kickstarter

Smartphones have rarely been accused of being elegant cameras. Tablets are even more troublesome. Sometimes, it would be easier to hold your device flat and snap a picture. Try that now and you'll get a lovely shot of your feet. Try it with a HiLO right-angle lens, and you'll get a real photo.

The HiLO hides three lenses and a prism inside that allow the image to bounce into the correct part of your camera. An app is also part of the Kickstarter project, so you'll be able to quickly correct for the image mirroring caused by the prism.… Read more

I had the worst case of headphone cord tangle on Friday, and wouldn't you know it? Just as I had finished unwinding and unknotting, a co-worker showed up at my desk with two samples of the Unlace, a colorful and rubbery new twistable detangler that just kicked off a funding run on Kickstarter.

If I'd had these twisties sooner, I could have prevented my most recent cord conundrum, but oh well... I'm excited to have them around for future knotty situations.

Inspired by the look of a shoelace, the Unlace comes in two sizes -- a 5-incher for earbuds and similarly sized cords, and a 10-incher for power cords and other burly cables. The longer Unlace can even be configured into an impromptu smartphone stand. Both sizes come in eight colors: white, yellow, orange, pink, blue, green, silver, and black. … Read more

Instead of leaving your favorite snaps to languish virtually, the folks at Ghost Nest have created an interesting way to show off your prized images.

The Geode is basically an oddly shaped picture frame that illuminates specially printed versions of your chosen snapshots. Just send your images in and the company will print them for you. This unique picture frame comes with a rechargeable battery and will glow for up to 6 hours on a full charge. … Read more

If you glance at your iPhone wish list, you may see things like longer battery life, expandable SD memory, a better flash, and an old school 30-pin connector for your shiny new iPhone 5. You can have all those things if you're willing to pledge $75 to the iExpander project on Kickstarter.

The iExpander is a jack-of-all-trades case that crams a whole lot into a relatively small size. You're still going to add 6.3mm of chunk to your sleek phone, but the trade-off is pretty tempting.

Let's start with the flashy stuff. The case has an ultrathin CAP-XX supercapacitor that powers an LED flash that can make a big difference in the quality of your low-light photos. … Read more

Ever since we started using the iPhone 5, we've either been carting the Lightning-to-USB cable around or had to go out and buy a spare.

Those pesky cables, however, have a tendency to get tangled in our bags, as well as cause a mess on our desks, so we were intrigued when we spotted the Spixi from New York-based Escargot on Kickstarter. … Read more

Sometimes we kick ourselves for missing out on a good Kickstarter. There's that moment of sorrow when we see something awesome is already funded and done without us. Then we eventually forget about it.

Kickfollower is a combination of a gentle reminder and a discovery tool for crowdfunded projects. It aggregates successful projects that are now reality and available for purchase from online stores.… Read more

Simple.TV started as a darling of CES 2012, but recently it's been faced with the more pedestrian realities of launching a new product, such as raising money via Kickstarter and meeting its release dates.… Read more

You're waiting for your flight at the airport. A snuffling sound emanates from behind you. It's getting louder. You turn to look. An eldritch creature emerges from a gray pod! Oh wait, it's just a fellow traveler removing his Ostrich Pillow. No need to panic.

The Ostrich Pillow looks a bit like a giant garden squash gone soft. It has a hole for your face so you can breath and two side holes to stick your hands in.

The Kickstarter project page refers to it as "a micro environment in which to take a comfortable power nap in the office, traveling, or wherever you want." … Read more

Kickstarter has been barraged by questions regarding its responsibility to people who fund projects on its platform, and today it addressed many of these concerns.

The crowd-sourced funding platform announced that project creators must now address the risks and challenges of their projects, can no longer use renderings of their proposals, and cannot give mass quantities of their finished products to funders.

"It's hard to know how many people feel like they're shopping at a store when they're backing projects on Kickstarter, but we want to make sure that it's no one," the company'… Read more