Kickstarter was founded in 2009 as a platform to help people crowdsource funding for their projects. Designers and artists post their projects – films, music, consumer products, and more – with a funding goal. If that goal is met in a specified time period, money changes hands, and if not, no money exchanges hands. According to Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler in a recent interview with GigaOM, the platform now funds $1 million worth of projects every week. To date since being launched under two years ago, $35 million has been pledged overall to 5,000 projects.
Here in the Boston area the majority of current projects posted are in the film and music categories, but we found 9 consumer facing products that need your help:
Day2Night
Convertible High Heel Shoes – Change from High Heels to Lower Heels in Seconds
About: There are five different heel heights that can be placed on and off by simply pressing a button. Now you ladies won’t have to wear sneakers on your commute to work in the morning or carry extra shoes in your purse when going out at night.
Pledged: $3,441
Goal: $15,000
Last Day to Fund: July 28
Spycraft: Double Agent
Spies. Secrets. Jetpacks. Diabolical plots.
About: Spycraft blends modern touch interaction and physics gameplay with throwback arcade fun wrapped in a clever tongue-in-cheek spy story. We’re designing touch game mechanics that appeal to casual mobile gamers as well as to traditional demanding platformer fans. Take charge of Agent Katt or Agent Shark — or play both with a friend in multiplayer duet mode — to stop the diabolical plot of a demented mastermind. Solve increasingly challenging puzzles requiring a combination of action, strategy, and timing, use stealth to sneak past patrolling minions, and collect jetpacks and other spy gadgets to help you avoid enemies and pitfalls while unraveling a story of espionage and deception.
Pledged: $1,055
Goal: $5,500
Last Day to Fund: June 16
DesignBlocks
Visual Programming for Artists
About: DesignBlocks is an open-source, web-based visual programming language that makes it easy to control lines, shapes, colors and images to create generative and interactive artworks. It uses the same visual grammar as the Scratch programming language, but has a vocabulary more suited for visual art and design. Inspired by Processing, DesignBlocks aims to make programming more accessible to artists and visually-minded people.
Pledged: $2,067
Goal: $5,500
Last Day to Fund: June 5
Animal Control
Mobile Indie Game
About: Animal Control is a casual game experience where you are catching animals. These animals are being thrown all over the place and you are the only animal control officer. An evildoer is getting the satisfaction of throwing animals all over the place. You need to be the person to save them! This guy is pretty tricky, he’s going to try and confuse you. You need to watch out for stuffed animals, which are bombs that he occasionally will toss your way. The game has two main game modes. One where we have implemented a three strike system for losing (each animal that you allow to fall of the screen or each bomb caught counts as a strike) and a 60 second free for all where you attempt to save as many animals as possible within that time period.
Pledged: $5
Goal: $1,000
Last Day to Fund: June 19
FIGUREGROUND
Motivated to Make Information Gathering Transparent, Public and Accessibles
About: Not to be confused with a t-shirt company—is a project out of Boston interested in generating a public ranking system where people like you and me communicate about our cities through FIGUREGROUND products. FIGUREGROUND has taken communication into another dimension. The t-shirts are replacing static signs and billboards by becoming a wearable tool. But the most interesting aspect of this new way of expression happens when you decide to wear it and share your city’s facts, stats, or pride with whomever crosses your path.
Pledged: $120
Goal: $5,000
Last Day to Fund: July 12
WanderPets
A GPS-Enabled iPhone Game
About: In WanderPets, you choose a creature to feed, train and play with. Using your iPhone’s GPS, you can discover a wide variety of hidden locations near the places you frequent in real life! Your pet grows, learns new moves, and develops tastes for different foods. Buy food and equipment for your pet at a shop, battle against unique opponents, and check out minigames like air hockey and a slot machine that dispenses sushi!
Pledged: $1,380
Goal: $12,500
Last Day to Fund: June 8
Heirloom Meals
Saving Yesterday’s Traditions Today & Tomorrow
About: Heirloom Meals radio show out of Great Barrington, Massachusetts is experiencing a major growth spurt! The host of the show, Carole Murko, (and her intern, Erin Russo) are on a mission to launch a multi-media cooking/lifestyle television show called Heirloom Meals that chronicles the food and recipe legacies of people from all backgrounds. We fancy ourselves salvage anthropologists with eager taste buds. Our hope is that in getting people to talk about their food memories and treasured family recipes that they will also be moved to incorporate more sustainable, locally supportive and mindful eating and living habits into their lives like their grandparents did.
Pledged: $6,485 (funding goal hit while writing this article!)
Goal: $6,000
Last Day to Fund: July 30
Red Cup
The Truly Social Network
About: Red Cup is a location-based social networking application that allows users in the same club or venue to interact with each other. We go to bars, clubs or live music venues for the collective experience we share with the people around us. This collective energy is often what defines these moments: the roar of a crowd, the clink of glasses, the friendly faces. Red Cup enhances your experience by enabling you to communicate with other users checked in to your location through the social network medium. You can break the ice, make friends, and interact with each other before, during, and after meeting in person.
Pledged: $335
Goal: $15,000
Last Day to Fund: July 5
Mira & Mouse
Vinal Toy
About: A little over 4 years ago I created two characters Mira and Mouse for a friendly video game art competition. I liked these characters so much that I wanted to make a vinyl toy of them. So for my first Kickstarter project I’ve decided to make a vinyl toy of Mouse! My goal in raising this money is to take my prototype print to the vinyl toy company I’ve selected and get the limited run of these completed and sent out. I’m not looking to have 2,000 of these things in my basement so this will be a limited edition print.
Pledged: $85
Goal: $7,000
Last Day to Fund: July 26
