Friend on a hand

Below is my submission for the Bug writing competition in original Croatian, and in my best attempt to translate to English (fixes are welcome). However, they must have thought I was joking or something, and they didn’t even take a look at it. Anyways, here’s a story with my 1+ year experience with my Fitbit:

English version:

We formed our friendship just before you wrote the article “Me in numbers” in your Bug magazine. That made me happy because you assured me that I’m a successful trend followed, like any real gadget enthusiast.

I wear it on my wrist, and it doesn’t bother me any second of my 8-hour work on my other Friend — Computer, but we won’t talk about him now because after all this isn’t his 5 minutes of fame.

First of all, I wouldn’t want to label him as a mere piece of hardware, because, in a very short period that I own him, he became my Friend Hardware.

Not only does he count the number of steps I make in a day, but he also counts my total sleeping time. His friend Application (which, btw, works great on any worthwhile mobile phone or browser) shows me which period of time I was restless during the sleep, and with this, I can see the quality of my sleep and the time it took me to fall to sleep.

It also allows me to enter the data about the food that I eat, the amount of water that I drink, and my current desired weight. Based on my activity, it calculates how many calories I spend, and how much more would I have to burn to stay in the fitness beast mode — bye bye personal trainers.

Hardware vibration mode wakes me up in the morning at the time allocated in the Application, so that I don’t wake up my child and wife early in the morning at 5 AM when I go for a run before work. Hardware sends me weekly accomplishments via the Application and it shows me how I stack up against my other “living” friends.

My FitBit Flex ❤

Original Croatian version:

Mi smo oformili naše prijateljstvo taman prije nego što ste Vi u Bugu imali temu “Ja u brojkama”. To me razveselilo jer ste mi time potvrdili da uspješno pratim trendove kao svaki pravi gadget entuzijast.

Nosim ga oko svog zapešća i ne smeta mi ni trenutka u mojih 8 sati rada za mojim drugim prijateljem Računalom, ali sada nećemo o njemu jer je to ipak njegovih 5 minuta.

Prije svega, ne bih htio da se njega oslovljava samo kao neki obični hardware, jer je on u kratkom roku što ga imam postao moj prijatelj Hardver.

Ne samo što mi mjeri broj koraka koje napravim u danu, već mi mjeri i ukupno vrijeme spavanja. Njegova prijateljica Applikacija (koja, usput budi rečeno, radi na svakom iole spomena vrijednom mobitelu ili browseru) mi omogućuje uvid u period kad sam bio nemiran tokom sna, te time mogu vidjeti kvalitetu sna i vrijeme koje mi je bilo potrebno da zaspim.

Također mi omogućuje da unesem podatke o hrani koju jedem, količini vode koju popijem, te svojoj trenutnoj i željenoj težini. Ovisno o mojoj aktivnosti računa koliko kalorija potrošim, te koliko bi još morao da ostanem u fitness beast modu — bye bye osobni treneri.

Hardver me ujutro budi laganim vibriranjem u vrijeme zadano u Aplikaciji, tako da ne probudim svoje dijete i ženu ujutro u 5 sati kad idem trčati prije posla. Hardver mi preko Aplikacije tjedno šalje email sa pregledom postignuća za prošli tjedan a i prikazuje mi koliko sam dobar u odnosu na druge “žive” prijatelje.

Moj FitBit Flex ❤

Oh, btw, the strap broke after more than a year of non-stop usage (showers included), but I bought a cheap replacement on eBay and it’s holding up just fine…

This post was first published on my blog. If you’re interested in hybrid mobile application development, you should check it out since I blog extensively about Ionic framework.