CulCharge is a small device which measured at 2.1 inch long and weighs only 38 gram. It is made by a start up company in Bratislava, Solvakia and it is currently being crowdfunded in Indiegogo campaign. The device has achieved its initial target by a comfortable margin as it is supported by Slovak Telekom which is a branch of Deutsche Telekom. For backers, it is priced at $49 for two units while the retail price is expected to by $70. Unfortunately, it does not include shipping fee.
CulCharge powerbank unfortunately is not capable to fully charged smartphones such as iPhone 6 or Galaxy S6. The battery size is about 1000 mAh. For iPhone 6, it is estimated that it can only charge up to 55 percent whereas for Galaxy S6, it can charge up to 39 percent. The device itself is charged by connecting it to the USB port of your laptop or PC. On top of that, it provides an additional data cable functionality to sync your computer and mobile device apart from being a powerbank and a charger.
There are two version of CulCharge, one is the Lightning model which is designed for iPhone and the other one is a microUSB model for Android/Windows/BlackBerry devices. It boasts that it can be recharged up to 500 cycles.
CulCharge guarantees 100 percent money back in case if it does not deliver what it promises. The delivery is estimated to start in December 2015.
In today’s digital world where people are increasingly relying on their mobile devices, power bank has become a necessity, especially when you are on the go. You need to do a thousand things – make & take calls; send and check messages & emails; check your location/route; book a movie ticket or a restaurant; browse for something you want to buy, listen to some music or watch an interesting video. Your battery will give out along the way and in such a case, a power bank will come to your rescue.
A power bank is an external battery which you can charge up and carry around with you in your pocket, purse, briefcase or backpack and use it to charge your mobile device whenever its battery gets low. Now, there are several power packs available out there but ET-Stone is eco-friendly as it uses green energy and apart from acting as a traditional power bank, it also has other useful functionalities.
ET-Stone charges your mobile devices outdoors and also serves as an efficient a lamp and a torch. Folks at Elixir Tech who have made the device, claim it to be the “World’s smartest solar power bank” and have started a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo.
Check out this video that will give you an idea about the new ET-Stone Power Bank:
Now let’s see some of the highlights of ET-Stone:
Faster Solar Charging
ET-Stone comes with a high battery capacity of 3100mAh, which matches that of many high-end flagship smartphones and it also charges faster than most solar portable chargers currently available in the market. While the 2000mAh battery of such chargers takes about 4-5 days to get charged completely, the 3100mAh battery of ET-Stone gets completely charged in only 14 hours!
This has been made possible due to the super quality Solar panel used in the device which has highly efficient Sun Power Cells (2.75V/550mA). This is what makes ET-Stone much superior to other solar powered portable chargers available.
The device has a built-in Voltage Boosting Technology that helps to make optimum use of solar energy to maintain the required voltage levels for charging the solar panel even under low lighting conditions. The solar panel will effectively keep the battery levels to the maximum at all times of the day in any kind of weather. Protection circuits in the device protect it from excessive sun as well as current spikes.
Smarter Normal Charging
If by any chance solar energy is not available, the ET-Stone can also be charged directly through a plug. The input port accepts both AC and DC voltages. It can be charged directly through a plug or by connecting it to a DC source such as the USB port of a PC or laptop. The chipset in it can automatically detect the i/p current of the adapter and also sense the o/p charging current to the smartphone.
Overcharging of the battery is a major cause for reduced battery life. This can happen if it continues to be charged beyond its maximum capacity and for a longer time. To overcome this problem, the Elixir Tech team has used a sensing technology inside the device that will continuously monitor its charging level and once the maximum charging capacity limit is reached, it will automatically stop the charging process. This avoids overcharging and subsequent heating of the battery, resulting in a longer battery life.
Dual Charging
Dual charging is a unique feature of ET-Stone battery Bank. If both your smartphone as well as ET-Stone batteries are running low but you only have a single adapter or laptop/PC connection, you don’t have to choose between them. When you connect the adapter to ET-Stone and the USB cable from ET-Stone to your smartphone, the phone will charge first and after it is sufficiently charged, the charging will automatically shift to the power bank.
Lamp & Torch Features
This is another unique feature of the ET-Stone. Apart from being a conventional battery charger, it also acts as an LED lamp and a torch. The lamp consists of two powerful LEDs located at the front of the device while the torch is a single high-intensity LED located at the bottom. The use of anti-glare lenses ensures enhanced and wide-angle dispersion of light.
Another useful feature is that three intensity levels of light are available for the lamp and users can select any one option as per their needs:
1) 1st intensity gives 14 hours of light
2) 2nd intensity gives 22 hours of light and
3) 3rd intensity gives 35 hours of light
The torch provides only a single intensity light.
The ET-Stone lamp has another useful built-in feature- the SOS light. It can be activated by long-pressing the lamp button for 2 seconds and is very helpful in emergency situations. For example, if your car breaks down at night at any remote spot or when you go camping or hiking and are in need of help, you can send out an SOS signal with the lamp.
Ergonomic Design
The ET-Stone power bank has been designed after giving a lot of thought and as its name suggests, it has a combination of strength, rigidity and smoothness, which are the inherent properties of stone. A patented revolutionary kickstand is attached to its frame, which allows you to rotate the device a full 360 degrees and position it according to the sun’s angle. The kickstand also offers rigidity and added protection to the device and can also be used to hang the device.
An added advantage are its ¼” 20 UNC brass thread inserts which allow users attach it to a car mount, a tripod or a gorilla kickstand. ET-Stone can also fit snugly in your pocket and be carried about easily.
Applications
Apart from being useful in day-to-day life, the ET-Stone can also be a useful in travelling, hiking or camping in remote places or even in remote rural areas where no charging plugs or lights are available. It will also be useful during natural calamities like earthquakes or floods when there is a power problem.
What do you think of the new ET-Stone solar power bank? To know more about it, to buy one for yourself or to lend a helping hand, you can head over to Indiegogo.
It seems that the tech industry is slowly getting adapted to 7-inch smartphones and it may be possible that phablets may be not big thing for size comparisons. Last month we saw Blu announcing its Blu Studio 7as the first 7inch smartphone in the market. Now an unknown startup is said to have launched a campaign at Indiegogo for funding of “world’s first 7-inch dual-SIM Tor phone.”
The new handset is named as the Boss Phone, which pretty looks like a tablet and is said to be running the Android 5.0 Lollipop out of box. Tor is basically a free software and the creators of the smartphone say it “provides elite level protection against hackers, malicious third parties, and private data collection by corporations.”
The Boss Phone sports a 7inch display with 1280×1920 pixel resolution and comes with dual SIM capabilities and LTE connectivity. The device offers a 16GB of built-in storage expandable via microSD card. The camera to its back is 8MP while the front hosts a 2MP secondary snapper. Under the hood lies the powerful octa-core MediaTek MT6592 chipset.
The shipment for the device is said to be starting in October later this year. The threshold funding for the handset is assumed to be $150,000. For further details check the source link below. Check out the images for the device below.
Last month, we told you about Jolla launching a crowd funding campaign on Indiegogo and now the campaign has come to an end successfully with Jolla managing to raise $1,824,055 which is much more than its initial goal of $380,000. The upcoming Jolla tablet would be more enhanced having a split screen feature and an addition of microSD card slot supporting 128GB of additional storage.
Reports show that Jolla also planned to add the 3.5G connectivity feature for additional cost of $30 but that required an total funding of $2.5 million which was not possible. Moreover, the good thing is that all people who have contributed for Jolla’s campaign with $209 and more would get a Jolla Tablet by the May 2015.
Looking to some of its technical specifications, the Jolla Tablet would have a 7.9inch display to its front with 1536×2048 pixel resolution, a 5MP primary camera to its back, 2GB of RAM memory and 32GB of internal memory, a 64-bit quad-core Intel Atom processor clocked at 1.8GHz and a 4300 battery backup. The tablet would be running the Sailfish OS 2.0 which would also allow users to run the Android apps. For more details regarding the tablet, click the source link below.
After the NSA surveillance scandal broke out, many people were concerned about their privacy, worrying that the National Security Agency or anyone else might be checking on their emails. Some students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard got together and developed a new super-secure alternative to other email services, the ProtonMail.
As ProtonMail founder and front-end developer Jason Stockman told The Huffington Post:
“It was the Snowden leaks that got us started. A lot of us at the time were working at CERN, the nuclear research facility in Switzerland, and we started hearing about all this and we really freaked out. We ended up posting on Facebook about privacy issues, and it just grew from there.”
ProtonMail was founded in 2013 by a team of scientists who met at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland with a goal to offer “a more secure and private internet” to protect people from surveillance carried out by governments and big corporations. The email service provider’s public beta launched in May 2014 allowing anyone to open a ProtonMail Beta account instantly without waiting for invitation.
They have adopted an end-to-end encryption and the data gets encrypted in the browser itself before it goes to the server. So the ProtonMail has no access to these messages and cannot decrypt them. The company also hosts all their servers outside the US in Switzerland, where all the user data is protected by strict privacy laws and remains safe.
ProtonMail is easy to use and works in any modern web browser. It is also mobile friendly. It can be easily accessed from PC, laptop, tablet or smartphone. You can also send and receive emails from those who are not using ProtonMail.
Key features of ProtonMail include:
End-to-end Encryption
Swiss Based
Expiration
Compatible
Unsend
ZeroAccess
Scheduling
No Installation
No Ads
Free Forever
ProtonMail launched a fund raising campaign in June this year on IndieGoGo and raised $550,492 against a goal of $100,000 till the campaign closed on 31 July 2014. The company will use these funds to buy and host servers to support new accounts and to improve the service further.
Imagine a solar paneled road that you can walk or drive on. The solar panels would harness sun’s energy and convert it into electricity and heat. The roads would be clear of snow and ice, they would be illuminated at night with LEDs and electric vehicles could be recharged anywhere along the road. Think how much it would save on electricity or gasoline and how much pollution it would reduce.
Sounds crazy? Well, this is the brainchild of Scott and Julie Bursaw who have taken up this ambitious Solar Roadways project to make it possible. Their basic idea is to replace asphalt roads with solar panels made from recycled tough materials having photovoltaic cells embedded in them. These cells would collect power from the sun and produce clean renewable energy. These solar panels would withstand heavy weight of vehicles and would be used to pave roads, sidewalks, driveways and parking lots.
Electricity so generated would pay for the cost of the solar panels. The electricity could be used by homes and businesses and excess could be stored. Roads could be heated up by adding a heating element on the road surface to melt the snow and ice on them. LEDs could be used as road lights to light up the road during nights. Electric vehicles could be charged at roadside charging stations or in parking lots. The possibilities are numerous.
Solar Roadways Inc. was founded in 2006 by Scott and Julie Bursaw. In 2009, they received a contract to build the first protype of the solar road panel from the Federal Highway Administration. They got a grant of $100,000 from Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) for Phase I which was followed by another grant of $750,000 for phase II to build a solar parking lot. Solar Roadways started a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo on 21 April 2014 to raise money to go into production. The company managed to raise $2.2 million from the campaign far exceeding the targeted amount of $1 million.
If this Solar Roadways project takes off, it would reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, the stocks of which are depleting rapidly. They would cut down the greenhouse gases and generate huge amounts of clean energy that will go a long way in saving our world’s environment.
Ritot is a smartband in development which, with the help of a projector, casts the notifications on the wrist. The concept is similar to projection clocks but it is present as a wearable band.
The prototypes are said to be designed with fashion sense. They are more appealing than normal smartbands. The band is made up of aluminum with leather covering.
With the shake of your wrist or with the touch button you can activate the pico projector in the band which will then display apps notifications, messages, weather alerts and your Twitter and Facebook messages on your wrist. The smart band will support Windows Phone, iOS and Android smartphones.
The smartband is designed so you can take it anywhere. You can wear it while jogging and its waterproof so you can even swim with it. It will also come in sport version which will use rubber and plastic as covering instead of leather and metal. The downside for now is that neither version includes tools like heart rate monitor or even a step counter.
Its battery can last up to 150 hours in projection mode and lasts a month in standby mode. It can be charged wirelessly with a dedicated pad. The pad also shows time and can be used as an alarm clock. The pad can also be used to adjust the settings of the smart band; you can change projection color and set it for the use in right or left hand.
The Ritot makers have passed a campaign for fund raising on IndieGoGo. They have already passed their funding goal. The final product will arrive in January or February next year. You can also take part in funding and order one smart band for $120 or two for $200. Once the campaign is finished the retail price is set to be $160 per smart band.
Key-rings haven’t been the concentrate of abundant innovation over the years however a replacement crowd-sourced campaign is progressing to modification that. Dubbed GOkey the device brings a Bluetooth-enabled key locator, an exterior battery, a USB flash drive and a USB cable (or Lightning if that’s however you roll) into one.
The cool trying piece of tech has a battery of its own, that in keeping with the manufacturer can offer enough juice for 2 hours of speak time for those emergency cases. It’s an integral cable (either micro USB or Lightning reckoning on the version) therefore you ought not to carry that moreover.
Using that cable, GOkey may be used for tethering your smartphone or tablet to your portable computer or computer for each charging and knowledge synchronization functions. The device is Bluetooth-enabled therefore you’ll combine it together with your phone and use it for locating your misplaced keys. To sweeten the pot even more there’s in-built memory therefore GOkey will act as a separate thumb drive – 8GB, 16GB or 32GB reckoning on the version you decide.
The operation has achieved over double its original $40,000 goal in precisely four days, however there are still plenty units up for grabs on its Indiegogo page.
You can presently get AN 8GB or 16GB unit for $49 (or $59 if you would like it dispatched globally), whereas the 32GB version prices $59 ($69) for initial adopters.
There are special optical device incised units and concessions if you get 3 units, if you would like to pledge a lot of.
It is a rule in fashion that if you can leave the bag, leave the bag. But the thing is it is not always proper and comfortable to stuff all our things in our jean’s pockets. ‘Cos more often than not, leaving the bag turns our pockets bulgy and this is never a good look. When you go out though, what are your essentials? A purse, your phone, and a bottle of cologne? If that made up your casual trip basics, then I have some good news for you. Now you can leave the tote bag because the Atomyzer is here! “Atomyzer – The Case That Sprays!”
It is a new product on the crowdfunding site Indiegogo that put together an iPhone case with a refillable atomizer. Suffice it is to say, this iPhone case go beyond just protecting your smartphone from scratches and nicks. It also supports your hygienic needs. You can fill it up with your favorite cologne, hand sanitizer, alcohol, or whatever liquid you just can’t go out without. It is originally designed for perfumes and colognes, but you can certainly fill it up with any liquid you like. Perhaps not anything you intend to drink though. The spray head can be locked, so you do not have to worry about accidental butt sprays.
It is amazing how technology is constantly showing it is avant-garde. You can never imagine in how many ways it can make our lives convenient with new discoveries. Now you can fit all your things in your pockets without ruining that cool and fresh mien. Big thanks to the brilliant mind behind this, Rahul Dharod!
