
Introducing Carrot - hitgeek
http://www.introducingcarrot.com/
======
publicfig
Before I sound too negative, I would like to say that it does look like a lot
of hard work went into this, and I really do think it’s a good product.
Unfortunately, it seems like another solution looking for a problems. From
what I can tell, this product has little to no compatibility with Cakes and
Deserts. At Small Startup – which this entire comment was written to promote –
we heavily utilize Cakes and Deserts and can’t really imagine releasing a
product in 2014 under the food category that doesn’t fully integrate with
Cakes and Deserts. Is there any hope for updating compatibility in future
releases or is this just another product that doesn’t even look at market
needs before releasing a product?

EDIT: I was able to find a tutorial online for integrating Carrot with Cakes
and Deserts, which may work until a better solution is
found:[http://www.chow.com/recipes/21792-moist-carrot-cake-
recipe](http://www.chow.com/recipes/21792-moist-carrot-cake-recipe) . I would
still like compatibility with some specific use cases like Scones and
Tiramisu.

~~~
cfontes
Come on.... Carrot integrates beautifully with Cake there is even a Chef
recipe for it (AHA!!!) ! It's my favorite bundle when working on Breakfast
module.

~~~
stronglikedan
And some good glazed baby carrots might as well be a dessert.

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soapdog
This is just a nitpick but this type of headline doesn't tell us anything
about carrot or why should we care for its introduction. I love new stuff as
much as the next person but can we we change the headline to something like
"introducing carrot - an innovative nutrient carrying system for a new world"

~~~
duiker101
It would also be nice to have some examples of extended use or a demo to get a
feeling of the product.

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ilghiro
Look's cool but I can't really see the difference between this and the market
incumbents. What are you differentiators to:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Cabbage_a...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Cabbage_and_cross_section_on_white.jpg)

or

[http://www.leekrecipes.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/leeks-
food.j...](http://www.leekrecipes.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/leeks-food.jpg)

~~~
colmvp
I feel like the color orange is an excellent differentiator as it's more warm
and happy.

~~~
bjz_
Oooh, this was just leeked:
[http://i.imgur.com/b6zPy73.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/b6zPy73.jpg)

------
quarterto
I have a few qualms with this food:

1\. For a gardener, you can already grow such a vegetable yourself quite
trivially by getting seeds, planting it locally with compost, and then using
water and potash on the planted seeds.

2\. It doesn't actually replace a potato. Most people I know add flour or
bread to be able to make stews, but they still carry a potato in case there
are thickening problems. This does not solve the thickening issue.

3\. It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating. I know this is
premature at this point, but without charging users for the service, is it
reasonable to expect to make money off of this?

~~~
quarterto
Alternatively:

No wireless. Less starch than a potato. Lame.

------
midhir
Pfff. I can make my own carrot FOR FREE by hacking a raised-bed and hooking it
up to my local water provider using a polycarbonate pipe and standard spray
head. Why would anyone need to BUY ONE?!

~~~
underlines
Depends on the copyright laws in your country, and what will you do, if you
grow too much of them at once? Sharing is prohibited in some areas! Be
careful!

Maybe someone should invent a subscription based carrot delivery service, or
even a flatrate service for carrots, like spotify or netflix.

------
richoakley
It looks like you've built your landing page in PHP, which is renowned for its
scaling and security problems. I'd highly recommend looking into something
like Scala or Lisp if you want your unlaunched product to have any chance in
scaling to the millions of users you probably won't get.

~~~
Garbage
I don't know if you have tried PHP recently, but with the frameworks like
Symfony2, it's much more robust and feels natural to code into. I think you
should give it another try. :)

~~~
panopticon
Can't tell if continuing joke or went over your head...

------
qboxio
Making the world a better place... with extensible and reusable nutrient
delivery systems. Currently in beta (carotene).

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teebot
I'm just not sure about the form factor. Carrot is probably a bit too big for
my hands and Carrot mini won't be released before 2015 so I'll skip on Carrot
for now.

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kylelibra
I've had access to the beta for a while now, I would definitely recommend
using.

~~~
skygazer
I kept mine in my back pocket while at a wedding reception, last weekend, and
when I finally pulled it out to use it, it had warped, and would no longer lay
flat. While it still seemed completely usable, I'm definitely going to return
it, right after I post to Youtube.

------
awwstn
Compliments on the thing as a whole, but one thing stuck out to me
(negatively).

When I read about vegetables and interaction and saw the screenshot of how
interfaces haven't changed much, I got rather excited about the idea of a
vegetable that truly tried to change the way we process nutrients. Instead, it
seems Carrot mostly focused on the stuff surrounding vegetables. Which is a
noble goal, but not what I was hoping/wishing for.

I'd like to see someone reinvent vegetables, or update them for wearable
interfaces. In the same way that the mouse greatly changed the way we work on
'normal' computers, surely Carrot should give us similar new advantages. I've
been following a number of projects that try to do this, but they are hyper-
focused on just that nutrient-input part. I'd love to see the best ideas from
those experiments find their way into Carrot.

(This is just a general observation, not an attack on Carrot. I can understand
that you have chosen a specific focus that doesn't happen to be what I care
about.)

------
k-mcgrady
Nice idea. I would pay you money if you made a version I could grow in my own
garden. I don't want my food growing on someone else's land. I value my
privacy enough that I would pay you for this. I don't want it growing on your
land and then all of a sudden Google acquires you, shuts you down, and I never
have a carrot again!

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sdegutis
This one little page pretty much sums up all that's wrong with startup culture
and silicon valley in general.

------
cpursley
Speaking of Carrot, here's a site for those DIY folks who want to hack on
their own open-source carrots.

[https://openfarm.cc/](https://openfarm.cc/)

[https://github.com/FarmBot/OpenFarm](https://github.com/FarmBot/OpenFarm)

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nine_k
Devices like this, nice, sleek and integrated, are, as usual, not very
hackable. Try getting it to change colors, for instance. (Though I did see
yellow and purple prototypes, not yet on the site.)

On the other hand, the device has an unexpected, but well-documented and very
cool ability to run genetic algorithms! It's _ridiculously_ slow, like 1-3
iterations a year (!), but you can run great many in parallel, since the
device is so inexpensive — and, you know, sun-powered, so you don't pay for
running it _at all_. Beats your server farm hands down.

------
alexhektor
Great product, great design. But how will you pivot if Apple enters this
market? I'm pretty sure their design and taste should be sweeter than yours.
How do you intend to compete?

------
yawz
It would be easier to consume if the design were more modular...

~~~
monk_e_boy
And tasted like apple. (OT: In our house we call them 'rubbish orange
bananas')

------
danso
Wow, so much work was put into this product and the design, but the call to
action is put at the very bottom. What a shame, did any A/B testing go into
this?

------
memming
Nicely done. Where can I get one?

~~~
colinbartlett
You can't actually buy it yet. But you can contribute to its development via
Kickstarter. Acquaintance level donation at $5 will give you email updates
when Carrot grows. Friend level at $20 and you'll get a Carrot seed. Baby
Carrot level at $50 will get you a spot in the first harvest once development
is completed in 3 to 33 months.

------
vicbrooker
Help please!

I followed some instructions so that Carrot would be compatible with Apple,
but it's made it impossible to move without a Glass!

I don't want to be sucked into relying on overpriced peripherals... How do I
do a factory reset?

[http://www.purejuicing.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/05/apple-...](http://www.purejuicing.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/05/apple-carrot-juice.jpg)

~~~
underlines
Mashups are possible, if you put your apple and carrot device in a mixing
device it can probably made compatible in a liquid form...

------
ende42
Two years ago I implemented something different, but in green:
[https://github.com/niko/green](https://github.com/niko/green)

I had a juice version in the pipe but I didn't like that I had to use yellow
for that. It's hard to use yellow once you get used to green.

But I'm really interested in orange now so I might give carrot a try.

------
markng
No sugary. Less food than a steak. Lame.

------
yukifu19
This is one of the best things I have seen in a while. Just when I'm hitting
my head against a wall giving my pitch to investor after investor each day,
answering the same questions...here comes carrot to rejuvenate me. With
vitamins. And comedy gold.

------
swalsh
Why not just eat a cucumber?

~~~
bicx
Because this isn't communist England. Geez.

------
washedup
Nailed it. The happy/lame/sappy music with little chimes, fast paced rhythm,
and soft strumming acoustic that can be heard in commercials like this has
started to make me go insane.

------
ArekDymalski
From the enterprise perspective this is a very dangerous product as it doesn't
seem to have any security mechanisms. How can I prevent others from
unauthorized access to my carrot?

------
robinhoodexe
Awesome, although the font, in my opinion, should be sans-serif, preferebly
something like Helvetica, to be maximum web 3.0 responsive design javascript
framework startup like.

------
GoldenHomer
Wasn't there something similar that came out in 2012 called Celery? It seems
to me Carrot is a little late to the game. Either way, please shut up and take
my money.

------
smanuel
I would rather wait for v2
([http://introducingcarrotjuice.com/](http://introducingcarrotjuice.com/))

Can't handle too much fiber.

------
charlie_vill
Question is: will it blend? Or rather, will it bend?

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pshinghal
I don't know if they've updated it lately, but I'm using an old version of
Carrot and it's extremely buggy.

------
_-__---
Can't wait for integration with taproot.js

------
davidw
We love carrots at 73 Prime Numbers!

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fla
How does it compare to Apple ?

------
bgdnpn
I can only offer $3.7 billion for this startup. Can we reach an agreement?

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notacoward
It's orange? Pssht. That was _last_ year's color.

------
vojant
Any idea how to build this using Raspberry PI or Arduino?

------
lelf
On a serious note, this one is actually useful at least.

------
Xeoncross
Darn. I just renewed my 2 year contract with an apple.

------
serve_yay
Hate stuff like this

~~~
netcan
Not to be pedantic, but it's hate stuff like _that_.

~~~
golemotron
There is nothing more HN than this thread.

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juanuys
Beware of cheap imitations: almost no vitamin A.

------
wil421
How does Carrot prevent against Rabbit attacks?

~~~
underlines
Install a wall of fire between your garden and the outer world...

Or use an apple, people say rabbits don't attack apples...

------
interdrift
Now with the new API codenamed EATME

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aarondf
Is this even open source?

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waitur
lol, just like all those product introduction out there.....

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ddoolin
Now in JavaScript :)

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juliangindi
This joke has been beaten to death, and than tortured for a bit.

------
jlas
Here's another fun satirical site:
[http://html9responsiveboilerstrapjs.com/](http://html9responsiveboilerstrapjs.com/)

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kartikkumar
Now that was a complete waste of 60 seconds. Was that supposed to be funny? I
get the feeling I've been left out of an inside joke.

~~~
eddieroger
There's no joke to be left out of. The community sometimes just blows off
steam by mocking itself. I don't particularly care for it, but usually it goes
nearly as quickly as it comes.

~~~
kartikkumar
Gotcha, thanks. Shame you get downvoted without explanation around here for an
honest opinion.

