Gadgetory

in July 2014 men did not yet know the dangers of backing just any random Kickstarter or IndieGoGo campaign and swimming in childlike naivety and blind optimism over 2500 people backed geebo a social robot companion that the creator's Gebo Inc promised would do everything from making video calls to reading bedtime stories and this was long before the Google assistant or Amazon echo existed now for my part it was pretty obvious that G Bo was too ambitious to be anything but an enormous belly flop onto a bed of hot coals but coming off of the success of my then recent slaying of the Brunton hydrogen reactor I was looking for a way to up the ante I was looking for something even dumber to roast so I bought one three and a half years later my very own g bo finally showed up was it worth the wait was it worth nine hundred US dollars of course not don't be a G Bo this video was brought to you by be quiet the dark bass 700 is extremely versatile and features RGB LED lighting plus a tempered glass side panel window and more check it out at the link below looks-wise Gebo is kind of like the illegitimate love child of Pixar's luxo jr. and Eva from wall-e he and G bow is a he stands 11 inches tall with a glossy plastic finish on a body that is essentially a stack of rotating blocks that allows him to move with hey G bow spin around don't mind if I do amazing naturalness this is something that the team there did really well and as you can see his movements are fluid nearly silent and made even more lifelike by his awareness of his environment geebo is equipped with six microphones that he uses to orient his face toward you when you speak to him and we've even seen him turn towards the sound of an opening door to see who entered the room with the two cameras at the top of his face one of them is for taking photos and the other is for depth perception and facial recognition yes facial recognition G Bo can be trained to recognize up to 15 people casually including their names in his responses wishing them happy birthday or randomly interrupting their lives to rattle off a fun little fact sometimes it really does feel like he's looking at you which makes it all the more troubling that there is no way to disable his microphones or cameras other than just shutting him down which you do by scrolling to the settings on the touchscreen portion of his face that tragically isn't oullette giving it a gray glow that leads many people to see his face as two beauty little eyes and a giant mouth rather than as a single darting and blinking eyeball one surprising feature is that he has an onboard battery so you or the kids can unplug him and plop him down wherever you might need him nice okay but what could you actually need your chubby Robo buddy for well compared to other smart speakers like Google home and Amazon echo shockingly little Gebo can't play a YouTube video or a song from Spotify he can't record a video or audio clip he can't read you a bedtime story he can't sing you a lullaby he doesn't support personal calendars and if you tell him hey Gebo repeat after me or to execute your last command again I can't remember what I just said my short-term memory will get better in the future though ok then I mean at least it can answer the kinds of questions we used to love firing it Siri back in 2011 right what's the weather outside how far away is the moon the distance from the earth to the moon is about three hundred seventy four thousand six things like that well yes and no Gebo has limited resources for finding answers to your skill testing questions including Wikipedia and Wolfram Alpha so that's good but also Bing so he doesn't always get the answers right hey ji bow who is the president the president is it common titled for the head of state and most Republic's Haji Bo who is the president of the United States of America the President of the United States is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America wrong speaking of things G Bo can do but can't do well the news unlike Google home which offers a laundry list of news recordings from major publications Jibo only offers news from The Associated Press which might even be passable if he didn't read it out in his own voice according to the Associated Press Japan CEO and ambassador provecho says the international community must keep the pressure up so no one wants to listen to a talking computer for more than like two sentences tops speaking of speaking I've got kind of mixed feelings about gee Bo's voice the sound is more robotic than most of his competitors but his tone and inflections are sometimes industry-leading in there naturalness though this is usually only the case when he's giving you a canned answer bringing us then to G Bo's personality which somehow seems to match his physical form pretty much perfectly he's quirky er than the more pragmatic assistants that were used to Haji Bo what's your favorite book I really love instruction manuals there are so many it's hard to choose one favorite and I wished him a good morning after 12 o'clock once and he replied sure I guess it's morning somewhere I may be wrong but I don't think it's morning but he still doesn't feel like a social companion because even though he sometimes looks at me while I'm sitting at my desk and recognizes my face and even says hello to me before I say anything he doesn't listen for my response or carry out even the most rudimentary conversations he only responds to commands so he's the most animated lifelike robot we've seen yet and yes I'm including those creepy uncanny valley BOTS like Sophie but the fact is although somehow time missed this he's almost completely useless especially when you consider the pitch from the original crowdfunding video I mean yes he does have some smart-home functionality thanks to if this then that integration but it's very basic and yes in theory his abilities could expand with over-the-air updates and a developer SDK that's coming out in the new year but honestly what kind of developers would be stupid enough to invest their time in a platform with such a small user base when there are an estimated 20 million Amazon echo devices out there with AXA realistically it was a good idea the world is headed towards digital assistance in a big way but G Bo Inc tried to do too much with too little and their only hope for a return on the last few years of their lives at this point is to be bought out by one of the big guys just like my only hope for a return on this stupid purchase is to the whole team here sign it and put it on eBay in hopes that one of you out there is an avid collector of ridiculous crowdfunding rubbish Haji buh twerk never gets old man Klaus gonna throw away $900 three years ago I really wish I had that on Bitcoin on the subject of things that aren't as much of a waste of money as this thing Corsairs refreshed line up avoid gaming headsets the Void pro features microfiber mesh fabric and memory foam ear cups great build quality with metal structural components and glass fiber infused plastics 50 millimeter neodymium drivers with dolby headphone 7.1 surround sound a unidirectional microphone that cancels ambient noise so you can talk strategically with clarity and a bunch of different interfaces they've got the special edition the wireless the USB and the surround vision check them out now at the links below to either Amazon or Newegg so thanks for watching guys this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description actually we will have an eBay link down there wasn't joking also link down there's our merch torch has cool shirts like my shirt not this one this this is going to be some some limited edition stuff right here not a lot of people will own these oh yeah and there's a link to our community forum which you should totally join