mindtoss - musings, stylings, rants » Apple

Crowdsourced social product development

stephen chip — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 02:01:00 +0000

Most of you have heard of websites such as Threadless, CafePress, and Zazzle. In a similar fashion comes Quirky, a phenomenal social product development site. The basic premise is that anyone can submit ideas that may be selected for product development. If your idea get that far. So how does an idea get selected? Here’s an excerpt from Quirky:

There are two main steps to idea selection: community evaluation and staff evaluation. During the community evaluation, members of our online community vote, rate, and comment on all the ideas submitted. The top 5 ideas go on to our staff’s deep dive evaluation, where they get thoroughly analyzed in three areas: design potential, marketing potential, and viability. Each idea will receive a score (out of 100) and the idea with the highest score becomes Quirky’s next product! Whew, that was exciting.

Not only is Quirky exciting but they have incredible innovative products as well. Usually innovation comes at a price. On Quirky everything is fairly priced.

Here are a couple of my favorites:

Cordies cable organizers

PowerCurl MacBook Cord Wrap

Contort Flexible USB Hub

Wrapster Headphone Cord Organizer

Of course some of my favorites are all based around Apple products. What did you expect from a so-called Fan Boy. In addition, you can also find a slew of innovative products that range from Dustpans to Rubber band hooks.

As a fan of user interfaces, Quirky also hits a home run. I love the way the shopping cart works. Items placed in the cart are alway visible by rolling over the shopping cart icon in the logo box located in the top left hand corner.

Head over to Quirky and check it out.

iBottleopener – It’s a party in your pocket.

stephen chip — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 12:18:30 +0000

So an app will go only so far these days. Never fear, now your iPhone case can open bottles. For only $20 bucks, it doesn’t seem like a bad deal.

via: coolest-gadgets.com

Pump up the volume on your MacBook with a USB powered subwoofer

stephen chip — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 02:22:20 +0000

I carry my MacBook Pro everywhere, especially when I’m on the road. Most of the time I’m listening to music through headphones. However, once and awhile I like to listen through the Macbook’s built-in speakers. The speakers aren’t exactly the definition of ‘high quality.’ They are somewhat tinty sounding and lack a low end bass.

Enter “BassJump” from Twelve South. It’s a one-of-a-kind USB powered subwoofer designed exclusively for the Macbook. The sound and power are delivered via a single USB cable which helps to keep the cable count under control. It also utilizes software to customize the sound between the built-in speakers and subwoofer. It’s reasonably priced at just $79.99.