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Originally Posted by andr3w321
Smart razor and smart toothbrush.
All our electronic devices are going to be hooked up to the internet eventually so a razor and toothbrush seems like a natural progression. People already wear devices while they sleep to look at their sleep patterns and and heart monitors that they can look at all the data on their phone.
The idea would be that you could look at your phone and look at how long you brush your teeth on average, at what times you brush, if it were smart enough, how you could improve your brushing technique. You could get points for flossing etc.
Similar stats for shaving. Maybe it could monitor how fast your hair grows or how much of it it's cutting off. What your avg shave time is etc.
You could even add an adapter to hook up to use your phone's batter for power in case you're traveling and don't want to carry around both a razor charger and electric toothbrush charger. Only problem is you would need a protective case for your phone because nobody wants slobber on their already bacteria infested cell phone.
I've been reading up on Fitbit lately, which this is somewhat similar to (fitbit just tracks exercise/calories, but same theory), and I like this idea. Some guy gave a speech at a video game conference maybe 1-1.5 years ago, and I wish I could remember his name and find the video, but he basically laid out a big scenario where every aspect of everyone's life becomes tracked and game-ified, with achievement badges and all that sort of thing. So you get points for exercising regularily, brushing your teeth, whatever, and you can give access to your data to organizations if you want, so for instance the government might decide to give a tax credit to people who exercise regularily, in order to lower health care costs, etc.
I think it's a better than 50% chance that the smart razor/toothbrush will be tried by someone in the next 5-10 years, although I wonder if it's a bit too early for them and people need to get used to this idea? Like, right now the only networked devices I can think of like this are:
- Fitbit (and the competing Body Bugg)
- There's a line of scales I just learned about yesterday that are networked and can track your weight loss on their website.
- Nike has that thing that goes in your shoe and hooks up to your iPhone and tracks your running on their Nike+ site.
Would love to hear more things, I'm sure there are some, but anyhow, these are all specifically fitness things, which seems like a good niche for this sort of device to start with. I think the concept of networked devices of this sort may need to gain a lot of traction, to the point where people are really familiar with the concept, before something as specific as a razor/toothbrush takes off. To me, it just doesn't seem like one of the first household items you'd logically pick for this. Or is it? I don't know. Just seems too early to me (albeit a cool idea).
I wonder how much it would cost to get these manufactured. Clearly a huge amount, but I wonder what an actual ballpark would be to hire good industrial designers, technical people who can create/program a device like this, and then have them made.