Interesting Bits

jaja & AppTag Progress

Jon Atherton — Wed, 02 May 2012 00:52:17 +0000

AppTag 96% Funded!

Jon Atherton — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 03:32:34 +0000

So Close! Kickstarter fixed the chart, so it looks much nicer now!

I really am loving Kickstarter – we’re building a company from our products that we have market tested on Kickstarter – it’s a fantastic launch platform!

Who is Talking ABout AppTag & JaJa? Everybody!!

Jon Atherton — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 07:28:44 +0000

Mashable Is This 2012′s Hottest Toy? Mashable thinks so

TechCrunch Pressure sensitive stylus with a clever twist.

NYT Nice pressure sensitive stylus

USA Today nearly any kind of multiplayer shooting game you can imagine, all without needing to block the headphone port or eat away battery via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi

Uncrate compatibility with most Nerf and Buzzbee toy guns serves as icing on the geek-flavored cake.

Technology Review MIT - Hello World covers products that contain important new technologies.

The Toy Spy It will be able to capture the attention of Android fans that had their blaster dreams shot down by the iOS only based smart device play of the Lazer Tag offering.

Dude I Want That The app-and-apparatus duo that will turn your basement, your backyard, and your 3-mile stumble home from the bar at 3 a.m. into an intense competition of agility, precision, and tactical prowess.

Gizmag Luckily for software developers, the AppTag won’t just be limited to games produced in-house. An SDK will become available in the next few weeks

PCMagThe app even includes an augmented reality angle, allowing players to see things like medkits, armor, weapons, and ammo packs on their phone’s screen and shoot them to reap the benefits.

WhatTheCool Obviously as with any blaster toy, the object is to shoot your friends!

Nerf Mod Reviews The AppTag units can be fitted to any tac rail to be used with your favorite blasters!

Swagsofresh a few different forms of iPhone laser tag hit the scene lately, but none that have impressed us like the AppTag Laser Blaster.

AppTag 90% Funded

Jon Atherton — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 06:56:09 +0000

Well AppTag is leaping up to final funding! Kickstarter funding has jumped 10% in the last 24 hours.

Two notes on the chart below – the latest day has just begun, and it also has an error in it for some reason, misreporting in the chart by $1300, its a bug of some sort.

AppTag Update ~90% Funded

Jon Atherton — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 23:02:29 +0000

100% Funding is in our laser sights, and we still have 2 weeks to run – the AppTag laser blaster is getting close to reality!
It was a very exciting day at AppTag laser frag headquarters today! AppTag got a big mention on Uncrate this morning which caused quite a reaction onTwitter. And hot off the press… a great write up on Gizmag – it’s all happening!

Here’s a great idea – you can save some dollars and have some awesome fun too! Maybe get some friends together to do a group buy – our most popular deals are the 2 and 4 pack, we even have people buying bigger numbers to resell.

AppTag is going to have some excellent arcade style games, but it is going to be terrific for big wide open warfare – imagine playing a shooter game across a whole city!

Thanks to our wonderful backers we have jumped 20% in just 2 days and I really appreciate it.

Jon Atherton on Tumblr

Jon Atherton — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 04:45:03 +0000

Finally got around to updating my tumblr blog.

So if you want to see what I share on tumblr go here: Jon Atherton Australia on Tumblr pretty boring at present, but I’ll be sharing all my starred items on Google Reader there.

AppTag Apps for laser tag and arcade games

Jon Atherton — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 02:04:43 +0000

A couple of updates for our Kickstarter project.

First shot below shows screen one of our arcade game for single player. An AR marker is placed on the floor, wall or where ever, spiders hatch out of the floor and you have to shoot them before they jump onto your phone – you can see the spiders in the shot, and an iPod mounted into our AppTag clamp (ignore the small stainless blot, that is for testing only and won’t be in production.

Second screen is not quite as clear, but shows the Laser Tag game as it stands at the moment, Lots more gameplay work to do on this one! I didn’t have a suitable target, so its a plastic dragon

AppTag in the News

Jon Atherton — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 05:12:50 +0000

AppTag mentioned in PCMag.com Cool Kickstarter Projects.

Urban Taggers - These guys *know* about such things!

Mashable “Is this 2012′s Hottest Toy?” “iPhones aren’t cool. You know what’s cool? Shooting your friends with your iPhone, mounted into a laser blaster.”

The Australian Newspaper – great summary article about all my projects

Twitter Users in General “Gotta Get, Must get, Want want want, coolest Kickstarter project I’ve seen – and lots of other great feedback!

Design Thinking for AppTag

Jon Atherton — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 01:03:39 +0000

Here are a few thoughts that I want to share about our design for the AppTag

The thought process on the high freq sound was:

1. Bluetooth and wifi are expensive to implement in toy, consume batteries, painful to setup for kids

2. adding a wired headphone cable seems like a good idea except you cannot use the speaker or microphone for walky talky and sound effects on the phone, it’s also a bit of a pain to ensure that the cord doesn’t damage the phone if it is bumped.

3. Audible sound is infuriating for parents, and gives your position away!

4. High frequency sound outside human hearing allows for simple controls, all smartphones have a microphone, it’s forward and back compatible. No interference from outside noises, spectrum is largely empty in range we use. Pets and babies etc not effected, since volume is very low.

Why have we gone for a clamp, rather than an enclosure?

1. Forward and back compatibility with all smartphone shapes and sizes

2. Doesn’t block the camera position, Android phones have lots of camera positions.

3. Probably the best reason: You do not need to remove your case! so it can be protected – our family has a no case removal policy for the kids iPods!

Toy companies have gone with a closed software system that means developers will not be able to develop for the toy. We have an open SDK (soon) so the toy can be expanded.

Compare this enclosure to our simple clamp!

Here’s a comparison table too:

AppTag 38% Funded – LOVE @Kickstarter

Jon Atherton — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:53:07 +0000

We’ve still got 32 days to go, wbut already 38% funded after just 5 days, LOVE kickstarter!

Kickstarter is going to disrupt a lot of businesses! Previously an inventor like me would pitch inventions, then the toy company has a bunch of committee meetings, they then decide to evaluate it with an option, if they then proceed they offer a small prepayment and an eventual 5% royalty on wholesale. They cover all marketing and manufacture. Inventors can do really well with the right toy!

Now with Kickstarter, I can develop an idea and do the same work as I pitch to the toy companies (create a movie and do a presentation). I then upload it to Kickstarter – where thousands of people evaluate the product! Real customers put there money down if it is good!

So for example with the jaja pressure sensitive stylus (which we pitched as a kids coloring in toy) we have now had over 1000 backers, and raised enough to do the tooling and final development work ourselves – we own the IP, and we can sell direct online for a cheaper price with a greater margin.

I mean look at the Nerf toy – they are selling for $40 and wont be available until August – we’ll be sending ours out in June and you can get one for just $25, and we make the margin rather than the 5% royalty, it pays for our production and everyone is happy!