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April 06 2012
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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:
February 29 2012
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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.
February 23 2012
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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.
February 10 2012
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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.
February 03 2012
The Zen Table Practices Mindfulness So You Don’t Have To
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.
The toy is a little pricey – $999 for the “table” kit, half that for the desktop version – but the concept is pretty cool. It’s basically a robotic Etch-a-Sketch with a few tricks built in. To wit:
Hello? This is Zen Table?
The coffee table version is 56″ x 39″ x 19.5″ while the desktop version is 13″ x 9.5″ x 2 1/2″. Created by video game developer Simon Hallam, the Zen table lets you draw nearly anything into the silicone sand, allowing you to complete your mandala without having to get off from work. They’re about $4,000 below their funding goal, so get over there and get zenning!
January 24 2012
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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.
January 20 2012
Marketing Genius: Two Twins Giggling As They Sell You Designer 3D Glasses
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.
The video goes a little something like this:
(giggle, giggle)
Whispered: “Let’s do that again.”
“Hey guys! How are you?”
“We’re going to show you how to use the 3D clip-on… You take off your prescription glasses, clip it on, and put your glasses back on… How cool is that?!?!”
The glasses-free twin then accuses the bespectacled twin of not having prescription glasses. And after some more synchronized giggling and what seems to be twin ESP, the duo shows off the t-shirt you’ll receive after pledging a $15 donation towards their project.
But the “commercial” can’t end before we venture back to the roots of Ingri:Dahl: the Popcorn model of fashionable 3D eyewear, and the company’s first design.
Sounds like a can’t-miss opportunity if I’ve ever heard one.
No, but seriously. I kid around, but this could actually work for the Paulsen twins, who are about $2,500 shy of their goal with ten days left to go. They’re real, fun young women who seem to really enjoy what they’re building.
If you think you might enjoy it too, just head over to Ingri:Dahl’s Kickstarter page and make a pledge. This giggling twosome deserves it.
December 15 2011
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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.
November 26 2011
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Want to be notified to turn on the AC when a room reaches a certain temperature? Or when your laundry's done? Well MIT Media Lab alumni Supermechanical have built Twine, a sleek 2.5" rubber square which connects to Wifi and allows objects to "communicate" under certain conditions. The Twine, which reminds me of a Square from a design simplicity perspective, comes with a web app, 'Spool' which allows you to program its sensors with natural language rules like "When: accelerometer is at rest, Then: Tweet" in the case of the laundry done thing, for example.
October 09 2011
Earth+Sprites
Ground Control to Major You: for a mere $300 you, too, can send a satellite into space. How? Well, a young man from Ithaca, New York (it's gorges) is planning on sending a box of tiny, self-contained, solar-powered radio transmitters into space - about 300 in all - and watch them as they transmit from near orbit. Like a murder of tiny space crows, the Sprite satellites will peep out their location and - for $300, your initials - as they circle the planet.
August 26 2011
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The perception of geeks used to be that we lived in darkened houses constantly hunched over computers, never seeing the light of day. To be honest, that was me for a bit in my younger years, but these days I've come to appreciate the outdoors a bit more. Still, my love for fresh air is only matched by my love of lazing about, and the Kammok sounds like a perfect fit for my ideal lifestyle.
August 10 2011
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I think we can all agree that one of the worst parts about buying a new gadget is the fact that it's just one more thing we'll have to charge, one more electrical socket we'll have to free up, and one more charger to keep up with. But a new Kickstarter project aims to help deal with that. From a startup called Nice, I proudly introduce to you CableKeeps.
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We covered the PenMoto when it was still a gleam in its creator's eye and, sadly, it was never completed as the designer, Kelvin Geis, cancelled it on Kickstarter. Well, friends, the PenMoto is back and it's better than ever. The new project involves the same pen mount product - a magnet holds your Wacom or drawing pen in place so you can use the keyboard and then flip it back into your hand when you're ready to draw - and $25 gets you one pen ($35 for international orders). However, Kevin has improved many of the features and reduced the manufacturing complexity considerably. Previous backers of the project will get the pen for free when it is manufactured.
July 29 2011
The Isostick Makes A Mockery Of Optical Disk Hegemony
In the old days, you used to have to put something called “optical media” into a “DVD drive” to install software and operating systems. Those days are long over thanks to an odd little USB key called the Isostick.
Although the project doesn’t officially exist – it’s almost funded on Kickstarter – the IsoStick promises to allow you to load any ISO disk image from any computer just as if it were loading it from an optical disk. Why would you want to do this? Well, some computers can’t boot directly from a USB thumbdrive and the IsoStick solves this by masquerading as an optical drive first and a thumb drive second. Almost any PC will boot from an optical disk, which makes the Isostick so useful.
You can write multiple ISOs onto the FAT32 drive and a special selector lets you pick which one to load. This means you could keep multiple install images on one USB drive and install them as needed.
Write the creators:
The isostick is targeted at IT people, computer technicians, and geeks in general that are sick and tired of carrying around lots of discs that always get lost, broken, scratched, or just stop working. Often times you’ll have to update your discs with the latest patches or virus definitions or what-have-you. With isostick it’s a breeze, just drop the new iso on the flash drive and you’re ready to go!
$225 gets you a 32GB stick and some stickers while the cheapest model costs $125 for 8GB. If you’re unsure what you’d do with this, you’re probably not the target market but they’ve had $21,000 in pledges (out of a target of $25,000) so far, so it’s likely this has always been an itch that needed scratching.
July 25 2011
The Astroclip Is A iPhone 4 Clip For Astrophotography
Amateur stargazers and peeping toms, this one is for you. The AstroClip promises to mount an iPhone 4 to any telescope with a 1.25-inch eyepiece for easy astrophotography. An iPhone 4 simply snaps into the injection molded case and then three set screws secures the case to most telescope eyepieces. This opens up all sorts of fun photography projects: shooting the moon and stars, the lady in the next building and so much more!
The project launched on Kickstarter last week and seems to be having a bit of trouble getting off the ground. This is the designer’s, Matthew Geyster, third Kickstarter project. His first project, Rustic Case for iPad and Kindle 3, was eventually funded, but his second, a dual-tipped capacitive stylus, didn’t raise enough funds. This time around Geyster is asking for a reasonable $15,000, which will cover all the costs while keeping the manufacturing in the US.
The minimum pledge is $1, but $25 comes with an AstroClip and worldwide shipping. Pledge $40 and Geyster will ship you a special edition red AstroClip along with a AstroClip t-shirt. The pledge levels continue up to $500 with each netting the backer more AstroClips. A telescope isn’t included at any level.
Say what you will about phones replacing conventional cameras. It’s happening as more and more accessory makers begin catering to that market. AstroClip is just one of the latest.
Similar mounts have been available for years; the idea isn’t anything new. But other mounts are generally expensive, specific for a certain camera, and require a sturdier telescope tripod depending on the weight of the attached camera. The AtroClip solves all those issues by working with the very popular and light iPhone 4. The project just needs a bit of kickstarting.
July 19 2011
Kickstarter Celebrates Its 10,000th Successful Project And $75M In Pledges
Crowd-funding website Kickstarter has put up an interesting retrospective post today in honor of their 10,000th successfully-funded project (an Ohio band putting together a 7″ if you’re curious). We were privy to some of these numbers (or their predecessors, anyway) when co-founder Yancey Stickler and some successful project creators took to the stage at Disrupt NYC, but now they’re here in graph and blog form for those who missed the panel.
The growth of the site is remarkable: it has funded the same number of projects in the last month as they did in their whole first year (1044). The trends seem to show some areas leveling out, but that may not be a bad thing.
We tend to look for the tech-related projects (today I posted the gorgeous Pen Type A) more than the far more popular media projects, so we have a bit of a skewed perspective on the site: the things we see are often on the more expensive and more rarely funded end of the scale, as they often require prototyping, manufacturing, and packaging. But a huge majority of the projects are in fact music and film. Fashion and games join tech at the bottom of the list, perhaps because those tend to find other avenues of bootstrapping.
One eloquent graph shows the decline in number of days required to achieve $5 million in pledges:
As you can see, it’s bottoming out. Steady growth in this display yields diminishing returns, as it will take quite a few people if they want to reduce that number from 23 to 20. And this graph shows a sudden peak in projects successfully funded (note that these graphs refer to different time periods, so don’t draw any conclusions by lining them up vertically):
That could be for a number of reasons, though Strickler and Benenson (who authored the post) offer no explanation. I would hazard a guess that they are reaching the efficiency ceiling for their staff and layout. With over 300 projects being submitted a day (according to Strickler in May), approving and monitoring them is more than a full-time job. It’s possible that the way the site is organized doesn’t scale effectively beyond this volume of projects (like app and grocery stores, where at some point the multiplicity of options makes finding what you want more difficult), but it could also be for another reason beyond the scope of the data they have revealed.
Whether Kickstarter attempts to resume that sharp growth it’s seen in the last year or whether it decides to streamline and make it a more curated experience is entirely up to them. I’d like it either way; I’m no fan of growth for growth’s sake. The next year should be an interesting one for them.
Lastly, check out this blink-inducing video of all 10,000 successful projects’ pages:
July 12 2011
The Move Lets You Wear Your iPhone Sans Straps, Look Like Tony Stark
Three things come to mind when I look at the Move, a Kickstarter project that lets you attach an iPhone to your clothes without any sort of straps, velcro, or magnets:
- “We are the Borg. You will be assimilated.”
- “The Arc Reactor, from AT&T and Stark Technologies. Now with 3G support and streaming cat videos.”
- “… what are the chances I’m cool enough to pull that off?”
So, how does it work: Glue? Jet-packs? Sorcery? It’s actually a bit simpler than that: it’s just good ol’ fashion tension.
First, you hold the Move behind a layer of clothing wherever you want the iPhone to sit. Then you place your iPhone on top of both the layer of clothing and the Move and push it into place, allowing the tension of the Move and that layer of cloth to hold it in place.
We’ll just go ahead and say it: yeah, crammin’ your iPhone into your clothes will make you look like the mega-nerd of mega-nerds — but 10 years ago, so did just owning a smartphone. With short range wireless tech, battery, and display technology all getting harder/better/faster/stronger, wearables are going to be a big part of our future (if not as a primary device, then as a means of interacting with the primary device and your environment), and this is sort of a hacky way to make your iPhone into a sort of psuedo-wearable today. Today’s mega-nerd is tomorrow’s cool kid.
One thing the video doesn’t really touch on where it should have: just how snugly is this thing held in? It’s obviously snug enough for jogging (see 1:37 in the video below), but if my iPhone is going to get an untimely introduction to the cold, hard concrete just because I danced a bit too hard, the idea sort of falls apart.
The guys behind the project say they need $25k to get things moving, of which they’ve currently only raised about $250. As it’s a Kickstarter project, they’re looking to fund it all through pledges; $2 makes you a contributor, $25 gets you a Move, $45 gets you two, with other options available for those looking to kick down some more cash.
July 07 2011
Josh Harris Takes His Wired City To Kickstarter
For the past year, Josh Harris has been trying to get funding for his Wired City concept. It’s a crowdsourced Internet TV station where all the viewers are also the broadcasters, multicasting to each other and the World Wide Web.
If this sounds a little like the documentary movie We Live In Public that is because Harris was its subject. He also founded Jupiter Communications and Pseudo a decade ago, but he’s a little bit eccentric. His ultimate vision for Wired City is wild (check out my interview with him from last year below). Harris once told me that all he needed was $50 million to build it. I suggested he might want to start with a smaller, less expensive piece of it to prove it out.
Now he’s taken his idea to Kickstarter, where he is trying to raise $25,000 to build a “net television pilot.” That will probably be enough for the uniforms, and might help him secure some angel money to get a real production going. “More importantly,” he tells me, “it is a litmus of audience interest in the thing.”
In it’s first day, the project has already raised $2,108. I bet he could raise the entire $500,000 on Kickstarter if he wanted to. It’s perfect for Kickstarter because it’s kind of half-movie, half-Internet startup.
You won’t get any shares in Wired City for contributing, but you will get “privileges for being a founding member,” including a “day of cyber-living on the Wired City set (non-transferable)” and maybe even a “Wired City cadet bandana.” If you pledge $2,500 or more you get:
A Wired City Official dress uniform including jacket, pants, socks, underwear, collared shirt, t-shirt and formal hat. Seven days (for four) of cyber-living on The Wired City set (transferable). PLUS one year of VIP status (including prime capsule hotel living quarters), a personal video assistant and special powers/privileges. PLUS 20,000 BoWC credits.
Well, what are you waiting for?
March 29 2011
Kickstarter: The Cosmonaut Stylus Treats Tablets Like Whiteboards, Not Paper (and that’s awesome)
Kickerstart is really the go-to place for all things iPad/iPhone. If you have a random case you wanna sell, put it up on Kickstarter. It’s kind of a running joke with us right now because of the sheer amount of iPad products on the site. But the Cosmonaut is different. It’s actually clever.
Tablet users should understand the benefit here. Writing on an iPad isn’t like writing on paper. It’s different and as the embedded Kickstarter video explains, the experience is more like using a white board and so this stylus was designed with that in mind. The kicker (get it? because it’s on Kickstarter? nvm) is that this project doesn’t have multiple tiers of funding. Pledge what you want. There’s only 3000 funding slots open and pledges start at just a $1. Clever.
March 10 2011
Wanna Be A Movie Producer? Just Give $250 To Jon Heder & Nick Peterson On Kickstarter
A couple weeks ago, we noted an interesting new project that had popped up on Kickstarter: an animated short film by Nick Peterson and Jon Heder. Heder, of course, is an actor known for his roles in Blades of Glory, Mama’s Boy, and yes, Napoleon Dynamite. He clearly could have funded this project himself, but he and Peterson decided to give Kickstarter a try to raise the $27,000 required to make the film.
I got the chance to talk with both Heder and Peterson the other day to ask them about the experience so far. The project still has 16 days of fundraising to go, and so far they’ve gotten about $4,000 in pledges, so they have a ways to go yet. But the two have good insight as to how exactly the process works for this type of project — and it’s clearly very much an experiment for them. If it works, they envision doing other movie projects this way — Heder even has some thoughts on if it could work for larger-scale projects.
So far, the $25 donation options for the film is the most popular one. But the $250 gets you an associate producer credit, and $1,000 gets you a co-producer credit. So if you ever wanted to be on IMDb, here’s your shot. Watch the full interview above — you can donate to the film on Kickstarter here.
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