Month: October 2014

Categories
Cell Phone Accessories

Gyzmo is another Bluetooth button to remotely control your smartphone

For decades, senior citizens with medical conditions have counted on emergency paging necklaces to notify medical responders of an emergency. Gyzmo operates primarily as a wireless panic button that can be used to contact emergency contacts with precise GPS location by activating the functions programmed into a smartphone. This way, trusted and reliable friends and family members will know where the Gyzmo owner is, and that something is wrong. Additionally, Gyzmo can be used to activate functions on any smart device wirelessly, by again using one of three pressed buttons to activate features set up through the owner’s smartphone.

The Gyzmo battery lasts up to six months, ensuring that it won’t go out in the middle of an emergency if properly managed. Stadson Technology, creators of the Gyzmo, are looking for $75,000 to develop the app, test, and go through production. Buyers can pick one up for $49, having it delivered in April 2015. As just a panic button, Gyzmo is a pretty solid idea and device that could potentially save lives. Trying to market it as a smart home controller seems a little far-fetched, as it still has to be routed through a smartphone, and most smart devices already have companion apps for wireless control.

Categories
Food and Beverage Personal Transportation

Kreweser is one cooler that’s a wild ride

KreweserCoolers are heavy and can be a pain to lug around. Kreweser doesn’t only make the cooler more portable, it also lugs you around as well. As a combination cooler and electric trike, Kreweser lets you sit on the cooler and zip around at speeds up to 18mph. When the cooler is removed, the trike folds up for better storage. While a really cool, ha!, idea and great for pavement, Kreweser won’t really work on sand or rough terrain, where coolers are typically needed. One will cost backers a staggering $749 donation. Kreweser hopes to raise $90,000 on Kickstarter.

Categories
Home

Odor-eliminating toilet seat fans your stink into the wild

Without getting into specifics, many people have a certain degree of embarrassment or even panic about dealing with the aftermath of using a restroom, particularly at a friend’s or date’s house. Many a comedic movie scene or shameful story has been made about these moments of desperately opening a window or finding a chemical spray to mask the smell.

The Fresh Air Plus is a toilet seat designed to prevent this situation from ever happening again  by pumping the foul air out of the toilet before it ever has a chance to escape. Powered using a nearby electrical outlet, the Fresh Air Plus uses a hose to an outdoor vent to remove the smell discreetly and privately. The Fresh Air Plus fits any standard toilet and replaces the existing toilet seat. It also includes a no-slam system that eases the lid down gradually.

This product offers people who are sensitive about bathroom matters a chance to avoid the stinky subject entirely, as the odors never even have to leave the bowl. Adam Payz, the inventor of the Fresh Air Plus, is trying to raise $80,000 to move the product from the prototype phase. It only costs $160 to get rid of the dirty bathroom smell forever, once the Fresh Air Plus ships in March 2015.

There’s a subtle contradiction in purchasing an item for your bathroom to hide the evidence of smelly behavior when that item requires hooking up a hose to your toilet, plugging it in, and adding more lights to the toilet than the average pachinko machine. The Fresh Air Plus is certainly doing its best to innovate, but when you have to drill a hole in the wall and run a hose to hide something that everyone goes through, maybe, just maybe, the issue is more mental than physical and odiferous.

Categories
Home Safety

Burglar Blocker reinforces your windows against the bad guys

Home and small business security appears to have gotten a bit simpler and easier.

Burglar Blocker offers the typical homeowner and small business owner the opportunity to burglarproof home and office with locks that help to deter those who would sneak around the backdoor and windows with the intent to steal, destroy and possibly worse. The gadgets appear to be relatively easy to install, though installation will require a drill. It appears that all the other pieces necessary for installation are included. The lock also comes with a steel cover and key as an added security feature, and seems like it would work well alongside a security alarm system.

For burglars who are more rude and actually bash in windows or doors, more aggressive self-protection measures may be required – although communities in some countries may frown on such measures. For €17, backers can get two products with an expected delivery of December 2014.

Categories
Cell Phone Accessories Connected Objects

Salt locks your phone when you get up to grab some condiments

The seemingly innocuous act of unlocking our devices is suddenly not so when we lose almost three days a year doing just that. Most people have caught on to this, disabling their security as a result, leaving them vulnerable should they lose it. The choice between not having a lock screen or enjoying instant access to our devices is a tough one, but many opt for the latter out of sheer convenience.

SALT is a durable plastic card embedded with Bluetooth technology allowing users to enjoy the best of both worlds. As long as the user is within 10 feet the card, it will let you access your Android or iOS device instantly. The second you’re out range, the phone locks: either the entire phone or certain apps in response, protecting you in the unfortunate scenario of losing it or having someone rummage through your personal texts and e-mails.

If the opposite occurs and you lose the wallet or purse the card was in, the SALT app can help you locate it instead. With a custom battery estimated to last for over a year, users can enjoy keyless entry to their devices while still maintaining a high level of security. Although the company behind SALT has already hit their funding goal of $50,000, interested parties can grab themselves their very own with just a $15 pledge.

There aren’t very many solutions to this small yet time-consuming problem. SALT is one of the first that manages to be more versatile than just a card in your pocket. Many people are obviously interested, but one wonders if this could have worked without a battery to avoid the inevitable purchase of another. They’ve also admitted the possibility of the iOS version eventually lacking its star feature by blocking out an entire smartphone eco-system in the process. Solving these two issues will propel this from a maybe to easy impulse purchase territory.

Categories
Running Wearables

Zoi wearable helps you run better and safer

From the neon-colored, spandex laced marathoners to those simply seeking to keep fit, poor technique is the main cause of running injuries. Avoiding these injuries while working towards a stride and pace that is challenging yet suitable for the body takes consistent feedback and patient coaching. Unfortunately, employing a coach can be cost prohibitive, running apps only telling you how much you run, and technical gait analyses only give you a snapshot of your technique for too much money.

Runteq is positioning their biometric running system, Zoi, as your personal coach. Comprising of a chest and foot sensor, runners can enjoy vocal feedback with the included wireless earbuds about very specific aspects of their technique, all in real time. Feedback takes the form of cheering and gentle encouragement advising you on things like pronation, ground contact time, and overall body motion, all of which can be used to create shareable personal training plans for review on the Zoi smartphone app. There a number of perks available, each offering Zoi for discounted prices ranging from €69 to €119, all contributing to the company’s funding goal of €50,000.

Another company has taken a stab at the same issue of runner education with runScribe, a pedometer sized device that attaches to your foot. Compared to Zoi, though, it has a much narrower focus — limited to collecting information that’s manually uploaded rather than actively feeding it back to the user.

Zoi is coming along at a time where interest in wearable tech is at an all-time high, but where the expectations at what they can do are similarly high. Applications and wearables are saturated with heart rate and blood pressure monitors which provide disjointed information, so Zoi pushes the envelope with their novel, smart feedback system. While the MSRP may be a bit pricey at €149, it will surely come out cheaper than other, more expensive alternatives.

Categories
Food and Beverage

Coffee Cuppa takes you from grounds to sipping lickety-split

Here is the perfect item for coffee coinsures who find the instant stuff to be an affront to their taste buds. Coffee Cuppa allows for the real deal to be available in minutes without having to brew a complete pot. The grounds go in the small coffee holder gadget, which goes in one’s favorite standard sized coffee cup. Then just pour hot water over the gadget. Grinding the coffee beans will still be necessary. If the plan is to have the real stuff available at the office or some other location away from home and there isn’t a grinder there, a bit of preplanning will be necessary, as well as sealable storage baggies for toting. It’s not clear if the gadget is airtight to preserve freshness and prevent grounds from escaping during travels. For £10, early bird backers get one product with an expected delivery of November 2014.

Categories
Apparel

Collar Perfect portable steamer benefits wrinkled professionals

The Premise. Bulky irons are great for some clothes, but not all. Dress shirts, with their buttons, collars and pockets, are difficult to iron because there’s so much room for error. Most opt to send their shirts out for pressing. But those who aren’t able to pay for such a luxury are stuck with wrinkled shirts or melted buttons.

The Product. Collar Perfect is a small device about the size of a computer mouse. It is a essentially a mini iron in clamp form. It’s sized and shaped to make ironing touch ups much easier. Not only does it leave the bulky ironing board behind, but it’s also much more portable, making looking dapper on the go possible. All you need is a plug to use it. If you’d like to flat iron something, the clamp folds out flat as well.

The Pitch. Collar Perfect’s video features a man getting ready for a date and failing miserably. He burns his shirt with an iron and forgets his pants to a nice dinner. His annoyed date hands him the Collar Perfect. The rest of the campaign features helpful snippets of the Collar Perfect in use not only on shirts but also on skirt hems as well. Collar Perfect is looking to raise $40,000 on Kickstarter.

The Perks. A $20 donation will get backers the Collar Perfect at an early price. When those are gone, backers can get the Collar Perfect for only $25 with estimated delivery in April 2015. Reward tiers go all the way up to $5,000.

The Potential. Collar Perfect is, by all accounts, a great way to smarten up your clothes, especially if you’re out of the house. This is a useful product for men, as most women have been able to achieve the same results of mini-ironing using their hair straighteners. Collar Perfect’s one drawback is that it isn’t cordless. The creators would do well to consider using a battery with a USB charger. Still, this product definitely has a place with young professionals who just can’t seem to keep themselves put together.

Categories
Technology

Skully’s AR-1 protects your noggin while leading you home

The Premise. Motorcycle helmets are necessary for the safety of riders all over the world, but most don’t add much to the experience itself. Of utmost importance is keeping a rider’s eyes on the road, but not much has been done to satisfactorily address this issue outside of rear view cameras. Still, some feature lightweights carbon fiber construction where others feature Bluetooth integration, but there isn’t one complete package that tries to change the act of riding a motorcycle itself.

The Product. Skully’s AR-1 is the company’s inaugural attempt at creating the future of motorcycle helmets. Sporting ultra-modern, slim stylings, the aerodynamic polycarbonate shell houses some serious technology built atop the Android platform. This allows for a transparent heads-up display, a wide-angle rearview camera, and both online/offline turn-by-turn GPS navigation, along with future application support thanks to an open SDK. The helmet also includes a variety of connectivity options, including Bluetooth and smartphone-enabled Internet connection, both allowing for over-the-air updates.

Even with so much technology, safety is Skully’s number one aim. The heads-up display has been created so that it’s always in focus, meaning a rider won’t have to take their eyes off the road. Most importantly, the entire product is DOT/ECE certified, meaning it passes the Department of Transportation design requirements for helmets.

The Pitch. Skully’s entire campaign is one of the better ones you’ll come across, featuring top-notch production in each one of the videos. The first goes over what the Skully offers while the second video impresses with endorsements from prominent professional motorcycle riders and Amazon CTO Werner Vogel, amongst others. The campaign leaves you with no doubt as the FAQ answers all of the doubts that you may still have by its end.

The Perks. The introductory price for the Skully AR-1 is $1,399. If that’s too much to swallow, interested backers can reserve one for $499 while paying $949 later. Whatever you do, you can expect the helmet in July 2015 the latest.

The Potential. Each of Skully AR-1’s features have been offered before in helmets, like Reevu’s use of a 180° rear-view camera or BiLT’s super connected offerings featuring smartphone connection and GPS navigation, so in and of themselves they aren’t revolutionary. What Skully succeeds in doing is packaging it all up effectively while still surprising. As with any boundary-pushing product with lots of hype behind it, only time will tell if every component will indeed will work as advertised, especially that HUD they’re touting as so safe.

Categories
Connected Objects Fitness

Glyder is a smartphone-connected exercise product for the deskbound

The Premise. Sitting is as harmful to our health as smoking is. Or so they say. Either way, it’s difficult for office workers to get the exercise they need in order to stay healthy. Some have the chance to take a walk at lunchtime, but busier bees are chained to their desks all day.

The Product. Glyder is a fitness device that lives underneath your office desk. Resembling a digital scale, it has two pedals on either side where your feet go and comes in red, gray or black. The motion is similar to that of an elliptical machine. A large digital screen on top shows the calories you’ve burned, the strides you’ve taken and how close you are to your daily exercise goal. This data can be stored and set with an accompanying smartphone app. The app stores your workout history and also allows you to adjust the resistance of Glyder and compete with other Glyder users.

The Pitch. Glyder’s campaign video shows an office worker trying and failing to workout at the office. There’s also a funny part where the Glyder user makes less noise while exercising than her coworker sitting in a rocking chair. The rest of the campaign goes through Glyder’s various features along with helpful gifs of the pedal width being adjusted as well as the product in use. This under-the-table fitness device hopes to raise $75,000 on Kickstarter.

The Perks. Early gliders can enjoy the Glyder for $99 at a regular price of $139. The top tier of $10,000 offers backers a trip to China to tour Glyder’s factories. Estimated delivery is currently set for January 2015.

The Potential. As with any office workout tool, there’s always the risk of looking unprofessional as your legs mysteriously gyrate under your desk. We’ve seen several of these types of products at Backerjack like Tao and Cubii, both of which stress at-desk workouts. Like Cubii, Glyder emphasizes that elliptical motion, but does so in a sleeker manner at a fraction of the cost. While it’s unclear how beneficial a Glyder workout really is, the price and lure of activity at the office may be irresistible for antsy executives.