Hovertrax is Like a Segway Without Handlebars
Vancouver, Wash.-based company Investist has a new idea for rolling in style. It’s called Hovertrax, and it’s an auto-balancing, electronic transporter with two-wheeled gyro technology — or, more simply, a wiggle board with power.
The group is collecting funds for the gadget through Kickstarter, and, as of Wednesday afternoon, has already raised more than $50,000 — exceeding its original goal of $40,000, with 39 days remaining to donate
SEE ALSO: Flying Concept Car Could Hover Over Congestion
The concept behind Hovertrax is simple: Its two motors, one in each wheel, correspond with your movements. To move forward, lean in to your toes; to move backward, tilt your heels behind you. Spin the board in circles by placing one foot behind the other. The company assures there’s no learning curve — just hop on and hit the road Read more…
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Read More →Photo Project Will Send Balloon to Lower Stratosphere
NASA may have retired the space shuttle, but that doesn’t mean amateur explorers need to stay grounded, right?
The Kua Fu Initiative is a photo project raising funds through Kickstarter to send a payload capsule into the lower stratosphere to capture HD photos and videos. Doug Cambron, the project’s founder and a safety system supervisor from Perryville, Mo., said the idea for the mission stemmed from a lifelong curiosity of exploring the sky.
“Everyone who’s grown up has thought at one point or another, ‘Man, I really want to be an astronaut,’” he told Mashable. “This is a kind of a way to make that small bit of a dream come true.” Read more…
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Reporter Crowdfunds Alleged Footage of Mayor Smoking Crack
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is denying the reported existence of camera-phone footage showing him partaking in crack cocaine.
How is that video not online yet, you ask? Gawker’s John Cook posted a story describing the video, but refused to pay the sources the $200,000 they demanded for the file. Cook — who broke the story Thursday — has turned to crowdfunding platform IndieGoGo to raise the cash for the footage.
Cook’s “Rob Ford Crackstarter” has only raised $55 at press time, though three separate Ford-related campaigns have garnered approximately $2,500 between them
In a post about the campaign, Cook acknowledges $200,000 is “a lot of money,” but says his sources “fear for their safety, and want enough money to pay for a chance to get out of Toronto and set up in a new town.” He goes on to address concerns his sources may not be “reliable” kinds of people, but promises that if the deal falls through, whatever funds are raised will be donated to an unnamed Canadian non-profit that assists people with addiction. Read more…
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Read More →Pebble Smart Watch Raises $15 Million, Releases Official SDK
Everyone’s favorite smart watch — the Pebble — just raised $15 million in Series A funding. The company also released the next evolution of its official SDK, now known as the PebbleKit.
Led by Charles River Ventures, the $15 million Series A isn’t the biggest amount of funding we’ve seen in the hardware space, but it’s impressive when you consider the context of the round — and Pebble’s crowdfunding roots.
Pebble remains one of Kickstarter’s most endearing stories. More than 68,000 backers pledged over $10 million to make Pebble the most successful Kickstarter project in history.
A year later, watches are slowly but surely making their way to backers, and the developer community around the watch is heating up. Read more…
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Why Melissa Joan Hart’s Kickstarter Project Failed
It’s finally happened. Kickstarter users have said “No thanks!” to a celebrity’s film project.
The crowdfunding campaign for the film Darci’s Walk of Shame, which had Melissa Joan Hart attached to it, was cancelled Monday after raising only $51,605 from 315 backers in a little over a month. The hope was to raise $2 million.
For the unfamiliar, Melissa Joan Hart was a 1990s teen star best known for her roles in Nickelodeon’s Clarissa Explains It All and TGIF mainstay Sabrina the Teenage WitchDarci’s Walk of Shame—written by Dan Rosen— was supposed to be a comeback vehicle for the actress, who’s seen herself relegated to cable television. Read more…
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3D Print Your Sketches With Doodle3D
The talk of the tech town is all about 3D printing. From iPhone cases to guns to full-sized houses, it feels like we’ve already come close to seeing it all. But what about sketches?
A new drawing tool called Doodle3D aims to bring your playful sketches to real, three-dimensional life. The device syncs with your iPad and plugs directly into your 3D printer. After sketching a basic line drawing, like a word or stick figure, your blueprints are sent to the printer via Doodle3D’s WiFi box. Easy as that.
SEE ALSO: How 3D Printing Actually Works
Granted, the creations are pretty simple — the variety of art tools appears to be similar to those from Draw Something. But if you’re only looking to print basic shapes and doodles, it might be something worth checking out Read more…
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Read More →Meet the Kickstarter for XXX Projects: Offbeatr
A Kickstarter for the XXX world? Meet Offbeatr, the crowdfunding platform for all things adult.
It’s sort of like a Kickstarter for porn ;— a ; place to brainstorm and then create all your kinky ideas. And, if they’re popular enough, get them bankrolled. Last week the site announced they’ve funded over $280,000 for pornographic projects since their launch about nine months ago. But it’s not all NSFW fare. Instead of just the raunchy stuff you might expect, funding has also been for art, games and comic books. Unlike Kickstarter or Indiegogo, projects are only funded if they’re approved by Offbeatr users. In total, 100 adult projects have been created with 4,000 receiving funding pledges. The site has 10,000 registered users who have generated 2.5 million page views. Read more…
More about Indiegogo, Adult Content, Nsfw, Crowdfunding, and E Commerce
Benevolent Is Like Kiva for the Silicon Valley’s Working Poor
Ask the average American what comes to mind when they think of Silicon Valley, and you’ll often hear answers about the area’s booming technology sector. Less discussed even among the technology community is the skyrocketing number of poor and homeless people who live just miles from the doorsteps of such business behemoths as Google and Amazon
Silicon Valley’s technologists are beginning to pay close attention to the problem, which is evidenced by a 20% rise in homelessness over the last two years, a dramatic increase in food stamp participation and a drop in average income for minority groups Read more…
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Mad Genius Could Be a Revolutionary Game Controller
Combine the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Kinect, add incredible precision and a controller you can separate into two parts, and you get Mad Genius, a motion-controlling gamepad that could change the gaming world.
How precise is it? Try 1/100 of an inch. Watch the video demonstrating the technology with an Xbox 360 version of Skyrim, and you’ll see how it gives you full 3D control, sensing your jumps, moves and ministrations with astonishing accuracy.
So far, you’ll see a tangle of wires connected to this prototype, but this is just the beginning. Soon to land on crowdfunding site Kickstarter, the company says the final shipping product will be completely wireless. Read more…
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Storm-Chasing Photographer Captures Earth’s Power and Beauty
Camille Seaman was vacuuming her living room when the idea struck her: I should drive into the heart of a really dangerous storm.
It was during a TV show about storm-chasing, one of those behind-the-scenes mini-docs on Discovery or History, when her daughter, lounging on the couch while Seaman maneuvered the vacuum between furniture, made the playful suggestion
“She just looked up and said, ‘Hey, mom, you should do that!’” Seaman told Mashable. “And I thought, ‘Yeah, this actually looks pretty fun.’”
Just three days later, Seaman was in Kansas with a team of professional storm-chasers, helping to monitor, track and photograph monstrous cloud formations as they crept across the Great Plains Read more…
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