Kickstart This! A Bluetooth speaker to make you drool

Pick of the week – QuarterWave

Prepare to drool over the QuarterWave Bluetooth speakers. Just look at them. They're divine. Rarely, if ever, has Kickstarter seen technology that looked this good.

Now, there are hundreds of Bluetooth speakers out there, from the absurdly expensive to the dirt cheap. But how many have you seen that look so lovingly crafted as these? And, if the developers are right, there won't be too many that sound better either. QuarterWave speakers are “designed to guide sound waves emitted from the rear of the speakers to prevent cancellation effects on the back surface of the speaker cone.” Know what that means? No, me neither - but it sounds great. (There's loads more techy stuff too. Read all of it here.)

The QuarterWave is cut from quality domestic wood, measures 520mm x 248mm x 128mm, and comes in five finishes from natural to jet black. If it hits its goal it'll begin shipping in December.

What they say

The QuarterWave is a handcrafted Bluetooth speaker system which implements a tapered acoustic transmission channel designed to produce a full-range superior quality sound. The QuarterWave is designed to transform any music listener into a true audiophile as we've removed the guesswork in finding the acoustic system to brilliantly reproduce your favourite music.

The money

Cary Gallaway and Donald Thomas have until November 4 to raise $50,000 to get the QuarterWave into development. The money will help fund shop space, production tooling and lab testing. If you want to be one of the first to get hold of the speakers you'll need to pledge at least $499, so it's not cheap.

Coming to a shop near you – Baboomi

For me, waking up in the morning is an undignified affair. My daily routine is to grope in the dark for my alarm, haphazardly hit the snooze button until it shuts up, fall back to sleep, then sit bolt upright when it shouts again, waking my partner hours before she needs to be up. It is not a smooth way to start the day.

Baboomi might be the answer.

Unlike traditional alarm clocks, or smartphones, Baboomi goes under your pillow and promises to “wake you up comfortably and gently using vibrations that you can customise". It's thin enough that the designers swear you won't feel it through the pillow, and allows the user to control the strength, pattern and frequency of the vibrations through a smartphone app. What's more, its “subsonic waves” will wake only you, and not your partner.

With 13 days of funding still to go, Baboomi has already smashed its $20,000 goal, taking more than $30,100 already. It begins shipping in March next year.

Punt of the week - Choosing My Adventure

Of the many projects that appear on fundraising sites, my least favourite are the 'you pay for me to go out and have an adventure' types. Almost impressively, Marcus Embeche's project is probably the least-appetising I've come across. Embeche, a self tittled '21st century poet and profiteer turned musical cosmonaut' wants you to give him money so that he can “move my life and recording studio into an RV and spend a year travelling across the country [America] with my dog, writing my album and telling my story.”

The twist? We get to vote on all the really interesting parts of his trip! Woop! Like where he should go, what songs he should cover, and, thrillingly, what he should wear.

Firstly, I want guarantees – if enough of us demand he performs dressed in nothing but a bow tie and Wellington boots, will he? And what if we demand he writes songs solely about Gary Lineker?

So far Mr Embeche has raised a grand total of $0. I think he's lucky to have that. Here's my radical suggestion: rather than give him your money, save it and go and have an adventure of your own.