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the indiegogo is now closed but here is a link for anyone that wanted to look. https://www.indiegogo.com/proj...

GPD MicroPC, 6-inch Handheld Industry Laptop It doesn't have parallel, but it has serial!

RS-232, Gigabit Ethernet, USB Type-C, HDMI, microSDXC, three USB 3.0 (or that being called "USB 3.2 Gen 1" now?)

Would of thought the article would be about it's successor the Cosmo Communicator instead

The Gemini PDA has been around for about a year - I was one of the backers. The more interesting one is this:

https://www.indiegogo.com/proj...

This will actually fully replace your phone with a Palm-style computer, unlike the Gemini, which I've since sold.

No, not Cosmo Kramer.

https://www.indiegogo.com/proj...

Good news, though! The market may actually finally provide what we desire:
https://www.readyfx.com/
https://twitter.com/livermoriu...

They only recently reneged on their keyboard Moto Mod and instead announced that they were switching to developing a complete device: https://www.indiegogo.com/proj...
It could still turn out to be a disappointment, but I am nevertheless cautiously optimistic. At least someone seems to be seriously developing a (landscape) slider, because Blackberry sure as fuck isn't anymore (I bought and use the Priv).

The link doesn't work, but this one does: https://www.indiegogo.com/proj...

Anyway, totally agree with you. USB-C has made it extremely easy to run your laptop longer.

companies are starting to offer external batteries with decent wattages. Hyper offers a 100Wh model that claims to double the 15"MBP operating time. It also charges other devices and doubles as a charger when plugged into an outlet. I am considering getting one for when I travel since I can charge a phone, iPad and MBP with it. https://www.indiegogo.com/proj... [indiegogo.com]

I normally think those things are kinda lame; but that looks like a perrfect companion for a mobile MBP setup.

Thanks for the tip!

That's because everyone but Apple lies like a dog even worse than Apple does when it comes to battery life claims.

FTFY. I don't think I've ever gotten anywhere close to ten hours on my retina MBP. On average, I'm lucky to get much more than three hours unless I'm doing something that uses almost zero CPU, like web browsing.

The problem is, power management is not a replacement for a larger battery, but unfortunately, Apple's hardware engineering managers, with their utterly myopic focus on making laptops thinner, can't seem to let that reality seep through their thick skulls. So instead of giving us the maximum battery size you can legally carry on an airplane (100 Wh), each generation of MBP has had a smaller battery than the one before it. Therefore, in my experience, actual battery life has gotten measurably worse every time I've upgraded my hardware.

I agree that Apple should maxout the battery size in MBPs, but their obsessive desire to make it as thin as possible negates any chance of a larger battery. However, companies are starting to offer external batteries with decent wattages. Hyper offers a 100Wh model that claims to double the 15"MBP operating time. It also charges other devices and doubles as a charger when plugged into an outlet. I am considering getting one for when I travel since I can charge a phone, iPad and MBP with it. https://www.indiegogo.com/proj...

To be more precise, you are helping the manufacturing costs of a product that may or may not get made.

For a good example, look at the PodRide. Interesting idea, but going from a single hand-made prototype to optimizing the parts for manufacturing has cost them a lot more than they thought, both in money and time.

You misspelled "16:12" (aka 4:3). Especially if you can make it vertical, which sadly doesn't apply to laptops (unless we somehow invent good alternate keyboard layouts).

I for one don't watch movies, which means basically every single task I'm doing at the computer is better done in portrait. Reading webpages, coding in a terminal, reading/writing mails, etc. Heck, even most porn pictures are vertical, only clips are landscape.

On the desktop, I can do both: I have one small monitor in landscape and one big one in portrait, both 4:3. No such option on laptop -- and sadly, a keyboard phone that's about to get delivered has useless 16:8.

You may be interested in the Gemini... a new android device with a very nice keyboard.

Seems pretty close to what you're after, although it's a clam-shell rather than a slider.

https://www.indiegogo.com/proj...

I think this is what you are looking for.

Not available yet, but the project can already be supported: "A mobile OS in the public interest" https://eelo.io/ https://www.indiegogo.com/proj...

For reference here are the Asus EEE 701 Specs(8.9" Wide x 6.3" Deep x 1.3" High)

Asus Mini Specs (~10" wide)
Asus Transformer Pad (~10" wide)
Chuwi Surfacebook Mini (~10" wide)
GPD Pocket
Or any Surface tablet with a bluetooth keyboard case (e.g. Naxa)

Then the Planet Computer Gemini is worth checking out.

Well then check this out!

Phone with a big screen and decent keyboard? Sounds great.

13.3 is not a phone, it's a laptop with a modem. For a phone, you're looking for this, at 5.99.

Sounds a lot like the Psion I carried for years when I was a working consultant -- actually a series 3 and then a series 5. liquid crystal display, SSDs for storage and a very usable but tiny keyboard. A pity they never got traction this side of the pond. And ran on AA batteries for weeks -- a very practical pocket computer, something I miss when using my smartphone. With wireless connectivity (still many years in the future) it would have been perfect. Nokia and Microsoft made sure it died... but they still make industrial stuff.

It's making a comeback. Kind of.

https://www.indiegogo.com/proj...

This is not a solution, this is paying more for a new unproven service with an opportunistic ad.

First of all, Netflix or other services joining it is just wishful thinking. Come back when you have the vast majority of them already paying for it. This isn't how things works out there, throwing low prices thinking these companies will fish - you have to go directly at them and make a business proposition. If you didn't bother to even do that, how can you think people will buy it?
Pay us and the services will come. Heh, fat chance.

They can claim they have better tech and whatnot, plus an Ethernet box, but it's still a middleman that you have to trust. They'll be assigning the addresses, controlling what goes on behind the scenes, maintaining service. You know, the stuff we already pay ISPs for.

Net Neutrality is about not having extra middlemen interference.

Doesn't matter if they made it easier by assembling routers or switches, this is not something the vast majority of people will pay for. Heck, this is not something most people that are already paying for VPNs will pay for.

Blah blah they can see the traffic they won't be able to throttle. Again, this isn't how it works. Ever heard of whitelisting? Yep. It's not only the idea that ISPs might block or throttle speeds on specific services, it's the idea that they'll throttle everything and dedicate free fast lanes to their own. Throttling everything is plenty practical, they already do it.

This sounds like a crowdfunding pitch. Oh wait, it is exactly that, isn't it... left out this little detail not to show what this really is:
https://www.indiegogo.com/proj...

Yep.

I tried to beat the puck using a RasPi and a conventional USB mic - IT SUCKED. The mic isn't meant to pick up my voice while I'm playing music and even a RasPI 3 takes longer to process vocal cues using either the google now or alexa apis.

A similarly priced microphone array, even with a kickstarter discount, is gonna cost you more than the dot than the dot: https://www.indiegogo.com/proj... If you are willing to sacrifice some features / reduce the number of mics, you are still gonna end up over budget when you factor in the price of the Raspberry Pi.

Lucky for us there is only one such standard. Oh, wait. No, there isn't. There is for example this. Just read the "how it works" section.

And how I know that they have control over the lock? Because else they couldn't do this.

Keyboards will be replaced, but whatever they'll be replaced with hasn't been invented yet.

No touchscreen nor speakwrite has either the accuracy nor bandwidth of an actual keyboard. Likewise on phones: popular input methods are fit at most for a status update on this week's MySpace replacement (I lost track of what's in fashion today), while N900 or hopefully Gemini are fit for a multi-hour hacking session. Try writing C or Perl code on a modern "smart"phone, go ahead.

Have a look at Matrix, a watch that is powered by your body heat. It's on indiegogo (which should raise some red flags, but this seems genuinely okay - they gave updates every month or os and are almost ready to ship). They promise you can even swim with it!
https://www.indiegogo.com/proj...

Check out Gemini.

Yup indeed.

The whole premise when smart watches where successfully brought back to the spotlight by Pebble, was to have electronics as power-economic as possible.
Pebble had eInk among the considered technologies to make it cheaper.
Tethering to a phone was actually a *selling point* - leave as much works as possible to the phone, and use the smartwatch only as an interface in order to make the most out of its tiny power budget.
You ended-up with watches which could go a week or more between charges. (and currently you find smart watches which try to have even lower power requirement, such small fraction of watts that thermoelectric effect from the wearer is a valid method to boost battery life).

Then the big companies noticed the popularity and the tremendous success of pebble in crowd-funding, and panicked that they might miss a slice of the pie.
So they rushed in with what they have : ultra-brilliant marketing department able to sell anything by making it seem desirable, and boring soulless engineering department trained to cram bullet points on a list.
And you end up with products which are basically not smartwatches - i.e.: extensions giving a few useful extra functionnality on an otherwise nice watch - but instead are diminutive crippled phones. Things that try to be phones but with catastrophic performance.

It's "iPhone 1" and it's horrendous battery life all over again.
Apple Watch 3 will end up being a crappy iPhone strapped to you wrist, not a brillant device revolution that Apple is desperately in need to stay relevant.

The sad part is that Pebble started an interesting trend of low-power device that can hold a week,
but the whole concept of smartwatches seem to be dying due to over flooding the market with crappy power-hungry stuff.

There's been nothing decent since N900. Yet Gemini looks promising.

Investors invest in the founder, someone with the vision and the skills to get the job done.

No, they seem to invest in someone with a vision and a willingness to follow it. In many cases the "visionary" is just an ideas guy and they then have to find engineers to actually make the thing. Engineers also have the habit of saying "nope". For example...

When I was in the medical industry as a startup, we kept on getting compared to these guys:

https://www.indiegogo.com/proj...

and that device was somewhat more capable (on paper) and not dissimilarly priced. Although the market was different people still wanted to compare. Now, I spent about an hour looking at it and decided it would never work.

For example, by a cursory look at the hardware, they have a ECG (can work, but would be inaccurate on the forehead), reflectance pulse-ox (definitely can work, potentially more accurate but calibration isn't settled yet), a thermometer and a few bits and bobs, like a thermometer. They claimed to able to measure *internal* body temperature which is clearly a lie to anyone who thinks about it for 3 seconds. They also claimed to be able to measure blood pressure. This is not clearly a lie unless you know about medical devices. The only remaining option is pulse transit time. That works, but needs frequent recalibration, i.e. half hourly measurements using an oscillometry cuff. Even then I don't know off hand if there's actually a certified machine on the market.

Anyway a brief investigation to me demonstrated beyond doubt that it would fail. They raised about $50 million and the FDA has told them to remote brick the devices.

Anyway as an engineer trained in the field, it was obvious from me that it was utterly impossible with state of the art technology. It's also kind of obvious that a startup which isn't centred around some leading engineers in the field is going to be able to quickly surpass the state of the art when many people have already tried.

Everytime the phrase "extinction level event" comes up, I am reminded how much money this Indigogo campaign was able to raise.

Let me just warn you about something Wycliffe... other than working well with Ubuntu (Dell Venue 11 Pro comes with Windows 8.0), it's actually a pretty crap tablet tho. xD

I bought it a couple of years ago, along with a docking station. The tablet is horribly constructed, too heavy to be used as a reading tablet, it has a plastic back that gets deformed overtime and won't fit anymore, and the batteries that came with it puffed up out of nowhere (at least they didn't explode).

Docking Station was also very poorly built. It has a single proprietary connector that supports the entire weight of the tablet that eventually gave away... I had to dismantle the whole thing, pull the connector out of the docking station so that I could make it work again.

It also puzzlingly has a microUSB port for charging, but it needs a proprietary brick to supply enough power to charge... horrible decision that goes against the standard. It won't work with external batteries or regular smartphone chargers.

Other stuff you might want to know: it uses a non-standard size for m.2 SSD storage that is hard to find and very expensive, power button is very easy to break, and despite having core i5 models and such, it's actually dual core and a series of CPUs designed with power savings in mind, which means it's far less powerful and sluggish than a Surface Pro 3 or so.

The whole thing smells like initial prototype for a tablet that Dell decided to sell. I got so fed up with it's quirks and problems that I ended up abandoning it and buying myself a Samsung Galaxy Tab S2... which is why I even started experimenting with Ubuntu in it in the first place.

What I'm trying to say is this: perhaps, if you can find out someone who tried to do a similar thing with a more robust tablet, it'd be a better route. Dell deserves only shame for putting out such a shoddy product in the market. :P I've been trying to find out if there are other smaller Windows tablets from other brands that will also take Ubuntu, no luck so far. I remember there were a bunch of them of the 8 inch type that came out around the same time the Venue also came out, but I'm finding hard to get real experience information...

Anyways, here's something else I've been looking into since yesterday, thanks to your post:
https://www.indiegogo.com/proj...

Must admit I'm very tempted. xD

Something like this?

Aye, especially a keyboard and a sane operating system are a must. You'd have to go over my dead body to take away my N900, even though it's getting really long in the tooth (like, no usable graphical browser: MicroB can't handle any SSL anymore, modern browsers can't run in 256 total RAM with only ~100ish left after Nokia's crap), but is good enough that sometimes I do several hours long hacking sessions in the bed without even bothering to get to the big computer a few meters away.

Neo900 is an expensive piece of vapourware with ancient specs. Keyboard attachments for Android dumbphones are useless. Proper replacements are also vapourware (Pyra, Minotaur One. I've gambled $380 for a Gemini, but there are doubts even whether they'll deliver, chances for a proper mainline kernel rivallling those of a snowcone in hell.

Indiegogo currently has a Cerulean Moment, if crowdfunding is your thing.

Rent for the brothers' personal apartments in the Marina
Security deposits for an apartment in Dogpatch used by the Wellers
Weekly apartment cleanings
Personal grocery bills for the Wellers
All restaurant meals for the brothers
Mitchell Weller's Dodge Viper, which was claimed for insurance following an accident, as well as the new Viper purchased by the company to replace it

Check here -> https://www.buzzfeed.com/nitas...

On the back of that, at the time, I pulled out of a major indiegogo funding campaign because I no longer had faith in the model. When I signed up to to it it had a large "back out at any time" message on the page. After considering the matter of Skully I decided to back out and was confused as to how this is done from my backers page. I read the FAQ and it simply said that I go to my backers page and hit the "Refund order" button. So simple except THERE WAS NO REFUND button.

I asked and I was told that SOMETIMES there is no refund button and that funds have gone to the campaign owner. So I cannot get a refund from Indieggo because they do not have the money. I emailed the campaign owner and got no response for two months. As I had no other information to go on I researched the campaign, backer and related company and sent them letters threatening to sue as they are subject to EU law (Luckily because US law is really shit on these sort of things). After some haggling I got my funds -12% for various fees, 2% were to Indiegogo...and you know what I was lucky to get anything at all.

They have since clarified their refund policy further -> https://support.indiegogo.com/...

Simply do not believe ANYTHING a campaign page says. It might very well say "hassle free refund." but really should say "limited refund options occassionally available, terms and conditions apply. If you believed this was honest and bought based on that assumption you're a sucker hahahaha"

Now ask Skully-AR1 backers if they got anything yet? Helemt? Refund? An apology? - There is ZERO accountability.

We MUST convince Indiegogo and Kickstarter - basically crowd funding in general to do more.

Firstly I would like FULL DISCLOSURE expense reports of backers money. There is NO excuse not to let backers of your porject know how you spent their money.
Secondly I want the crowd funding site to review sufficiently large projects, say over $1 million with a third party registered accountant to check this is not all BS.

Lastly, for blatant misuse of funds amounting to fraud I would like for Kickstarter/Indiegogo to sue these people to the ends of the Earth on backers behalf. I will pay good money, more than my original investment to make sure fraudsters are dealt with as harshly as possible.

Without any safety checks and so on I tell you now I will never ever back any product that has not been released and review or a has a money back guarantee I can trust.

Enough to keep the platform on life support. Still teasing the market with rumours of 'Surface Phone' vapourware emulating x86 on Snapdragon 835...

Footnote: Cerulean Moment is a crowdfunded project launching a new mid-range handset. Still a long way to meet their funding goal, however.

Don't forget about the Ubuntu Edge phone concept, that was announced in 2013, but failed to meet its Kickstarter funding goal. Ubuntu Phone

I meant Indiegogo. I'm too used to use kickstarter as a generic term.

Don't forget about the Ubuntu Edge phone concept, that was announced in 2013, but failed to meet its Kickstarter funding goal. Ubuntu Phone

Sure I was. I pointed out that you can just get a keyboard and you have a WAY better, WAY cheaper solution than either of these pieces of under-specced crap. (Did you check out the prices? Insane!).

Or if you really don't want to carry around a keyboard, use speech-to-text. It's a thing nowadays, no keyboard needed. These over-priced way-underspec'd pieces of crap are a disgrace. Look at the picture in the summary section. They say you can use this to do spreadsheets - I say it's just proof that this will let people go blind without bothering to track down porn. The device does not exist, and its' chance of coming to fruition is not so great.

Their weasel words say they've produced a physical model - but if you read further, no guts. In other words, right now it's all show, no go. The "spec" comes with a big asterisk - that this is their goal, not their current design.

I read them, but according to an update at the Continues indiegogo site, CBS is reviewing everything on a case by case basis and has not suggested that Continues stop what it's doing as of yet: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/star-trek-continues#/updates

https://equity.indiegogo.com/

Possibly. Maybe we should still donate to https://www.indiegogo.com/proj... just in case.

The VoCore2 Lite is the $4 version, and won't be available to the masses until January. That's why it's not in the store.

You have to get in on the Indiegogo campaign to get it early:

https://www.indiegogo.com/proj...

The flat part where the lightning connector is probably has a thin connector like this that goes to the actual circuit inside the case

My favorite extension for Chrome will be vertical tabs tree: https://www.indiegogo.com/at/c... Of course, only if I would get enough support to finish its development. ;)

Meet the Runcible.

Indeed. While some of the CoD assets were based on real-life items, they were also clearly created specifically for that game since they had various embellishments and details unique to that game (as one of the examples floating around suggests, in much the same way that AK-47s look different in different games)...which were meticulously reproduced in Orion's models, even if they covered them up with different textures.

Moreover, it sounds like Orion's developer has a history of copyright infringement. For instance, the reddit post that's blowing up links to a a set of examples of plagiaraized artwork used for achievement images in one of their other games (in fact, it may be the game they renamed and re-released, allegedly so that they could dodge the bad scores the game had on Metacritic and trick people into buying it again). And after the developer created an Indiegogo campaign with a goal of $500 to help cover their legal fees and whatnot for this DMCA takedown, the first "donation" was $500 from the developer themselves.

Everything about this dev just smells fishy, and while I typically can't stand Activision as a company (nor have I ever had a desire to play any of their CoD games, let alone actually done so), I'm having trouble finding fault with them here. It sounds like this dev is ripping off their 3D art assets and slapping some new textures on them to try and call them their own. And it seems clear that they know they're in the wrong, since when they tried to defend their models as being their own, they didn't do the obvious thing someone who was innocent would do by posting like-for-life, side-by-side shots of both their model and CoD's asset so that we could all see that theirs was unique. Instead, they posed Activision's and their guns at wildly different angles, seemingly with the intent of obscuring the similarities that would be glaringly obvious if they had provided useful side-by-shots shots...as the side-by-side shots posted by others have demonstrated.

That said, it does seem like there's some Activision shilling going on in the comments here too, what with all these ACs posting the same stuff over and over again. Not sure what to make of that, but regardless of any shilling, it doesn't change that at least from a layman's perspective, it looks like this dev lifted models from Activision, along with all of the embellishments and details that make them uniquely Activision's, and now they're being rightfully called out on it.

What about the PodRide? It should cost under USD$4K, one seater, 25km/h, 60km electric range and human-powered mode for exercise.

People can use bicycles in winter. People already use hybrid/electric cars in Canada and in other countries with cold seasons.

What's the point of your comment again? You've never seen snow in your life or something?

Anyone who backs a kickstarter project without the understanding there's a 33% chance you'll never see their money again, or receive the promised product, doesn't understand kickstarter, and probably shouldn't be allowed to have a checking account, let alone a credit card.

I pledged $1 to PodRide a few days ago, are you telling me that Mr. Kjellman could revoke my "many thanks"?

The last time someone was serious about defending the Earth, nobody cared enough to pay for it.