Month: April 2015

Categories
Health and Wellness

BetterBack provides improved posture, produces better backers

Good posture is one of the most ignored health issues out there. Our posture affects the way we breathe, grow and function. Bad posture can have serious long term complications, such as back pain and a hump in our old age.

BetterBack is one solution to this problem. This product is targeted towards individuals who sit a lot and helps them straighten their otherwise slouched over sitting position. The main portion of BetterBack rests on the lower back. Two straps reach from that part to loop around the knees, providing leverage to draw the lower back in while the upper back straightens out. BetterBack can be used and carried around anywhere, making it convenient. It also boasts breathable fabrics so that one’s back doesn’t get all sweaty.

This is one of those products that doesn’t need technology to be innovative and effective. BetterBack provides a simple solution in an even simpler package. The product’s makers may want to consider adding a standing option to their brand, but their existing product is still intriguing. One will cost backers a donation of $75 for delivery in October 2015. BetterBack Kickstarter campaign is looking for $12,500 by May 2.

Categories
Connected Objects Cooking

Babs connected kitchen assistant helps keep both your gadgets and grub clean

A kitchen is only pristine when it isn’t being used to whip up a delicious breakfast, lunch, or dinner. When food preparation is on the agenda, kitchens can get real messy real quick, making it onerous to both cook and simultaenously reference resources like cookbooks and internet recipes.

Salted Wire’s Babs smart kitchen assistant is here to help out in that regard. The Bags smart kitchen is exactly what people need to prevent their recipe books from getting soaked with water and their iPad screens from becoming grease-laden cesspools. Bats utilizes voice controls, thereby allowing users to ask Babs for anything as varied as dinner ideas tailored to specific dietary needs to suggestions on making a current recipe better. To make up for its lack of a display, the device is capable of interfacing with Chromecast, Android devices, and iOS devices. As a result, users can send whatever information they’d like to smartphones, tablets, and TVs to truly provide for a hands-off experience.

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Categories
Input Video Games Virtual Reality

Get a jump on your virtual foes with the PAO omni-directional treadmill

At the moment, virtual reality is in a weird place. As refined as the technology currently is, virtual reality goers are still likely to experience motion sickness. Additionally, the illusion of virtual reality quick dissipates when users are forced to stay still and use some sort of controller to facilitate the experience.

Like many others before it, PAO aims to solve this immersion problem with a multi-directional treadmill. Not only is it designed to translate a person’s movement in any direction, it can also translate squats and jumps. What’s more, the product can be used with virtual reality headsets, traditional gaming consoles, and even Android devices. A PAO can be purchased for $300, with an expected ship date of December 2015. The Kickstarter campaign is looking to secure $10,000 in funding by May 20.

PAO is extremely similar to its predecessor, the Virtuix Omni, save for its current pre-production status. As a result, the Omni is a much more refined product, something reflected in its $699 price tag, not to mention its 160lb product weight and the large list of accessories it can be used with.  In comparison, the PAO is more than half of the Virtuix Omni’s size and costs less than half. Notably, the PAO doesn’t require users to wear specialized shoes like the Omni does. If PAO can ensure that these benefits remain in place when the final production unit ships, it will prove a worthy and compelling purchase for gamers looking for a full and immersive virtual reality experience.

Categories
Connected Objects Uncategorized

Calou drags the wall calendar into the digital age with e-ink

In an era before Outlook and Google Calendar, people tended to keep their personal schedules in a pocket planner and group or family calendars on a wall calendar. Smartphones have replaced the former but their larger siblings — tablets — haven’t really replaced the latter. Part of the reason for that is because these calendars should be viewable at a glance, which mean a constant display.

Calou is the closest a digital product has come to recreating the classic wall paper. Like an e-reader such as the Amazon Kindle, t uses e-paper technology to maximize battery life. Calou’s developer, Hamburg-based TECHNIKmanufaktur, says that the iPad-sized product can last two week without being charged. The tablet is encased inside a wooden dish-like enclosure that has a magnetic front for small notes and photographs.

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Categories
Home

Handi Sani wipes bathroom germs off your toilet brush with a flush

Finding an easy way to keep the toilet bowl brush sanitized can be a challenge. But impressively, the Handi Sani self-cleaning toilet brush presents a hands-free way to make that happen.

The way it works is quite simple. The Handi Sani cleaning apparatus attaches to the side of the tank with one small hose running into the tank to take advantage of clean water, and another hose running into the toilet bowl for proper draining. The brush is placed inside the Handi Sani so that when the toilet is flushed, the attachment fills up with clean water while simultaneously draining the dirty water into the toilet bowl.

Interested backers might also like to check out RollPull, and Shower Shimmy. This campaign seeks to raise $178,000 by April 13, 2015.  Early bird backers get one product for $20 with an expected delivery of October 2015.

Categories
Networking

Neobase lets you create your own Facebook for private social sharing

The world has never seen a Web site like Facebook, where a sizable chunk of its population — 1.3 billion people — share details and media about their lives to their circle of friends. On its login screen, Facebook notes that it’s free to use and always will be. But it makes money via targeted ads. That’s why there is always close scrutiny, and a lot of concern bordering on paranoia, about its privacy policies, particularly when they change.

For those who like the idea of sharing status updates of their lives with a circle of friends without the intrusion of ads or fear of privacy breaches that many Facebook users have, there is Neobase. Billed as the world’s first private network device, the small cylindrical home server has a 1 terabyte hard drive. As opposed to just being used for sharing files like previous products, Neobase runs Neone, a social network that doesn’t have any central hub but runs on different people’s Neobases.

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Categories
Uncategorized

Prana wearable tells you how to breathe easy, take a stand

Today, most wearable are focused on measuring the number of steps one takes per day. It’s a useful measure of daily activity, but there is far more to understanding one’s well-being.

Prana looks like many fitness trackers that clip to a waistband, but it takes a different approach, measuring things that many other product are not – breathing and posture. Prana calculates a score for both and allows a number of ways to actively improve, including a videogame controlled by your breathing and respiration exercises associated with practices such as tai chi and yoga. San Franciso-based Prana Tech seeks $100,000 by April 30th. The price for a Prana is $129, a $20 discount from its expected retail price. The device is expected to ship in July.

Prana competes with Spire, which measures activity in addition to breathing. Spire is ahead of the curve when it comes to interpreting the meaning of certain breathing patterns, but Prana’s measurement of posture is a nice bonus as that has previously been the domain of other wearables; its active training is also more interactive than Spire’s.

 

Categories
Automotive Connected Objects

Loxet locks up the car based on your proximity to it

When drivers mistakenly think they’ve locked their car, or perhaps forget about doing so altogether, the result can be costly. While having one’s car towed can be frustrating, having it stolen is an entirely different and more aggravating experience.

Because preventing a car from being stolen is much easier than recovering a stolen car, the Loxet is a device worth checking out. Loxet is a smartphone-controlled proximity lock and anti-theft device for cars that should help drivers breath a bit more easily. Loxet works with Android 4.3+ smartphones and iPhones equipped with Bluetooth 4.0. Once installed, the device automatically unlocks a car as its owner approaches and locks the door right as the owner begins leaving the vicinity. The device prevents anybody from driving the car who isn’t either a) the owner or b) an individual who has been granted access via a setting on the accompanying app. Loxet costs $69 and is scheduled to ship in August. Its maker is looking to raise $25,000 by May 15.

Loxet certainly has potential. One potential barrier towards widespread adoption, however, is the setup process. While the device itself can be mounted in any car equipped with central locking, it will take a mechanic 45-90 minutes to install it, this according to the company’s Kickstarter campaign. Loxet can also be installed by the purchaser via an instruction manual, but if it takes more than an hour for a mechanic to install it, it’s likely too complicated for the average consumer to set up in the first place. Turning to a mechanic will, of course, add some cost to the device.

Categories
Tech Accessories

Brik Case makes customizing MacBooks a snap

Many laptop users like to personalize the tops of their computers, a fun activity often accomplished with stickers. Laptop users, however, may get tired of previously chosen designs. Not helping matters is that many stickers can be extremely hard to fully remove.

The Brik Case offers a novel way for users to more easily customize their laptop. The Brik Case is a customizable laptop case that uses toy bricks which allow users to constantly change the design of their case. The Brik Case was conveniently designed to easily clip on and off MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs, so long as they were manufactured in 2013 or later. Notably, the case isn’t officially licensed by Lego, Mega Bloks, PixelBlocks, Kre-O or K’Nex. Nonetheless, the Brik Case is still compatible with all of those toy bricks. Its maker is planning to ship the case in August with $39.99 pricepoint. Its makers are hoping to raise $30,000 to help pay for the molds, packaging, engineers and the first order of Brik Cases. The campaign end date is slated for April 25.

The Brik Case hold a lot of promise, albeit for a very niche audience: MacBook users who are fans of Lego and other toy bricks. Making a version for Windows PCs would be an obvious move that could significantly expand the market for the case. The product’s Kickstarter campaign, however, makes no mention of such plans in the future.

Categories
Connected Objects Health and Wellness

VIP sleeves monitor calves, keep the blood pumping to avoid clots

Between sitting for most of the day and sleeping for upwards of nine hours a night, the heart can have a rough time making sure the circulatory system is in tip top shape. What most people don’t know are that the calves play a crucial role in pumping the blood back up to the heart, which is why more and more articles and news reports reaffirm the danger in leading an inactive lifestyle.

The VIP pneumatic sleeve is engineered to allow wearers to be proactive even when they are forced to be sedentary. Designed to be worn on the calves, the device contracts and expands with air to assist with circulation, softening the impact of long periods of inactivity and ultimately decreasing the likelihood of blood clots. The VIP also uses Bluetooth LE in order to connect with a companion iOS or Android app, allowing users to set goals, set alerts, customize the rate of air flow, and track usage over time.

A backing of $199 will net backers their own sleeve and charger in November of 2015. VSS, the company behind VIP, is looking for $200,000 in funding by May 1. It should appeal to those concerned about conditions such as Deep Vein Thrombosis for situations such as long flights.