One interesting element of Google I/O this year were the sensors laid out everywhere around Moscone tracking environmental data throughout the event. Those types of sensors are now all around us, including in our phones and in various smart home devices, and now a new Kickstarter project from ManyLabs wants to help kids get familiar with them very early on. → Read More
Smart watches are all the rage, and judging by the turnout and level of enthusiasm at the recently year one meetup for Pebble Kickstarter backers in San Francisco which I attended last week, there’s at least a passionate niche audience for the things. So it isn’t surprising to see them continue to pop up on Kickstarter. A new one called Agent has a few unique tricks, however, which its creators… → Read More
There’s plenty of buzz about the concept of making our cities “smarter” — that is, loading them up with sensors and data-driven services to improve efficiency and quality of life. Hell, even Google has taken to loading up its event venues with scores of sensors.
Most of the discussion out there deals with how local governments are working toward this lofty, nebulous goal, but a team called… → Read More
A lot of people don’t carry cameras anymore, now that they have smartphones. But that means that you could miss opportunities to capture great moments, especially when you’re missing out on the great optical zoom available on some more expensive or specialized dedicated camera devices. That’s what Snapzoom hopes to fix with its binocular mount for smartphone cameras, and the best part is that it’s… → Read More
Tom and Tony Cannon are former Silicon Valley programmers who, in 2011, turned to indie game making. They are launching a new game, called Stonehearth, that looks like a cross between Civilization, Minecraft, and Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. → Read More
The Infinity Cell is a kinetic charger for the iPhone that uses your body’s movement to generate electricity. The current prototype for the Infinity Cell is a crude 3D printed rectangle, roughly the size of a pack of cigarettes, linked up to the iPhone with a cable. The plan is to create a more streamlined version during the product’s Kickstarter campaign. → Read More
My car’s steering wheel has taken a beating because of the all the lousy drum fills I’ve banged out on it over the years, and at least one entrepreneur thinks that experience could use a little bit of improvement.
Gregor Hanuschak (who, in a previous life, worked for NASA) has put together a Kickstarter project for the Smack Attack, an in-car gadget that lets users make those steering wheel… → Read More
Designers Dave and Calvin Laituri have joined forces to kickstart Pucs, small, stainless-steel icecube replacements that promise to chill your drink without wetting it down. The Pucs are milled of solid steel and come in a handsome wooden tray that you can place right into the freezer. → Read More
San Francisco-based Boreas Gear, Inc. is funding its latest product through Kickstarter, in an attempt to build a modular pack system that provides three bags in one. If you’re a bag enthusiast like myself (that might not be a real thing but I still have tons of them) then you’ll appreciate the idea of a simple system that makes it easy to covert a single frame into a daypack, waterproof bag and… → Read More
I was fortunate enough to spend a solid chunk of my adolescence strapped into an ill-fitting vest and shooting lasers at friends of mine, but a group of technically minded youngsters and their mentors in southern California didn’t just want to play laser tag.
No, the crew at San Diego-based ThoughtSTEM wanted to whip up a (slightly) more subtle laser tag system of their own, and they’re just… → Read More
GameStick, a would-be OUYA competitor that got funded via Kickstarter, has had its launch delayed. The device achieved backing on Kickstarter in February and originally planned to start shipping in March, with “fulfilment to customer” pegged for April. But the launch has now been delayed until June — with the project creators saying it’s been a victim “of the success we have created”. → Read More
A new Kickstarter campaign from San Antonio-based Ubertronix, Inc. aims to turn your Android smartphone into a wireless trigger for your DSLR. The project follows others that offer similar devices, but this one, the brainchild of Josiah Leverich, who founded Ubertronix a little over a year ago to build camera remote hardware, has some unique elements, including a way to use your smartphone as a… → Read More
I love my tiny little Mazda, but I’ll be honest — I still don’t completely understand how it works. That’s never really bothered me before (I’d much rather geek out over a phone or something) but a Kickstarter project from a small team in Boston has me itching to pay more attention to what’s really going on under the hood. Long story short, Dash combines a Bluetooth 4.0-enabled dongle that plugs… → Read More
It’s not as compact as an Aeropress, but the Nomad looks like a solid way to get an espresso shot from a small device. The tiny machine, which is currently on Kickstarter, boasts the same principles used in full-sized espresso machines. The Nomad is just a lot smaller, more efficient, and doesn’t require any power making it a portable machine — hence the name.
The company is looking for… → Read More
Austin-based Moniker Guitars is running a Kickstarter campaign to create a line of semi-hollow-body guitars for discerning git-fiddlists. The company will offer their first guitars for a $700 pledge, not bad for a hand-made guitar from rockabilly city. → Read More
Another established hardware startup is turning to Kickstarter to help fund its next wares. This time it’s the turn of Click & Grow, maker of the smart garden that lets you grow a plant indoors with little or no intervention. After selling over 50,000 units of its first device, the Palo Alto, U.S. registered company with an R&D lab in Estonia, is launching a crowdfunding campaign to get… → Read More
After the initial success of the Kickstarter campaign for a movie based on the TV show Veronica Mars (with a goal of $2 million, it has currently raised $3.9, and there are still 17 days to go), I had a chance to interview the show’s creator Rob Thomas and his agent Julien Thuan about what’s next for the movie, as well as what the campaign’s success means for other TV shows and films.
There’s… → Read More
The Jambox (or its many equivalents) is fine, but I much prefer the experience of visiting second-hand shops around the city in hopes of finding a tower speaker relic that smells musty but still has a richness of sound and vintage appeal. Now a new Kickstarter project wants to help make sure proper speakers (the kind with removable cloth covers built strictly for sound first and style second) can… → Read More
A few years ago, I received a panicked phone call from a friend I hadn’t heard from in months. His Internet connection was on the fritz, and he had a huge project due the next morning. He’d called his ISP, and they were no help. As his only friend that, as he said, “knew computers and stuff”*, I was bound by International Homie Law to fix his crap. → Read More
Tiny smartphone thermometer accessory Thermodo is on a funding roll, and it hopes to keep things going with new backer levels that it has shared exclusively with TechCrunch. Two new colorways are in development for funding milestones, as well as Windows Phone app support, and now third-party developer are revealing that they will be working with some specific third-party apps. → Read More
Australian hardware startup and Kickstarter success story LIFX has good news for people who missed out on backing the initial project: it’s opening up a second round of pre-orders, with a new production run of 100,000 units, sold directly through its website. LIFX sold out its pre-order allotment on Kickstarter in just six days, blowing past $1M, which is 10 times its original funding target. → Read More
Remember Keyboard Cat? Of course you do. It’s pretty much the Citizen Kane of the YouTube generation.
The meme’s creator has raised $200k+ on Kickstarter for a Cards Against Humanity-esque game wherein you pit mythical creatures against each other and argue which would win a fight. Which is perfect, because there’s nothing us geeks love more than arguing about stuff that doesn’t exist. → Read More
Smartphones have a lot of on-board sensors, but do they really have enough? No way, say a slew of recent hardware startups, of which Danish Vavuud is only the most recent. Vavuud is turning to Kickstarter to help build a smartphone-compatible wind meter, one that miraculously contains no electronics and yet still can communicate accurate wind speed measurements wirelessly to iPhones and Galaxy… → Read More
It’s not easy being a crowdfunding tiddler in a pond where sharks like Kickstarter and Indiegogo are known to swim. Which doubtless explains why a group of homegrown U.K. crowdfunding sites have banded together to launch a self-regulating trade body. The 12 founder members include startup seed funding platform Seedrs and video games funding platform Gambitious. → Read More
Any geek worth his fedora and duster will know the name Days of Wonder immediately. The company makes some of the best boardgames around (Cargo Noir needs to win an Emmy) and Small World is probably the best fantasy game I’ve played in a long time. Now you can take part in an effort to bring Small World 2 to a tablet near you. → Read More
If you were a fan of the teen detective TV show Veronica Mars, this was an exciting morning — creator Rob Thomas launched a Kickstarter campaign to finance a Veronica Mars movie. (I’m a fan, and I’ve backed the project.)
But even if you didn’t watch the show, the campaign should be cause for some excitement. That’s because (as a Kickstarter spokesperson confirmed) this is the first project to… → Read More
Julie Uhrman, the CEO/Founder of the smash Kickstarter-project-turned-gaming-console known as OUYA, was the third keynote speaker at SXSW Interactive 2013. Interviewed by The Verge’s Joshua Topolsky, the two dove in the intricacies and challenges of crowd funding and creating a new hardware startup. → Read More
When you think of crowdsourcing, you usually imagine something like the Pebble smart watch or the Misfit Shine – gadgets that are hard to build in mainstream ways but take off by sparking a groundswell of support. But what about a crowdfunded Tesla museum? Or how about a grocery store that uses no packaging? Those kinds of projects are what Slava Rubin, founder of Indiegogo, is most excited about… → Read More
After I shelled out something like $200 for a Kinect bundle that I ended up shoving in a closet, the team at 4tiitoo may have finally given me a reason to dig the thing out. The Munich-based company recently kicked off a Kickstarter campaign to let Kinect owners control their PCs with little more than some subtle glances, thanks to a $50 add-on they’re calling the eyeCharm. → Read More
Danish startup Robocat has built a lot of software for Apple’s iOS devices, but today the company is branching out with the launch of a new hardware accessory for the iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. It’s called Thermodo, and it’s a very small hardware thermometer that fits in your device’s headphone jack, and transmits real temperature data for use in apps. → Read More
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