Indie projects, why don’t you support me the way I support you?
So, each project that I’ve supported via Kickstarter has delivered a final project that’s kind of beta. Adonit has a promising product with their Jot Pro, but I don’t think it was ready for prime time.
Nice looking stylus, right?
Even with slapping scotch tape on the disc of their stylus (their suggestion), it struggles to work with my Zagg screen protector on the iPad. And this is the replacement disc they sent me. I get not testing with every screen protector – how could you – but Zagg is such a big brand in that market it’s surprising. So far the DAGi stylus is the best I’ve tried for that situation. That being said, I will say that the weight of the Adonit Jot Pro is great. It’s got a really nice look and feeling to it. The magnet as opposed to actual pen clip is pretty useless, especially on iPad 1, but as a marketer, I understand the streamlining of one’s product to match with the Apple aesthetic. And it’s still small and feels sturdy enough to carry in my pants pocket comfortably. Ultimately what I get is a nice looking product that I can only use if I’m swiping to the right or drawing lines and pictures to the right on my iPad. Which is a shame, because it really is nice otherwise.
That said, it’s a heck of a lot better than the other Kickstarter project I supported – the GoPano Micro from GoPano. I put money behind this towards the beginning of this year I think, because I felt like it would be a great, unique way to capture behind the scenes footage of the new show that we’re working on. The idea is that this lens attaches to your iPhone and shoots video in 360 degrees. You can then play back that video with an app on your phone (and from what I understood, a player for a website) that let’s an audience member pan around in real time, letting them choose what they want to see of what was shot. Cool, right? They can check out the scene being shot, then check out how the crew works to shoot it! So neat! In theory, yes. After a number of delays – which I get, because we’re still waiting for me to finish the Fallout piece – I finally got the GoPano in the mail the other day. Excited to try it, I opened it up, put the case on my phone, downloaded the app and attached the lens. At that point, I tried to focus with what I thought was success, but ended up shooting final video in a blurry, unfocused mess. And not in a cool, bokeh kind of way. In a “this is bad video quality” kind of way. And I can’t figure out how to focus the damn thing to a sharp final image. There are no real instructions on how to do it and I can’t find anything about it on their site. Admittedly, I’m terrible with web-fu and searching for things, but you would think they might provide some sort of instructions on focusing with the product itself.
So far for me, Kickstarter projects have been good ideas that need a little more time to bake before they’re ready to be delivered.
