THIS WEEK IN NERD

In which Ashley breaks down nerdier corners of pop culture.

      

Kickstarter roulette: in which Ashley picks random awesome and nerdy Kickstarter projects to review

 For those of you who didn’t know already, Kickstarter.com is a website where people can fundraise their ideas or prototypes into reality (i.e. video games, films, design, and technology). This concept is called crowd-funding.

One of the main benefits of Kickstarter is that it allows developers and artists the freedom to pursue their ideas without the hinderance of stuffy business executives and investors. Another cool thing: if you pledge money, you usually get some cool shit.

Here’s some success stories: Cards Against Humanity (possibly the best drunk game ever), a bus stop gets funded in Atlanta, classical music is now free on the internet, and Zach Braff’s new indie movie. So, some pretty neat things have come from here.

Now it’s time to review potentially awesome (or useless) Kickstarter projects!

 

Glyph: technology
A mobile personal theater with built in premium audio

You can use it as a personal theater or regular headphones.

DUDE. This looks so cool. Ever wonder what Geordi was up to on Star Trek?? Well, now we know.

Geordi from Star Trek

Essentially what this gadget does is let you view and listen to video from basically any device through an HDMI cord AND you can use them as headphones for just listening to music. I for one, am looking forward to 360 degree viewing in the future. The Glyph is still in Beta and will be on sale soon for a nice $499.

My Dying Words: website
(an awful, useless, and morbid website)

 Ok. This is one is pretty awful. This guy wants to start a paid subscription website where you “Take the uncertainty out of dying. Leave your lasting messages behind, after you’ve passed on.”

So you pay to leave a bunch of photos, emails, videos, and other things about your life, to give to people after you die. Can’t you do that for free on Facebook? Or maybe they should team up with ancestry.com to make it more interesting. I personally would LOVE to know what great-great-great-great-great Aunt June’s thoughts were on raising chickens.

 

Slam McCracken: A Graphic Novel

Slam McCracken

This one could either be bad or good. The graphic novel is about a hard-boiled Private Eye living in a noir-type world. What is with people and using random animals/objects as Private eye detectives? Does anyone remember Assy McGee? Anyway, the art is intriguing, but there hasn’t been any insight to the story-writing.I’m looking forward to Slam cracking some egg-celent cases. See what I did there?

Assy McGee

Sound for Settling: film
Short animated horror film

Sure, maybe snow angels will melt this EVIL SNOWMAN’s heart

This Kickstarter is to fund sound for a short animated horror film. I was a bit skeptical, but after watching the short video, I’m sold. The story is about a guy named Bruce who suspects his snowman is trying to kill him. Has a B-rated horror animated film ever existed before? If not, I think we’ve found it. All of that aside, this whole short has been made by one girl. I’ve always been fascinated with claymation and the like, but this is amazing. Kudos to you. I look forward to seeing this on the Sundance list someday.

Bruce

All in all, I was not disappointed by Kickstarter. There’s some really cool ideas out there and also some really terrible ones. I did notice that there’s a ton of “aspiring musicians” practically begging for startup money. However, invest at your own risk, and you might end up having a shout-out in the next great indie film.

 

Happy hunting!

Later nerds! – AK