Month: October 2014

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Soapseat provides a goop escape route for your wet soap

Most soap dishes allow your bar soap to sit in its own gooeyness resulting in mold or, at the very least, a soggy soap puck. SOAPSEAT promises to CHANGE that. It’s essentially a soap dish with raised ridges in the middle that spill into the sink. One side curves downwards while the other side grips the edge of the sink. In this way, the water can flow down so that your soap stays fresh. This product comes in three different finishes, all dishwasher safe. One of these vamped up soap cradles will cost backers $25 for estimated delivery in February 2015. SOAPSEAT has a Kickstarter campaign goal of $10,000.

If fresh soap really means a lot to you, then this is a useful product. Most probably don’t care, or opt for those soap dishes with holes in the bottom so the liquid collects in a bottom tray that’s cleaned out. SOAPSEAT is lower maintenance, but still a high price for such a simple product.

Categories
Cycling

Quick Caps provide convenient security for your bike

Bike security is the foremost concern for cyclists around the world. Making sure someone doesn’t make off with your precious ride is difficult, especially if the bike in question has quick release wheels. Despite having to carry an additional lock for the front tire, many people choose this kind of wheel for the sheer convenience of being able to quickly take it off at a moment’s notice. After numerous years of doing just that, inventor Curtis Dorrington created Quick Caps, a product that eliminates the hassle while retaining the quick release wheel’s convenience.

Quick Caps is a small, weatherproof lock that fits around the quick release lock’s lever itself, preventing anyone who would be daring enough to try from doing so. With the product being made from marine-grade aluminum and requiring 900Nm of force to break, even attempting the feat is a tall order. The product’s 51g weight will be a welcome relief to anyone that has been looking for this sort of solution, so ponying up just £10 (or £14 if you happen to have the wrong type of quick release) will be an easy decision. The creator is looking for a £15,000 infusion to start mass production.

Categories
Accents

LeggyHorse takes your wall photos to another dimension

There’s something about framed art and photos that makes a house a home. Usually, the personality of these items is limited to a single dimension. But LeggyHorse has found a way to use picture frames to create new dimensions for framed art and photos. The frame itself seems to be made of leather and acrylic. It’s lightweight and doesn’t require any tools for pictures to be hung on the wall, but the campaign does not clearly indicate what alternative hanging method is used.

Once in the LeggyHorse frame, pictures can be hung on nearly any flat surface, including wood, plastic, glass and ceramic tile. This product seems like a great way to release that “inner artist” without having to put a great deal of effort and time into being creative and imaginative. For $46, backers get a set that includes 12 connect frames and four regular 4×6 frames. More support gets the larger sizes. Expected delivery is set for February 2015.

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Sports

Wingboard lets you capture air in a wild new way

Thrill seekers can’t get enough of skydiving, bungee jumping and wingsuit flying. Now, they can up the ante with the WingBoard. This product combines wake boarding with sky diving. The user stands atop the WingBoard which is attached to a plane. YES, a plane. Okay, one of those little planes, but still. It has wheels on the bottom for take off and, in the sky, the rider holds onto a rope much like when water skiing. One will cost extreme backers basically $600 for only the kit and manual to create a 1/16 scale version of the product. WingBoard hopes to raise $32,000 on Kickstarter to continue developing their product.

Thus far, the creators of WingBoard are still in the very early stages of development. They’re slowly scaling their product up to ensure safety. Speaking of which, it’s unclear what happens to the rider if they let go of the rope or lose their balance. Those water skiing can just float around in the water, but do WingBoarders just fall to the ground? Or do they perhaps wear a parachute? Either way this sport seems like it could require exceptional safety controls with wind and cold altitudes making it downright unpleasant. It will be interesting to see if this product ever fully develops with the approval of all the necessary acronymed organizations.

Categories
Food and Beverage

Splash Infuser drops in to add flavoring to water

Sugary beverages are the bane of many people’s diets, adding an entirely unnecessary amount of sugar to their daily intake everyday. We’re recommended about 40g of sugar a day, but most drinks have 10 times that amount. Many drinks also come laden with unsafe chemicals in plastic containers made with harmful materials, compounding the issue even more. Companies have tried marketing infused water as an alternative to unhealthy drinks, but even those can prove unsafe.

The people over at Cardboard Helicopter have long considered these problems and have created the Splash Infuser in response. It takes the form of a small container with holes large enough to let muddled fruit mingle with water without letting a bunch of seeds into the drink. Made from BPA-free, food grade plastic ensures that no unwanted chemicals find their way into your infused drink as well, whether it be water or alcoholic in nature. The company has already ironed out the model but needs $15,000 to start a large production run. Just $15 gets you in the door to all the watery infused goodness you can handle.

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Personal Transportation

Ion Smartscooter looks like non-electric models, gets you on your way

The last miles of any commute are some of the most painful. Who wants to walk twenty minutes at the very beginning of the day or after having worked eight hours every day? Although there are some solutions, bikes and scooters are either too bulky to transport easily or too dirty in terms of fuel.

Probity Cell LLC has created the ion SmartScooter as a low-cost, clean alternative that will get you where you need to go, fast. It’s top speed of 15mph is powered by a lithium-ion battery that charges in three and a half hours and lasts for more than 1,000 cycles, ensuring a long and sustainable life. In addition, its foldable nature makes it so that it can be more easily transported than a bike, especially because it only weighs 26 pounds. The ion SmartScooter joins scads of other personal transportation devices like the Me-Mover and Halfbike.

The company is starting off slow with just two production runs, but they want to minimize any issues through their Kickstarter campaign. They were aiming for a modest $40,000 to do so, a goal that has shown interest by many. If they’re able to back up their claim of squeezing 500 miles out of the scooter for less than a dollar’s worth of electricity, they’ll be able to convince many more to grab one of their own for the introductory price of $399.

 

 

Categories
Home

Whirling Dervish offers a different spin on the wind turbine

Those who use alternative energy swear by it, and those who don’t wish they did. Out of the many alternatives available, wind is at a point where it should be more utilized but it isn’t due to technical constraints. The creator behind the Whirling Dervish claims to have addressed the majority of the issues with traditional wind turbines by making designing a blade that decreases the minimum amount of wind required to spin, thereby making it more efficient. Along with claiming that the product can meet 55% of a home’s energy needs, he also made this Turkish product silent to boot.

The Whirling Dervish is notable because it doesn’t only power devices, much like the Trinity or the Drill Turbine do, but rather attempts to address the problems in the space, giving it much potential should the creator achieve his $50,000 goal. If potential backers are OK with receiving a prototype, they can pledge $150 or more to receive their very own by February 2015.

Categories
Wearables

KUFF is tough, lets you wear your files where you flex

With mounting concerns about privacy in the cloud, many people are going back to hard, physical storage to make sure their information is safe. While traditional USB sticks are portable, most of the time they’re flimsy. While hard drives can store tons of data, they usually aren’t portable and are prone to breaking down sooner or later. The creator behind KUFF is looking to perfect a product that features the best of both worlds.

Kuff is a wearable solid state storage that is worn around the wrist and features capacities from 16GB all the way to a whopping 1TB. An LED is planned for presenting custom information with the help of a developer SDK,. Although the Kickstarter campaign isn’t addressing the product’s clunkiness, it aims to fund the display along with wireless charging. Other features on the docket include connectivity with Bluetooth 4.0, iOS and Android companion apps, USB 3.0, and waterproofing using a nanocoating.

If the creator can put KUFF on a diet, get wireless connectivity and charging down, and continue marketing to media professionals and the DJ circuit, he may have a winner — he’ll just need to hit his goal of $21,000 to find out. One of these wearable storage devices will set backers back $110 with estimated delivery in December 2014.

Categories
Fitness Health and Wellness

MOBO is ready to roll with muscle relief wherever you are

As an athlete, it’s important to take care of your muscles and joints. Not everyone can afford professional massages, so other methods must be used. However, rubbing your back against a door jamb just for some relief isn’t ideal. The MOBO System is the self-proclaimed Swiss Army Knife of massage. This product transforms into many different shapes, textures and densities to deliver a custom massage to any part of your body, from your neck to your feet. It’s easily transportable and has lots of possibilities for assembly. One will cost sore backers $109 on Kickstarter, or $99 if they’re early enough with higher tiers offering more elaborate versions of MOBO. MOBO hopes to raise $50,000.

This product’s flexibility in use is pretty cool. The campaign does a good job of showing all the different ways it can be morphed and how many parts of the body benefit. However, assembly does look a little finicky to break down and rebuild. Also, MOBO should warn users that it can’t cure serious injury. Nevertheless, for the typical mostly-healthy athlete, MOBO is a great accessory to have on the field.

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Connected Objects Fitness

Yoga SmartMat provides guidance to make you a perfect poser

Yoga is all about balance. Unfortunately, our bodies are alarmingly lopsided. A pose that we can do perfectly on one side of our bodies is surprisingly difficult on the other side. Yoga teachers are constantly adjusting their students to maintain balance in their poses. The SmartMat does the exact same thing. By connecting with your tablet or smartphone via Bluetooth, the SmartMat collects data about your posture, balance and alignment to assist you with becoming a yogi master. It first adjusts your alignment, telling you, for example, to move your right foot forward. Then, it tells you to shift your weight so there is equal pressure on both sides of the body, a very important aspect of yoga. The app lets you monitor your progress over time and even gives you new yoga moves to try out. Powered by battery, this mat boasts up to six hours of life. For a mat and the Android/iOS compatible app, backers will have to shell out $347, $100 less than the retail price, for estimated delivery in September 2015. SmartMat is hoping to raise $110,000 during its campaign on Indiegogo.

By all accounts, SmartMat looks like a super cool way to get your yoga on. Most fitness monitoring devices focus on higher impact sports, like the runScribe. SmartMat, while expensive, provides a ton of useful information since the entire mat is collecting data from the entire body, pretty cool. Looking like a traditional yoga mat and made out of most of the same materials, it’s a little concerning how long this mat will last. Some mats wear out over time, but with such an expensive investment, it’ll be important for SmartMat to prove its functional longevity. Also, it’s only water and sweat resistant and not proof. Big sweaters and hot yoga practitioners will have to protect the SmartMat with an extra towel. Still, this super cool product is a great tool for yoga enthusiasts looking to perfect their practice.