How Not To Launch a Gadget 160
An anonymous reader writes "Starfish sells itself with this slogan: 'The next biggest thing is the next smallest thing: The world's first ever interactive iPhone and iPad mirroring device on your wrist.' The reality is that building products is hard. Building products with amazing feature sets is harder still. And, as the old saying goes, if something looks too good to be true, it probably is. From the article: 'On Thursday morning when the show floor opened, Starfish’s booth was completely empty—no product, no marketing materials, not even any people. Come Friday, various permutations of representatives appeared at the booth intermittently. ... Saturday arrived, but the watch didn’t, at least not at first. After hourly promises of its imminent arrival, a single prototype of the Starfish watch appeared sometime before 1 p.m. My colleague Dan Moren got to the booth before I did, and the Starfish device wasn't working then. It had apparently worked, briefly, in some sense of the word "worked," when a reporter for TUAW visited the booth. ... The sole representative at the booth when I returned wouldn't give his name. What information he did give me didn’t mesh with what [the CEO] had told TUAW. ... "Why did he send you to man the booth if you can’t answer questions about the watch?" I asked the rep. "I’m done talking to you," he said, as he moved to position himself directly in front of my face. His expression had gone from brusque to combative. "Did you hear me? I’m done talking to you." My accompanying colleagues and I took the unsubtle hint. We left the booth.'"
Re:Captain Obvious strikes again (Score:4, Informative)
If you can't manage that, at least bring scantily-clad women to the party... nobody expects them to answer questions about the device, and as a bonus, you'll get a lot of pictures of it.
Even in jest, can we not continue to perpetuate this as a good idea for tech expos. And people wonder why it's hard to get women interested in IT.
If it weren't for the fact that it works, it wouldn't be perpetuated.
Lowest common denominator love socially-acceptable bags of fat.
Re:Another Kickstarter failure (Score:5, Informative)
According to TFA, they are *going to* use Kickstarter to fund the project. It's not even on Kickstarter yet.
With the bad press, they'll have a really hard time raising those funds (assuming people take the 2 minutes to actually google the company before giving their money).
Re:Recipe for disaster ... (Score:4, Informative)
I personally have purchased a set of gaming dice 3d printed with stainless steel.
FTFY
It's a small but important distinction. The ability to print stainless steel would be revolutionary, while the ability to powder cast has been around for millennia. A hyped convolution of the mold making process is not going to change much besides the number of shitty knives and dice in pawn shop display cases.
It is indeed possible to print IN stainless steel, titanium etc.... Using a technique called selective laser sintering, fine metal powder is selectively melted/fused by a high power laser, allowing you to directly print custom parts from metal.