If you’re an older gamer, you will remember the holy trinity of Sierra RPGs – King’s Quest, Space Quest, and Police Quest. All three of these games used something called “imagination” and “storytelling” to immerse early gamers in an Ad Lib sound card-induced gaming coma.
Now you can relive those heady days with a new game by the makers of Space Quest, Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe (aka “The Two Guys from Andromeda”). Their new game, called SpaceVenture, is a refresh of the old Sierra series and promises spills, chills, and horrible jokes. It’s getting funded on Kickstarter as we speak.
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Dan Misener, in a fit of inspired data mining, scraped half of Kickstarter to find failed projects. He could not, it seems, find a single one. Why? Because Kickstarter hides them behind a non-searchable wall. They exist, sure, but you won’t find them with google and they never, ever show them in their “Discover” browsing system.
And good for them.
In a general sense, Kickstarter isn’t a marketplace. It’s not like Etsy or eBay or Amazon where the slow-sellers sit next to the hot items. It is, instead, more of a competition. It’s a competition for eyeballs, for cash, and for media attention. It is more a dog show than flea market, and you don’t keep the ugly dogs on stage after the first round of judging.
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Kickstarter is a great place to launch a product. Remember the Pebble smart watch, which saw over $1 million in funding in its first 28 hours on the site, and surpassing $3 million well over a month before their stated goal?
Disrupt, which just so happens to be underway as I type these very words, is also an excellent place to launch your product. We’ve seen countless companies rise to almost instantaneous success after stepping off of our stage, like Soluto, Mint.com, Redbeacon, and GroupMe.
So it should be no surprise that Incident’s now-famous gTar, which was launched both on the Disrupt Battlefield stage and on Kickstarter, has made upwards of $120,000 on Kickstarter since launching on our stage yesterday. → Read More
Teaching kids – especially little girls – about electronics is a hard job. First, there’s the electricity. Then there’s the sense that soldering, wiring, and lining up LEDs is considerably less fun than watching Tangled. This project, called Roominate, aims to change the way girls think about electricity.
The kit consists of a set of tiny furniture with built-in wires and switches. You can wire up your dollhouse however you like, adding lamps and switches. $49 gets you one regular room and $95 gets you a “duplex.” → Read More
My set ritual before going to bed each night is as follows — turn out the lights, plug in my iPhone, take off my glasses and attempt vainly to nod off. Step two in that process can be a bit of a crapshoot in the dark, but the folks at Scrap Pile Labs have recently kicked off a new Kickstarter campaign for a product called the CordLite that just may come in handy.
As the name sort of implies, the CordLite is a dock connector cable for iDevices that, well, lights up thanks to a pair of forward-facing LEDs. It’s a very simple concept, but the thoughtful execution is what make this project worth keeping an eye on. → Read More
Is The Avengers worth your money? Do the disc-blasting Nerf guns leave a welt? How do you pull a Pebble and rein in $3 million on Kickstarter?
In this week’s TC/Gadgets webcast, we answer all this and more. → Read More
There are about a million case vendors out there ready to hook up your iThing with the utmost in protection and style, but very few differentiate in a cool way. This Kickstarter project, however, has really caught my eye with a minimalist design and smart functionality.
A company called FineGrain has recently posted their Bowden and Sheffield cases to Kickstarter with a goal of raising $20,000 by May 22. They’re nearly halfway there.
The Bowden and Sheffield solve the same problem that the Cygnett iPhone case solved for me. The iPad is beautiful, so putting a full-time case on it detracts from one of the tablet’s best qualities: its design. The Bowden and Sheffield keep your iPad safe in transit, and offer up a stand-type functionality so you can prop it up while you type or what have you, but they aren’t meant to stay on your iPad at all times. → Read More
According to the Kickstarter API blog, a bug caused 70,000 unlaunched projects to be publicly visible over the weekend, allowing folks to see goals, funding plans, and descriptions on projects that haven’t yet appeared on the site. Of the 70,000, visitors only viewed 48.
The bug exposed no financial information. → Read More
This is clever.
A new Kickstarter project aims to disrupt the pill case market. True, it’s not the sexiest industry in the world, but it’s ripe for some disruption, since there just so happens to be a huge market for it and there’s very little, if any, differentiation between current competitors.
So what is it?
Well, in a few words, it’s a pill case that’s shaped like a pen, fittingly named the CapsulePen. → Read More
Looking to relive your childhood or turn your iPad into a hackneyed political pun? You’d best get over to Ari Krupnik’s Kickstarter project. For $60 you get a red or blue case that simulates the actual Etch-A-Sketch knobs, allowing you to perform all of the deft maneuvers to which you’re accustomed. Stair steps? Easy. Long curve? Go for it. Horrible script writing? Bingo.
The product is completely licensed by Ohio Art and the company is trilled with the attention and the high-tech upgrade to their flagship product. They may even manufacture the device in Ohio Arts’ factories. → Read More
While the use case for these glasses can quickly become quite dubious, the YouGen.tv glasses by Vergence Lab are pretty cool. Not only do they instantly change from sunglasses to clear Buddy-Holly-style specs they also record your life as it happens.
Created by Jon Rodriguez and Erick Miller, the glasses will go for a $199 pledge (they’ll retail for $299) and the creators expect these things to become more powerful over time by including HUD features in future versions. → Read More
If you spent any time in high school thinking about ley lines and bio-implants, you were probably a Shadowrun player. The game, which petered out after a disastrous run as a PC/Xbox game in 2007, brought the high-tech of William Gibson to the magical realms of Mr. Gygax. It was, in short, pretty cool.
A Kickstarter project aims to bring back all that fun in video game form, adding lots of what you missed about Shadowrun back to the PC. This new version will be a RPG involving the Shadowrun world complete with various character types – elves, samurai, humans – and, although this is discouraged, deals with dragons. $15 gets you a copy of the game while $60 gets you a t-shirt and some in-game perks. → Read More
This may not have been the U.S. government’s exact intention when when it passed the crowdfunding-friendly JOBS Act, but you have to wonder if it has also jumpstarted the number of crowdfunding sites out there competing for entrepreneurs’ and consumers’ attention. The latest comes from the social and mobile games developer Apps Genius — (in)famous for its scatological riff on Angry Birds, “Angry Turds” — which today announced that it is launching a new crowd-sourced funding site, GetFunded.
Like Kickstarter and many others, GetFunded will be a “crowdfunding platform for entrepreneurs who are seeking new investments in their businesses and ideas,” according to a statement from App Genius. Adam Kotkin, the CEO of Apps Genius, clarifies that just because his company is focused on games, this doesn’t mean that GetFunded will be, too: it’s aiming for everyone and everything. He tells me the site will be launched in the coming weeks. → Read More
Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding have been two of the biggest trends to affect how businesses — especially small businesses and sole traders — raise money, with sites like Kickstarter.com and in the UK Funding Circle attracting a attention for being a great way of getting backing for projects or business ideas bypassing the traditional and expensive world of bank loans in the process.
Now a site is launching that gives this model an additional twist: AskYourUsers.com is a simple service that helps you find people for microconsulting projects lasting no more than 15 minutes — and it uses your LinkedIn network to help you find them.
From the demo that I have seen, the service is basically that simple, but it works very smoothly, and definitely solves a need — one that Dunne and her co-founder, Chris Bumgarder, essentially stumbled on unintentionally… → Read More
When’s the last time you really splurged on something for your bike? The old girl gets you around town, puts up with your ridiculous maintenance regimens, and shifts and rattles in just the right way to get you up and down the hills of your hometown. Why not show her you love her and, thanks to Blinksteady, put a ring on it.
The Blinksteady is the world’s smartest bike light (citation needed). It turns on when it’s dark and turns itself off when your bike is stopped. You no longer have to reach back to turn on your light when dusk turns to night and, better still, you never have to risk being hit by a nightblind SUV driver in some deserted late-night cul-de-sac. → Read More
Who needs governments? The ongoing trend toward mobile, social and crowdsourcing apps has led to a wealth of new community-based resources that support or supplant traditional civic and government services. Think Kickstarter instead of the NEA or Canada Council. Or consider the new Circle of 6 app, which is intended to help prevent violence before it happens, by letting users reach out to friends when dicey situations arise, instead of calling 911 after they get out of hand.
Circle of 6 is the brainchild of health educator Deb Levine and anti-violence activist Nancy Schwartzman, who have found that it’s often easier for people to reach out for help via a screen, and that it’s important for groups of friends to offer concrete strategies for supporting each other. It’s already won the White House’s Apps Against Abuse challenge, and racked up tens of thousands of iPhone downloads. “We are working to get the app in the hands of Android users as soon as possible,” says lead developer Christine Corbett Moran (an astrophysicist with a double-major Physics/CS degree from MIT, who develops apps in her copious spare time.)
Apps like Circle of 6 are the thin edge of a really interesting wedge. → Read More
SoMe is a film about the rise (and fall?) of social media. Produced by web rabble-rouser and satirist, Loren Feldman, the film will feature Feldman’s signature puppet act (it will be cool, I promise) and interviews with and segments about web luminaries like:
Some great news for small business owners, and perhaps a sign of more crowdsourced funding coming to the U.S. soon: the UK startup Funding Circle — a Kickstarter for small businesses — has just announced that it has raised a $16 million round of funding to further build up its business of enabling non-bank lending to small businesses.
The investment included participation from existing investor Index Ventures as well as new investor Union Square Ventures — a sign of how Funding Circle may have its sights set on taking advantage of the new crowdfunding laws to expand to the U.S. This Series B round takes the total raised by Funding Circle to $21 million. → Read More
February was a big month for Kickstarter. Not only did they have a number of record-breaking projects, but they were shoved into the mainstream consciousness with a flood of traditional news coverage.
But there was always the question of whether these thousands of pledges would have any lasting effect on the site. Could such a rush of attention actually have negative effects, increasing competition and bringing in more projects than the site’s population of donors can handle?
Fortunately, that doesn’t seem to have been the case. The site’s big month appears to have made a lasting increase in both projects, users, and funding. → Read More
I usually trash any email that comes my way pitching an iPad case and/or stand. Sorry, but there are just so many of them that they really need to stand out. The Mogul, a Kickstarter project, certainly stands out and just so happens to solve a bit of a pain point, too.
See, the Mogul isn’t your average iPad stand. It’s actually meant to be used as a point-of-sale module in conjunction with Square and (yep, you guessed it) the iPad. → Read More
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