GENOMICON

Well, my latest kickstarter “investment” looks set to be a record-breaker.

At 8am this morning I received their first update email… which said “Woohoo! We made our target!”… 5 hours later, they’ve doubled it… and they have 30 days to go.

So far on kickstarter I have funded:

1) extruded Aluminum rollers – for CNC machines and Camera Sliders
2) a smartphone controlled robot
3) a universal smartphone to tripod attachment
4) a recycle plastic to make feedstock for 3D printers machine
5) a floating ecosystem/machine to create biofuels
6) open source, web-based video-editing software.
7) indestructable, modular earbuds

On indiegogo I also punted $100 to Jeniferever

I’ve also punted money to Wikileaks, and The Real News Network. I think that covers it. If America decides to <airquotes>call</airquotes> wikileaks a terrorist organisation, than I have materially aided terrorism and can be deported/imprisoned etc… but then so can a lot of people, and really, the only way out of this one is for everyone to go into Spartacus mode… everyone donate.

Still… two of the things I’ve donated to in the list above were just $1 – because I think they’re interesting projects and want to be kept on the mailing list. Of the things where I’ve pre-ordered… the only thing that’s turned up is a T-Shirt from Jeniferever… which is fair enough, since I gave them $100 and it was me that suggested they go on indiegogo in the first place.

As to the others? The roller-bearings should have been here ages ago. I’ve talked the bloke… apparently as I’m a donor, I should jump to the top of the queue…. still… vaiting vaiting vaiting. In the time that it’s taken this thing not to turn up, someone else (who did apparently get what they asked for) has made an entire 3D printer.

I’m not impressed with turnaround times… even if these things are still in development. I can remember when the standard mail-order delivery time was 28 days. Every magazine that had adverts for mail-order had 28 days as a standard policy. Amazon.com kicked that one right out the window. Now it’s A-fucking-SAP. I’ve ordered things off Amazon UK and had them turn up in the letterbox the next day. For my own mail-order stuff, I try to get them out the door same day that the order comes in. I find it really stressful having to wait 10 days for parts to turn up (If I’ve run out). It looks to me as though crowd-sourced funding could do with the same kick up the arse that Amazon gave mail-order. I know development takes time, but it doesn’t take that much time.

So… Kickstarter. Not a good way to do your shopping.

In terms of investment? If they make this helicopter, then the whole thing is worth every penny… in fact if any of these things come off then it’s worth every penny… but particularly the helicopter.

–

ps: And Kickstarter STILL doesn’t have an RSS feed even though I’ve told them twice that they need one – and their navigation is kindof crap… all about “staff recommendations” and “popular”. I’m not interested in “staff recommendations” or “popular”. I’m only interested in every single new thing that turns up, preferably filterable by category, and I don’t want to have to manually revisit their site looking for updates. That’s last-fucking century – so instead of finding new things through their site, I’m reliant on other people’s blogs, and twitter.

So that’s today’s complaining out of the way.

edit:

So it looks like the reason that Kickstarter pulled this project is not (as I’d thought) that they took fright at the legalities, but because the people involved were quite possibly bullshit-artists.

Which is a shame. Still. There you go. The excoriating eye of the internet is a tough one to fool once it’s got you in its sights.

Fooled me though.

K for Cool

(via)

Apart (perhaps) from the German Ginger Catweasel… who seems to have a slightly French Accent, with a large dash of Scandinavian. Swiss then.

Seriously though, this is a really cool toy. Possibly steals a bit of the thunder from the Twine thing

THAT MADE OVER 1/2 A MILLION $ ON KICKSTARTER!!! even though it actually looks like a the sort of wax that you use to make skis go faster. The strength of Twine though is that it provides an interface a bit like an Email “Message-Rules” interface… which is actually a bit of a quantum-leap I think… and an application that would have a lot of traction in smartphones… because 5 years from now, there’s probably going to be quite a lot of them lying about not being used… and they have FAR more sensors and smarts than Twine, already built in, already with drivers, already working.

Speaking of which – I managed to sell over $1000 worth of Golden Mean Calipers in one day a couple of days ago… so am finally cracking and getting a smartphone. From no cellphone at all to $800 smartphone in a single bound. I kindof needed to anyway because I’d bought one of those little smartphone robots from Kickstarter…

Something I felt semi-obliged to do, even though I didn’t have a phone myself, because I’ve been predicting this would happen for the last couple of years.

The last thing I invested in in Kickstarter was the 3D Printing Filament From Recycled Bottles project… I just punted them a single dollar (they’d already made their goal) because I want to be kept up to date with how they get on. I’ve actually paid to be on a mailing list… although obviously the motivations are a little more complicated than that.

Back to the modular toy robot… although that’s really cool, when I say “Steals the thunder from Twine”… what I mean is “It doesn’t really”… because what Twine is, is a general-purpose device… so is therefore more configurable etc. One is really good for putting on a coffee table and playing with… kindof executive-toy-like… the other potentially has real-world applications. Additionally, the Modrobotic thing currently costs $160 for a minimum set… and the benefits of having more than one set multiply… so it’s possibly a bit expensoid to be hacking into real-world apps.

Interesting though. Kindof gives the lego concept a whole new dimension. When I was a kid we had a lego-like system made up of 1cm cubes that could click together (probably still got it somewhere). This is kindof like that, but each cube can actually do stuff.

This is Catweazle

ps: … ahhh… I knew those things looked familiar

K. For. Cool.

For a number of reasons.

1) I like Indiegogo. Why?

a) It isn’t US-only.
b) It doesn’t have a “if you don’t reach your goal, you get nothing” model. Kindof a risk for the investors maybe… but it favours conversation between investors and inventors.

2) People get a really cool little reprap for like $500. If I’d known this was going on, I would have bought one. I think. I still might – though I’m really more interested in a laser-cutter.

3) It really fucking worked – they got more than double what they were asking for – and they’re only 1/2 way through the alloted time.

4) Open-Source hardware is looking likely to be A LOT more lucrative than open-source software. Just so long as (dear god) we can keep the greed-head “IP” people out.

5) I’m not sure if this is good or bad: Indiegogo (in this instance) is being used for straight retail, rather than crowd-sourced investment.

So um… does that mean that Nike can “crowd-fund” a new shoe? That kindof fucks the idea of Indiegogo if they can. It’s basically being used as an advertising channel for existing businesses – which is not in the spirit of the thing.

–

I wonder if there would be any traction in a bitcoin version of this… could be interesting, given the massive volatility of bitcoins at the moment. If you’d d.onated $100 in bitcoins yesterday, it would be worth $150 today, and by “yesterday” and “today”, I mean yesterday and today. Literally.

Bitcoins crashed over the weekend… lost about 70% of its value… probably because you can’t get money into the system on the weekend… so the only money in Mt Gox (the main exchange) is from people who “had some lying about” or who have just panic-sold. It went from $30 down to about $10… and is now back up to $20. Usually Mt Gox turns over about 1 million $ a day. The rally yesterday saw it turn over 2 million $ – and that’s with people not being able to get money into the system.

It’s seriously volatile. I’ve got a couple of thousand $ in there – which is about 10 times what I originally invested (almost all of which is from Golden Mean Caliper sales)… but for me it’s more of a donation. I just want to see the thing work – as an exchange currency, not as a storage-currency.