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Hanfree Stand Makes Your iPad Float in Mid-Air
March 18th, 2011
Do you ever get tired of holding your iPad in bed? Well, it looks like there’s an accessory that will help you deal with that situation once and for all. It’s called the Hanfree and it will work with the iPad and iPad 2. The stand will literally make your iPad float above your bed.
The Hanfree is a cleverly designed stand that will suspend your iPad in mid-air. This means that it can be used to watch media, read books or instructions, in bed or while you cook, and plenty more.
It looks pretty cool, especially if you spend hours in bed or in the kitchen with your iPad. I don’t, but maybe you do. The Hanfree also has a versatile ball-socket pivot point, which allows you to easily angle and swivel your iPad to your preferred viewing angle.
The creators are still seeking funding via Kickstarter. This means that you can pre-order the stand for only $50 (USD). Once it’s in production, it will cost $80, so by helping to fund production, you get a nice deal too.
[via Ubergizmo]
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that’s ridiculous.
16 Oct 2011
Hello
I am writing regarding hanfree-iPad floating.
In july 2011, I paid 150$ to your account via my visa card for three Hanfree-iPad-floating stands but have not received them yet. The there hanfree ipad floating were due to be posted to my london address in September 2011. Unfortunately, I have not heard anything from you regarding the items.
Could you please look into this matter as soon as possible?
Best regards
Peter Jakes
Peter: we don’t sell items here on Technabob. I assume your message is intended for Hanfree. Have you contacted them directly?
Look now at the comments on the Hanfree Kickstarter page.
With a goal of $15,000, Seth Quest raised $35,004. Up until 3 October 2011, he reported as if things were going well. Then he lapsed into silence for a while. On 28 November, he returned to announce the collapse of the project.
His initial posture was that Kickstarter is a roll of the dice, and that his buyers had simply lost their money. Although hes not completely abandoned that posture, when it was forcefully explained to him that there was a legal contract between him and the buyers, he supplemented this claim with an insinuation that his obligations were transferred to a corporation that he formed, and evaporated when that corporation were dissolved. He has also said that he is trying to arrive at a settlement, and would do so if only buyers would behave more deferentially. Meanwhile, some buyers have been demanding documentation on how the money was spent, but Quest wont even supply that.
The Hanfree project was most probably begun in sincerity. But somewhere along the line, Quest and his associates began using the money for other things, and allowed themselves to not think about what was coming when that money ran out.
Ouch. this is definitely one of the risks of Kickstarter projects. Occasionally , people come up with cool products but don’t necessarily have the business plan to back up the execution.
Perhaps Kickstarter should start requiring that all projects include at least a basic financial plan for the funding.
I hope that those who lost money are eventually compensated.
Kickstarter could take a number of feasible steps to protect customers. But a ruthless clearing-house weighs not only costs of enforcement and losses due to potential customer alienation, but the potential profit from their fees paid by fraudsters; so the amount of fraud that it regards as optimal may be significantly greater.
I don’t expect most buyers here or in similar Kickstarter cases to get their money back. Individual Kickstarter buyers are typically going to see the cost of pursuing non-performing sellers as greater than the potential recovery, unless those buyers take into account the social externality, or otherwise have a very strong emotional investment. And the financial scale of Kickstarter projects is typically too small to interest a class-action lawyer; plus the transactions are scattered across states.
Expect to hear and read about more of this sort of thing, as grifters see the potential, until Kickstarter begins to fear for its future. I don’t know whether its owners and executives will then effect sufficient reforms to keep it going, or will regard it as played-out.
Didn’t eBay go through similar challenges in its early days, then put in place numerous controls and policies to help,protect both buyers and sellers? Hopefully, Kickstarter will learn from this and adopt similar practices. I like the idea of forcing businesses to have a business plan, and releasing the funds as they hit key milestones in their plan. I know that’d be complex to manage, but if you’re going to work like a venture capital firm you need to put in place more checks and balances for investors.
Yes, eBay is another Internet clearing-house, and there are otherwise some strong similarities. And Kickstarter could surely effect some changes that would make it a safer place for buyers and a more enduring business.
But there are simple changes that could be made easily and almost immediately, that Kickstarter isn’t making, such as never using the bare word “successful” for non-performing projects. Kickstarter’s resistence to such changes bodes ill.