kickstarter

If you've always wanted to achieve the precise focusing seen in the movies, perhaps it's time you invested in a follow focus. However, with professional systems costing anywhere from a few hundred to thousands of dollars, the 50-Dollar Follow Focus is a more affordable alternative for videographers on a budget.

The brainchild of Wiley Davis, the 50-Dollar Follow Focus is made in his homemade CNC (computer numerical control) mill and consists of the follow focus body, a pulley and a rubber-toothed belt. A user-adjustable spring built into the system of Teflon washers in the follow focus allows users to fine-tune the amount of friction needed when focusing a lens.

Crafted from durable, heat-treated aluminum, the 50-Dollar Follow Focus comes with a re-positional handle, which lets users set their lens at different positions at specific marker lines. Finally, a toothed-belt and pulleys of different sizes can be swapped to fit different lens sizes. … Read more

Compact Bluetooth speakers are hot items these days and nowhere is that more evident than with HiddenRadio, a Kickstarter project that is due to get funded today to the tune of almost $1 million, blowing away its modest goal of raising $125,000.

For those who don't know, kickstarter.com is a crowdsourced angel investor site that can help folks raise money to produce products that are in various stages of development (some projects get funded, some don't). HiddenRadio appears to be one of the site's bigger success stories.

Industrial Designers John Van Den Nieuwenhuizen and Vitor Santa Maria … Read more

Something about the HiddenRadio has hit a nerve on Kickstarter. The project blew past its $125,000 goal and has already topped $400,000 in pledges.

HiddenRadio is a small canister-shaped Bluetooth speaker with no knobs or buttons. You just rotate the casing upward to reveal more of the speaker and increase the volume.

When fully open, the HiddenRadio can crank out 80 decibels of sound. That should be enough to get the neighbors to bang a broom handle on the ceiling.… Read more

If Indiana Jones were a photographer and needed a camera case, the Cam Crate would be it.

Whether you're braving sandstorms in the Gobi desert, wading through the crocodile-infested Amazon, or negotiating the dense jungles of Sumatra, this rugged case promises to protect your shooter. It's waterproof, mudproof, crushproof, and even shockproof.

Able to fit most dSLRs, the camera case by product designer Matthew Geyster has a quick-access latch that allows users to quickly open and close the container and features a soft, padded interior. It's made from a hardy composite material and comes with a lifetime warranty, as well as a carry strap. … Read more

Sony's Walkman is alive and well in digital form, but the iconic tape player version is still the image that comes to mind when you think about Walkmans.

If the Audman Kickstarter project gets off the ground, you'll be able to take your iPhone or iPod Touch back to the go-go days of the '80s with a Walkman-style costume.

Besides making your iPhone much less attractive to thieves, the Audman also packs a surprising amount of bonus material.… Read more

"The sea is everything. It covers seven-tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides." - Jules Verne, "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea"

The ocean is indeed teeming with life, and I, for one, never tire of watching documentaries and nature specials about it. Now, a Los Angeles-based company is giving you the chance to capture video of life under sea with your iPhone.

The FourPro is an underwater housing rig designed for the iPhone 4 and 4S by Mocean Armor. Built from marine-grade aluminum and stainless steel components, the FourPro seals in your smartphone and allows you to shoot video underwater at a depth of up to 100 feet. … Read more

Inventor and engineer Jason Giddings hopes you have a few extra bucks to back his idea for a multitouch mouse and keyboard concept made entirely out of glass and metal.

The combo looks like the input device used on the Gibson supercomputer in "Hackers," but Hal and the Plague would probably be more psyched to use Giddings' wireless peripherals.

The glass surface of the keyboard and mouse shrug off food crumbs and most liquids, and both use Frustrated Total Internal Reflection (FTIR) technology with the help of an embedded camera to pick up infrared light reflected off the inside walls. Proprietary software then picks up the location of the tap and engages the appropriate key press.

Did I mention the software is open source? Yep, that means any developer can potentially manipulate it beyond the functionality of other multitouch peripherals like the Apple Magic Trackpad and the Optimus Maximus keyboard.

You can see visual mockups of the keyboard and mouse set at the Kickstarter donation page, but Giddings still has a long way to go before he reaches the $50,000 goal needed to build prototypes and enter preproduction.

Pledge $10 for a chance to submit your ideas on what to name this thing--the winner will receive the first production model! More concept photos after the jump.… Read more

The MacBook Air has won me over, after a long period during which I'd felt skeptical about the concept. Small, light, fast startup, long battery life; it's all great, except for two things: limited internal storage and few ports. A clean-looking solution for the latter has been made, but it's just looking for funding.

The LandingZone, a MacBook Air docking station, is a Kickstarter project that's aiming to help Air owners with their port woes--but only to a point. The $200 dock concept has four USB 2.0 ports, an Ethernet port, a Mini DisplayPort, and a Kensington-compatible locking port. What it conspicuously lacks is Thunderbolt support. … Read more

In the beginning, back in the 1870s, a typewriter key traveled downward when you struck it because the force was needed to propel a typebar onto the ribbon, thereby printing a character on paper.

Even with the advent of electric typewriters--and, much later, computer keyboards--people liked the keys to move decisively when they struck them. It helped with touch typing and confirmed that your keypress had, indeed, been registered. To this day, "full travel" is one of the most complimentary adjectives you can apply to any keyboard.

And then there's the iPad's zero-travel, on-screen keyboard. Many … Read more