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Kickstarted

By Jessica Roy 5/16/12 5:55pm

Kickstarted

Tentacle Bento (kickstarter.com)

Card Game About Tentacle Rape Porn Pulled from Kickstarter

Even on the sex-swathed Internet, there are still some things considered too taboo for mainstream consumption. While a search for “tentacle porn” on XXX sites would undoubtedly yield at least hundreds of results, crowdfunding platform Kickstarter is publicly grappling with its anime animus.

The Daily Dot reports that a tentacle rape porn-themed card game that had raised more than double its funding goal was canceled by Kickstarter, due to its graphic material. As Twitter user @VonRosceau tweeted, “Kickstarter didn’t want a game about raping teenage girls with tentacles funded under their name today. Manchildren angry, nobody surprised.” Read More

By Kelly Faircloth 5/14/12 7:45am

Kickstarted

kickstarter

Good God, There Are A Lot of Kickstarter Projects In the Pipeline

Looks like Kickstarter just had a slight hiccup on its path to complete world domination. The Wall Street Journal reports that an April site update introduced a bug exposing the details of unlaunched projects.

The company confessed: “The bug made accessible the project description, goal, duration, rewards, video, image, location, category, and user name for unlaunched projects. No account or financial data was made accessible.” That means no credit card numbers and no addresses. There’s probably no reason to worry if your graphic novel zombie rom-com reinterpretation of Moll Flanders wasn’t quite ready for primetime, either. Kickstarter estimates that, discounting downloads by the Journal reporter who found the bug, a mere 48 projects were seen.  Read More

By Jessica Roy 5/10/12 4:54pm

Kickstarted

(supermechanical.com)

Pebble Watch Surpasses $10M, Partners with Twine for Real-Time Updates Sent Straight to Your Wrist

Oh, the Pebble. We’re almost getting tired of writing about it. The little e-paper gadget hit the “most-funded Kickstarter project EVAH” mark about six million dollars ago. Today, it surpassed $10 million in pledges and sold out of all 85,000 of its offered watches.

Seems like a good time to announce its second software partnership, right?

That’s exactly what the team did. The Next Web reports that another well-funded Kickstarter project, Twine, announced today that it had partnered with Pebble to offer real-time alerts to the watch. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 5/04/12 2:54pm

Kickstarted

Screen Shot 2012-05-04 at 1.40.21 PM

NYU ITP Students Build a Nightmarish Kickstarter for Wartime

The head of Joseph Kony, minus his teeth, sells for $1 million. His actual teeth go for $50,000, depending on availability. A little too pricey? How about $100 for a thank you letter from Richard Gere for funding a Tibetan militia to resist Chinese rule. A mere $25 will also get you a personal thank you for donating to build a “discrete tactical vehicle” for U.S. military interrogators.

That’s the nightmarish world depicted by Kickstriker, a hoax built by a group of NYU grad students from the Tisch School’s ITP program for Clay Shirky’s tech communications class. The object of the fake site is to get people to think about “how a world of crowdfunded warfare might not be so far away,” reports Wired.  Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 5/01/12 12:06pm

Kickstarted

pebble-alerts

The Pebble Effect: The Spotlight Is Suddenly On Hardware Startups

The last time Betabeat checked in with Pebble the smartwatch, Y Combinator alum Eric Migicovsky had raised some $4.6 million on Kickstarter for an idea that struggled to find venture capital backing despite, you know, actually making revenue. (For those of you keeping track at home, Pebble has added $3 million on top of that for a total of $7.6 million–and counting!–with 17 days left to go.) Yesterday, Mr. Migicovsky got The New York Times treatment.

Now, all the fuss seems to have migrated over to the agenda for TechCrunch Disrupt. The conference just announced that for the first time in New York, the event will feature something called “Hardware Alley” alongside its standard “Start-up Alley” showcase on May 23rd. “We’re looking for promising hardware startups,” writes TechCrunch. “Got a disruptive Kickstarter project?” Gee, wonder who they’re talking about there. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 4/18/12 5:07pm

Kickstarted

Pebble smartwatch

Pebble the Smartwatch, the Most-Funded Kickstarter EVAH, Is Now at $4.6 M. and Counting

Yesterday, we called it. The fact that Pebble the e-paper watch had raised $3.5 million with more than a month to go meant that KickStarter had hit the tipping point, surpassing even Double Fine Adventure’s previous high-score of $3,336,371. Maybe we shoulda waited awhile. Between now and then, Pebble has raised another million and change. The new total is $4,625,453 from 32,120 backers with 30 days to go.

At this rate, Pebble is going to raise $34 million before the jig’s up and Kickstarter should just secede from the Union and start minting their own currency. Maybe cfundrs or crowdsies™ or something. Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 4/17/12 12:13pm

Kickstarted

Pebble, in action.

$3.5 M. and 31 Days to Go? Kickstarter Has Officially Hit the Tipping Point

We’ll probably end up writing this post eight more times, because this smartwatch project on Kickstarter has already raised $3,521,979 (three million, five hundred twenty-one thousand, nine hundred and seventy-nine dollars) with 31 days (a whole freaking month) to go before time runs out. The startup is nearing its third birthday and recently hit a stretch of mega-hits, including the videogame Double Fine Adventure, which closed at $3,336,371, and the webcomic Order of the Stick, which closed at $1,254,120. Another video game, Wasteland 2, just closed at $2,933,252.

Now this crazy touchscreen smartwatch project, Pebble, is taking Kickstarter to the next level. It raised $1 million in 28 hours (Double Fine hit $1 million faster) and with so much time to go, it boggles our tiny little minds to think of what the final total might be. Especially with those eight more stories we’re going to write about it. Read More

By Jessica Roy 4/13/12 3:21pm

Kickstarted

(kickstarter.com)

This Touchscreen Watch, Pebble, Hit $2 M. Faster Than Any Other Kickstarter Project

It’s a simple idea, but one that takes true technological sophistication to build: what if all of the important things your cell phone can do could be transferred over to a watch via Bluetooth? The concept has that futuristic Google Glasses waft to it, but it’s a product that is real and actually works, and eager technophiles are all but throwing money at the team who invented it. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 1:17pm

Kickstarted

kickstarter

Man Starts Kickstarter To Buy Kickstarter, Fails to Understand Finance

Comedian and rabble-rouser Eric Moneypenny decided to follow the grand tradition of McSweeney’s satirical Kickstarter for Greece, by starting his own Kickstarter . . . to buy Kickstarter. Get it?

The project, called “I Would Like to Buy Kickstarter,” aims to raise $19 million based on its value on WorthofWeb.com. Donors who pledge $10,000 or more are entitled to a: “Pizza Party! With me, Eric Moneypenny, the new owner and CEO of Kickstarter.” Donors pledging $10 or more get a much more raw deal:  a free Kickstarter account to launch their project. Guess under Mr. Moneypenny’s regime, the crowdfunding platform will start charging for its services. Read More