#elevation dock

Elevation Dock by Elevation Lab, Portland, OR

We all saw that video and knew that frustration, and that’s why they were able to far surpass their Kickstarter goal so easily. And with the iPhone 4S, it really did work that well, once we eventually got our Elevation Docks.

But with the Lightning adapter, the Elevation Dock works like all of the other docks in that video.

It’s even harder to remove the iPhone 5 from the Elevation Dock than I expected. It requires two hands almost every time, and it makes me want to throw the Dock out the window.

I'm glad that I'm still using the iPhone 4S.

Lately, we've been watching a constant flow of new initiatives for funding new projects boosted mainly by the Kickstarter site. This site allows you to pitch for a product or idea and request funding from other people who would be interested in your project (crowd funding). One of the first projects that made me aware of Kickstarter was the Glif by Studio Neat, a stand and tripod mount for iPhone 4 (and 4S) which I ended up buying a couple months after they got their funding and already through their website (only upgraded my iPhone 3G for a 4S, so I couldn't really use it at launch time). It was one of the first widely publicized successful Kickstarter projects and from there new ideas started appearing.

One of these ideas got a lot of traction after being linked by John Gruber from Daring Fireball was an iPhone dock (wow… the first two products from Kickstarter I mention are iPhone related… moving along) called the Elevation Dock which passed its targeted pledge by an astonishing 2000%. From the pitch video the dock is amazing and I could really see me using a couple (one at home and one at work), but I can't really justify folding $100 (each) plus international shipping for a freaking iPhone dock.

Up until here it just seemed a new form of starting a business and asking your future clients for money upfront before your future buy was even real. Mind you, most projects who enter Kickstarter don't get funded, but some are. But now all sorts of things are applying for crowd funding and a couple games caught my attention. The first was a sword fighting video game called CLANG that aims to become a realistic sword fighting game and pledged and got $500k. The other one, much more recently and which aims to get almost a million dollars (yup, you read that right) is a RTS game called Planetary Annihilation. The pledgers, some of which made Total Annihilation, claim that there are no producers willing to finance an RTS game and so they had to fund themselves by other means. But are you willing to back with your own money games that you don't know if they will be any good?

What brought me to write this post was mainly the apparition of App.net, a Twitter competitor with a catch. You have to pay $50 to enter the social network. The creators believe it is the money they need to provide you a Twitter-like service without having to succumb to tactics and attitudes - like the new Twitter API changes which in my opinion don't change much as they only want to be able to monetize on the REALLY BIG clients - that favor the advertisers that will supposedly pay for your enjoyment and use of the social network (saying supposedly because it seems Twitter still hasn't found a proper way to monetize itself).

There are precedents, of course. Take Pinboard for example. When Delicious was crumbling down, an entrepreneur called Maciej Ceglowski saw an opportunity and created a payed alternative for archiving your bookmarks (not a client, yet). He needed a business model from start, not wanting to get VC like… Twitter, so he calculated how much a single user would cost to serve, put his profit margin and got a per user price, as he explains in the service's about page. But this is a service and a price that I find acceptable.

My question, to myself and to whoever is willing to read and answer this brain dump, is: aren't we going too far? Paying $50 to enter a social network? Of course all the tech bloggers and cool (read rich) guys are already in, but is the Average Joe falling for that? I personally think I can live with the new Twitter API policies and quirks for the time being and be able to interact with the new App.net clients (since they won't be leaving Twitter anytime soon) and the rest of the "cheap basterds" that will stay on Twitter because they feel $50 is a lot to pay for a Social Network pass.

Today my Elevation Dock finally arrived!

As a quick recap, the Elevation Dock was a Kickstarter project and quickly became one of the most popular projects in Kickstarter's history.  Rather than tell you all about the Elevation Dock, I'll just show off their great video:

So this all happened back in February, and today I finally received my Elevation Dock.  First thing I noticed was the small touches on the packing.

Very Apple like, as you might expect.

The actual dock itself is made from the same material as MacBooks, so it's absolutely the heaviest iPhone dock I've ever seen.  The idea of course is that by being so heavy, it's easier to take out the iPhone, which is absolutely true.

The Elevation Dock comes with both a very short cord and one that's about 6' long - the short cord is ideal if you have a laptop but that's about it.  To swap out cables you need to unscrew two hex screws (thankfully an allen wrench is provided), and then you need to unplug the micro USB end of the cable.  They included a helpful guide to doing so:

The other notable feature is the pad that sits inside the opening for the phone - by default it's thin enough to allow iPhones with cases to fit in comfortably, but you can flip it around for a thicker pad if your iPhone is case-less.  I thought it was notable that the default is for the thinner side of the pad.  The assumption is that most people with an iPhone have a case, and I'd agree with that.

If you're somebody who just wants a cheap place to rest your iPhone, this is not the dock for you.  If you've ever wished that Apple made a high-end iPhone dock, or even if you just hate having to mess around with regular docks, this is absolutely the nicest iPhone dock I've ever seen.

As Trevor Gilbert notes on PandoDaily, the "best dock for the iPhone" project has now surpassed $900,000 in backing and is closing in on LunaTik's (you know, the awesome iPod nano watch) record of $942,578 with 3 days to go. 

If you want to know how much thought and care was put into the Elevation Dock, just watch the video on the Kickstarter page by creator Casey Hopkins. He out-Apple'd, Apple. Let's push this thing to the record.