Kickstarter is hosting its third annual film festival in Brooklyn this weekend. At the event, the crowd funding site will screen a number of films including features, documentaries, shorts, animations, and works-in-progress all of which were funded through Kickstarter.

The program of films includes: Everybody Street a documentary on New York street photography by Cheryl Dunn; a snippet from Academy Award-nominated cartoonist and animator Bill Plympton‘s animation Cheatin’; Mr. Grillo: The Thereminist, a documentary by Danilo Parra about a man who has dedicated his life to the instrument; and The Adventures of Ledo and Ix, Emily Carmichael‘s web series about two characters from an old-school video game, among others.

The free all ages event will take place on Saturday August 3rd at Havemeyer Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn from 7-12pm. Follow this link for more details.

As younger generations get accustomed to using tablets and iPhones, handwriting may get lost in the gestures.  Enter the Lernstift, a Linux powered pen that gives a subtle vibration when you make an error.  The pen’s orthography and calligraphy modes are perfect for children learning to write and you won’t even need an app or computer to power the artificial intelligence behind the tiny computer.

Read more

Kickstarter has removed “Back to the Wild,” a proposed sequel to Maurice Sendak‘s classic children’s book Where the Wild Things Are, concerned that the project would violate copyright restrictions.

Harper Collins requested that Kickstarter remove the project. Here is what they submitted to the crowd sourcing site:

 The infringing material is a proposal to create a “sequel” to WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, entitled “Back to the Wild,” using the characters, scenes and copyrightable elements of the original work. Any such unauthorized “sequel” would clearly violate the Estate’s right to create derivative works. Read more

Kickstarter posted a long blog post criticizing a controversial seduction guide project by Ken Hoinsky that raised $16,300  on the site. Many readers had complained about violent content the author had posted on Reddit.

UPDATE: Hoinsky has issued a statement about the controversy.

Kickstarter has decided to ban seduction guides “or anything similar” on the site. They also donated $25,000 to RAINN, an anti-sexual violence charity. Here’s more from the post:

First, there is no taking back money from the project or canceling funding after the fact. When the project was funded the backers’ money went directly from them to the creator. We missed the window. Second, the project page has been removed from Kickstarter. The project has no place on our site. For transparency’s sake, a record of the page is cached here. Third, we are prohibiting “seduction guides,” or anything similar, effective immediately. This material encourages misogynistic behavior and is inconsistent with our mission of funding creative works. These things do not belong on Kickstarter.

Not many iPhone Accessories have the stamp of approval from Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak, but this is what he had to say about this iPhone Pocket Tripod:

Great project. Never would have come about without a great deal of creativity and desire to do something different…it’s perfect for me. You can count me in. I never had thought that something like that could be done.

 
Read more

Outdoor surveillance cameras are nearly everywhere, but you can never find them when you need them. When my friends were victims of hit and runs, we did our best to source camera footage to find the perpetrators, but it’s nearly impossible to locate cameras just by walking around the city. These are the kinds of public investigations that can be aided by a map of surveillance cameras – the kind that Surv is seeking to provide.
Read more

Do you or your phone want to be a part of the world’s first commercial cyborg? Lucky you because RoboRoach is coming via Kickstarter to a mobile device near you. Pledge $100 or more and you’ll get a miniature communications backpack to attach to a cockroach of your choice. An additional $50 will get you a small cockroach colony, but you can catch your own roaches for free!
Read more

Despite the fact that the shoreline in Malibu, California is public, it is difficult for the public to access much of the beach. Private homes and gated passageways keep visitors out, even though beachfront homes are only entitled to own a portion of the beach that their house sits on, and not where the sand hits the water.

Jenny Price, a writer/activist in the area worked with Escape Apps to create an app that helps the public find their way past these walled public beaches. Price has raised more than $32,000 through Kickstarter to fund the iPhone and Android versions of the app, which are expected to launch this summer. Here is more about the app from its Kickstarter page:

We’ve made an app that’ll show you exactly where each public access point is up and down the Malibu Coast. It helps you park – ID those fake cones and fake garages. It tells you which signs you can smile at and ignore. It even walks you down each beach – house-by-house – to show you where on each beach you hang all day on the dry sand.

If you have an iPhone, you’ve discovered that the mute button doesn’t actually mute all sounds – and that’s annoying. To deal with iPhones and their inconsistent audio behavior, Ron Adair created the Mutator, a small plug that connects to the iPhone via the headphone jack. The Mutator assures that all of the sounds from all of the apps are silenced. The end.

Read more

Can’t be there to put your child or grandchild to bed? StorySticker lets you do create audio recordings of yourself reading their favorite book so that they can listen to your voice at bedtime.

The StorySticker audio book works through the combination of an app and a unique coded sticker that attaches to the inside of any children’s book. You can buy the stickers at a book retailer and paste it into your child’s book. Then you can download the free app and follow the prompts to record your reading. The recording is linked with the sticker and your child can hear your recording by scanning the StorySticker code or by selecting the book within the app.

stkr.it will introduce the StorySticker product line at BookExpo America in New York this week. “The joy of reading a physical book with a child is universal,” stated Mike Newman, president of stkr.it.  “StorySticker creates that joy for out of town grandparents and traveling parents – anytime, anywhere. With StorySticker, any children’s book can become a personal audio book.”