Real bottles have curves. Applying the classic “best of both worlds” marketing pitch to a crowded category, TRIMR is an attractive, dishwasher-safe, concave BPA-free plastic bottle that includes a springy agitator to shake up protein shakes. It can also simply function as a water bottle with the agitator removed and a flip-up lid for when you’d rather gulp than sip. While TIMR might wish to cause its competitors to tremor, it is designed to stay stable in a cup holder. Bottles should be available to backers in April 2014 for $25 or available with a daily protein intake slide calculator for five bucks more.
Author: Arthur Tufeau
The turnover of successive iPhone generations has led to many of us having a surplus of old devices. You could sell them or give them away, but why not put them to work around the house? wobL is a nightstand cradle for your iPhone that positions it at an optimal viewing angle for your horizontal head and allows you to “snooze” an alarm via a companion app. Rocking is a clever way to snooze the device given that the iPhone has no side-mounted snooze button, and the approach avoids having to pair with something via Bluetooth. Of course, it also works with Apple’s iPhone 5 series, providing a place for you to charge up overnight. On the other hand, even a dimmed LCD isn’t everyone’s favorite bedside companion. wobL comes to Kickstarter after a campaign on its hometown crowdfunding site Crowd Supply. It’s available to backers for $25, but isn’t expected to be available until October 2014. That seems like a long time for a relatively simple device, even including potential app development time.
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Chess on the Dot makes you king of the globe
The world is not flat so why should your chess game be? So goes the reasoning of Joshua Chan, creator of Chess on the Dot. This is actually the designer’s third gogo at Indiegogo trying to raise funds for his pricey ($1,199, a 20 percent discount of retail) chess globe that uses magnets in place of gravity for keeping the pieces affixed to the board. Previous attempts to pawn the art piece have been checked. Despite the unusual shape, the game plays as it does on a standard chess board albeit with a lot more rotation. Beautiful if impractical, the chess-in-the-round set can transport to your sphere of influence in June 2014.
What do you get when you cross the hobbyist Arduino platform with Bluetooth and the On-Board Diagnostics (OBD-II) port found in every vehicle? Nobody really knows yet, but the developers of Freematics (a portmanteau of “free” and “telematics” aim to find out by opening up the combination to open source developers. One thing’s that certain is that the device can handle a lot of data about your car’s vital statistics such as its speed and engine RPMs. Turning that into something more meaningful for people will be left to developers who will be the main audience for the data collector. Freematics should be available in March 2014 to backers who pledge at least $89 AUD.
Apple did a great job with the AC adapter for its laptops, which allow you to wrap the cords around them for more organized travel. Alas, the company passed on that opportunity with the iPhone, leaving no great options for tucking away its Lightning cable, an issue others have tackled. The I’m Tidy is a small silicone covering for Apple’s standard iPhone wall charger that allows you to wrap your lightning connector around it. As a bonus, it will support your iPhone upright atop the wall charger when it’s plugged in. The bit of silicone is expected to ship in June 2014 for backers for $25 CAD after the early bird tier runs out.
One of the benefits of digital communications that we take for granted is the (optional) notification of new messages. Postifier brings what many have a love-hate relationship with to physical mailboxes via a Bluetooth-Arduino mashup. While there’s an element of “because we can” to the product, the creators appeal to the utility for those who have a hard time getting around having to go down to the driveway to pick up their mail. Another option would be to ask neighbors to pick up mail when one is on vacation. However, the Postifier uses Bluetooth, so notification is confined to a relatively short range for now. On theo other hand, the battery is expected to last around nine months. It’s not much to look at now, but should be available to backers in June 2014 for $35 AUD plus another $10 for shipping outside of Australia.
Decades before there were LCD displays, Nixie tubes showed off digits in glowing vacuum glass containers. Their retro appeal and geek cred have led them to adorn the wrist of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. And while they’re a tad impractical for such a small timepiece, they have no problem working on the aluminum brick that serves as the base of Blub. Due to ship in backers in May, the clock is more art than functional timepiece, as one would certainly surmise from its $369 AUD price tag. It features a night-time shutoff and an alarm, although you probably shouldn’t try slamming it as you would a snooze button.
Lazy Susans have a bit of a problem and it doesn’t stem from their lack of exercise. The longer they wish to extend, the wider their diameter must be. That really ground the gears of Witchita’s Nam H. Le, who has enabled more flexible placement with the Puzzo Susan, a system of wooden toothed wheels and connectors that offers more flexibility in terms of placement. As a bonus, the gears act as coasters. Of course, if someone else’s search for Mrs. Dash moves your desired NuSalt out of the way, you’ll just have to wait your turn. A modular product, Puzzo Susan should be past its teething phase in configurations starting at $50 in February 2014
Only Apple knows for sure why it abstains from supporting wireless standards such as Qi. But if the company did come out with a portable charger, it’s a good bet it would look a lot like the Ark, the rounded square of which resembles the previous generation of its AirPort Extreme router. As with other chargers that support Qi, you lay the phone atop the surface and it simply begins charging. However, since Qi adds a bit of depth to the phone, you may need to add a different back cover or, in the case of the iPhone, a case as the Ark’s creators have. After that, you can fill up the Ark with electricity as if it were Noah’s animals, and set it down on any flat surface deemed worthy to serve as a smartphone refilling station. Set to sail in March 2014, the naked Ark starts at about $65 with a host of other early bird and reward tiers offering bundles with adapters for the Galaxy S3, S4 and iPhone.
Plumbing was invented by the Romans, who were not advised of the eventual arrival of smartphones vulnerable to water. This may have something to do with why there’s no good place to put your mobile companion when taking a shower. Londoner Georgey Sheehy seeks to bridge the words of water and wireless with the HOYO. While there are many waterproof pouches for smartphones and tablets, the HOYO allows you to play through a protective barrier while affixed to a wall or even embedded inside a shower curtain. That latter configuration will involve taking a knife to your bathroom’s bare body barrier, but offers the advantage of easy insertion and removal as well as placing the all-important potential porthole on the other side of where the water is. Still, that could make HOYO a no-go, you know? The £15 HOYO should be available in either wall or shower curtain configurations in June 2014.