This developer wants to use iBeacons to help you lose weight

iBeacons promise to change the way brick-and-mortar establishments get us to shop, and we’ve seen a number of interesting implementations emerging already. But innovative developers could help push the technology into new territories.

One indie developer is looking to help people lose weight using Apple’s technology, with the launch of the Carrot Hunger app for iPhone.

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Carrot Hunger is a talking calorie counter that rewards you for eating healthy foods and prods you with a verbal stick for eating too much. You can manually enter the food item into the app or use the built-in barcode scanner to log the meal you devoured. Carrot Hunger then translates calories into actionable items, such as how far you need to run to counteract that pizza.

However, it’s the use of iBeacons that are particularly interesting.

With Carrot Hunger, you can place an iBeacon in, say, your fridge, and the app will issue a gentle reminder to record your food intake through the app when you approach the fridge.

If you’re nearing your pre-set calorie intake for the day, Carrot will issue a shrieking alarm. And if you’re already over the limit, a voice will scream at you.

Quirky Carrot

Quirky is certainly one word to describe the series of Carrot apps created by Philadelphia-based Brian Mueller, who embeds light-hearted bullying into the heart of his creations.

With apps for to-do lists, reverse to-do lists, keeping fit, and waking up, Mueller has amassed almost a million downloads over the past couple of years. He has built a solid reputation as a builder of fun, well-designed applications that are, well, really quite rude to you.

As we wrote at the launch of the Carrot to-do list app back in 2013, it’s a “condescending, sadistic program that resides in your iPhone with the sole purpose of putting you down as you carry out real-life tasks.” Elsewhere, in the Carrot Fit app, you’re told to “transform your flabby carcass into a Grade A specimen of the human race,” rather than being asked politely to go for a run and cut down on the cream cakes.

With Carrot Hunger, Mueller ditches dull push notifications and ushers in a genuinely fun, perhaps even effective, way of keeping you on your toes while battling the pounds. And the one-man band says if the app is successful, he plans to bring more people on board to grow the Carrot brand further.

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Meanwhile, check out the official Carrot Hunger app promo skit below.