Crowdfunding


Own a Hand-Crafted Wooden Pen Made from a WWII Ship

I enjoy studying WWII as a history teacher and love hand crafted pens as a pen turner. A cool Kickstarter program is offering a chance to own a hand crafted pen made from the deck of the USS North Carolina. For as little as $45 you can own a piece of the historic ship. Check out Kickstarter to learn more.



Create Your Own Watch Thanks to Modify Watches

Imagine if you could pick from one of more than thirty different watch band colors and then design your own watch face. That’s what the Mod-To-Order project on Kickstarter is all about. Modify Watches is looking for $50,000 to make it happen. Having received some early samples of the watch, I sure hope it is successful. Here’s a closer look.


SipSnap Turns Any Cup into a Sippy Cup

Babies not only require a ton of stuff, but they constantly rotate in and out of all that stuff. Just when you’ve mastered bottles, it’s time to move on to sippy cups. It’s a never ending parade of plastic pieces, but the Kickstarter project SipSnap hopes to make the transition easier with universal sippy cup covers!


Color Cables Glow, End Fight Over Whose Cable Is Whose

Color Cables is an Indiegogo campaign running through midnight April 6, 2014. Their goal is to raise $20,000 with which they hope to offer cables for charging and synchronizing your MicroUSB and iOS (30 pin and lightning) devices. But these are no ordinary cables; according to the company each cable glows, is colored, and won’t tangle.



Can You Say “Downward Dog”? The Hotdog Yogatote Can

Hotdog Yoga is a spinoff from our friends at Skooba Design, and they have turned to Kickstarter to help fund their latest project. The Yogatote is “designed to be more practical and versatile than any standard mat bag”. A full-featured yoga bag with a built-in mat carrier, the bag offers tons of organization without looking like it.


Brew Cutlery Makes Loving Beer Even Easier

I recently built a home bar; between glass wear, jiggers, shakers and openers, there are tons of gadgets I could fill my drawers with, but a recent Kickstarter campaign has introduced an item I have never seen. Brew Cutlery combines stainless steel eating utensils with a bottle opener. A $20 Kickstarter contribution will let you eat, drink and be merry!


Help Kerry Woo’s ‘Take the Long Way Home’ Project Hit the Road

Kerry Woo, past Gear Diary writer and current street photographer extraordinaire, has just launched his first Kickstarter project — the aptly named “Take the Long Way Home”. His goal is to “document a rich pictorial history of America’s back roads, [and] upload the images online with professional printing and direct mailing to you” while driving cross-country from Seattle to Nashville. And now, in my words: Kerry is someone who I have never met in person, but over the ten or so years that we have been communicating online, he has become a dear friend. Kerry has always had a quirky…



Reinvented GBag Golf Bag Uses New Technology – Will Change How You Golf!

The golf bag is a standard part of any golfer’s arsenal, but while there are loads of models they all serve the same basic purposes the same basic way. Now Gbag has launched on IndieGoGo and looks to change the way we think of the golf bag for good, using magnets and ultralight materials and a modular design! The golf bag is a standard part of any golfer’s arsenal, but while there are loads of models they all serve the same basic purposes the same basic way. Now Gbag has launched on IndieGoGo and looks to change the way we…


John Bigg’s Novel Mytro Finds Funding via IndieGoGo

Traditional publishing is terrified of the rise of ebooks from Amazon, but it’s not just ebooks that threaten the publishing world. Crowdfunding is useful and disruptive for more than just gadgets, and can be used to fund books as well. In fact, John Bigg’s novel Mytro is being funded successfully via IndieGoGo!


‘No More Woof’ Looks to Translate Dog Thoughts to Words, Raise Money on IndieGogo

Have you ever wondered what your dog was thinking? We would love to know what our pets want and if we could better take care of them. That’s the promise of No More Woof, a prototype from the Nordic Society for Invention and Discovery in Sweden, which discovered a way to sample and ‘translate’ EEG patterns into common speech elements. Using a Raspberry PI computer along with EEG electrodes to capture, analyze and report changes in brain activity with commonly associated human speech: No More Woof is a small gadget that uses the latest technology in micro computing and EEG…


MyLIFTER Makes Garage Organization Smart

There are two kinds of garages out there: the garages where cars live while shelves of stuff loom over them ominously, and the garages where the idea of fitting a car amongst all the stuff stored there is laughable. No matter which garage you have, myLIFTER is a Kickstarter project designed to organize your garage and control it from your phone!


Will the Bonaverde Coffee Changers Project Succeed? I Sure Hope So!

I debated and debated (and debated!) about whether or not I should back the “World’s first roast-grind-brew coffee machine” by Bonavarde Coffee Changers. In the end, even though it seemed unlikely and possibly too good to be true, and even though there were plenty of good reasons not to,”but what if it works?” won out, and I backed. Bonaverde more than met their initial goal of $135,000; they smashed it with over $681K in backing money, and they added several stretch goals along the way. This may turn out to be a very expensive piece of junk, or it might…


Toymail is a Cute Idea That Picks Your Pocket

One of the things I have learned extremely quickly as a new parent is that some kid’s accessories and toys come with crazy gimmicks. They’re either smartphone-connected for no good reason, overpriced, or they’ll make something simple overly complicated, all in an effort to part parents from money. The Toymail project on Kickstarter appears to nail the trifecta!


Make Your High-Fives the Life of the Party with Fiesta Five!

When I heard about the Dragon Innovation project called ‘The Fiesta Five’, I had an immediate thought: one of my sons loves fist-bumps and high fives, the other does not. When he finally does give his brother a high-five, there is a celebration … and I could just picture him using one of these to make it truly special.


Help Bring the McDonald Observatory’s Struve Telescope Model Home to Texas

The McDonald Observatory is a Texas landmark that evokes emotion in all who see it. To me, the bright white telescope domes nestled in the Davis Mountains represent inspiration, education, and — perhaps most importantly — exploration. An Indigogo campaign has been launched to celebrate the Observatory’s 75th anniversary; here is how you can be a part of it all.


ChargeSmart: The World’s First Smart iPhone Battery Case

We’ve seen a host of different app-enabled hardware for the iPhone. There’s been everything from smart scales to smart radar detectors. Now there’s even an app-enabled battery case for the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5S. They are working to fund the project on Kickstarter, so if this is something that sounds interesting to you, read on.


Padcaster Launches iPad Mini Kickstarter Campaign Releases Padcaster 2.0!

The original Padcaster demonstrated once again that dismissing the iPad as a media creation device is wrong-headed – it allowed iPad owners to attach their tablet to a tripod and then use lights, lenses, external microphones and more. Now they have launched a new Kickstarter to help fund the creation of an iPad Mini version! Why are they seeking funding now? Well, they only introduced the Padcaster in April and started selling it in June so it is just starting to get rolling through production. As they note: “The Original Padcaster is already in production, having been funded almost entirely…