You’ve probably heard about a few Kickstarter projects that never quite reached orbit, like the Zano Drone that made $3.5 million disappear, or Ryan Grepper’s struggles to get his Coolest Cooler made after a $13 million dollar campaign (although, to be fair, they are actually shipping their product as we speak). But nothing so far can match the jaw-dropping crazy of the Peachy Printer, a 3D printer project that raised $600,000 in Canadian funds in 2013.
So far, no printers have been made, most likely for the simple reason that one of the partners in the project took the money – and built a house with it. An email from co-founder Ryan Grayston appeared in the inboxes of backers Wednesday outlining what happened, along with plans to try and get the printers made, but really, with essentially no cash in the bank, it’s not looking good.
But the really bizarre part of the deal is that Grayston got embezzler David Boe to admit his misdeeds in a video – complete with ominous music. Boe essentially says, hey, sorry, but I spent $300,000 of the money on a new house. “I’m not trying to deny it,” Boe says in the video.
So what now? Boe says he wants Peachy Printer to survive and he’ll do what he can to help. But that apparently doesn’t include selling his new house. At least, not yet. More strangeness: Grayston apparently knew about the missing funds two years ago but has been trying to keep the project rolling anyway. There’s a whole lot going on here and we are following the story closely so be sure to follow along here for all the details.
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Distracted driving is one of the leading causes of car accidents and due to the highly addictive nature of our phones and the ways we use them, that’s probably not going to change real soon. However, a new product cleverly named ZeroTouch from Logitech’s Logi sub-brand. The system features a mounting system and app for your Android phone – there’s no iPhone app yet – and let’s you respond to text messages, get directions and so on – all hands free.
You do have to put a little metal plate on the back of your phone for the mounting system, so if you can deal with that, it looks like a pretty simple way to upgrade your old beater to a sorta cutting-edge smart car. Once you attach your phone to the mount, the app launches and a wave of the hand activates ZeroTouch. The system is either $60 or $80 depending on if you want a vent of dash magnetic mount for your phone.
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If you’re an avid Instagram user, you may have thought the app had gone missing from your phone. No, it’s just that the friendly camera-ish app icon has suddenly changed, along with a visual re-skin of the app itself. They even made a fun video about redesigning the icon. Anyway, the app has been slightly tweaked as well – it’s mostly black and white now – but otherwise, it pretty much works like it used to.
Instagram has about 400 million users and was purchased by Facebook in 2012 for one billion dollars. Every day, users post up over 80 million photos and videos to the service.
