I have written in the past about a company called Quirky where product ideas are submitted by people like you and me, developed by people like you and me, and then sold to people like you and me. I love Quirky and I’m a fairly regular contributor (and earner). In fact, I returned to my office today to find an unexpected package from the company. I love surprises.
Quirky Wrapster
Wrapster is a single piece of durable plastic that is uniquely designed to help you wrap up your ear bud headphones. In the video further down the page, I show how it works.
Retailing for $6.50, it’s a cheap way to keep your headphones from getting tangled up. It also boasts the ability to use it as an iPhone stand as well, but I couldn’t get it to hold my iPhone 4 up. Despite being unable to use it as a stand, I enjoyed it for the hour I owned it until my wife claimed it as her own.
Quirky Cordies
One of Quirky’s earlier products has been revamped and is shipping again. Cordies, coming in at $12.99 keeps all your cords and cables from falling off the back of your desk.
I showed this one in the video below as well and I was pretty impressed with how well it works. Cordies has a little weight to it to keep it on your desk and in my testing, it held up to some weight on the other end trying to pull the cable down.
Video Demonstrations
Both of the items described above are easy to talk about, but I thought it would be better to just show you how they work. Rather then using the company’s videos, I decided to make my own and put them to a real test. Other than the Wrapster’s bonus feature as an iPhone stand not working out for me, everything worked better than I expected. I also talk about the company as a whole and the awesome shirt they sent me, which I wore immediately.
About Quirky
For those unaware, Quirky is a site that takes ideas from anyone willing to submit them and presents them to the global community via their web site for evaluation. Once ideas have been evaluated by the community and by Quirky staff, one or more are selected to go through the development process. This process includes several smaller submission/evaluation rounds to flesh out things like the industrial design, colors, name, etc. Quirky also asks the community to participate in surveys and other ways to help define the end product. Eventually, a product is presented for pre-sales commitments and if enough sell, it goes into production and ships to buyers and stores.
The beautiful part is how people make money on the site. People make money by earning “influence” in a product. That influence translates into a percentage of the sale price of each unit sold for the item the influence is earned on. As an example, I have some influence in Wrapster, so I earn a wee tiny amount of money on each and every Wrapster sold. It’s very tiny, but 87,000+ Wrapsters later, it’s adding up nicely. The most influence is given to those who present the ideas and the least to those who just vote or help guide the development, but it all earns. I’ve only earned real money little bits at a time with the voting and guiding, but have made a few hundred dollars so far. Others have made thousands. Check it out for yourself if you haven’t yet.
If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you’ve probably played plenty of games with zombies, castles that need destroying or defending, or unhappy birds flinging themselves at pigs. The game I’m reviewing today has none of that. What it does have is bubbles that you have to pop, and it’s called Just Pop It from Zoltán Kovács.
Game Play
Unlike most games, this one is surprisingly simple. It starts with an empty grid and a set of four teal colored bubbles, each with the number 3 in them. You get a bubble on the grid by aiming and releasing your finger on the screen. The number inside a bubble indicates how many times you must hit it with another bubble of the same color before it pops. Each time you pop a bubble, you get another bubble to throw at the grid. When you run out of bubbles, the game is over. A bubble can be bounced off the virtual walls and top, but not the bottom. If a bubble touches the bottom, the game ends. It’s as simple as that.
The grid includes an overlay with the level, number of total bubbles popped, and number of bubbles to pop until the next level in large numbers, making it easy to read while playing.
Addiction Factor And Longevity
This game is addicting, and that caught me off guard. It doesn’t look very exciting, and frankly, it isn’t, but after I started playing I had a hard time putting it down. I attribute this partly to the fact that you just want to keep going until you beat your high score and partly to the fact that by time the game has ended, you’ve already put in a lot of work to get that far. Unfortunately, I don’t feel like this game will remain addictive to me for very long. I’ve been playing for a few days and it’s still fun, but it starts the same way every time and I don’t know if there’s enough variation to keep me interested. If this game follows the path of some other games and introduces updates with new ways to play, it will renew my excitement.
Everything Else
The graphics are done about as well as I might expect for a game this simple and I actually prefer that they’re not over the top. This is like playing pool, in a sense, so I’m happy to not be distracted with too much while I’m angling my shot. It starts and runs smoothly, but has a bug that prevents you from continuing an interrupted game. If you exit the game for any reason, it will crash right after you re-enter the game, forcing you to start it again from scratch.
All things considered, I like the simplicity of Just Pop It, but I think it needs some variations in levels to justify the cost for the full version. Grab the Lite version and generate your own conclusions.
It happens when you least expect it. It can happen while running your Mac or when starting a new session. If you have never experienced it, this article is here to prepare you. Yes, the infamous hard drive crash. It is time for Mac hard drive recovery.
Preceding a Mac hard drive recovery, you might notice your computer is slowing down markedly. If you have kept up the Mac maintenance on your computer and your Mac is still running slowly, it is a good idea to have at the Mac utilities included with your computer.
Your Mac includes utilities you can access from either your installation disk or through the command line’s use of diskutil or fsck. If your Mac runs OS version 10.4 or later, use disk utility from your installation CD or from the command line first.
The installation CD version of disk utility gives you broad support for hard disk and data issues on your drive. It is appropriate to use all the functions indicated on the installation CD to verify your Mac hard drive is restored. Disk utility includes the following hard drive recovery support:
• Disk integrity verification and repair
• Restoration of corrupted permissions
• Reconciliation of partition information with the Master Boot Record
• Repairs to mounting, demounting and ejection of all disk media
• Volume repair for Apple Software Restore (ASR) images
• Use of the Self Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) tool to direct you where to return a warrantied defective hard drive
• Additional hard disk and CD image functions
Use the fsck program for Mac OS version 10.3 or earlier. Instructions for using this program are noted in your installation CD materials or the Mac help utility. Alternatively, you can search for information on fsck online.
If your Mac hard disk failed during a session or you cannot boot at all, you are likely headed for 3rd-party software to attempt to perform Mac hard drive recovery. From another computer or a public use computer, you can find the various Mac hard disk recovery tools offered by vendors If your Mac hard drive simply won’t start, your data is likely lost. Often, you will find reviews and user comments for each tool that can you determine if the tool will work for your configuration. Be sure to know your operating system version for compatibility purposes.
A power loss event, an improper shutdown, or a forced restart of your Mac can result in an inability to use your computer and hard drive. When that happens, or when your computer partially boots, cannot get to the login screen or cannot display the desktop, you might try a safe boot for Mac hard drive recovery.
Safe boot is an option under startup shown for Mac OS x 10.2 or later. This mode includes automatic disk checking and repair. You might find your computer is fully restored after using the safe boot mode and restarting your computer.
David Ritchie is a software development writer. His current area of interest is Mac uninstall software.
