Kickstarter - page 8

Imagine exploring a creepy house full of eerie and unfamiliar sounds, supernatural horror dripping from every bannister and behind every mysterious, creaking door.

Now imagine entering such a disturbing environment when you’re blind.

Cassie is the blind young protagonist of Perception, a horror game from many of the folks that worked on Bioshock Infinite and Dead Space, and she’s been dreaming of this house for some time now. When she finally figures out it’s real, she heads off to investigate it, using only echolocation–sound into visuals–to confront and solve the ghostly mysteries within.

There’s a gloriously tense trailer, too, from the perspective of the wisecracking teen, Cassie. Check it out.

Stop taking pictures of your “stupid face,” Thomas Hurst says. Think history, legacy and every day, unposed moments.

Hurst believes he has the tool to help you make more meaningful photos and the veteran photojournalist is trying to raise $25,000 on Kickstarter to bring the COVR you need to snap candid photos with your iPhone 6.

When a camera bag claims to be water resistant, it feels a little like the brand is hedging its bets. It will protect your gear up to a point.

But the designers at miggo have a bag they declare confidently is storm-proof and all-weather. They even say with certainty the ironically named Agua will remain protective for five minutes in rain falling at 10 liters a minute with up to 22,000 pounds of force.

If you’re in a Biblical hard rain, you may have bigger problems then keeping your camera dry. miggo just wants you to feel comfortable with Agua if you’re out on a typical rainy day.

There is plenty that former Android-users won’t miss if they make the jump to iOS, but one thing they might is the iPhone’s lack of an Android-style “back” button — the result of Steve Jobs’ belief that everything about the iPhone be as uncluttered as possible.

A new Kickstarter project gives you back this feature, however, thanks to a “smart” screen protector which adds just such a button to your iPhone 6 or 6 Plus home screen.

And based on the fact that it’s already been funded more than six times over, we’re assuming it’s something a number of users would really, really like to get their hands on. Literally.

The iPhone is a distracting gadget. There’s texting, Facebook and a dozen-odd games I keep on the thing. I’m constantly being notified that there is something new to look at, a new Instagram post, a new Twitter reply, a new email.

Sometimes I just want to get away from it all, but I keep my iPhone with me all the time because, essentially, it makes sure I’m able to make a phone call in an emergency.

Now there’s a new Kickstarter project that aims to let you leave your iPhone at home but still remain connected with the one essential function: phone calls. The Light Phone is “a credit card-sized cell phone designed to be used as little as possible. The Light Phone is your phone away from phone.”

That sounds pretty neat, actually. Too bad I hate making phone calls.

A Super Bowl ring is the most coveted of football’s rewards, a talisman with the sparkle to match the magic of a championship season.

An Indianapolis Colts fan wants to give the New England Patriots the ring he thinks they deserve. Sitting on top of his 3-D-printed blue ring is a ball-inflation needle, the kind the NFL now believes was used in the infamous Deflategate game where the Patriots “cheated” their way to the Super Bowl.

Everything about your vibe – the earbuds, furiously typing fingers and intense body language – says do not approach. But the steady stream of co-workers stopping by your desk can’t take a hint.

You could tell people “Can’t talk now!” but you’re afraid to come off as rude. Your politeness is killing your productivity.

A Utah startup called Wired In has come up with a simple, sleek desk accessory that does the talking for you. It’s a light-up sign that lets people know you’re in the zone without insult or anxiety.

The iPhone is probably the best, most portable gaming device around. Even so, sometimes nostalgia kicks in and you miss your old Gameboy.

The Arduboy is a new, credit card-size console that is just as portable as an iPhone, if not more so. And it can play all the old 8-bit games your iPhone can’t.

Do you like your music hot? I mean really hot?

If so, the Sound Torch could be the Bluetooth speaker of your dreams. The in-development audio device is headed for Kickstarter with a proof-of-concept video that should make fire marshals nervous.

See it in action, and get a taste of the creators’ crazy ambitions, below.

Glide helped Jim Dalrymple reboot The Loop into a gorgeous digital magazine way back in October 2013; we’re excited to see how much progress the Glide publishing app, invented by Chris Harris, has made during the time between then and now.

We’re not the only ones, either: With 15 days left to go on its Kickstarter campaign, iPad publishing app Glide has already garnered $12,000 over its goal.

“I’ve been following Glide since the release of ‘The Loop’ app, and I’m so excited to see it finally approaching release,” says Kickstarter commenter Nick R. “I didn’t know much about ‘The Loop’ at the time, but was blown away by the functionality of the app itself. Amazing to see how far its come in 2 years. Glad they took their time and did things right. —- Good job Glide team.”

I pretty much love Apple and Lego in equal measure, so the idea of somehow combining the two is never going to fail to win my approval.

Assuming that I’m not the only person to feel this way, allow me to introduce the Brik Case: a fantastic Kickstarter campaign intended to raise the cash needed to manufacture a MacBook case that can be decorated with Lego bricks, to create any design of your choosing.

A game like Real Racing has sophisticated graphics that, combined with the motion sensors of an iPad, give you the sensation of being behind the wheel.

The only thing missing is the actual wheel.

Ivaylo Kalburdzhiev wants iPad users to have a more comfortable drive when they play anyone of the more than 450 tilt games.

The CEO of KOLOS, slavic for colossus, has developed a gaming wheel for the iPad that launches on Kickstarter today.

Citizen George is slated to be a full-length independent film about a director who creates a hugely popular space opera film trilogy (read, George Lucas and Star Wars), only to end up releasing disappointing film prequels 20 years later.

So far, so basic, right? The catch here is that you have to choose the type of movie this fan film will end up being. Want a dramatic story about a serious film auteur and the perils of fame and fortune, like Citizen Kane? Drop some cash into the Drama tip jar. Want a wacky, time-travel comedy like Austin Powers? Slide your money into the Comedy tip jar.

Blood makes Sherwood Forlee squeamish, it really does. So imagine the surprise of friends who know his weakness when he created a type of bandage for the everyday boo-boo that creates the illusion of a stomach-churning wound that would make most people call 911.

Forlee’s sense of humor is sicker than the images on his Boo-Boos bandages, though. He says he was in a “jovial spirit” when he began drawing up plans for the morbid adhesive strips.

“They look disgusting, but they also look funny,” Forlee told Cult of Mac. “While I was doing the research, I was at the point of quitting. I would google search ‘terrible wounds’ and I could only handle like five minutes at a time.”

We still don’t know the exact launch date of the Apple Watch, but if you just can’t wait to load up on accessories for your Apple wearable, the first Apple Watch dock is already available on Kickstarter.

ChronosDock, a “luxury” bedside dock, is the first Apple Watch accessory we’ve seen launch so far. Its makers, Kickshark, say it’s “the most indulgent, opulent piece of docking jewelry” they could imagine. It only costs $99, but they insist it’s “excessive in the extreme” to satisfy all you high-end fashionistas.

We think it looks kind of boring, but take a look for yourself:

At 9, Mariah Martin already has a handle on future careers. “Veterinarian, professional figure skater, fashion model and teacher – not all at once.”

For now, she must settle for tech entrepreneur.

The Seattle fourth-grader and her father, Scott, understand learning math for many children is no joyride but they have developed an iOS game app they believe will put kids in the driver seat on a road to mastering the basics.

CarQuiz allows drivers to navigate a track with math equations along the way and a choice of three answers a little further down the road. Once the equation appears, the driver must quickly figure out the answer as three choices appear. With a finger swipe, the driver moves into the lane with the correct answer.

LAS VEGAS — Your iPhone is really great at finding places to eat, recipes to cook and stores to buy food at, but when it comes to actually analyzing the things that go in your mouth, it’s not very futuristic. That’s where Consumer Physics comes in with its molecular analyzer called SCiO that brings Star Trek-like tech to your pocket.

SCiO is a tiny spectrometer similar to the giant ones found in laboratories that are used to analyze the molecular makeup of objects. Only instead of pumping out nothing but nerdy scientific facts, SCiO was designed to help iPhone users analyze everyday objects, so you can discover things like how much fat is in a piece of cheese or whether a watermelon is ripe.

“Your iPhone can tell you what song is playing on the radio, but when it comes to telling you the nutritional value of food it’s kind of clueless,” says Consumer Physics’ CEO Dror Sharon. “With SCiO we’re encouraging explorers to help us on our mission to map the physical world.”

LAS VEGAS — With its wide base and gently sloping sides, the Archt one speaker looks a little like an egg pod from Alien or the business end of a bomb.

Its outer shell is sleek black plastic, with a flat ring around the top that gives it a space-age feel. If the killer looks aren’t enough to grab your attention, the speaker’s ground-thumping bass will.

“It gets really loud,” Archt CEO Evan Foo told Cult of Mac.

While the all-in-one wireless speaker is certainly loud — it was ballsy enough to cut through the background noise here at the International CES trade show — the goal is to deliver CD-quality sound, no matter the source of the audio.

Tired of looking at the world from the same old perspective? Need a fresh take on things? A new point of view?

Well, you have less than two weeks to get your hands on an EYEteleporter, an outlandish, periscope-style device that will give you a unique perspective on the world.

Anyone who travels a lot internationally has likely been stung by roaming Internet charges at some point in other. While it is possible to buy or rent a local SIM card when you’re abroad, this requires that your iPhone be either unlocked or jailbroken — and also limits users to just one mobile carrier in each country.

Trying to solve this problem is a nifty Kickstarter project which aims to build a its multi-carrier, virtual SIM-equipped iPhone case that means travelers get affordable data roaming in 100+ countries for just $2 a day.

When The Magazine ceases publication this December, owner Glenn Fleishman will be closing shop on an ambitious two-year experiment in digital publishing.

It’s not a total surprise — subscriptions were already on a downward trend when Fleishman transitioned from editor to owner of The Magazine after purchasing the publication from Marco Arment last year — and it’s not a total bummer, either.

In fact, Fleishman says he’s feeling pretty good about stopping here: he’s met his obligation to provide Kickstarter backers with their one-year subscriptions, and he’s ending this fascinating experiment while it’s still profitable.

“I’m even able to pay myself an ever-declining hourly rate for my time,” said Fleishman, who spoke with Cult of Mac about what went right, what went wrong, and his feelings about pulling the plug on a project that was his full-time job for the last year and a half.

Andy Rooney once quipped that anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there’s a 90% probability you’ll get it wrong.

With that sentiment in mind, a new Kickstarter campaign is in the process of raising funds for a fantastic project: a fully reversible, nigh-unbreakable USB Lightning charging cord for your iPhone. Check out the video after the jump.

Deciding to buy a new iPhone is always easier than figuring out what to do with the old smartphone its replacing. 280 million used smartphones are expected to be shoved back into closest and drawers by the end of 2014 rather than being recycled, but the folks at MindHelix have come up with a novel solution: turn it into a smart-home security robot named Rico.

Rico – a smarthome security device that tracks changes in your home – gives your old iClunker a second life by putting it’s processing power and sensors back to work, so that you can track all the data from various sources in your home, and make changes remotely.

The Rico Kickstarter project just launched this week, and while the little security bot can do a number of things on its own, like monitoring temperature, carbon monoxide, smoke, humidity and motion detection, the device becomes more powerful when you feed it your old smartphone eWaste.

Check out Rico in action in the video below:

Particularly on the back of the recent iCloud account hacking scandal, smartphone security is something a lot of people are paying more attention to.

With that in mind, a London-based designer recently launched an intriguing Kickstarter campaign, to create a clothing label aimed at raising awareness about high-tech security.

The clothes are all cleverly constructed around a removable waterproof stealth pocket, made from police-grade shielding fabrics, designed to securely block all Cell, WiFi, GPS and RFID signals to ~100 dB.

These days, most of us have no shortage of extra batteries that can juice up our iPhones and iPads in a pinch. The problem is that none of them are there when you actually need them: you’ve forgotten them at home, or they’re in that other bag.

The bKey is a new Kickstarter project that aims to make that problem a thing of the past by shrinking down an external battery to the size of a key. And if you’ve got a battery on your keychain, you’ll never be without a charge.