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The Internet of Things should be its own category on Kickstarter, since there's yet another project on the site that hopes to connect your physical and digital worlds. But its real promise may be in providing context to computers that will evolve into new user interfaces. Guess what! There's another Kickstarter project that pushes the Internet of Things forward in a fun way. For as little as $10 you could pledge money to SmartThings, which wants to develop sensors and an application environment that lets people who may not be comfortable programming an Arduino board tie the physical world to their virtual one.

The Scanbox on Kickstarter is a foldable scanner that's easy to put together and snaps in place with magnetic buttons. The scanner, made from a high-quality laminated card, works with most smartphones with a back-facing camera. The Scanbox can digitize full-size documents and anything that fits into its dock. Watch the video above to see how the scanner works. The Scanbox has been 702% funded with 31 more days left on the crowdsourced funding platform. Backers can receive the scanner with a $15+ donation. The scanner will go into production once its Kickstarter deadline is up.

Almost 50,000 projects have sought financing on Kickstarter since the site began on April 28, 2009. About half successfully reached their fund-raising goals. Each dot represents how much a project raised by its deadline. Active projects are shown as of 5:30 p.m. Friday. 

Crowdfunding has become increasingly popular lately. That is, those who are looking for funding for their various projects can now turn to the community at large, which makes small contributions that are pooled resources into some pretty sizable chunks of change. Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter have been able to boast some phenomenal success stories recently - the $3 million raised for the Double Fine Adventure video game being a case in point. Of course, not everyone who tries to raise money via Kickstarter is successful (actually less than half are.) But by bypassing traditional fundraising channels - investors or banks or grants, for example - crowdfunding sites have supported a flood of new creative projects. In many cases, these are projects that would not have ordinarily received funding.

Karpfinger is one of a growing number of hardware startups leveraging crowdfunding, better tools and proliferating expertise to get to market faster and more cheaply than their predecessors. Between Kickstarter, amenable contract manufacturers, and fast-growing platforms like Apple's iOS, hardware ventures are finally, really starting to sprout like software ventures.

"Are you frustrated that low-end 3D printers don't have the quality to make the true beauty of your designs real? Do you dream of having the power and resolution of a truly professional machine on your desktop? We've created an easy-to-use system that rivals the output of high-end printers at a fraction of the cost."

"Form 1 is "a high resolution 3D printer at low cost" as the promotional video states. The first 25 backers gobbled up the device for $2,299, the next 100 claimed one for $2,499, and the current price of $2,699 is still available. It's important to note that this price does not include shipping, which could be significant for the international community that already paid $2,999 to get theirs. Still, compared to the recently announced new Replicator 2 printer from popular MakerBot available for $2,199, the Form 1 is definitely within the budget of many in the market for a 3D printer."

Kickstarter can be a blessing to artists and entrepreneurs-sometimes too much of a blessing. Earlier this year, a slew of crowd-funded projects received money that was an order of magnitude more than requested. Such windfalls can turn a dream into a nightmare: They often bury ill-prepared creators and lead to manufacturing delays, lawsuits, defective products, and irate backers. Here are a few projects that got slammed with excess success.

Well, it's been quite a year already for the crowdfunding industry. With the JOBS Act becoming law, the tech industry (and the economy at large) are headed for some big changes. Namely, the legalization of crowdfunding in startups for non-accredited investors has come to pass. Yes, now even your mom can invest in your startup. While many of the consequences (positive or negative) of the legalization will play out over the next few years, the most well-known crowdfunding platform has been busy racking up a blockbuster season. If it weren't there already, Kickstarter hit the tipping point in February, as it saw a number of record-breaking projects and landed squarely in mainstream consciousness thanks to a slew of media coverage.

More than a million backers have given $274 million to more than 28,000 home-grown ideas through the New York-based website, which entreats visitors to "fund and follow creativity." Some donors are growing disillusioned as entrepreneurs miss deadlines or fail to produce. Among technology and design-related projects, 75 percent didn't finish on time, according to a study published last month by Ethan Mollick, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

Want to work from anywhere? You're not alone. Some 63 million Americans will call somewhere other than the office their workplace by 2016, according to analysts. Now a new documentary in the works on Kickstarter will take a look at the current workplace, or lack thereof, and its impact on the lives of workers.

"The idea of a mass-market virtual reality headset that totally immerses players in a game world died out pretty quickly in the '90s, a time when the technology wasn't quite up to the heady concept. Now, a hardware designer named Palmer Luckey thinks that technology has finally caught up with the dream, and seems to have done a good job convincing a lot of game designers that he's right. Luckey's head-mounted display, the Oculus Rift, launched on Kickstarter today after first being previewed at E3. The device quickly surpassed it's $300,000 funding goal (approaching $600,000 at the time of this writing), primarily by selling $300 development kits to thousands of backers. Those developers include id Software's John Carmack, (who'll be bringing Doom 3 BFG as the first game to support the headset), Epic Games' Cliff Bleszinski, Unity CEO Dave Helgason and Valve president and owner Gabe Newell, who offered up supportive quotes on Rift's potential for truly immersive virtual reality."

"everal years ago now, I bought a Nazbatag:tag. You know, the internet-connected rabbit? It looks all anime and flashes colors and reads you RSS feeds. It has been relaunched in a third iteration as Karotz. Ever since that rabbit has sat on my desk, announcing the time or occasionally making an appearance at a talk or presentation I give on education technology, I can't help but think he was a little ahead of his time. People still hadn't grasped what it meant to have computers in things that didn't have screens. But, with the launch of Ubi on Kickstarter the other day I sense people are starting to understand the Internet of Things."

Ils s'appellent Kickstarter, Ulule ou Indiego, et ils sont les nouveaux acteurs du crowdfunding sur Internet. Ce phénomène, que l'on peut traduire par « financement participatif », permet chaque année le soutien, par un grand nombre, de projets de plus en plus nombreux, qu'ils soient artistiques, journalistiques, économiques ou citoyens.

"ver wish you could have Siri-like voice activation in your home rather than just on your phone? Ubi - short for ubiquitous computer - is an always-on voice-activated Android-powered computer. It's a little four-inch square packing a microphone and speakers, and it's got lots of uses. Just say 'Ubi' and it will do your bidding, be that voice-based web searches, speakerphone, intercom or alarm clock functions. The compact computer can be used as a baby monitor, or as a supplement to networked climate control systems like Nest."