The eTeleporter is a brand new box that will teleport humans from one physical location to another, instantaneously. Wait, no. Let’s start again. The eTeleporter is a kind of a phone booth for your iPad.
The box solves the problem of eye contact when talking to people via FaceTime or Skype. It also solves the problem of not having a giant ugly aluminum and plastic box on your desk. The eTeleporter uses an optical system to redirect your image into the camera so the person on the other end feels like you’re looking them in the eye instead of gazing slightly downwards. This should make it much more comfortable for them, but doesn’t help you at all, unless they also buy an eTeleporter.
It also acts cuts down on reflections, because it’s a box, and works to amplify both mic and speaker.
And I figure they’ll sell almost none, because, let’s be honest here, the iPad is all about freedom and convenience, and having to put it inside a giant coffin to make a call that will only benefit the callee is not very appealing. It also costs $100, and won’t arrive until February of next year. Given that the eTeleporter only works with the full-sized iPad (the optic system is married to the position of the iPad’s camera) and that there will almost certainly be a newer, smaller iPad in October, you could be wasting your cash.
If you want one, though, the Kickstarter link is below.
Source: Kickstarter
Thanks: Kristin!
Charlie Sorrel writes reviews and how-tos. Follow Charlie on Twitter at @mistercharlie, and at micro.blog on @mistercharlie
One response to “ETeleporter Box Lets You Look Video-Callers In The Eye”
HI Charlie – Thanks for taking time to review our eTeleporter Capsule
We wanted to share a couple of statistics about iPad based video chat: Even tough the iPad is a mobile device, video chat usage is not mobile at all. Research shows us that on 93% of video chat sessions both users are stationary and not moving at all during the video chat. We took this into consideration for our final design, since we believe -and we could be wrong of course- that we won’t be seeing anybody walking on the street or driving their cars and video chatting on their iPad at the same time. We could have made it smaller, but then the viewing experience would have been much less fulfilling.
We took into consideration portability, so it can fit easily on a carry on bag for busines travelers. The capsule is compact enough that it actually fits snuggly in a shoebox.
Also, we actually have designed our capsule so an inset can be added to the base, to make it future proof for future versions of iPads that may have different physical dimensions. So this device can actually be used with the new smaller iPad 5 and the investment on this device won’t be lost. Thanks again for investing some of your valuable time writing about our technology and please let us know if you have any other questions.
The eTeleporter team