I’d only recently come across Kickstarter when a few weeks ago a buddy of mine highlighted that a couple of folks were building the Microsoft Courier concept into the iPad. Now at first I thought this was some kind of home project, an amateur weekend project you might call it. So I had the image of being greeted by a YouTube link and some crazy looking tech inventor showing off his pride and joy in a makeshift project for the iPad. Oh how I could not be more wrong.

Kickstarter is a site for fantastically creative people to come in and show off their ideas to the world. They usually start with a high quality video introducing themselves, perhaps a little history about who they are and where the idea came from before demoing their idea or product to you. Sounds just like any other product site? Sure. But the real core of Kickstarter is that none of these projects actually exist. Or not yet at least. The projects on the site are ultimately funded by the money raised by contributors who visit the project.

The great thing is that it takes out all the risk of investment as the contributors only pay their decided pledge once all the funding is met and within the predestined timeline. This way you know that you’re not just throwing money at a horse that won’t get off the starting line and it’s a great way of raising funds via the people who will ultimately enjoy or purchase the end result.

Of course you get a few lame projects which mimic products that some of you may have seen in stores already. But there are so many hidden gems hiding away in the vast and beautifully laid out database of projects that you’re bound to find something you like from film projects to physical kitchen products. I did a brief search on iPad products and was astonished at the ingenuinty and uniqueness of a lot of these products. Another great perk is that a lot of the products feature a “Pay what you want” option whilst guaranteeing that they’ll send you the product (shipping included) once the project becomes funded. So for you early supporters, there’s a huge discount available if you can’t afford the end retail price or want a bit of a saving.

Some of the great projects available are:

Hansfree iPad Stand

GoPano micro – Capture 360º videos from an iPhone 4

Tembo Trunks – Earbud Speakers

There are plenty more projects out there just waiting to get the funding to get off the ground. I’m supporting a number of projects at the moment and truly cannot wait for them to go into production and try them out for myself.

Link: Kickstarter