Kickstarter is a funding community that brings designers and developers together with people who are interested in their projects. You can create a project on the site and ask for funding, and depending on how well you represent your idea and how well it is perceived, you may receive the necessary funding to create it.

Kickstarter projects come from a wide variety of topics, from music and games to publishing, new technologies or design. If you ever wanted to fund your own comic strip, the album of an artist you like or an iPhone app that finds your car no matter where you have parked it, then Kickstarter is the right place to look.

Creators and designers get the funding they need to create their projects. The people who fund the projects on the other hand often get something in return as well, next to the eternal gratitude of the designer of course.

This is usually grouped into tiers. The more you pay, the more you get usually. I for instance decided to fund enough to get a copy of the board game shipped to my address. If I would have paid more, I would have received a prototype of the game delivered before the actual printing of the game or game shirts and strategy guides.

You usually get the core product if you fund, and often a lot more than that. Ever wanted to see your fantasy self in a board game that you’d like to play or in a new computer game? Then Kickstarter is the right place for you.

If you are new to the site I suggest you open the popular listings first. Each project is listed on the page with an image, title, short description and funding information. The funding information display the amount in Dollars and percentage that has been funded already as well as the days left before the funding closes down. You will find many projects receive more funding than they creators actually need. That’s not necessarily a bad thing though, and you can join the funding as long as there is time left before it closes.

A click on a project opens that project’s home page on Kickstarter. Here you receive detailed information about the project as well as all funding information you need. The sidebar lists what you will receive for your money. In the case of the “best dock for iPhone” you will have to pay $59 to get one in glass bead blasted finished instead of $90 which you would have to pay in retail once the product ships. You could also pay more and get the dock in different colors and materials.

You need to create an account first before you can fund a project. Funding is not difficulty at all as it takes a few clicks to fund a new project.

What I really like about Kickstarter is the fact that you can fund interesting ideas and projects that may otherwise never come to existence. You’ll definitely find crazy ideas on the site that you would never invest in. But for ten ideas that do not interest you, you find one that is exactly what you ever wanted to have. I love to browse through the new projects on the site and am always excited when I discover one that sparks my interest.

I might even use it in the future to get funding for some of the ideas that I have, e.g. for writing a book.

Project management rules need to be in place so that everyone knows what to do and when to do it. That’s easy if the project team works in the same location, more difficulty if it is a country wide or even worldwide project.

Writeboard is a lightweight unobtrusive service that allows everyone to share a whiteboard with other users.

Whiteboards are a great way to save information in writing. Online whiteboards offer the same advantages while getting rid of the same location requirement.

One user creates a new whiteboard by specifying a name, password and email address. The whiteboard is a basic text editing form on a website.

A limited set of formatting options are available. It is possible to create lists, headers, embed links and logos and make text bold or italic.

This is done in a special syntax, not with the usual text formatting tools that almost every text editor on the Internet offers.

writeboard

The original creator is able to invite new people to collaborate. This is done by sending them email invites from within the software. It is possible to skip the step and work with the login information of the thread starter. This would mean however that it is not easy to find out which user made which modifications to the document.

The main page of the whiteboard displays the contents and versions. It is possible to compare two versions of a text to see the differences.

whiteboard text comparison

Text can be exported in either a txt document or as a html file.

Each Writeboard project consists of the following four steps:

• Write something… Write a business letter, copy for your website, a marketing brochure, or a product description, or a weblog post, or a song, or a poem, or an idea, or an essay, or a book chapter, or whatever else you might normally write in your email program, text editor, or word processor.
• …share it… Want to collaborate on some copy? Want to pass a memo or letter by someone else for editing before you send it? Want to work with your business partners on some text for a proposal? Want fellow students to contribute to a group paper? Want to collaborate with a client on wording for their project?
• …revise it… Writeboard makes editing easy and safe. Every time you save an edit a new version is created and linked in the sidebar. This allows you to write without fear of deleting something, overwriting something, or losing a better version of the document from last week.
• …compare it.Ever want to know what changed between two versions of a writeboard? Simple. Just check off two versions and click the compare button. Everything that was deleted will be grey and struck, everything that’s new will be highlighted green.

The main benefit of using Writeboard instead of other online services (like Google Docs for instance) that offer work collaboration is that it is easy to create and use.

Projects that need more formatting options and functions are better of with advanced project collaboration services. (via Free Download A Day)

Each project consists of a name and a color. That’s the minimal constellation. Additional data like contact names and email addresses can be added and sub projects can be created. Each project and sub project is listed in the left column and can be accessed with a double-click to change data, add sub projects or write comments on previous time entries.

The time of a project will be tracked when the user drags the project into the Currently Working On area of the application or by clicking on the Work On button in the project’s detail view.

Instead of tracking the time in real time it is possible to drag projects into the weekly view and edit the time manually. A double-click leads to that option which also offers access to the comment function.

Automatic time tracking cannot get better than this. The application is very responsive and it is easy to create new projects or sub projects. Reports are saved in Excel format which is also excellent.

The project creator can then pick one of the freelancers who responded with an offer. It is possible to use a private messaging system to communicate on site to get the details right before a deal is closed. The website offers an Escrow service that will withhold the money until the project has been finished.

Adding a new project costs $5 which are subtracted from the money that is being paid to the freelancer if one is selected to finish the project. I think that this website offers some nice opportunities for freelancers as well. Just take a look at the average bid amount for certain categories to know what I mean. The price range for most projects lies between $100 and $1000.

While the website concentrates on brokering IT deals it does have several other categories that are related in a way or another. You can find and post offers for Accounting, Translations, Photography, Legal Advice or Copywriting on the website as well.

I like to post projects there because I know that my money is safe until the freelancer completes the product to my satisfaction. A rating system that has been implemented makes it easy to analyse a freelancer by previous works that he has done on the site.

I’m not using the website as a tool to earn money but I guess you could be highly successful if you are an expert in any of the categories that are offered on the website.