Atlas Fitness Tracker doesn’t understand what an endorsement is

Just noticed something on the Atlas Fitness Tracker campaign.  It’s a textbook example of a crowdfunding project mistaking a quote for an endorsement.

atlas quote

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A quick message from the founder of Hydrobee

Last week, I got a message from Burt Hamner, founder of Hydrobee which we reviewed recently.  Here’s what he had to say (edited to remove personal information):

Your DropKicker review was fair, glad you know we can make the power claimed, and yes, there is a lot more work to do to make this a commercial product!  And yes, I have not done it before, so I got smart.  Find help!

We have now figured out how to charge our USB dynamo/battery with faucets and hoses, streams and rivers, wind, bikes, pulleys and open wood fires.  Design in process.  Found a great prototyping and batch manufacturing team in Tijuana who makes power tools etc.

Also we have a little coalition of local Seattle people forming “McStarter” consulting team to help others do crowd funding.  Maybe we can enlist you guys as product reviewers  pre-Kickstarter, for those entrepreneurs smart enough to know that’s a good idea!

Burt Hamner, President, Hydrobee SPC

The Ark wireless portable charger

ark

As the portable backup battery market is flooded with a number of hand-held battery solutions, the Ark from Bezalel hopes to float above the rest by offering a wireless charging feature uncommon in portable devices.  With forty days and forty nights left to go on their campaign, it looks like they’re well on their way to reaching their $35,000 goal, but when their efficiency claims are scrutinized, one wonders why anyone should bother waiting.

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SeeSpace InAir Augmented Television

seespace

SeeSpace InAir promises a whole new way of interacting with your television. Using an inline HDMI dongle, they hope to enhance your favorite programming with additional information from the web.  It’s definitely a cool idea if done well, and the hardware technology is there, but the real question is where this extra content is going to come from.
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Airfy wireless hotspot

airfy

The Airfy team claims that their new line of wireless devices will make it simpler for individuals or businesses to set up advanced and secure wireless networks.  The product looks good, but there are some business challenges and gaps in their product description that leave me with a few big questions such as “what does the app that ties all of these things together actually look like?”

While it looks like Airfy is pitching a new wireless router, closer investigation reveals that they’re trying to start up an internet services based company that will utilize a global network of devices such as those pitched in their campaign.  Many of the advertised features require pervasive use of their technologies, and yet some of those features may hinder widespread adoption.

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Smarty Ring provides “alerts right on your finger”

ring

Note: this photo does not even remotely represent the actual dimensions of the product.

Link to Indiegogo

The Smarty Ring Indiegogo campaign ended this week smashing its fundraising goal amid a huge flurry of interest in the final stretch.  Unfortunately, as stated at the top of their project description “All pictures shown here are conceptual design”

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Angel demonstrates working Inertial Measurement Unit

angeldemo

It’s been a while since we’ve talked about Angel, and it looks like they’ve made some progress as shown in their latest updates.

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Drop Kicker Mop Up, Dec. 9

There are some crowd funded projects we come across through our search that are just so out there that we really can’t find anything interesting to say about them.  They’re so far gone that we’re confident that every one of our readers knows better to take them seriously.  That being said, they’re still pretty amusing, so we thought it’d be fun to do a brief bi-monthly wrap-up of the projects that aren’t really worth a full analysis.  Thus, the Drop Kicker Mop Up:

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“The Rock” smartwatch finds itself in a hard place, Kickstarter finally steps in.

rockwatch

Link to Kickstarter

Piggybacking off the success of the Pebble, the new Rock smart watch offers some never before seen features at a competitive price, however a growing number of backers have seen these features somewhere before…

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Kickstarter project creators like to quote people who summarize their words

Building an audience is hard.  Our blog has been slowly gaining traction thanks to our efforts through social media sites like reddit, but a real explosion of traffic can only result from our readers taking it upon themselves to read our content and share it with their friends.

Fortunately, our content is free to access, so everyone who chooses to “talk it up” has already had an opportunity to review it thoroughly and evaluate it for themselves for free.  This isn’t always the case.  Movies, music, electronics, and books all cost money to access, so smart consumers turn to product reviews to gather information before they whip out their wallets.  Savvy producers even show off good reviews as a way to build credibility for their product.  You can’t watch a car advertisement without hearing something about J.D. Power and Associates or Consumer Reports, and the back cover of just about every best seller is littered with quotes from various critics.

So what happens when you’re selling a product that doesn’t exist yet?  Nobody can buy the product to review it, and you can’t even send out pre-release units to journalists.  What do you advertise?  As it turns out, the solution is often to just quote people who summarize your words.

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