I had an OLPC. My children liked the apps, but struggled with the keyboard because they kept fat fingering the keys. They were little at the time, younger than the target audience. I can't imagine bigger hands trying to type on that keyboard.
Dead Startup Toys
71–80 of 211 posts
Re: Dead Startup Toys
#72I was expecting a well-researched collection, instead there are a whopping six items. This website is like a startup: promises something exciting, delivers a dud. Feels more like a grudge page.
Also, a friend of mine was lucky enough to get a Coolest cooler. It's actually well made and still works.
EDIT: I'm a dingdong: this site is actually selling scale-model replicas. Duh.
Re: Dead Startup Toys
#73They could add the CueCat to their list. I seem to remember that Wired got all excited about it at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat
I always appreciated CueCat because years after they failed I bought one on ebay for $2 and used it as a barcode scanner to categorize all my books. Worked great for that. :)
Re: Dead Startup Toys
#74Did One Laptop per Child truly fail as a startup? It was always a nonprofit, so of course it didn't make money. While the technology was lacking in many respects, it did serve a lot of children at the time, and proved the market that Chromebooks came to later dominate with a similar approach (linux-based OS with minimal resources at $100-300 price point).
>Did One Laptop per Child truly fail as a startup? I'd say it kind of did (as did Netbooks as a technology for the most part as well). It's smartphones really that won the segment that OLPC was primarily targeted at. Chromebooks became fairly big in education but primarily AFAIK in developed countries.
If it, and netbooks as a hardware category, failed, it was because in the end they turned out to not have been worth it. I used a netbook happily for about a year or two, it cost ~$400 if I recall correctly, and afterwards I donated it to my sister who I think used it for a while as well.
That's at least $150/yr for a low end product fun but uncomfortable product. After the netbook I upgraded to a Macbook Pro that was $1250, and I used it for 8 years, after which I also donated it to my sister, and she's still happily using it. That's a roughly similar $150/yr, but for a best in class product with great comfort and wide usability.
I wonder if anyone used a OLPC's for more than a year or two.
Re: Dead Startup Toys
#75They could add the CueCat to their list. I seem to remember that Wired got all excited about it at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat
I got one! It still works pretty good as a standard bar code reader. I have it integrated into my library cataloguing software
Re: Dead Startup Toys
#76Needs to add lockitron and little printer.
I was just about to post Little Printer. Because we need a machine to make receipt-paper printouts of all the stuff we can take three seconds to look at on our phones.
It was a cute design, though.
ETA: Of course, as this is a limited-edition marketing thing, they can't actually make toys for more than a half-dozen or so models.
Re: Dead Startup Toys
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
That was a neat one. I never thought it would go anywhere because who would buy hardware just for that? But I did kinda admire that they tried. One of those 'oh man great idea ... oh no I don't think it will ever work' kinda situations. It was very much a fun early mass consumer days of the internet kinda shot in the dark / fun to me.
> I never thought it would go anywhere because who would buy hardware just for that? But I did kinda admire that they tried. I think they gave away the readers for free. I had one at one point, and I certainly wouldn't have paid a penny for it. I think they were also the basis for quite a few barcode-based hobbyist projects at the time.
Yes. I still have mine and I didn't pay for it. I don't remember how/where I got it but it was free to me.
Re: Dead Startup Toys
#78No OUYA?
Re: Dead Startup Toys
#79Is „one laptop per child“ really as bad as the other vaporware/fraudware in the list?
Not necessarily. The list is actually two different categories mixed together: 1. Products which failed because they were targeting their niche poorly (e.g. Juicero, OLPC) 2. Products which failed because they were outright scams (e.g. Theranos, Coolest) However, I do think the failure of OLPC is still interesting enough to deserve a mention on this list. With OLPC in particular they were trying to be like three diff…
> Ultimately they wound up delivering a very weird product that didn't actually do the thing it promised to do. That's very much in the spirit of a failed startup.
Also, it had the typical techie issue of "solving" a problem by trying to force more tech into it. Tech people are often like the proverbial person who only has a hammer so sees every problem as a nail.
Re: Dead Startup Toys
#80Seems prudent to point out this isn't the product of a disgruntled's weekend project with fancy webdesign. This is a product from MSCHF which is a $100M+ startup [1] (feels like they're getting a bit of an astroturfed free ride of prime PR on HN because folks may not realize who is behind this) [1] https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/279769-42
The best part is when you go to mschf.xyz there are a bunch of links, and when you click one it logs `TypeError: n.setAttribute is not a function` to the console and then doesn't do anything.
millions of dollars to build a homepage with some links on it that spit out JS errors is the ultimate commentary. i think it's genius.