Steven Colbert On Vessyl Digital Cup [video]

http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/9nzwjt/vessyl-digital-cup

by rickdale • 12 years ago

98 77 12 years ago

thecolbertreport.cc.com

joesmo• 12 years ago

Absolutely hilarious.

What would actually be useful is something that does the same for food, although I have no idea how that'd work (perhaps a probe of some kind). It's trivial to calculate nutritional information for beverages as a human, but for those of us who track such things, I have yet to see a really good system for solid foods that doesn't rely on human guessing about portion sizes and matching to existing known entities from a database of foods.

chriskanan• 12 years ago

Computer vision researchers are starting to work on the food calorie counting problem. See this video demo from SRI International: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH2c_F6YB-A

http://gigaom.com/2014/04/03/dont-eat-that-sri-built-a-calor...

iffycan• 12 years ago

Such as SCiO? https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/903107259/scio-your-six...

justinpaulson• 12 years ago

Why is it trivial to calculate nutritional inoformation for beverages? In the United States, on average, 21% of our calories are consumed from beverages [1]. I know some people that just drink water, so that means there are others who are consuming probably greater than 1/4 of their calories from beverages. There is clearly a problem, in the USA, of people consuming too many calories from beverages, and it is not trivial. I think this is a good step, but there are a few ways it may be missing the mark (like why not a set of mugs that I can change the user settings of based on who in my family or friends grabbed the cup out of the cupboard.)

[1] http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/nutrans/policy/beverage/us-b...

cseelus• 12 years ago

Yeah, thought that too. Some approximation on calories and macronutrients would be really great.

This would definitely serve the huge market of folks who track their daily intake:

  - People who (have to) do it for medical reasons
  - People that want to loose weight and need to get a better understanding of what exactly they are eating every day (often times it is not enough or the ratio of macronutrients is out of place)
  - Nearly every bodybuilder and fitness-addict

bellerocky• 12 years ago

A hardware startup is hard enough without this kind of mocking, but mocking the new smart objects does make for some compelling humor. Google Glass for example was mocked pretty extensively recently too. This take wasn't fair, since this product saves you the time of having to type in your calories for each drink into your phone by figuring out what you are drinking, but it was funny.

kingnight• 12 years ago

Thanks for sharing what the possible use for this could be.

That's a quite a price to accomplish just that...

7 years bit was really great.

zalmoxes• 12 years ago

Appropriate to the 7 bits comment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TE0n_5qPmRM

anon808• 12 years ago

What is the everyday benefit of this for the regular person? Humans have been drinking things for a long time without knowing the exact stats of their beverages. What is this product trying to optimize?

ertdfgcb• 12 years ago

Probably calorie consumption tracking, which is becoming increasingly relevant with the all the fitness technology and the obesity epidemic.

tdicola5• 12 years ago

My thoughts exactly. The tech of a 'smart' cup could have cool applications to the kitchen, like measuring how much liquid you're pouring for a recipe. However as a weird 'fitbit for what you drink' device I'm really scratching my head trying to understand it too.

sp33211• 12 years ago

Yes, and Americans have become increasingly obese, partly because they don't know how many calories they are eating and drinking. What this optimizes is how much you have to think about journaling. Just check your phone occasionally to see totals, trends etc.

gonehome• 12 years ago

While I'm not very confident in this product anyway, in this case the audience/marketing they got from this Colbert segment is huge.

This is a really good thing for them.

NickWarner775• 12 years ago

Colbert raises a great point about the practicality of it though; why would you take the time to pour a beverage into the Vessyl just to get the same readings you could have obtained from the initial container?

ithought2• 12 years ago

Wine.

tdicola5• 12 years ago

Wine connoisseurs would probably scoff at drinking out of a giant cup. There's a whole art/science to the cup shape and ritual of drinking wine.

JAFTEM• 12 years ago

The only reason I can think of is the listed nutritional value isn't always accurate. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't understand how this cup can be any more accurate than the label.

Honestly if I wanted to count calories and monitor my nutrition, I would rather speak to my phone what I'm currently eating and have it tally everything up. And I would gladly pay $10 for an app like that over $200 for a cup, so until someone can bring this technology down to $20-$30, I don't care.

sp33211• 12 years ago

I don't feel like calculating how much I poured into a cup every time, or manually journaling every time I get a drink. But it would be nice to know how much soda I've had in a day.

ethana• 12 years ago

A "toylyt" would be a good medical analytic device actually. Get it on kickstarter Steven!

j2kun2• 12 years ago

This already exists. I saw a live (text) feed of a toilet that would post statistical information about the contents — get this — in real time.

Apparently it could also determine if you have STDs, and which ones.

[EDIT] here's the site: http://quantifiedtoilets.com/#feed Apparently it also tracks blood alcohol content and doubles as a pregnancy test. The former sounds convenient for a toilet in a bar: it will tell you if you're legally able to drive before you leave the bar.

bstpierre• 12 years ago

That's not real:

This was a thought experiment

guiomie• 12 years ago

Doesn't work in Canada.

See this link for Canada: http://www.thecomedynetwork.ca/Shows/TheColbertReport?vid=39...

It is the full episode with annoying ads at the beginning...

gatehouse• 12 years ago

& the segment starts at ~10:20

headbiznatch• 12 years ago

Detecting rohypnol, or similar scenarios where you are "truth testing" the ingredients. Pretty sure rohypnol detecting glasses (or drink umbrellas, etc.) exist, but I am not Googling that.

jkestner2• 12 years ago

Disposable stirring sticks and coasters that detect roofies do exist, and they're more convenient than bringing your special cup around to bars.

sebular• 12 years ago

I've never heard of the Vessyl before, but it sure looks like something that'll be gathering dust in people's cupboards.

It might be a valiant engineering effort, but the concept strikes me as a poor way to digitally tap into peoples' diet information.

The real solution is ultimately going to be at the point of purchase. Sales already happen in the digital space, so that's the logical point to start building a database of food intake. If you had a digital grocery bill, that information could be used by your digital fridge (or just a simple phone app) to track what's been purchased and consumed by each member of the family.

Taking that idea a step further, the marketing / monetization of being able to sell that usage data back to advertisers, or creating a "diet API" that knows peoples' habits after they leave the grocery store would be a gold mine. In that light, the Vessyl just seems insanely shortsighted. It's a shame that Colbert had to be the one to tell them.

Honestly, who uses the same cup every time they pour a drink?

tdicola5• 12 years ago

Grocery stores already know what you purchase through tracking with the the club/value cards they promote. The information is sold to marketers, etc. and even in some cases used by the police and insurance companies.

jkestner2• 12 years ago

I would love love love for someone to make a loyalty card with an API. It would be a win for grocery stores since they would have more accurate data and more users, who would actually be more loyal if they're able to get real personal value out of shopping at a particular store. Fine detail on what I'm buying, and when. I could see a slew of services for brick-and-mortar that can compete with some of the data that Amazon keeps to itself.

sp33211• 12 years ago

Honestly, who uses the same cup every time they pour a drink?

Well, I do. I buy 2-liter bottles of soda because they're cheap, but they're unwieldy for consumption. At work I just have one cup, so that's what I use. I feel like lots of people already have a personal coffee mug or something. And more people would if they bought one of these.

jack-r-abbit2• 12 years ago

who uses the same cup every time they pour a drink?

That is my biggest (but not only) issue with this. And if both my wife and I have one, that each syncs to our own phone, now we need to keep up with which cup is whose? Too complicated.

[Edit: I was not being sarcastic. Having two identical cups in the same house would make it difficult to make sure we are using the right cup each time. We already run into that problem occasionally with our Up bands.]

sp33211• 12 years ago

It seems like it would be pretty easy to mark them.

papa_bear• 12 years ago

This is pretty much what we're trying to do with Eat This Much (http://www.eatthismuch.com/). For the people that follow our meal plans, we're basically a lead gen for every single thing that person eats, and we're working on making it easier to integrate the generated meal plans with your existing habits. Combine this with automated grocery delivery, and we already know all of the foods in your fridge so you don't even need a smart fridge (though it would still help for eating things outside of the plans and tracking them).

ScotterC• 12 years ago

I've been using a 1 liter nalgene for about 8 years now for almost all my drinking. Which is only water anyway. I'd love for an automated way to track the water consumption instead of measuring by hand.

omellet• 12 years ago

Use a scale. 1 liter == 1 kg.

jonhmchan• 12 years ago

The CEO of Vessyl responds: https://www.myvessyl.com/blog/posts/9-vessyl-on-colbert-repo...

smacktoward• 12 years ago

Glad to see he was a good sport about it -- that's exactly the right way to respond to a story like this, even if you really want to blow your stack and punch the wall a few times.

Which isn't to say you shouldn't blow your stack and punch the wall, just that you should only do it in private :-D

jakar• 12 years ago

Wow, that camera phone clip from the Daily Show is great. And Jon Stewart looks so much younger!

LandoCalrissian• 12 years ago

Talking about the design part was the best for me. We made this new elegant future cup, that looks exactly like a cup, innovation!

0xdeadbeefbabe• 12 years ago

It's comfortable living on a desk!

bunkat• 12 years ago

As opposed to on the ceiling where all of those other cups live.

gk12• 12 years ago

The silliness is easy to recognize in this context, but I roll my eyes just as much when I see some site or app with "beautiful" or "elegant" in its tagline.

ejain2• 12 years ago

Don't forget the "vibrant" colors...

InclinedPlane• 12 years ago

This beautiful and elegant design will delight our customers while disrupting the industry with its game changing real-time social collaborative mobile experience.

gk12• 12 years ago

Buying an expensive gizmo to track every liquid you consume, and limiting all your drinking to just that one gizmo, seems like an awfully roundabout way of improving your health. Simply drink more water instead.

joshfraser2• 12 years ago

1 can of coke contains 160% of your recommended daily intake of sugar. Lobbyists have worked hard to keep that information off the label, but it's true. Vessyl is an amazing feat of technology, but their messaging is confusing -- if they really want people to drink healthier, they should just encourage them to drink more water and less sugary drinks.

ianstallings2• 12 years ago

And the damage to one's teeth from those drinks can be tremendous.

Then there's this in diet soda: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4-Methylimidazole

I recently stopped drinking diet soda because of its possible health concerns and switched to brewed tea. One day I'll be completely free of caffeine also, I'm weaning myself off by simply drinking more water. I really wish I had never started drinking caffeinated sugary drinks.

sp33211• 12 years ago

That particular chemical looks completely harmless.

GuiA• 12 years ago

they should just encourage them to drink more water and less sugary drinks.

This is a US based company. The USA is a country where water is close to being unheard of as a drink. Kids in school mostly drink milk (genuine WTF moment for me as a European kid who moved to the US), most restaurants either have soda fountains or try to upsell you on other drinks, soccer moms bring Gatorade/Powerade to their kids, etc.. I've been to restaurants where the waiter seems genuinely pissed when you ask for pitchers of water for the table and nothing else.

I guess you can't make much money from water (unless you convince the average American that the water from their tap is dirty and full of germs, in which case you can sell them placebo filters that you have to renew every other month), and that doesn't fly in the country where dollar is king.

Mandatum3• 12 years ago

To be fair in a lot of places a water filter makes sense but in most cities where I assume you're talking about the type of people who buy bottled water when their mains water is just as good (in some cases better), you have a point.

Having flashbacks to putrid dead-rat water in rural New Zealand.. shudder

tvdijk• 12 years ago

Huh? As a European living in the US, I've had the opposite impression. I've never been to another place where every restaurant will automatically give me a free glass of water (and continuously refills it) without me even asking for it. I've also never gotten a dirty look for sticking with just water.

In Europe, you generally have to pay for bottled water, unless you specifically ask for tap water (and get a dirty look in response).

Mandatum3• 12 years ago

There's 35g of sugar in a 330ml can of coke[1]. The recommended daily intake of sugar is 90g. So it's 38.9% of your RDI, not 160%..

[1]http://www.fatsecret.com.au/calories-nutrition/coca-cola/coc...

joshfraser2• 12 years ago

The exact amount of sugar in coke varies by geography, but in the US, it's 39g per 330ml can.

The World Health Organization recently lowered the daily recommended intake of sugar to 5% or less of your daily caloric intake or roughly 25g/day.

GBKS• 12 years ago

Reminiscent of the Amazon Fire Phone promo video. Woman holds up phone to a book cover and says "Fire Phone can instantly identify this book, tell me the title and where to buy it." Information previously unknown...

DanBC• 12 years ago

That information might not be as easily a a ailable to people with visual impairment.

ejain2• 12 years ago

Vessyl's reluctance to answer questions about the sensor they are using is a big red flag for me. I'm guessing it's some kind of photospectrometer? It's hard enough to build consumer gadgets even when using off-the-shelf sensors...

The other issue is that knowing how much liquid you drink is not as interesting as knowing how dehydrated you are.

bravo22• 12 years ago

99% chance it uses a bunch of LEDs and optical sensors to measure things like refractive index and volume, couple that with a built in scale (likely a small load cell) and you can classify the drink.

Note how they never say it "measures" the sugar in your drink. They say it recognizes that it is orange crush.

I'll be interested when I can mix up a batch of sugar, water, and salt and have it tell me exactly what I've put in.

jcromartie• 12 years ago

This is what they meant when someone said that "work on real problems" was bad advice for single male engineers in San Francisco.

Steven Colbert On Vessyl Digital Cup [video]

Related Stories