Kickstarter is seemingly a place where people go to make iDevice accessories. Some are hits, most are not. The Sonastand is clearly the former. Apple’s Johnny Ives would probably even approve of this one.
The story goes that the Sonastand’s creators are, as one of them puts it on Reddit, two normal nerdy dudes trying to do their thing. To be honest their creation is not very novel but it’s still rad as hell. All the Sonastand does is prop up the iPhone 4 in a way that connects the dock’s passive speaker horn to the phone’s tiny speaker. But it’s not just empty claims compensated by sexy looks. The creators tested the Sonastand and found its passive horn significantly boost mid and high-end frequencies. TWiT will never sound the same. → Read More
Well, Kickstarter, it looks like you’ve finally arrived. And I don’t just mean that you launched 27K projects, saw $99 million pledged, or attracted 30 million+ visitors last year — which equalled a sizable increase in activity on your Internets compared to the year prior. No, no, no, I mean that your winning crowdfunding model has been adopted by the adult industry. Clearly. Indeed, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and Groupon certainly saw its fair share of flatterers after its launch, but it didn’t inspire a response from porn, at least not in the early days. (Though there are those that are trying, god bless them.) → Read More
Most Kickstarter projects are some permutation of the words iPad,iPhone,case,stand,shell, and stylus. But this project is a permutation of the words long-form, journalism, and website. The project, called #MATTER, is the brainchild of Jim Giles and Bobbie Johnson and hopes to bring thoughtful, long-form journalism to the tabletweb.
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Tabber is an upcoming Kickstarter project that essentially adds an LED light show to your guitar and, more importantly, allows you to learn to play chords and solos by following the lights on the fretboard.
The idea is definitely not new. The Fretlight guitar beat these guys to the punch and I wonder what patent issues they will have to deal with. However, as an idea, it’s pretty ingenious. The Tabber is a “sleeve” that fits over the neck of your guitar and it should work, as the folks at Tabber reiterate, on any git-fiddle in your possession.
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Last year I locked up my bike over on Pike street for an evening out with my friends. When I came back a few hours later, both my headlight and taillight had been stolen. What a crackhead was going to do with my budget headlight I don’t know, but the real problem was that I had to ride home in the middle of the night with no lights.
Brad Geswein and Slava Menn had a friend in a similar situation, except unlike me, he was actually hit by a car. They decided that they’d make a bike light that was not only impossible to steal, but pretty much indestructible as well. And here it is, on Kickstarter. → Read More
I’ve played through my share of tower defense games in my day — and have gotten hopelessly addicted to a few of them — but none really approach Andy Wallace’s Doodle Defense when it comes to execution. You see, instead of dragging and dropping pre-made parts onto a field, players must defend against invaders by drawing their own towers and obstacles on a whiteboard. → Read More
They say when it rains, it pours. That’s not usually a good thing, but when it’s raining money, things are a little different. That was the case at Kickstarter yesterday, where they had their biggest day of funding ever, beating the record set… the day before yesterday.
It was also the day that marked the first Kickstarter project to break $1,000,000 in funding. And the day that marked the second project to hit that number. And New York’s city council endorsed the site as a way to highlight community projects that need funding. Oh, and they’re on Portlandia.
Definitely the biggest day in the site’s history, then. They’ve commemorated it with a great blog post that might just make your Friday a little better. It also brings up a few new and interesting questions regarding how the site should or will be used. → Read More
If you played PC games in the 90s, chances are you played some of Tim Schafer’s work. He worked on the Monkey Island Series and Day of the Tentacle, later going on to create such classics as Grim Fandango and Psychonauts. He recently took to Kickstarter to try and score some funding for a new point-and-click adventure game, as most publishers would consider the genre more or less untouchable these days.
He figured there were enough people out there who wanted a new adventure game that they could scrape together $400,000. That was last night. They hit their goal in 8 hours, and are likely to break a million dollars before the end of the day. In fact, just since I started this post, I’ve had to adjust the headline to reflect an additional $50,000 $70,000 $100,000 that has been pledged. → Read More
Remember those little Zen rock gardens they used to sell for desks? So you could take a minute of your busy day to contemplate the void? Thanks to the magic of Kickstarter, you can build your own automatic, desktop-based Zen garden that will rake itself into endless patterns.
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Those of our readers old enough to remember the 90s will almost certainly recall cassette tapes fondly. The clacky little tapes and their creaky cases have more or less disappeared from the world, and no surprise: they were fragile, limited, and sounded pretty bad.
But they were also hugely empowering, and helped produce in an age of comparative consumer powerlessness the same feeling we take for granted today: that we should be able to copy, lend, and duplicate the content we’ve bought. Cassette is a documentary looking for a few bucks on Kickstarter that hopes to highlight cassette culture then and now. → Read More
A couple years back, I got to take part in the production of a music video being shot locally on a RED and filmed partially on board a custom helicopter build. It was interesting watching the operator and director work using the rig, but I was struck by how very specialized the copter was. Built from scratch by AerialPan Imaging, it was far from a personalized or affordable solution.
A new Kickstarter project called eye3 intends to make just that: an affordable aerial platform that can be automated and controlled from afar, yet is robust and customizable enough to meet the demands of serious photographers. → Read More
If you thought Apple’s marketing squad was genius, just wait until you watch this Kickstarter video from Ingri:Dahl. If you aren’t already familiar with the “company,” which you shouldn’t be, it’s basically two sisters named Kine and Einy, and they want to sell you a 3D clip-on for your glasses.
It’s actually rather clever. The girls market fashionable 3D eyewear, and this 3D clip-on is just the latest in their collection. But that isn’t really the point.
I’m more interested in how this set of twins is pitching their product. A glance at their website would lead you to believe that they’ve got a legit business (and I believe that’s the case), but the way they market themselves and their products on Kickstarter begs to differ. → Read More
This Kickstarter project aims to rend the very fabric of space and time. The product is a camping pot for boiling water and doing a little cooking in a pinch but get this: the pot is made of paper.
The pot is completely biodegradable and folds flat in your backpack. It’s mostly designed for a single use although you can feasibly boil a few bottle-fulls of water in it over time. The foods you cook must contain water but they are not limited to highly liquid consumables: → Read More
The nominations have been tabulated and the votes are in. Over 300,000 nominations were calculated across 20 categories. Along with our partners GigaOm and VentureBeat, we are very proud to announce the finalists for 2011′s best in technology. Voting begins now.
For 2011, we’ve added some new categories. Best Location App, Best Cloud Services and Biggest Social Impact join the Crunchies ranks this year. You’ll also find Best Social App (Google+ is up against Facebook Timeline, the New New Twitter, Instagram, and Path 2.0), the NYC-dominated category of Best Shopping App, Best New Startup and the year’s best VC’s and Angel Investors. Newcomers like Task Rabbit’s Leah Busque and Keith Rabois for his angel investments (Airbnb, LinkedIn, Yammer, Path, YouTube) made the list of finalists, as well as industry favorites such as Marc Andreessen, Jack Dorsey, Mark Pincus and Ron Conway.
In addition to today’s announcement of the Finalists, we are happy to release our next batch of tickets through Eventbrite. The release begins now, so act fast and get them while you can. → Read More
Some projects you want to succeed just because they’re something the world should have. Even if they’d be expensive, dangerous, and probably not as cool as you want them to be. Case in point: spnKiX, a pair of battery-powered skates that scoot you around at up to 10MPH, and look as futuristic as they sound.
They do indeed look like something from the future, though after a few hours of racing through trash and dust, they’ll look like a little more 21st century. I’m not a fan of the stylized name, but maybe in the future vowels are precious and the letter C has been eliminated. So I’ll let it fly. → Read More
While I find that I like my ferrite-based Kickstarter art projects to be a bit more automatic, the Ferrite Interactive Liquid Sculpture is still pretty cool. It’s a tube containing a Ferrofluid – a suspension of ferrite particles – that is shock-resistant enough to survive a few tumbles. You can use a magnet to create odd shapes, experience the magic fo magnetics, and you can put it on your desk and toy with it as you wait for 5 o’clock to roll around.
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The last few times I’ve brought my camera out into the wilderness, I’ve had a few fears regarding its safety. Sure, a foam case will prevent the lens from getting scratched and so on, but what it is mauled by a bear, or we are attacked by werewolves? Most hard cases, like those from Pelican, are reliable but bulky, designed for air travel with multiple lenses, but not hiking or climbing and quick access.
This Kickstarter project, the Cam Crate, hopes to make a simple hardened case for your full-size SLR and its attached lens. → Read More
I’m a little ashamed to admit that I spent the tail end of my high school career goofing off and trying desperately to appear cooler than I actually was. Fortunately for our future, people like Luis Cruz exist: this recent high school graduate designed the Eyeboard, a low-cost, open source eye tracking solution meant to make communication easier for disabled users.
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Editor’s Note: This week we’re running a three part series by Steven Isaac, a programmer with an amazing resume including stints at Sun, Microsoft, and even a hardware start-up that brought the first (non-portable) tablets. For years he’s dreamed of an easy-to-use device with a full keyboard that slides out when needed and, together with a designer, he built the Touchfire, a fully funded Kickstarter project that has only 10 days to go before production begins.
We asked him to create a series of short posts about his experience with the Kickstarter process and offer you, the hardware hackers out there, some advice and best practices. The entire series appears here.
Brad and I are sitting in his office, waiting for the FedEx guy to arrive with our B39 prototype. The fate of our company lies in the balance. FedEx comes at last, and we rip open the package.
Jubilation! Not just one but several B39 keys had the required behavior. They also feel really good to type on. Is that a tear I see in Brad’s eye? He did it, TouchFire lives! Every key design we have made since descends from one of those B39 keys. → Read More
Editor’s Note: This week we’re running a three part series by Steven Isaac, a programmer with an amazing resume including stints at Sun, Microsoft, and even a hardware start-up that brought the first (non-portable) tablets. For years he’s dreamed of an easy-to-use device with a full keyboard that slides out when needed and, together with a designer, he built the Touchfire, a fully funded Kickstarter project that has only 10 days to go before production begins.
We asked him to create a series of short posts about his experience with the Kickstarter process and offer you, the hardware hackers out there, some advice and best practices. Read part one here. The entire series will appear here.
I knew what I wanted – a soft, rollable keyboard for tablets – but I didn’t have an inkling how to get my keyboard idea made. That’s when I met Brad.
Brad is both a mechanical engineer and an industrial designer, a rare but extremely useful combination. He started his career at HP, and then went to the legendary design firm IDEO. In a strange twist of fate, Brad had done the mechanical design of the EO tablet while at IDEO. But our paths never crossed. → Read More
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