Commander Keen designer crowdfunds a sequel of sorts, lets us make our own (video)

Commander Keen designer crowdfunds a conceptual sequel, helps us make our own video

PC gamers of a certain age will have very fond memories of the Commander Keen series — usually trying to pogo toward a hard-to-reach gem or frantically escaping a Dopefish. Key creator Tom Hall and his startup Pieces of Fun may be playing our heartstrings like a fiddle, then, by launching a crowdfunding drive for the Keen series’ spiritual successor, Secret Spaceship Club. Along with reintroducing the core sci-fi platform hopping we know so well, the game will include its own editor to let players build their own masterpieces. Newcomers just wanting to whip up a quick map should get a simple mode with easy drawing and visual, cause-and-effect scripting; those with some coding chops will have access to an advanced mode that lets them customize the scripting for objects, cutscenes and even the win conditions. We’ll have the option to publish maps for the world to see, and the results should be playable on a swath of platforms that include Android tablets, iPads, Macs and PCs running either Ubuntu Linux or Windows.

It’s an ambitious plan, and Hall’s development house would like to raise $400,000 by March 1st to make Secret Spaceship Club a reality by February 2014. There’s perks for jumping in early, however, such as becoming an in-game character. Anyone who’s still trying to learn whether or not aliens ate their babysitter will want to at least swing by the source link.

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Via: Polygon

Source: Pieces of Fun (Kickstarter)

Warning: "Get Rich Crowdfunding" Might Not Be a Legit Business

According to government regulators, the number of registered domain names containing the word “crowdfunding” has increased from 900 to 9001 since January 2012. Many of these are just harmless parked domains, but the SEC is worried that many are opportunistic scams targeting your money. More »

Zuvo Water’s Stratus cleans your H2O with WiFi filters, cloud-connected app

Zuvo Water's Stratus promises intelligent faucet, cloudconnected water filtration

Few of us are fortunate enough to enjoy clean municipal tap water — the rest have to make do with clunky bacteria-riddled filters and wasteful bottled H2O. Enter Zuvo Water, which has hopped on Indiegogo to fund its elaborate and tech-centric Stratus water purification system. It includes WiFi-enabled hardware, filters, optional “intelligent” faucets and a cloud-connected smartphone app that’ll tell you when to swap out old cartridges for new ones. These are no ordinary filters either — they go beyond simple carbon filtration by combining ultraviolet light (UV), oxygenation, and carbon with a patented five-step process, which Zuvo claims makes it the “only filter system in the world that is self cleaning.” Beat that, Brita.

Two kinds of Stratus filters can be part of the setup: a countertop model for existing taps and another that fits under the counter to accommodate one of Zuvo’s touch-sensitive faucets designed by D2M (which was incidentally behind Kickstarter-success Instacube). The faucets come in Bamboo, Acacia tri-flow and Hibiscus designs, and with chrome, brushed nickel or oil-rubbed bronze finishes. In case you don’t have your smartphone app handy, the taps are equipped with LED lights to show the water’s filter status as well — blue means clean, yellow means not so much and red means you should probably get a new filter, pronto. In addition to managing your filters, the aforementioned app also offers a personalized hydration coach that’ll remind you of your daily water consumption needs.

Continue reading Zuvo Water’s Stratus cleans your H2O with WiFi filters, cloud-connected app

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Source: Indiegogo

How hardware startups changed the face of CES

It was all bad timing, really. Just ahead of CES 2012, Microsoft announced that year’s event would be its last, blaming product schedules that just didn’t match up with the annual show. There was no question that the tech giant’s absence would be felt the following year, the first time in recent memory the Consumer Electronics Show wasn’t kicked off by a Microsoft keynote. It signaled, perhaps, a slight shift away from the days of huge companies dominating the event’s headlines — a phenomenon helped along by the recent attention-grabbing successes of a number of crowdfunded projects, many of which were present at the show.

The move from Bill Gates to Steve Ballmer was one thing, but a CES without Redmond? That was just unheard of, a specter that loomed over the show, even as the CEA happily announced it had sold out the company’s floor space in “record time.” In the end, of course, Microsoft was still at the show, albeit in a less overt form, by way of third-party machines from Sony, Samsung and the like, and in the form of a cameo by none other than Ballmer himself — a sort of spiritual baton-passing to the company’s keynote successor, Qualcomm. Heck, even the Surface Pro reared its head backstage at the show.

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Live from the Engadget CES Stage: an interview with Indiegogo’s Slava Rubin (update: video embedded)

Live from the Engadget CES Stage an interview with Indiegogo's Slava Rubin

Crowdfunded projects have been one of the surprise success stories of this year’s CES. Thankfully, we’ve got one of the most knowledgeable people on the topic around, Indiegogo CEO Slava Rubin.

January 11, 2013 2:00 PM EST

Check out our full CES 2013 stage schedule here!

Update: President of StickNFind, Jimmy Buchheim, will be joining us as well!

Continue reading Live from the Engadget CES Stage: an interview with Indiegogo’s Slava Rubin (update: video embedded)

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Kickstarter ends 2012 with $274 million in successful pledges, bigger projects

Kickstarter ends 2012 with $274 million in succesful pledges, bigger projects

It almost goes without saying that we love crowdfunded projects. If we use Kickstarter’s 2012 wrap-up as a bellwether, there’s many others out there like us. The number of successful projects shot up 53 percent last year to 18,109, and generated $274 million from pledges to projects that met their targets — that’s about 2.7 times more just in successful contributions than was raised in total for 2011, It’s not hard to understand why if you’ve been following along. Between projects like Double Fine’s adventure game, Ouya and Sundance Festival movies, Kickstarter in some cases has generated several times the revenue that a given client needed to get going. We won’t venture a guess as to whether or not 2013 will see fiercer competition from the likes of Indiegogo or Christie Street, but any surge in truly viable, indie-built technology is good news in our book.

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Via: TechCrunch

Source: Kickstarter

GameStick brings a new Android game console to your TV, fits inside its own controller (video)

GameStick brings a new Android game console to your TV, fits inside its own controller video

OUYA likely won’t be the only Android-based game console in town this spring. PlayJam is going beyond its smart TV roots to build the GameStick, a TV-based system that fits into a shell not much bigger than a typical flash drive — it’s small enough that the finished version should stow inside its own Bluetooth gamepad and draw power from the HDMI port, like Roku’s Streaming Stick. The Jelly Bean system’s dual-core Amlogic processor isn’t as powerful as the Tegra 3 in the OUYA, but it should also lead to a slightly more tempting $79 price. PlayJam’s remaining challenge is the familiar one of reaching a crowdfunding target: the company says it needs $100,000 to go through its last development hurdles and ship the production GameStick in April. If the firm makes its goal, however, the low-cost gaming world will be delightfully crowded this year.

Continue reading GameStick brings a new Android game console to your TV, fits inside its own controller (video)

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Via: Edge Online

Source: GameStick (Kickstarter)

Insert Coin: Engadget Is Looking For Some Cool Crowdfunded Projects

submissions-expand-insert-coin-new-challengers-open

Our brothers and sisters over at Engadget are holding their first red hot, super exciting conference called Expand in SF in March. The event will feature all the boring old commercial hardware you could imagine, including the latest from all the hardware greats but, more important, they’re also reaching out to a contingent dear to my heart: crowdfunded gadgets.

Having a brilliant idea isn’t always enough. Bringing a product to market requires support, marketing and above all, funding. Lots and lots of funding – but don’t worry, we might be able to help you get there.Engadget is proud to announce the launch of Insert Coin: New Challengers, a new competition aimed at helping to make those dream gadgets a reality. If you’ve seen our long-running series about the most promising crowd funded hardware, you can imagine that concept taken to the stage for a live competition between the best of the best new inventions.

Remember: this is for unlaunched products only and, knowing the field, this will be pretty competitive, so those with solid sterling-silver iPad stands will have to take a seat. If you’re ready to run with the big dogs, pop over here and submit and let us know how it goes. You know I love the smell of fresh crowdfunded projects in the morning.

Submissions for Expand’s Insert Coin: New Challengers competition now open!

Submissions for Expand's Insert Coin New Challengers competition are now open!

Because you haven’t been living under a rock, by now you know about our big Expand event coming up in San Francisco this March (plus, you’re following us on Twitter and Facebook to be the first to get all the news, right?!). Did you also know about our Insert Coin: New Challengers competition to shine the spotlight on the best new crowdfunded hardware projects out there? You do now!

The best part is, submissions are now open — and that means you can submit your project for a chance to win free tickets to Expand, $1,000 to cover your travel costs, and a total of $25,000 in prize money! No, we’re not kidding: all this could be yours.

Read on to find out more!

Continue reading Submissions for Expand’s Insert Coin: New Challengers competition now open!

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Insert Coin: 2012’s top 10 crowd-funded projects

Insert Coin: 2012's top 10 crowd-funded projects

This trip around the sun has been a monumental one for crowdfunding, marked by big projects and astronomical numbers. Take Kickstarter wunderkind OUYA, for example, which raised more than $8.5 million in funding from 63,416 backers. Kickstarter itself has even grown and matured, expanding to the UK and putting its foot down when it comes to pitching hardware by requiring working prototypes and assessments of risks and challenges. Out of the 60 crowdfunding efforts that crossed our desks as Insert Coins in 2012, 47 were successfully funded, four still have time to rake in funds and nine fell short of their goals or were otherwise stymied. We’ve handpicked and placed the top 10 projects that won our hearts and, on occasion, our hard-earned scratch after the break.

Continue reading Insert Coin: 2012’s top 10 crowd-funded projects

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