Quirky

Click ‘N Cook Product Research, Round 2

By popular demand, we’ve decided to add an unprecedented second product research phase to the development cycle for the Click ‘N Cook, the modular kitchen utensil originally proposed as the Super Spatula by community member Fred Ende.

As our team works to finalize the Click ‘N Cook’s “Rolodex” design, we wanted to gather more of your thoughts and opinions on this product’s form, function, and storage. We have compiled a list of survey questions, and we hope that your answers will help guide us as we make decisions about the Click ‘N Cook’s functionality.

Moving forward, we hope that polling the community on questions like these will help you all feel more involved in the process that occurs between the industrial design vote and the final design render.

Please participate in this project over the weekend and make your voices heard – you’ll also be able to earn additional influence!

You Tweeted, They Listened

Do you think viral is getting a bit obvious?

http://bit.ly/ctCEBA

I remember when viral marketing and memes were for big corporations and kids that might have wrote/read zines.

Robert Presar Loves Haikus (And Spam)

I am too busy /

Have time for a quick haiku /

I ate Spam today.

Note from the Community Ambassador: I’m thinking of imposing a haiku hiatus on Robert Presar. What do you think?

The DigiDude Is Cheaper, But That Don’t Mean He’s Cheap

Quirky’s DigiDude is so hot, he once made Ann Curry swoon. But even though he plays hard to get, truth is, he can be bought. In his glory days, his going rate was $24.99, but times are tougher. It’s a recession, ya know? Now, he’s just 20 bucks.

You heard it — we’ve decided to slash prices on the DigiDude from $24.99 to just $20! That’s $20 for one of Quirky’s best-selling products — a funky, portable camera tripod and key chain… with attitude.

Simply screw off your Dude’s head and pull out his retractable legs for the perfect on-the-go camera mount. Your Dude’s portability factor will let you say goodbye to shaky hands, blurry pictures, cumbersome full-sized tripods, and unnecessary camera gear forever!

Product specs:

- Mounts most point-and-shoot cameras and flipcams. If it fits in your pocket, it should fit on your DigiDude.

- Comes fully equipped with a keyring and retractable, adjustable legs so you can set your tripod’s height.

- The Quirky Community has certainly added some flair to this one. Choose from five dudes: Pinky Scorsese, Snot Buster, iChomp, BoltBot, and G-Bling-Money-Son.

Dare we say, “collect them all?”

Mosey on over to the Quirky store and pick up yours today! He may act coy at the beginning, but we promise he won’t say no.

Commit To Your Wrapster Today!

Wrangle your ear bud cord tangle with the Wrapster, now available for pre-sale in Quirky’s online store. Make your commitment now for just $5 (retail price $6.50) to help us reach our 720-item threshold.

With Quirky’s Wrapster, you can say good-bye to tangled ear bud headphones — we’ve created the ultimate cord management solution! The Wrapster’s unique design allows you to wrap your cords vertically, which means more convenience and less bulk.

Other features include:

- A compact 4″ tall shape.
- A fun design made of firm but bendable lightweight rubber material.
- Two sizable holes at the top of the product for storing individual ear bud units.
- A “q” (for quirky!) integrated into the design, which flexes out so you can clip the Wrapster to your shirt pocket.
- A slot on the base to hold the end of the cord in place when it’s wrapped up.

With the Wrapster, you’ll finally be able to wrangle the tangle out of your ear bud headphones!

Welcome, Interns!

We’re happy to welcome two new interns to our design team. Feel free to post some warm ‘n fuzzy comments to make them feel at home!

Kate

Hometown: Rockland County, New York.

School: Class of 2009 at Syracuse University with a degree in Industrial and Interaction Design.

What makes her quirky: Every Monday night, I travel crosstown to meet up with random people to play Scrabble. And, I eat my grilled cheese sandwiches inside first!

Jihoon (a.k.a. JSHIN)

Home country: Seoul, South Korea.

School: Senior at Parsons School of Design in the Product Design Department.

What makes him quirky: It is hard for me to get people’s jokes. I sometimes create very awkward situations by being serious when someone is joking. Jokes are difficult for me… but that doesn’t mean I hate them!

Apologies For The E-Mail Clutter

Oops! Sorry for those test notifications e-mails, folks.

We are in the process of completing some upgrades, and our system accidentally went haywire.

For the record, we do not have a new “product 0030″ in development. Feel free to influence our current projects in development at http://quirky.com/projects.

These things happen. Thanks for understanding!

Tweet, Tweet

Many of you have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon to promote Quirky using your social sales links. Kudos! We encourage all of you to leverage your social networks to attract new Quirks. This, in turn, can earn you cold, hard cash if your referrals purchase products in pre-sales or submit product ideas. Everyone wins!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Twitter machine, I’ve compiled some helpful links to help you get started:

A Newbie’s Guide to Twitter – a helpful beginner’s guide, from C-Net News.

How To Twitter – one reporter’s foray into the Twitter world, from the Wall Street Journal.

How to Get More Twitter Followers – useful advice for gaining followers, from DoshDosh.

Using Twitter to Promote Products – a video describing how Dell used Twitter to promote products, WhoPopsYourPopcorn.com.

Once you’re on board, don’t forget to follow us @QuirkyInc.

Do NOT Go In There!

Sometimes things get a little, well, quirky around Quirky HQ… ESPECIALLY when massive amounts of caffeine are involved. Nikki, our Director of Operations, just reenacted the following classic scene from Ace Ventura 2: When Nature Calls.

The office responded with uproarious laughter.

Yep… it’s been a long day.

Community Tips For Voting And Rating

We receive our fair share of feedback on ways to improve our voting and rating system. We’re looking at ways to improve this process, but as you can probably tell, we have a million projects on the pipeline! We ask you to be patient, and in the meantime, read this helpful community forum post by Quirkster Clinton Fleener on his method of filtering, rating, and voting on ideas:

I’ve seen a couple of ways Quirksters keep track of the ideas they like (especially when there are hundreds of submissions for name or tagline, etc.).

I will always leave a comment on the ideas I like. Then I later review just the ideas I liked (well, plus other ideas I commented suggestions to though I didn’t especially like the idea) by selecting “my commented on”. The downside is that this is kinda a misuse of the comment function – I think that comments are best used for sharing ideas.

Another way people keep track is to only rate the ideas they like. Then they later review just the ideas they liked by selecting “my rated”. The downside is that this is kinda a misuse of the rating function – Quirky uses the ratings along with the votes to help them decide which idea to use (so I always rate all the ideas).

These methods are certainly not as good as something like a “like” function. But they might help you keep track of ideas until a “like” function is available.