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Crowdfunding Roundup: New Apple-related projects
Every week, TUAW provides readers with an update on what new or significant crowdfunded Apple-related projects are in the news. While our policy is to not go into detail on items that haven't reached at least 80 percent of their funding goal, this update is designed to give readers a heads-up on projects they might find interesting enough to back. From Kickstarter SPIN is billed as a premium in-ear audio solution that provides a very cool cord-retraction mechanism in an aluminum casing to destroy cord tangling once and for all. One of the co-founders of SPIN, Kevin Brennan, hails from LUNATIK -- we're big fans of their products here at TUAW. The campaign has about a month to go and is currently at about 4.5 percent of the $125,000 necessary to bring this product to life. When I first saw FretPen, I immediately thought that this diminutive guitar fell out of Jim Dalrymple's ample Beard™. I'll let the video below give you an idea of how amazing this thing is when used with your iPhone. And it's also usable as a pen! Which reminds me of The Who's "Guitar and Pen"... but I digress. With 26 days to go, it's about a third of the way towards funding. YOU CAN PUSH IT OVER THE TOP ... YEEEEEAAAHHHHH! DARWINmachine wants to evolve the iPad stand, which is why they've designed the F2 iPad/Tablet Stand. It has about three weeks to go, and is about 40 percent funded. F2 is a professionally-machined piece of gear that not only looks futuristic, but works well too. Give it a look if you're tired of the same old iPad stands that are currently on the market. The Star Trek Tricorder is closer than you think. The SCiO pocket molecular scanner from Consumer Physics is amazing. Use it with your iPhone and it uses infrared spectroscopy to do some amazing things -- tell you what the nutritional value of a food is, identify a medication, or determine how ripe a piece of fruit is. Unsurprisingly, SCiO is already 188 percent funded with about six weeks to go. We covered Lunecase yesterday in a breakout post, and it's bleepin' amazing. Lunecase is an iPhone case that harnesses the electromagnetic energy from your phone to power a display on the back. The case "knows and identifies when users receive an SMS message or a phone call before it is even displayed on the iPhone's screen." Lunecase is 180 percent funded with five weeks to go, but you can still get in on the fun. Would you buy a Lightning or micro-USB cable if it had a lifetime warranty? One of the primary issues with existing cables is that there's no strain relief around the actual plugs, so the cables become frayed and unusable way too quickly. Snakable uses a patent-pending strain-relief assembly to keep your cables in one piece. The Lightning cables will be Apple MFi-certified, and the project is about 10 percent funded with three weeks to go. Get to work, backers! Hat tip to Hal Sherman for feeding us this one! And although I was a day late in getting this week's crowdfunding roundup to "press", that's all I've got this week. Be sure to join us next week for even more great projects that could use your funding dollars. If you're aware of any other crowdfunded Apple-related projects, be sure to let us know about them through the Tip Us button at the upper right of the TUAW home page for future listing on the site. Just make sure that they actually have a valid reason for existing, OK?
DarwinMachine Type 339 is an anti-boxism statement, and also a PC
Architect and racecar designer Matthew Kim gets much respect for his messed-up PC builds and now he's had a go at the 9-inch-cubed small form factor. The DarwinMachine Type 339 is perhaps less wacky than the Hammerhead, but its chassis exploits the same premium combo of semi-translucent eco-resin and CNC aircraft aluminum and comes with Kim's usual life-time warranty. The internals are decent enough for home theatre or a spot of gaming: a Core i5-2400S alongside a Radeon HD 6570, 4GB, 40GB SSD and 1TB HDD, but ultimately that $1999.00 price tag is all about the (hopefully dimmable) aesthetics. %Gallery-140363%
Pure Luxury takes DARWINmachine's Hammerhead PC, adds primo parts and lifetime warranty
Does this badass gaming rig look familiar? It should -- it's basically a DARWINmachine Hammerhead HMR989 with some sweet, sweet cherries on top. In an attempt to live up to its name, Pure Luxury's pimped it out with an Intel Core i7-990X processor, 12GB of pricey Kingston RAM, two NVIDIA GTX 580 graphics cards, two 128GB SSDs, 2TB of magnetic storage, and a Blu-ray drive for good measure. The company claims the killer combo can boot in four seconds, and run Call of Duty: Black Ops at 1920 x 1200 resolution with 8xMSAA at 285fps. All of those components plug into an ASUS Rampage III Gene motherboard and a 1.2 kilowatt modular power supply to juice the blood-red monster machine, and there's a lifetime warranty with 24/7 phone support. Should any of those expensive parts fail, Pure Luxury says it'll replace them with equal or better performing components and foot the shipping bill too. Of course, all this luxury doesn't come cheap -- you'll drop $9,500 before you see one of these puppies shipped to your house. Makes the original $2,900 Hammerhead look downright affordable, no? %Gallery-118728%
DARWINmachine Hammerhead HMR989 gaming rig looks ferocious, can attack your desk for $2,900
The giant PC gaming rigs of the last decade are so passé. Hot this year are sleeker, more cut models, models like the DARWINmachine Hammerhead HMR989. It looks like a crazy casemod but it's actually a custom-built rig you can order, priced at $2,899 and sporting a vertically mounted NVIDIA GTX460 graphics accelerator, a 2.8Ghz Core i7-860 processor, a combination of SSD and platter-based storage, and a power supply left hanging on the side. It's all aluminum and resin sheets and lovely, though we could probably do without the blue LEDs. %Gallery-114947%
