Hasta La Gadget!

Trying to raise $32 million via crowdfunding always looked overly ambitious. And indeed it has proved to be so. Canonical’s Ubuntu Edge Indiegogo campaign to build a smartphone designed for converged computing has fallen considerably short of its target, ending with the fixed funding project receiving nothing at all — which, when you’ve got pledges worth around $12 million, has got to hurt. The campaign ran from July 22 to August 21.

The Edge, which promised to be both a high end Android and/or Ubuntu-powered smartphone and also an Ubuntu-powered desktop replacement, never looked like it would climb its own crowdfunding Everest, as Canonical was forced to keep coming up with new tricks to try to eke out more backers. The price of the device was lowered, dropping from $830 to $695, plus additional price tiers were added. It even offered backers the ability to vote on the next model’s specs if the project hit its target. Which sounds like a nice carrot — but not a $32 million carrot.

The largest sum raised via crowdfunding to date remains the $10.2 million garned by the Pebble smartwatch (via Kickstarter) — a project which had a far more modest $100,000 goal. If Canonical had plumped for a more modest funding target it too could be taking home multiple millions of dollars right now. Albeit, the cost of building a high end smartphone is of course hugely higher than building a smartphone accessory like Pebble — as Canonical noted:

We’ve set such a high crowdfunding target for a good reason. Between design, certification and manufacture, the costs of building a new phone are huge — but the more we produce, the lower the final cost of each handset. Setting such an ambitious target means a more competitive price per device.

It’s all about scale. To offer the final product at a competitive price we need to produce enough volume to bring the unit costs down. At the same time, we want to be selecting parts that are not yet proven for multi-million-unit production. This is the balance we found. A lower funding target might seem more likely to succeed, but the individual perk amounts would have to be significantly higher. We believe this funding target and these perk levels give us the best chance of success.

In the event Canonical raised just over a third of their overly ambitious funding target, and generated plenty of publicity trying. Which may ultimately have been mostly what the campaign was about. We’ve reached out to the company to ask what their plans are post-Indiegogo unfunding and will update this story with any response. Their project page also notes: “If we don’t reach our target then we will focus only on commercially available handsets and there will not be an Ubuntu Edge. All contributions will be fully refunded.”

Update: In an interview with The Guardian, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth appears to confirm this is the end of the road for the top-end Edge ‘superphone’ concept but he told the newspaper that carriers and handset makers are interesting in building lower end handsets running Ubuntu Mobile.

The Edge received around 27,500 publicly listed backers, including Bloomberg which pledged $80,000 for 100 Edge devices — the sole backer at the top tier enterprise pledge level.

The project raises some interesting questions about the limits of crowdfunding for funding complex hardware projects. Many more modest hardware projects do very well on crowdfunding platforms but there is clearly a funding sweet spot considerably far south of the multi-millions Canonical was hoping to raise (suggesting Elon Musk probably shouldn’t bother trying to crowdfund a $6 billion Hyperloop). At the Edge funding level, investor/VC backing appears to be the only game in town.

As a quantified-self junkie and a huge slob, I enjoy attaching all manner of electronics to my body. That’s why I was excited about the LUMOBack. It’s basically a position sensor that you strap around your waist – under your clothes – and use to measure your posture and sleeping positions. It is, in a word, amazifuriating.

First, I think we all honestly need this thing. After years of being hunched over a keyboard, most of us look like Quasimodo’s tanned cousins. We could also try standing up a little more and maybe get out of the house once in a while. The LUMOBack helps on all these fronts. First, it buzzes when you slouch. Then, with the help of an iOS app, it tells you how many steps you’ve walked and how many times you stood up during the day. Future versions of the app will nag you more specifically, reminding you to stand every thirty minutes or so and offer more detailed feedback on your posture. There’s even a posture score that rates you compared to the average LUMOBack user. A little man turns from orange to green on your iPhone screen when you’re sitting up straight, allowing you to fine tune your posture. In short, it’s pretty amazing.

Even though it can do all that, however, I’m about to throw this thing into the East River.

I would, if given the opportunity, love to punch this green guy in the face. He buzzes at me almost constantly. To be fair, my problems with the LUMOBack stem from my own poor posture. See, once you begin using the device you attempt to overcorrect. Move a little too far to the back and the green figure that represents you standing with perfect posture turns sad and orange. Then you get a buzz. Then, 11 seconds later, you get another buzz. Then the LUMOBand forgets about you for a while. And then it buzzes again. It’s like the scene in Ghostbusters when Bill Murray zaps the dude even though he’s getting most of the ESP cards right.

This is wildly annoying after a while and I tend to rip the LUMOBack off my body and, later, sheepishly strap it back on like a cowed Logan’s Run prisoner. Then it buzzes when I’m standing straight. Then it buzzes at me on toilet. Then it buzzes at me when I’m trying to fix a ceiling fan. Boom. Off it goes, into the river.

The LUMOBack means well. If you sit all day – I mostly stand these days, thankfully – then the LUMOBack might be just the thing for you. Seeing the little dude bent over and sad is impetus enough to straighten up and stand up once or twice a day. As an exercise help mate, however, you’re left wanting. I’d love for the device to help me maintain posture during squats, runs, and push ups but for the most part it’s not designed for that. The sleep positions are fun but not as helpful as, say, a Basis band. I’d also love to see a desktop representation of my crooked spine so I don’t have to unlock my phone, but that’s not yet available.

Obviously this is LUMOBack 1.0 and I’m willing to hand it to the creators – they made a very usable, very simple product that addresses a problem that we all have. Will it cure backaches? Probably not, but it will allow far more self-awareness in terms of posture and body positioning while we spend our long hours at keyboards, mice, and consoles. It is frustrating, to be sure, especially if you’re a pre-scoliotic mess like myself. However, it’s important.

If you’re a quantified self fan, the LUMOBack can be another weapon in your probably already impressive arsenal. At $150 it’s kind of a single-use item (until the software gets better) so you’d better really be interested in your lower back if you strap this on. If you’re worried that you’re not standing up enough, however, then you can probably just set a timer or something and just sit up straighter. To paraphrase Dr. Steve Brule, it’s for your health, dummy. It’s not hard! Just please don’t buzz me again, LUMOBack. Please?

Google has just released a version of Field Trip for Glass Explorers, meaning the Niantic Labs project that offers users fun destinations, tips, facts and other information about the world around now has a very logical place on the computer you wear in your face that constantly whispers in your ear.

It’s so logical, in fact, that Field Trip was actually originally designed for Glass, according to Niantic Labs boss John Hanke speaking to CNET. In a video demoing the Field Trip on Glass experience, you can see how the app works in action as you day trip around and do fun things like hike through Napa Valley. It seems like a pretty good fit based on that demo, though how it works in person is likely somewhat less idealized.

Field Trip launched on Android about a year ago today, and the Glass app was the original target, but the platform wasn’t ready for it at the time, Hanke told CNET. He also added that a future convergence with Google Now might be in the cards (that’s an amazing pun), which also makes sense given how similar Field Trip’s functions are to the omnipresent Google Android assistant.

The Glassware for Field Trip is essentially a stripped down version of the Android app as-is, and allows people to get more or less information on a more or less frequent basis about the world around them based on customized settings. It’s a passive experience that presents Cards, and can even read them to you automatically depending on your location, and it shows one of the ways in which Glass’ unique design could give it a definite advantage or traditional devices like smartphones.

Microsoft previewed its Bing for Schools initiative back in June, an opt-in program for educational institutions that allows schools to sign up to offer a version of Bing to their students that drops advertisements and increases privacy protections. The Bing for Schools program launches for K through 12 schools today, and as an added bonus, using it will earn users points that their school can redeem for free Surface RT tablets.

Students, parents and anyone else who wants to contribute get credits via Microsoft’s Bing Rewards program for using the search engine, and can add those to a general pool for a specific school. Once a school hits 30,000 points, it gets a free Surface RT tablet, complete with a Touch Cover (the one with the capacitive keyboard built-in). The conversion is roughly such that about 60 users contributing to a school and using Bing as their default search engine can earn a school a Surface RT per month, which actually sounds pretty good.

Of course, the Surface RT is not the finest of all devices under the sun, and some argue that it probably shouldn’t exist to begin with. But at least they’ll do some good in schools, as opposed to sitting around on store shelves. And for Microsoft, the benefit is getting more hardware in the hands of educational institutions and students; that’s a highly attractive market to any computer or software maker.

The Bing for Schools pilot project launches today in a number of districts that have signed up to take part in the pilot project, which covers over 800,000 students going into the new school year. In addition to the benefits listed above, the program also offers automatic strict filtering of adult content, as well as lesson plans based on the Bing home page, broken up into three categories targeted at grades K-4, 5-8 and 9-12.

If you’re already Binging, you might as well sign up and support a school, no matter where you happen to be located – turning your searches for cat gifs into tech bonuses for kids is never a bad thing.

This video shows you probably the closest we’ll ever get to seeing a physical representation of the Hyperloop. It is a 3D scale model made by a nascent company called WhiteClouds and it showcases the teams 3D modeling prowess and, more wistfully, shows what the Hyperloop could be.

The Odgen-based team printed the model on three different printers using three different materials. They added a bit of color to the seats, smoothed them out, and now are the proud owners of a small, non-working model of the Hyperloop suitable for children’s parties and futuristic stop motion animations. Now if they could just 3D print these things full-sized using aluminum tubing and billions of dollars of right-of-way land grants then I think they’d really be in business. Regardless, it’s a noble effort.