer. There will be more content on the website soon, but I can do no better today than to quote my colleague Nik in Marketing:

What: AlertMe revolutionary home security & more! You’ll have the ability to check on your home and receive alerts about activity ranging from the everyday (your kids got home safe or the cleaner came) to the emergency (someone broke in or your house is on fire.) AlertMe is designed for people, not only for the sake of techno-lust, so it’s easy to use and to personalize for the way you live.

How: With a variety of clever devices and a stylish hub that plugs into your broadband. It’s easy to set up, no drilling, no tools, just peel & stick things up as we guide you through it all on the website. The various accessories communicate wirelessly with the hub, and the hub uses the internet to connect securely to the rest of the world. It has battery power and a mobile phone network card to continue working even if your house loses power or drops off the internet. You can connect with your home from anywhere using your mobile or through our cool web site. Anyway, you already have broadband, why not put it to good use when you’re not checking your email, watching YouTube, or downloading music?

Where: Anywhere you live (in the UK.) It’s completely portable, so fine even if you’re renting. You can connect or receive alerts anywhere in the civilized world. We’ll expand to other worlds sometime soon.

Why: To protect your most precious valuables: your home and family. To stop the paranoia about whether you closed the front door. To check on things while you’re away for work or on holiday. To impress your friends at cocktail parties or the pub. To be the first to spot a trend that will change the world. To stop your parents nagging you about living in the big city. To guard your bicycle shop in Newmarket. To know everything is ok.

Tweet tweet, I'm here

Since signing up for twitter, along with the rest of the world, to see what it was like, I haven't thought of many genuinely useful things to do with it. It could, of course, be a way to alert people to things happening at home for AlertMe. But there are many other ways to do that, too.

We used to use a whiteboard in the office as an IN/OUT board, and this worked well when there were three of us there on most days. Now there are 18! In addition, we now have phones, which ring when people aren't at their desks, leaving one wondering where they've got to. The solution is clearly that we all use twitter for our current status/location, and that we have a CamVine screen showing the latest tweet for each of us on the office wall. This means at-a-glance where people are information, and it can even be updated remotely using SMS.

It's a great idea, only partially marred by the unreliability of twitter. As I thought of it earlier, and explained to my Instant Messaging but untwittering colleagues, twitter's IM interface was down, again.

Crucible

Both Michael and I have won places on this year's NESTA Crucible scheme. This is good - three weekends to visit new places and to meet people and work on our interdisciplinary creative thinking - and bad, as Michael being there too makes one fewer new person to meet!

Black squirrel

Watt's on?

It seems like an age ago now that I ordered a Wattson from DIY Kyoto. It arrived on Friday.

This is a very highly priced "limited edition" product (mine is the 89th of 250), made from translucent white acrylic and wood, and £350. This seems a huge amount, and probably is, but is slightly less painful when compared to the Electrisave, at £60-£80. The Wattson is a much more attractive unit, and also comes with a USB link so you can log and process your data yourself (although this requires the use of one of those high-power-consumption computer doodads) - a major selling point for me. Also, as well as a numeric display, there is an ambient colour indicator of how much power you are using.




The box is fairly simply made, but looks good.




The manual is large and friendly. My first hand-stitched manual.





This is the first page of the manual - great text there.




Over the years I have bought many products which came with cloths - usually screen cleaners. This is the first to come with a customised duster.




The transmitter is battery powered, which was fine, but the batteries didn't want to be in the case. This was the third attempt, when they didn't jump out.








My electricity lives in a cupboard. The clip-on unit is very easy to fit.




The Wattson unit itself is very elegant. It is made from recycled school lab benches; this is very satisfying.







In these images it's barely on - newly installed and charging itself. It works on batteries, or via DC adaptor. Now it's been on a while, it's brightly lit (4-5W of shininess). Most of the time, we get a mauve pulsing effect, and a nice cheerful red number in Pounds Per Year, or Watts.

Now, I know from my friends up at PRI that this type of clip meter is very inaccurate, but nonetheless, as a vague indicator it works well. Our readings leapt by around 2000 when we turned the tumble dryer on (or more scarily, the kettle!) and by 100W when Michael's pretty CODA display was on - clearly a powerful monitor, or perhaps they are all like that. Hmm. At least the CODA box is low power :)

We are now sitting in the growing dusk. We are watching the West Wing, on the lowest power computer in the house. We must drink our tea whilst it is hot, since it used a lot of power to make, and will retire as soon as it gets dark...

May Day

Last week Michael and I went to Paris, and filled my camera (!) with photos (one, two, three, four). This week, I am in London for Usability in Practice training camp. The basic camp is probably not as intensive as you might expect, but it gets more so if you use the filler time to write out a detailed plan for your own company! We are all dedicated enough to attend on a Sunday and a Bank holiday, anyway. There's a lot of people here, from all around Europe and beyond, mostly web people, more non-profits than you'd expect. I'm envious of those who simply have an e-commerce site to test!