Since March, CrowdIt has amassed around 150 projects in the tech, creative, and nonprofit industries. They range from KC Dream Cars, exotic car rental for Kansas City, to Bioplastics, which wants to eliminate the use of oil in plastic-making, to the Kitty Barn for rescue cats.
CrowdIt is starting out with reward- and donation-based crowdfunding similar to Kickstarter. To contribute, backers have to purchase a virtual currency called “funz.” In the future, they plan to offer the new equity-based crowdfunding made possible by the JOBS Act: non-accredited investors (regular people who don’t meet certain income thresholds) will be allowed to fund projects in exchange for equity (and, potentially, big returns).
CrowdIt charges a 5 percent fee to successful projects and a 10 percent fee to unsuccessful ones (plus credit card processing fees). That’s slightly higher than Indiegogo, which charges 4 and 9 percent, respectively.
Besides offering incubation, CrowdIt hopes to gain traction by crowdfunding the application process, as well: eventually, users will have input into which projects are accepted on the site. If you join CrowdIt early, offer lots of mentoring, or contribute to enough projects, you’ll earn the right to review submitted projects and vote yes or no on them.
The incubator itself is somewhat crowdsourced, too. Industry experts can become mentors, nicknamed “suits,” by submitting qualifications like a post-grad degree or professional certification (such as a CPA). Along with mentorship, project creators also get networking opportunities and access to services like marketing and legal.
When the JOBS Act passed last April, the SEC planned to enact the crowdfunding legislation by December 31. Now, it looks like that won’t happen until late 2013 or early 2014, says CEO Jason Graf. But he’s already preparing to turn CrowdIt into an equity crowdfunding hub. He’s partnered with CrowdCheck, which will help protect investors by judging the legitimacy of projects, and CrowdBouncer, which will verify that backers don’t exceed their yearly investment quotas.
CrowdIt is based in Springfield, Missouri, and their vision is to help small businesses and creators across the country bring their ideas to life. “At CrowdIt, we believe everyone at some point in their life has had a dream that never came true due to a lack of capital,” they say. “Now . . . those dreams can be a reality.”
It's not the most eye-catching tablet we've ever seen, but the Excite Write was far more impressive when we turned it on. The 10.1in display looks stunning. It has a huge 2,560x1,600 resolution and everything looked razor sharp regardless of whether we were web browsing, watching film trailers or scrolling through Android 4.2.1's home screens. The Excite Write is protected by Gorilla Glass 2 as well, so it shouldn't pick up any scratches.
The ten-point touchscreen was very responsive, but the Excite Pure will also be available with Toshiba's keyboard cover. This is a Bluetooth keyboard that doubles up as a carry case and protective cover, but we were a little disappointed with its overall build quality. The smooth corners of its plastic cradle make it very easy to take the tablet in and out, but the flexible rubbery plastic stand that curves round to support the tablet has to bend quite considerably in order to bear its weight, even when the bottom of the cradle was resting in its support groove above the keyboard tray.
It felt quite fragile as a result, particularly since the cradle doesn't magnetically snap into place, and it didn't quite feel sturdy enough to survive a sharp accidental knock. Thankfully, it looks like the keyboard cover will be an optional extra rather than being bundled in with the tablet, so you should be able to attach your own Bluetooth keyboard cover instead.
The Excite Write has a good range of connections. There's a microUSB port, microSD card reader and a micro HDMI output on the side of the tablet and all three are concealed behind a plastic flap. The tablet also has an 8-megapixel rear camera with an LED flash and a 1.2-megapixel camera on the front for video chat.
The Excite Pure is powered by Nvidia's latest Tegra 4 processor and has 2GB of RAM. It completed our SunSpider JavaScript benchmarks in a super fast 567.7ms, making it one of the fastest tablets we've seen. It felt particularly snappy while we were web-browsing, but it also showed itself to be a capable games machine as well. We tried it out with Riptide GP2, a water-based racing game that only runs on Tegra 4, and the graphics looked incredibly smooth.
The Excite Write's final trick up its sleeve is its digitizer stylus pen, which lets you take notes using the touchscreen. Toshiba has also developed its own TruNote note-taking app to go with it and this is meant to be able to convert your handwriting into typed text. The pen felt very smooth and responsive while we were trying it out, but when we tried converting our note into typed text, we only had partial success. Read the full story at www.smartcardfactory.com!
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