There's strength in numbers, soul somewhere in solitude and an endless stream of Kickstarter projects that quickly find themselves in one camp or the other: backed or bypassed by the masses.
This week's crowd-fueled Thursday survey places the majority of its focus on Kickstarter campaigns attracting the numbers, both backers and pledges. Yet we found it very hard ignore, and had to check in, on a fundraising campaign that aims to teach a "turtle to fly for one time."
Everykey
With 641 backers pledging just over $40,000, Everykey LLC is well on the way to its goal of raising $100,000 to create a wrist-worn repository for passwords. Currently, the campaign has 23 days to go.
The Everykey wristband stores as many passwords as the wearer wishes. The band uses Bluetooth communications to provide instant access to smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, bike locks, doors and other items protected by digital passwords.
The Everykey features a password chain that can be used to log into all of a wearer's accounts at one time.
However, Everykey may be a bad idea for those who chose to break bad every now and then, as forfeiture of the universal access device during a criminal investigation could gift law enforcement agencies with every password the individual has.
A Virginia judge recently ruled criminal defendants can be compelled to unlock smartphones via fingerprints, but their right to remain silent protects them from having to speak their passwords.
AMPY
Walking to a store only to find that it's closed for renovations and running back up stairs to retrieve keys are easily viewed as time- and energy-wasting exercises. With Ampy, those acts of physical exertion can be stored in a pocketable block for charging smartphones.
Yes, we're talking human energy for charging electronic devices.
Approximately 10,000 steps or one hour of cycling passes along enough kinetic energy into the Ampy to power a smartphone for three hours or provide 24 hours of juice to a smart watch.
"Walk, run, or cycle -- the more you move, the more battery life you get," says Ampy's Kickstarter page.
With three days to go, the mobile power relay unit has raised $277,043 in pledges from its 2,263 backers. The Kickstarter's goal was $100,000.
The Equal Turtles
A small group of "scientists" want to teach a turtle to fly, as kind of a one-off sort of thing. The idea to teach a turtle to fly came during a walk in a park, where it must have been immediately clear that the "scientists" needed more than $15,000 to do so.
"So one day I was talking with my man Ashley and told him, 'me man wanna see flying turtle?' And he replied, 'yeah man,' " states the project's Kickstarter page.
Right now, one backer has pledged roughly $19 to see a turtle fly one time. With three days to go, the creators of The Equal Turtles campaign likely won't be quitting their day jobs as planned to learn how to teach turtles how to fly.
"We have to learn more about how to do the stuff we are going to do," the campaign states.
