And let the flood of ...
... 14 year old boy locker-room attempts at humor begin.
A team of boffins at Microsoft Research have been trying to solve the problem of stress eating with a Windows Phone smartphone app and a bra that measures the wearer's emotions. When humans come under stress, overeating is common. Some scientists think there's a valid reason for this – grabbing some extra food is always handy …
This must be a tactic to sell more phones. Perhaps it is because I am male, but if I am stressed a phone that flashed up a message telling me to breathe will very quickly find itself implanted in a nearby wall requiring a quick insurance claim. No prizes for guessing where they would put the male sensors.
Can we please at least ask why this app and "wearable device" are aimed exclusively at women, as these probably very svelte and not at all lardy American techies who are mostly male seem to have been paid to develop and publicise this risible idea.
And the app has a cartoon bird with a speech bubble telling you what to do that reads "Bird says". Are they unaware that in the UK, this has a colloquial meaning of girlfriend, and furthermore we do not like to be bossed around by our birds?
(OK, I lied about this not containing predictable puerile jokes.)
> Can we please at least ask why this app and "wearable device" are aimed exclusively at women
Microsoft engineers are clearly trying to understand women in the only way they know how. I've heard there's a related project underway at NASA.
Very liekly because its a proof of concept model and are looking for the best results as oppossed to a markettable item.
As noted in the article the best place to get the results needed is from the area around the heart so the researchers would focus on an item of clothing that covers that area and with plenty of skin contact. Vests, T-Shirts, Shirts, etc would be too loose so wouldn't give you that consistent skin contact needed but a bra would. Now seeing as men have no need to wear bras it would be focused around women hence why it would appear to be aimed exclusively at women.
Once the concept is proven to work they can then start refining it and looking at other form factors such as rings, wrist starps, watches, etc and once again, as noted in the article, they won't nessecarily rlease the proof of concept model as a retail model.
I misread the BBC's headline coverage of this at first...
"Microsoft working on a smart bra to measure mood"
Easy to get 'd' and 'b' mixed up...
"...the best place to get the results needed is from the area around the heart..."
Plenty of heard monitoring fitness devices can be strapped on without the need for an over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder.
Maybe if men want to use this device, they have to 'grow a pair'
it should be called the Redmond Airbag.Mind you V1.0 will probably hang off her ears with a plank of wood holding her chest up, for V2.0 they'll introduce a cushion for the plank and V3.0 will be virtualised and stuck in the cloud so you can access your virtual bra anyplace. Then Apple will create a patent for the iCup with rounded corners and a shiny casing. The first iCup will only have 1 cup, so that's there's a clear upgrade path to the next version. Meanwhile the Linux guys will still be researching what a woman is, and trying to draw up a use case so they can understand the problem whilst Android releases Jubbly Bean....
I must get a life