Things are happening!
We release weekly updates on our journey in order to let our Kickstarter backers, pre-order customers and anyone else who’s interested know where we are and what we’re doing. The previous ones are here, in case you missed them.
This week:
Hardware
- We’re happy to confirm that we received the first 200 bare printed circuit boards this Monday,
and around half of them are being assembled with components on Friday. - We did the first injection molding of one of the two parts of the Memoto plastic case and it looks very good.
- Samples of the packaging arrived from the manufacturer as well. Some minor changes are needed, but overall, we are very happy with the results.
- The custom Memoto USB cable design was released for manufacturing and is being produced. We are awaiting the first ones.
- The metal clip has been released for manufacturing.
Software
- The windows upload client is moving along, what’s left is building the user interface and connecting the application logic to it and the following user testing.
- We are modifying the USB upload protocol for both the OSX and Windows uploaders to improve the user experience and allow amongst other things the setting of camera parameters.
- Interviewing beta-testers about the momentification so we can continue improving the algorithms further.
- Designing the LED patterns and responses for the different situations they should convey information on. The LEDs are our only user-interface output, making this an important feature.
Backend
We have been working on optimizing the photo storage and processing on our servers using a multitude of benchmarks and tests, and are now feeling satisfied that we have a good scalability and so will be able to meet the user demand on photo upload, moment processing and moment browsing performance. One challenge has been to balance instant availability of photos as they are being uploaded with the benefits of having larger chunks of user photos on the server before analyzing them for the segmentation into the Memoto moments.
Wishing you all a fantastic weekend!
/Memoto Team
6 Comments
Dear Sara and Niclas,
You both appear to be noticeably silent on this discussion section of late and no one including your CEO has shown any sense of courtesy or professionalism by not addressing my fairly simple queries regarding Memoto’s financials. Is this the
typical way start-ups treat their backers in Sweden? Or has your leader simply put the gag order on you both regarding my line of questions? I must say I am
very disappointed and thoroughly unimpressed by both of you for essentially shirking your duties as part of your community outreach team.
Although I do not currently have a Facebook account, should I nonetheless sign
up and move over to FB in order ask my questions there in the hopes I get some sort of response from Memoto?
Mary
Hi Mary
I want to give you as clear answers as possible, so let me confirm that I understand perfectly what you are asking and then I will try to adress each of your questions. I don’t assume I have anything confused, it’s that I want to make sure I adress all of your questions not leaving anything out. Please correct me where I’m wrong, or add to this list other questions/concerns you have:
1) You are concerned as to if Memoto will manage to deliver the rewards to our backers or not. For us to prove this, you’d like us to disclose our financial records as you state above with amount of funding, burn rate etc, as well as where our VC funding is coming from.
2) Second, you are concerned about if we will be able to create a sustainable business in the long-term, to assure that we as a company will continue to exist.
3) Third, you worry about what will happen to your photos if Memoto would in the worst case fail to create a sustainable business.
4) You are of the opinion that we have misled the Kickstarter community in one or more ways. What I’ve been able to gather from your various comments, these are the ways you feel that we might have misled our backers: 1. by setting up a Kickstarter project even though it in your opinion seems we would have had the funds to go through with the project anyway, 2. by setting up a project with a product that was not as ready for production as we stated and/or 3. by setting a funding target that was too low in comparison to what kind of funds we needed to really go through with the project.
Are these the full set of questions that you want me to adress? Or do you want to add or correct anything before I make an effort to do so?
Kind regards,
Martin
It’s great to hear that you are “making progress every day” but what is the date that you are committing yourselves to in order to deliver the end product? My apologies if this information is well known to the public but I don’t see any reference on this website to any kind of plan or commitment or measurement of progress in percentage terms. If all I ever told my boss was that I was making progress but never committed to a delivery date for the projects he gave me then I’d very quickly find my funding – ie, my salary – ceased to exist!
I’m in agreement with Tim, I happily was a part of the funding during Kickstarter and will try to remain positive, but it gets harder each time another event passes by where I wish I could have logged it. I will also try and remain understanding that, yes, this is a difficult and ambitious project and it will take time, but it gets harder as weeks and months pass by the proposed delivery date. I appreciate Memoto’s continued efforts to keep it’s backers updated. Each week I read the updates, hoping for a conclusive delivery date. Thank you Memoto for bringing such a great and highly anticipated product into reality.
Best,
Jessica
Haters are always gonna hate. Keep up the great work and great updates. I have no worries until communications break down. In fact, I just ordered a second unit from your web site because i have such confidence that you will be delivering soon. I have seen many tech start-ups, and I am confident that this one will be successful. Products of this type are enormously complex, which is why this has not been done before.
Thanks for all the updates and information, it’s much appreciated. I really enjoy reading about your challenges and next steps and I think gives us all a sense of how challenging the work is and continues to be. It would also be helpful to know how the current progress is informing your new target dates for shipment. Keep up the great work!