The Internet of Things promised us a deeper connection with our objects. We would be hugging our toasters, marrying our fridges, and sleeping with our bathroom scales. But nothing out there so far could talk back to us until the Woolet.
The Woolet is a wallet that contains a small beacon that connects to your phone. When you leave (or lose) your wallet, the phone will buzz to let you know. More interestingly, the Woolet has a small buzzer built in that will notify you if you leave the house without your phone – a pretty useful feature if your Fitbit keeps making you leave the house. Finally Woolets can send out APB signals that ask other Woolet owners to report its location to you. For example, if you lose it in a crowded space other Woolet owners can pick up its signal and relay its location to you.
This is obviously a bit of overkill for a wallet but, given that our phones and our billfolds basically hold the most important things in our lives, I can definitely see the value in something like this. Like the Tile before it I worry that this might overpromise on the features and $119 for the non-early-bird model seems really steep. However, it’s not much in comparison to what could happen if you lost your regular old dumb wallet.
The product is already fully funded and it looks to be shipping in May 2015 so you won’t have to wooait loong foor yoour Woolet.