The Pebble smart watch, which was made hugely popular when it raised more than $10 million on Kickstarter last year, can finally display real-time fitness information related to workouts. RunKeeper announced Tuesday an app update for iOS and Android that fully integrates with the Pebble watch, allowing runners to keep track of their activity and providing a detailed analysis of their performance. The companies have been teasing this news for a little over a year now; in fact, RunKeeper was Pebble’s first app partner. The blending of these two companies could be powerful. There’s already an immense interest in the smart watch, and teaming up with RunKeeper will give users a way to stay connected without constantly needing to check their smartphone. “Pebble integrates tech into people’s daily lives in a fashionable and unobtrusive way. We’re excited that RunKeeper will be among the first apps to showcase our smart watch’s capabilities and how we support your day-to-day interests and activities,” said Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky in a statement. “With the RunKeeper app, fitness enthusiasts can benefit from Pebble to track their workouts, get motivated and meet their goals.” Pebble users can also control music and manage incoming messages, calls and notifications directly through the device. Developers can get their hands on a software developer’s kit (SDK) to introduce more apps to the device. Image via Pebble Pebble Hands-On Rock On Music controls on Pebble are intuitive and easy to use. Email Scrolling through email is as simple as pressing the down button on the side of the watch. Custom Watch Faces Pebble has a number of unique watch faces available. Fuzzy Time This Fuzzy Time watch face spells the time out for you. Time to Party You can select between a number of watch faces, including this clock face. Power Up The Pebble is charged using a magnetic charger similar to the magnetic power connectors on MacBooks. Rainbow Colored There are a number of different colored Pebble watch faces and bands, including an all white and all black model Kickstarter Edition The Kickstarter edition of the watch has “Kickstarter Editon” on the back of the watch face. Read more: http://mashable.com/2013/05/07/pebble-runkeeper/
Spike Lee is hopping on the Kickstarter bandwagon to finance his next film. Following the likes of Scrubs star Zach Braff and the creators of Veronica Mars, the acclaimed director is developing an untitled project that will look at humans addicted to blood. Lee calls it “funny, sexy and bloody (and it’s not ‘Blacula’).” “It’s a very different climate now, and the only way to ensure, as an independent filmmaker, that your vision gets on screen, is when you bring the money to the table,” he says in the video, above. On his Kickstarter page, Lee addresses the “faithful” with a long, persuasive letter that describes his love for filmmaking, as well as the troubles that come along with it. “The catch is Filmmaking is an Artform that costs M-O-N-E-Y,” he writes, throwing standard writing conventions out the window. “That is why I’m appealing to the Kindness in your Hearts, to the Faithful who have given me the much needed Love and Support over my 3 decades of Spike Lee Joints.” Present-day Hollywood does not support independent filmmakers, Lee says, adding that the studio-system model discourages creative liberty: I’m not hating, just stating the facts. Super Heroes, Comic Books, 3D Special EFX, Blowing up the Planet Nine Times and Fly through the Air while Transforming is not my Thang. To me it’s not just that these Films are being made but it seems like these are the only films getting made. To The Studios it seems like every Film must be a Home run on a Global scale, a Tent Pole Enterprise, able to spin off Sequel after Sequel after Sequel after Sequel after Sequel after Sequel. I have a different vision of what Cinema can be, a different vision of what some under-served Audiences might want to see. Lee vows — “on my Mother’s Grave and Right Hand to the Almighty” — that every donated dollar will go towards funding the film and not into his pocket. He’s also promising some pretty enticing rewards as incentives to support the project, including autographed items and thank-you tweets. At the time of writing, Lee’s campaign just surpassed the $100,000 mark; he has 28 days left to raise his entire goal of $1.25 million or receive nothing. The filmmaker, renowned for such iconic flicks as Malcolm X and Do the Right Thing, is also getting ready to debut his latest project, Oldboy, a remake of the 2003 Korean thriller of the same name. Will you support Lee? Tell us in the comments, below. Image: Al Bello/Getty Images Read more: http://mashable.com/2013/07/23/spike-lee-kickstarter/
A self-professed food geek has developed a sleek kitchen gadget that makes high-end sous vide cooking accessible in your own home. Sous vide is a cooking technique where food is kept in a water bath that is held at a consistent, low temperature. As explained in the video below, the sous vide method can’t overcook food in the water, allowing consistent results each time you make something. It is partially similar to cooking with a crock pot, in that you can plan a meal ahead and leave food cooking for hours at a time. Seattle-based Scott Heimendinger and Lukas Svec created the Sansaire immersion circulator, which heats and holds water at a very precise temperature, circulating the water to even out hot and cold spots. The consistent results give you evenly-cooked food, as show in the image below (sous vide on left, versus traditionally-cooked on right). Sous vide is a technique we’ve seen in restaurants, but Heimendinger told Mashable it makes sense in the home environment “because it removes you from the role of human thermostat.” In an oven, the temperature is higher so you can overcook food. With sous vide, the water bath is set at or slightly above the intended temperature you want the food to reach. Heimendinger said he cooks a medium-rare steak via sous vide at about 52 degrees Celsius. Afterwards, he uses a blow torch to quickly sear the steak. Heimendinger, also founder of the blog SeattleFoodGeek.com, said he first discovered this technique when he went out to dinner and had a side salad with a sous-vide-cooked egg on top. “The texture was so incredible,” he told Mashable. “It was so perfectly cooked. The yolk: it was thick but still runny, and the white was like pudding … There was something totally special and different about it, and I had to know how it came to be so.” Along with cofounder Svec, Heimendinger wants to take their Sansaire gadget into full-scale production by raising funds on Kickstater. Their project hit its $100,000 goal in about 13 hours, when it first launched in early August. With 13 days still left to go in the Kickstarter campaign, backers had already pledged more than $516,000, as of Friday afternoon. The Sansaire costs $199, much lower than the pro $1,200 circulators Heimendinger says he traditionally saw on the market. This summer, competitor Nomiku also raised more than a half-million dollars on Kickstarter for its immersion circulator. The Nomiku device currently costs $359. A Food Geek Heimendinger (pictured above, left) said he has always had some interest in food, noting that both his parents were good cooks and used to have a lot of dinner parties. “When I got to college, I got more interested in cooking on my own, mostly because the food on campus was pretty terrible,” he said. Heimendinger studied information systems at Carnegie Mellon University and has worked for IBM and Microsoft. He’s now involved with Modernist Cuisine, a Seattle-area research lab that merges the art […]
Daniel “Homeless” Mustard needs $15,000 in spare change. The musician, whose cover of Radiohead’s “Creep” went viral in 2009 when he was homeless, is asking for money to fund an album. Mustard no longer lives on New York City street or in parks, having found temporary housing at homeless shelters and Internet access to mingle with fans at Apple stores. “When you are homeless you usually have lost some sort of your will to live,” Mustard tells Mashable. “A big part of me getting my shit together has been getting that back. “And in a big way, getting exposure from the ‘Creep’ video (listen below) and all the support I’ve gotten on social media, and the making of the new record, has helped me get that back.” “When you are homeless you usually have lost some sort of your will to live.” This month, Mustard launched a project on crowdfunding platform Kickstarter to pay for the cost of producing and distributing his Fragments of Bone EP and supplemental merchandise. Mustard’s Kickstarter page lists unique rewards for people who pledge money to his project. So far, 92 people have given $2,903 in four days. There are 46 days left to meet his $15,000 funding goal He will perform via Skype for backers who dish $110 or more and create cover song videos for at least $250. He’ll also do a live performance anywhere within a 120 miles of NYC for $1,500 and one anywhere outside of that distance in the U.S. for $2,500 or more. At $450, he’ll give a “homeless walking tour” of lower Manhattan. “Well, in my mind, the things to be showing people are the places I used to sleep,” Mustard says. “Washington Square Park was a huge part of my life, and talking about how the park has changed over the years,” he adds. “It’s more about telling the stories than the actual places — places where we got hassled by the police, attacked, all that fun stuff.” He has many stories to tell, the narrative of being homeless with mental health issues and a drinking problem. “Getting sober, staying sober, is a process, not an overnight thing.” “Getting sober, staying sober, is a process, not an overnight thing,” he says. “I’m also going back to school and doing other things to better my situation.” People will hear tinges of his struggles, recovery and dreams in his new music. The yet-to-funded EP, Fragments of Bone, is named after a lyric in the forthcoming song “Vanity Plate”: “Like fragments of bone, scattered across the sky.” The line describes the sky’s stars. Having gained Internet fame with covers of other people’s songs, Mustard has established a flexible strategy. “When I think about covers, as far as what I would like to do, is covers of songs that people would never think I would actually sing,” such as “Hit Me Baby One More Time” from Britney Spears, he says. Mustard performed the Spears single and “Creep” on The Opie & […]
Hard-core fans of HBO’s popular series Game of Thrones want to create a web-based prequel, and need your help to make it a reality. A new Kickstarter project unaffiliated with HBO or George R.R. Martin — the author of the books on which the series is based — aims to create a pilot episode for a new web series that takes place 100 years prior to the events currently shown on Game of Thrones. Called “Dunk and Egg,” the series would occur in Martin’s fantasy world, but would include story lines from his prequel, The Hedge Knight. “Our labor of love will explore the legend and lore of Martin’s ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ and will give fans a glimpse into the harsh medieval world of Westeros,” the Kickstarter page says. “This is a series for fans, made by fans.” The team says it has been working to finish the pilot episode, but needs help funding the battle scene. “We have been working extremely hard for several months to complete a pilot for ‘Dunk and Egg,’ and are ready for our biggest undertaking yet … a battle,” the page says. “We want the battle to feel authentic. As fans, we’re all working for free on this project, and getting realistic armor, costumes, swords, animals, etc. is incredibly expensive. We’ve done as much as we can, now we need your help.” The project has already brought in more than $3,000 with the help of 65 backers. It has three weeks left to reach its goal of $10,000. Smaller pledges will get supporters a soundtrack and Blu-Ray copy of the pilot, while bigger donors will receive walk-on roles, props and a co-executive producer credit in the show. Read more: http://mashable.com/2012/09/15/game-of-thrones-prequel/
