But does it run Android?
Vibrator guru on pleasure tech: 'Of all the places you'd want a quality UI....'
CES is the world's premier gadget-fest, so it's perhaps unsurprising that this year it would devote a keynote at its Digital Health Summit conference track dedicated to a device owned by over 50 per cent of Americans: the vibrator. "Why shouldn't the same high-level thinking like that used in technology and other industries be …
-
-
Sunday 13th January 2013 08:51 GMT LarsG
Never mix tech with sex
The Engineers Song.
Ah-hum, titty-bum, titty-bum, titty-bum,
An engineer told me before he died,
Ah-hum, ah-hum.
An engineer told me before he died,
I have no reason to believe he lied,
Ah-hum, titty-bum, titty-bum, titty-bum,
Ah-hum, titty-bum, titty-bum, titty-bum.
An engineer told me before he died,
And I have no reason to believe that he lied,
(Chorus) That no matter whatever he tried,
His girlfriend was never satisfied!
(Chorus) That girl she had a .... so wide
She could never be satisfied,
(Chorus) The engineer was a designer,
Measured the bore of her v......,
(Chorus) Then he built her a .... of steel,
Powered by a bloody great wheel,
(Chorus) Yes he built a bloody great wheel,
Two brass balls and a .... of steel
(Chorus) Two balls of brass were filled with cream,
And the whole bloody lot was driven by steam.
(Chorus) He tied his girl to the leg of the bed,
Tied her hands above her head,
(Chorus) There she lay demanding a ....,
He shook her hand and wished her luck,
(Chorus) Round and round went the bloody great wheel,
In and out went the .... of steel,
(Chorus) Up and up went the level of steam,
Down and down went the level of cream.
(Chorus) Till at last the maiden cried,
"Enough! Enough! I am satisfied!"
(Chorus) Now we come to the tragic bit,
There was no way of stopping it,
(Chorus) It went like the piston of a train,
He should have fitted a gearing chain,
(Chorus) Clouds of steam blew out the top,
There wasn't a way to make it stop,
(Chorus) She was split from ... to ...,
And the whole .... thing was covered in ....,
(Chorus) It jumped off her, it jumped on him,
And then it buggered their next of kin,
(Chorus) It jumped on a departing bus,
And the mess it made caused quite a fuss,
(Chorus) The last time, Sir, that .... was seen,
Was in Buckingham Palace .... the Queen,
(Chorus) There's a moral to the story I tell,
If you see it coming better run like hell,
(Chorus) Nine months later a child was born,
With two brass balls and a bloody great horn,
(Chorus) The warning in the story is,
Always fit a safety switch,
(Chorus) The crux of the matter is plain to be seen,
You should never trust a MACHINE!
-
Friday 11th January 2013 17:30 GMT Anonymous Coward
Support
The more intelligent the device - the more likely it is to get taken over by malware? Niche developer apps must be a natural extension of such devices.
It will be interesting to hear my circle of friends and family trying to describe the symptoms of their device/application malfunction when they need some support advice.
-
Friday 11th January 2013 18:14 GMT Dave 126
Lies, damned lies, and... What?!
Owned by over 50% of Americans?
Okay, lets say 50% of Americans are female... of those some will not have reached puberty, some will might have decided they no longer have any interest in that sort of thing or have always been asexual, then there's the Amish, and probably a few Southern Baptists might object to them... Can gay men really be filling the gap in your figures? Explain yourselves!
-
-
Saturday 12th January 2013 05:43 GMT dssf
Re: Lies, damned lies, and... What?!
Figures don't lie, but liars sure can fig yers, lol!
And, what prod duct was it that in the end was rejected? Was it an animatronic Real Doll? Was it remote controlled, waterproof, and HIGHLY DUCTILE? Was it a highy R-tickle-yoo-late, resizable and undulating sub-lingual tool for him or for her? (Reminds me of when in high school, working part time at a pizza restaurant, one of the co-workers laid down a wax sheet on the dough weighing scale and produced/displayed he had 22lbs of tongue force in the downward direction against the scale. Freaked out some co-workers, excited others, but nobody got into trouble, hahaha. Boys AND girls competed, yours truly among since we were kids competing. I was for better or for worse, not anywhere near the max end of the scale. I think one or two customers picking up their pizzas sighted the activity, but nothing became of it... ( That was around, ohh, 1983... In Calif...)
Medical Mannquins brings to mind medical man o' kins.
-
-
Friday 11th January 2013 18:57 GMT Old Handle
Re: Lies, damned lies, and... What?!
I would guess they're counting both partners as owners. I guess that makes a certain amount of sense, and fits with the "couples' vibrator" slogan. Alternatively, they could be committing a grave sin of statistics by simply dividing the number of vibrators sold be the number of Americans.
-
-
Monday 14th January 2013 19:16 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Lies, damned lies, and... What?!
A girl flatmate of mine used to keep a really big black one (with tide marks!) in an empty fish tank in the kitchen (ex pet-rat home- I know, I know). She used to cover the tank with a dishclosh if any visitors were going to appear. All well and good until my retired parents visit and decide the kitchen is a bit untidy and they'd better wash up ......
cue lots of terror and screaming ... no, no , the OTHER dishtowel! And most puzzled parents!
-
-
Friday 11th January 2013 19:48 GMT Franklin
A bit ironic, really.
One of my sweeties has a We-Vibe, and the one complaint we have about it is the user interface is rubbish.
It's got a single button, buried in the tip under the silicone, that's very difficult to press to turn it on and off. Worse, the vibrator has, like, 15 speeds and patterns...and you have to push the button repeatedly to cycle through them. Once it's on, you can't turn it off without cycling through all the patterns.
If this is an example of the state of the art in vibrator UIs, the vibrator is still pre-Windows 98...
-
Saturday 12th January 2013 00:03 GMT Graham Marsden
@Franklin: Re: A bit ironic, really.
That sounds like she has the We-Vibe II.
The III version has a remote control that, once the vibrator is switched into "on" (but non-vibrating) mode and is in place, lets you activate the vibrator and move through the 6 different modes without needing to press the built in button again.
The only drawback is that, as the article says, trying to get the radio signal through two salty human bodies can be a bit tricky and you may need to move the control around to various positions before it will actually work.
-
Saturday 12th January 2013 05:52 GMT dssf
Re: @Franklin: A bit ironic, really.
Maybe a waveguide and a parabolic dish may accentuate the gain.... Tuner, coupler, grounding straps, F1, F2, F3 layer charts, maybe even a red and black patch panel. Don't forget the freq plan...
(Anyone not a naval or mil radio operator or born after 1988 might not get the inferences...)
-
-
Saturday 12th January 2013 05:49 GMT dssf
Re: A bit ironic, really.
Rubbish? For a sec, I had to decide whether it was super ticklish or garbage.
The Speeds and Pattterns were not bug, they are features, as in Spatterns, sans the missing accessories...
State of the art today might be hooking vibers up to Xbox, maybe even SirFace or Surf Face or Surface, whichever works out to be an appropos marketing name suitably distanced from MS the mother ship... Attach 3D eyewear, wired-up fingerpro... Umm, tips, and some tension tools with regenerative braking and this could be a verry real "Sexerciser". Of course, it might give Total Fitness and the informercial stars a serious workout.
-
Saturday 12th January 2013 15:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: A bit ironic, really.
I used to have a bicycle rear light that did the same thing....
Fast Blink, Slow Blink, Left to Right Blink, Right to Left Blink, Flashing the Macarrena Blink, Disco Blink.... and perhaps some others.
With an idiot ----little---- recessed "on" button, and dodgy electrical contacts...
It soon got the hammer.
Now all I have is a light with "ON, Slow Blink, Fast Blink, OFF."
This actually sounds like a real fucking prick - as in crack the shits and snap it in two.
"It's got a single button, buried in the tip under the silicone, that's very difficult to press to turn it on and off. Worse, the vibrator has, like, 15 speeds and patterns...and you have to push the button repeatedly to cycle through them. Once it's on, you can't turn it off without cycling through all the patterns."
I hate interfaces like that - it would drive me insane - from the moment it's turned on.
-
-
Saturday 12th January 2013 14:52 GMT Dave 126
Re: "sexual health and wellness"
>It's 2013 and you feel the need to medicalise your product to make it respectable.
The first vibrators in the Victorian era were medical devices, invented to save doctors from RSI. 'Hysteria' was believed to to be a female illness (it stems from the word for 'womb'), and many doctors set up specialist clinics to 'cure' their wealthy patients- and profited handsomely. Demand for their services was high, and RSI was a risk. Steam powered vibrators (mechanically liked to a steam engine in an adjoining room) were the first, but vibrators were among the first electrical devices sold. They were openly sold above the counter as health and beauty aids, and didn't acquire a bad image until the stag movies of the 1920s.
I read about this about ten years ago in New Scientist, but I believe a feature-length film on the subject was released in 2012.
>I suppose I could make a comment about US puritanism. . .
You could, but read up on the genuine history first. Like many things, it is stranger than fiction.
-
-
-
Tuesday 15th January 2013 11:01 GMT P. Lee
Re: Ah, yes,
How to improve your *relationship* - turn it over to a machine so you don't have to bother.
Surely, taking the time and the effort is a rather large part of the point of doing it. Otherwise, you may as well both get a little gizmo and not bother with each other.
This is the logic of turning over sex to an "industry" - commerce replaces non-commercial activity. Sex becomes (in some way) a transaction rather than a gift.
I'm glad I'm not in that kind of relationship.