Kickstarter - page 16

Bill Karas isn’t your typical biker. Yes, he’s got the type of facial hair that would make ZZ Top proud. He’s even got his own custom shop where he can build you anything your bike or hot rod needs.

But behind all the facial hair, metal music, and hot rod loving exterior, Bill Karas and his crew at Karas Kustoms have found something far more exciting and lucrative than building hotrods: making iPhone cases.

How does a group of bikers go from building custom steering columns to iPhone cases? It was pretty much a compete accident, but it starts with a pen and Kickstarter.

Ever wanted to pick up an awesome Mac or iOS accessory after it’s been funded on Kickstarter, but had no idea where to find it? There’s a good chance you’ll get it at BiteMyApple, a new online store that sells the coolest and most innovative Kickstarter projects as soon as they hit retail.

Portability and ease of use makes the iPad the perfect product for staying connected – whether you are on the move or in the comfort of your bed. At its core, the iPad is essentially the screen portion of a Macbook with touch capabilities. But there hasn’t been a true keyboard that acts like an external keyboard – one that you can use that keeps the iPad the tablet it was meant to be.

Until now, that is.

The Touchfire keyboard is our latest Cult of Mac Deals offer and you can get it for a limited time at the low price of just $50 – with FREE shipping to the US and international countries included!

Ever wish you could connect all your Thunderbolt accessories to one single box and then just hook that up to your MacBook? No, of course not. Because you don’t have any Thunderbolt accessories. Nobody does, unless they like spending double for a hard drive or have picked up one of Apple’s nice Thunderbolt displays. Which include the dock anyway.

No, what you need is the MacDock, a neat little Apple-TV-like box which connects a wealth of accessories to your vintage MacBook via it’s Mini DisplayPort and USB ports.

Oh Lord, the end is clearly, nearly nigh. Why? Because Kickstarter is now hosting a project to make aluminum notebook covers. No, not covers for your notebook computer. Covers for your hardcover paper notebook. The pull quote at the top of the pitch page says it all:

5052 Aluminum-Magnesium Alloy notebook & journal covers to keep your corners and pages straight.

Have you ever written this in a forum, addressed to a software developer: “I have $50 here which I’ll totally give you if you make this app”? No, of course not, because that would make you a thoughtless individual — we all know that software costs way more than that to develop.

Take NumLock, for example. It’s exactly the kind of app that forum-begging is made for. It turns back on the num-lock that Apple removed from its keyboards for seemingly no reason other than the aesthetic. How much would you promise a developer that you’d “totally pay” for an app to re-enable the number keypad? Well, now you can put that money where your, uh, keyboard is, and pitch in to DenVog’s cheap-as-chips Kickstarter campaign.

There’s no shortage of weather apps in the App Store. Every week it seems like a new weather app is enticing us with beautiful graphics and a unique design aesthetic.

While the apps are plentiful, there hasn’t been any mobile-oriented hardware related to checking the weather. It’s an untapped market many haven’t given much thought to. In the age of the iPhone, what value does a traditional thermometer even have?

Robocat has already put out some great iOS weather apps, and now it’s launching a Kickstarter campaign for Thermodo, a physical thermometer which integrates with the iPhone.

Yeah yeah I know. Another damn iPhone tripod mount. And on Kickstarter no less. I hear you: “Come on Sorrel, you handsome beast you¹. Can’t you pick something new to write about?”

Well, cynical but smart reader — this one’s different. I promise. And it’ll work with pretty much any camera-phone ever.

Did you ever try on a pair of your mother’s clip-on earrings? Or maybe you own a pair yourself. If so, you’ll be familair with the way they use a small and cleverly designed clamp to clip the gaudy bauble to your ear.

Now, the Budsnaps are just like this, only instead of a dangling decoration, they secure your iPhone earbuds.

In my wallet, I have a little “secret” compartment which contains a few international micro SIMs, an Apple-made SIM ejection tool (aka a fancy paperclip), and a guitar pick.

Or at least I usually do. The other day, when I actually needed it, the ejector tool had somehow found its way out of the wallet and into my bag. The problem was that it was not the bag I had with me.

But if I’d had the SIMPL case on my iPhone, I’d have been golden.

Have you ever tried to do any serious videography with an iPad? I don’t recommend it casually, but the iPad can be a great HD video tool, combining high resolution video capture abilities with a large screen for monitoring. Connecting it to a tripod, however, can be a trial.

SerialKickers aim to solve this problem with a new product for iPad, the ArchMount, an ultra-portable mounting system that will let you attach your iPad to a camera tripod for use in video, tele-prompter, or music applications.

Delver’s Drop is an upcoming 2D physics puzzler role-playing game (RPG) with strong visual and gameplay inspiration from NES-era games like A Link to the Past and Secret of Mana. However, it’s also a fully modern game that uses the latest in gaming technologies. The developers created a Kickstarter project to finish this labor of love, and to be able to bring it to Mac, PC, and Linux platforms, with some hopeful plans to be able to bring the game to iOS and Android in the future, and in another Kickstarter campaign.

In the olden days, where getting the exposure of your photos right was much harder thanks to the fact that you didn’t get to see the result until your prints came back from the lab, people would sometimes rely on a separate incident light meter, which would measure the light falling on the subject, and not the light reflected by it.

Now, such a piece of hardware is being made for the iPhone…

That’s what CamFind‘s developers are claiming — that the app is at least four times more accurate than Google Goggles at recognizing and then searching for the subject of a photo you’ve taken with your iPhone.

If you’re unfamiliar with the two-year-old Google Goggles function (integrated within the Google Search app) the idea is pretty simple. Just snap a photo with your iPhone, and the app tries to recognize what you’ve taken a photo of. Once identified, you can then initiate a Google search for that item.

This week’s must-have apps roundup kicks off with Real Racing 3, arguably the most anticipated racing game for iOS to date. Following its announcement last August, it’s finally — slowly but surely — making its way to App Stores worldwide. We also have an awesome new weather app called Haze, the latest game from Chillingo, and more.

Crowd-funding site Kickstarter can be a fantastic way to make your dream Apple accessory, like the Pebble E-Watch, a reality, and now it’s even easier than ever to help fund and keep track of new projects, thanks to the arrival of the official Kickstarter app for iPhone.

The idea was simple, create a brush and stylus combo tool that gives users an authentic painting experience on the iPad. Born on Kickstarter, the Sensu artist brush for iPad ($40) cruised well past its $7,500 funding goal, sitting pretty at just under $66,000 by the end of its funding deadline.

I now sit here with the product of that idea and Kickstarter cash, and after days of testing and tinkering with it, I can say with all sincerity—the Sensu team was definitely on to something special.

The Smarter Stand for iPhone really is smart. It was designed to solve two problems: tangled earbud cords and a slab-like iPhone which insists on slipping off anything you try to prop it against. And it does all this whilst remaining a flat, pocketable piece of plastic.

The iHook is back, folks, and it’s even better than it was the last time we told you about it. Unfortunately, it won’t open a beer for you, so that’s, um, out.

Recently re-upped at Kickstarter, the iHook Dual Edition will not only connect to your iPod Nano, making it an ideal way to mount the little square of joy, but it now allows you to connect an iPod Shuffle, too.

Artizens is raising money on Kickstarter right now, and to judge by the funding activity, it looks like the Kickstarter community is as excited about the potential of this upcoming game as I am, as the project has already gathered over half of its $30,000 goal with 23 days to go.

The game looks like a side-scrolling platform gam, with shades of Shadow of the Colossus, with giant creatures to overcome by co-operative teams of players, each of whom will be able to create their own characters and gear. The gear creation here is unique, with materials for the armor and weapons gathered from the defeated monsters, and the look and feel of the objects created by…drawing them.

I love gaming on my iPad, but for certain titles, virtual controls just don’t cut it. First-person shooters, fast-paced platforms, and even sports simulators are much better with physical controls. And there are plenty of them for iOS devices, but the Audojo for iPad could be the most convenient.

It’s a case with built-in analog sticks and triggers that turns your iPad into a real handheld gaming machine. But there is one thing missing.

The first batch of Pebble smartwatches began shipping on Wednesday, nine months after the device broke Kickstarter records by securing more than $10 million in funding. Reports had suggested, however, that the accompanying Pebble iOS app would be delayed due to Apple’s approval process — but it just appeared in the App Store.

Securifi’s new Almond+ router, a touch-screen router — really the touch-screen router, since the only other router available with a touch screen is the earlier version of the Almond, released mid last year and still available on Amazon for $80 — went live today on Kickstarter. It’s already lassoed over $90,000 in backing as this post goes live, with a goal of $250,000; that’s a third of its funding goal, just within its first day on Kickstarter.

Pebble was at CES earlier this month to announce that its much-anticipated smartwatch had entered mass production and was ready to begin shipping today, January 23. The company has now begun notifying some early backers that their order is on its way, but the vast majority will have to wait a little while longer. The device has been hit by supply issues that have somewhat scuppered its rollout, and the first batch is said to include just 500 units.

Meanwhile, the Pebble app for iOS is delayed, too.

Like a dummy, I bought a waterproof iPhone pouch without checking whether it fit my iPhone 5. It did, but only with some scary squeezing and bending. I bought the case to see me through a rainy trip to Paris at the end of last year, but when I discovered the mismatch (Paris Mis-Match?) I used my formidable mental powers to solve the problem – I hid in bars and coffee shops every time it rained.

If I’d had the mentalKase, though, I could’ve explored the city a little better. Well, almost.