The notion that the wristwatch has fallen out of favor among smartphone-reliant youth is apparently a fallacy, as a Kickstarter project to fund a modern timepiece accessory called the Pebble has raised nearly $10 million with a week still to go. (It’s funding goal? $100,000.) Indeed, the booming crowdfunding site has facilitated a wave of indie technology product development leading to several innovative new gadgets, including those below.
Digital Bolex: The ubiquity of the digital video camera has afforded the everyman the ability to test out the director’s chair, but as evidenced by about 90% of the content on YouTube, most people are more interested in capturing images like the antics of their cat than crafting thoughtfully framed narratives. For more serious filmmakers, the appealingly retro Digital Bolex may become a fundamental tool in their aesthetic arsenal. The first consumer-oriented “digital cinema camera” shoots raw images rather than compressed video, meaning that the filmmaker can alter the color and white balance, contrast, and more, without spoiling the quality of the imagery. Aaaand action!
In light of the ever-changing landscape of print publishing, fans of long-form writing have fair cause to fret. But just as innovative tablet platforms are modifying the parameters of recreational reading, advocates of creative nonfiction—a form once relegated to the pages of wrinkled magazines and bulky anthologies—have taken to the Web, where they are igniting new attempts at literary journalism.
Forefront: Nonprofit media organization Next American City ceased printing its quarterly publication this year after a near-decade run. Despite this seeming blow to the written word, the Philadelphia-based institution remains committed to its original mission and will continue to commission pieces about major city issues—but now, that content will be published exclusively online. New digital publication Forefront will feature a single piece of long-form journalism each week, available to subscribers (for a fee of $1.49/month) or for individual purchase (for $1.99/article). This clever curated approach is sure to win fans for its carefully wrought reportage of key issues, not to mention its very reasonable price point.
Education is clearly going digital, whether or not rumors of all-iPad classrooms are true. To equip students with the skills needed for future job prospects, initiatives like The Guardian’s Digital Literacy Campaign advocate for upgrading computer science and IT curricula in schools. Soon, the three Rs will be four, with Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic joined by pRogramming for true 21st century learning.
Raspberry Pi: Raspberry Pi is a barebones, yet fully programmable, Linux PC that’s only slightly larger than a credit card and costs just $35. The British charity behind it, The Raspberry Pi Foundation, spent six years researching innovative ways to spark a passion for programming among children. Committee Chair Professor Simon Peyton Jones asks, “Do we want the adults of tomorrow to see [computers] as mysterious boxes they can’t understand, or do we want them to have a sense of how to master it?” Once connected to the single circuit board’s USB, Ethernet and video outputs, students can experiment with coding, using programs like Python or Perl without fear of irreversible errors.
In 2009, Kickstarter validated the online pledge system as a viable means of fundraising. Echoing the popularity of crowdsourcing, crowdfunding has become a wildly successful way for entrepreneurial and creative projects to get off the ground. A number of online platforms have followed Kickstarter’s lead, combining social networking and philanthropy to put financial backing back in the hands of the 99 percent.
Lucky Ant: Though it’s a tough time to own a small business, allegiances to local communities have never been stronger. Lucky Ant wants to garner the power of localized crowdsourcing to empower people to invest in their own neighborhoods. Every week, the organization alerts its members to a new potential project in their respective locale. Anyone can chip in, but, like with Kickstarter, the money is collected only if the initiative reaches its pledge goal. Those who contribute receive perks and rewards from the business they support, making them resident VIPs. Currently available to New Yorkers only, Lucky Ant is expected to crawl into more cities soon.
Bigger speakers no longer mean a superior stereophonic experience. With digital music having made entire music collections instantly accessible and mobile, today’s audiophiles prefer portable speakers to the mammoth towers that once defined luxury audio. Indeed, the new stereo system ideal is more discreet, and with an ever growing crop of sleek compact speakers, consumers are opting for design and convenience over range and power.
HiddenRadio: Tangled cords are an annoyance of the past thanks to today’s wireless audio innovations, few of which are as modish as this Bluetooth speaker. Begun as an industrial design project whose funding goal has been raised several times on Kickstarter, the diminutive speaker’s design hinges on a volume cap that can be twisted to reach up to 80 decibels. The idea is to “hide” the device in every room of a home so that a soundtrack can follow the listener at all times. And, if someone inside the house insists on playing their music during an important call, HiddenRadio can also be used to amplify sound from a phone.
