It was a warm summer day late in 2013, typical for the upside down Australia. Halfway across the globe, far to the north, it was an equally typical nippy day in jolly England. Two men, Mark Hann from Australia, and Matt Venner from Britain came together and found Inactive Pixel Studios. From these humble beginnings are planted the seeds of lies, drama, Kickstarter scams, asset flips, and allegations of fraud .

PayPal won't be so crowdfunding-friendly in the future. The payment giant is dropping Purchase Protection for crowdfunding projects as of a user agreement change coming June 25th. From then on, you back efforts at your own risk -- if a campaign goes bust or otherwise doesn't deliver what you were promised, you can't dispute the PayPal charge to get your cash back. You might not want to take a chance on that too-cool-to-be-true gadget, then.

Introducing Funded Life. The simplest, most flexible, fundraise for anything and everything crowdfunding platform.

Think Airbnb + Kickstarter

Funded Life is a multi-functional platform to make home ownership easier.

A pristine beach in New Zealand bought through a crowdfunding campaign has been handed to its new owners - the public. Nearly 40,000 people donated almost NZ$2.3m (£1.3m, $1.7m) to buy the Awaroa beach in the Abel Tasman National Park, on the South Island. Campaigners snubbed a businessman who offered them money in exchange for private access to part of the beach. The seven-hectare site will now be run by a national park. The previous owner, businessman Michael Spackman, agreed to sell the beach after the online crowdfunding campaign reached its target in a little more than three weeks.

The Fed Ex guy is always delivering intriguing parcels to Mini Museum’s headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, but he’s never allowed to see what’s inside. On Wednesday, it was something very cool from Norway, co-founder Jamie Grove explains – though he can’t say any more. But Mini Museum has the fascinating, rare and bizarre delivered every day; it’s a unique startup that collects scientific and historic artefacts from around the universe, meticulously divides them and presents them encased in clear acrylic as a “mini museum”.

Like all new technologies and movements, blockchain crowdfunding is prone to hype as it gathers momentum and establishes itself as the de facto means of raising the cash for cutting-edge new cryptocurrency projects. This is a technology for the grassroots — blockchain promises disintermediation of finance and much else besides — and so perhaps its to be expected that the money and development also comes from the grassroots. Big corporations are developing their own distributed ledger technology, but the real innovation is happening in pockets of activity scattered across the web.

Plenty of top-flight headphones have noise-cancelling features to help listeners tune out the rest of the world. Now, a new set of brain-hacking headphones, Mindset, is taking everything a step further and adding distraction-canceling tech to keep you in the zone. Mindset, which just launched as a Kickstarter project, promises to include all the bells and whistles you'd expect from premium over-ear headphones — they're wireless with noise-cancelling capabilities, and the sound comes from Onkyo...

Senstone may be one of the world's smallest wearables — and perhaps one of the most useful. The tiny device has one function: to help you keep track of your ideas, to-do lists, and notes while you're on the go. Senstone records voice memos, uploads them to an app, and transcribes them for you. The device is launching on Kickstarter Tuesday with the goal of raising $50,000, but I got an early version of the Senstone to try out for myself.

Mark Kearns, 38, a web designer and gamer from Chicago, stumbled upon a new video game called Star Citizen while online in late 2013. The game, which was in development, promised to revive the spaceflight simulation genre with a sprawling universe for players to explore. Intrigued, Mr. Kearns decided to pledge money to see the game come to fruition. In total, he donated $175, which gained him access to Star Citizen’s alpha version — a playable version of the game in its early stages — plus a virtual ship to use in the game.

I spent my whole life in this music industry trying to figure out how to sell what I’m making. But I don’t “sell” anymore — this isn't about selling music. It's about making music. I got so used to those two being inseparable that it took a lot of psychological work to divorce the processes.

Arlan Robotics is developing a robot just for adults, and yes, you know what that means.

You know what everyone forgets about the story of the boy who cried wolf? In the end, there actually was a wolf - a ravenous, man-eating wolf. It's as much a parable about the dangers of ignoring credible threats just because the present situation is rosy, as it is about the social ills of sending bored teenage boys up lonely hillsides in the era before they could stream high-definition porn over LTE.

„Bitcoin Watch“ heisst die neue Uhr aus der Schweiz. Die junge Uhrenfirma Bernecker Uhren Werke, eine Tochter der BridgeWard AG aus Rüthi im St. Galler ...

An open world Action RPG game set in a medieval world - featuring mechanical medieval gadgets, factions, modular crafting and much more. We are currently in PRE-ALPHA stage of development. Any in-game footage you see is subjected to improve greatly as the game matures; as we hit the polishing stage. Please keep an eye out for updates.

Back in 2013, 2386 backers pledged a total of $39,739 via Kickstarter to a company called Kilobite to create a dystopian tactical RPG called Confederate Express. The game boasted a unique method of post-processing powered by tech known as the “False2D” API, which could “[simulate] 3D conditions in 2D environments.” A tech demo showing off this technology was made available alongside the Kickstarter campaign.

Crowdfunding has traditionally been a platform where the little guys go to get a leg up. Creators get the chance to share their ideas, and we’re able to do something positive if we like what we see. We chip in, take a little leap of faith, and maybe see something realised that wouldn’t have otherwise been possible. But, what about when a large corporation steps in to get a slice?

Patreon announced a new service fee policy that it says will help creators keep more money, but many are worried because they believe it will instead discourage their patrons from pledging.

Patreon is changing the way pledges to creators are handled, with many in the creative community concerned this will lead to smaller incomes and fewer subscribers. Launched in 2013, Patreon is a crowd-supported service that allows people — patrons — to financially support artists, writers, podcasters, musicians, journalists, game developers, models and other entrepreneurs. Patrons are encouraged to pledge either a monthly or per-post subscription that allows them access to new, often times exclusive pieces from the creator they’re supporting.