MAID Oven is a Kickstarter project that met its $50,000 goal in just five days. The advanced oven has a list of recipes, and users can upload their own into the database. Once you’re ready to bake, the oven has settings to automatically set the temperature and cooking time for whatever dish you might be whipping up. The coolest feature the device offers is that MAID Oven can act as a pseudo health-conscious dietitian. Depending on your eating and fitness habits (it can sync with your smartphone or smart watch), the oven will make suggestions for meals that factor in your calorie intake and taste preferences. It has access to an unlimited number of recipes from the web so you don’t have to worry.

Another feature of the sophisticated oven is you can control it with your voice. You can actually tell the oven what’s for dinner — it’s got built-in voice recognition. It doesn’t end here. MAID Oven also comes with an accompanying smartphone app. This means you can get push alerts when your food is done cooking, adjust cook time and temperature settings from afar, or remotely activate/deactivate the oven while you’re away from home. Isn’t it magical? Feel free to check out MAID Oven baking pizza, pasta, and even cake in the Kickstarter’s demo video below.

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MAID should be ready to go to market by Thanksgiving 2015. Hopefully you can deactivate the dietary suggestions for the holidays!

What Sparks Our Fire: A useful device with smart features and functionality that could truly make cooking easier, healthier, and more fun.

Will you be making some space in your kitchen for the MAID Oven?

If you dream of a world where people use air-powered umbrellas to fight the rain, you can wake up. The future is now. To be honest, the umbrella is one of those gadgets that hasn’t really been updated much in the last 200 years. Sure, technological advancements have allowed them to become easier to handle and more durable, but overall, it’s pretty much the same deal. But a new Kickstarter campaign has launched an idea that changes the umbrella game completely. It is called the Air Umbrella and it makes use of the airflow to form an umbrella without a visible cover.

Put simply, the gadget releases air that pushes the rain away. Currently, there are three sizes of the Air Umbrella available: small, medium and large. You can also fit two people under the Air Umbrella. The air umbrella will be ready to launch by December 2015. Head over to the Air Umbrella Kickstarter page to find out more.

What Sparks Our Fire: Engineers that strive to bring innovation to the most basic objects.

Would you consider investing in an invisible umbrella once it becomes available?

As kids, we all loved playing with Play-Doh. We could let our imaginations run wild to build, mold, cut, flatten and create anything, yes anything. Well, thanks to the people at inventables, a technology company based in Chicago, you can now make those childhood dreams a reality. Inventables has developed the perfect technology, Carvey, a successfully funded Kickstarter project expected to be in full production by Fall 2015.

 Carvey is quiet, clean, easy to use and can carve your project in 3 simple steps.

1. Make your design with the integrated softwaresoft
2. Choose your material (wood, plastic, foam, wax, cork soft metal, etc,)
3. Click “Carve” and let the machine do the work until it achieves your desired form

Here is a list of items you can easily make with Carvey: jewelry, wooden sunglasses, street signs, can openers, etc. Fell free to watch the video of Carvey in action here.

What Sparks Our Fire: A 3D machine that is easy to use and can help us turn ideas into real objects in under 5 mins.

What would you make with Carvey?

While the hype is around 3D printers, the world of 2D printing is having some innovation with Zuta Lab Mobile Robot that travels across the surface of a piece of paper, dropping ink. So, if you are a mobile person who is always on the go, then this awesome pocket-sized printer would deliver the best news for you. According to its creator, the idea was to shrink the size of the printer box to provide users with a means of printing on the go, while retaining the ability to print on large pieces of paper, so that people don’t have to wait to get home or to the office to print.

The teardrop-shaped portable printer is small enough to fit in a bag (3.9 x 4.5 inches) and weighs 300 grams. The printer is being designed to roll itself over the paper and is battery powered via USB. The battery lasts for about an hour on one full charge while one inkjet cartridge will be good for more than 1,000 printed pages. The devise uses standard HP inkjet cartridges for refill and takes an average of 40 seconds to print an A4 page. The project was successfully founder on Kickstarter and the first shipment is due in January 2015.

What Sparks Our Fire: A printer that goes where you go and prints from your phone on any size page

Are you ready to give Zuta printer a try?

When it comes to being mobile and productive, less is more. If you are a tablet or smartphone owner that prefers to use a physical keyboard when typing longer documents on mobile devices you might be interested in Flyshark, an ultra thin portable keyboard that fits your pocket. Flyshark is a successfully funded Kickstarter project created by Vbest Tech based in Chicago. The gadget uses bluetooth technology to connect with iOS and Android devices. When unfolded, it is a full-size standard QWERTY keyboard. Once charged, the device allows you to work for up to 20 days between charges. You can even have it engraved with your name, or design of your choice.

What Sparks Our Fire: A fashionable, ultra slim, and foldable keyboard that gives us the convenience of a laptop wherever we are.

Are you ready to carry your keyboard with you all the time in style?

Everyone hates it when they lose their keys. Worry no more. The GateKeeper GK-Chain, a Bluetooth 4.0 proximity tracker key fob will help you prevent item loss, locate items, and automatically log you off of your computer when taken out of proximity.  So, instead of typing in your password every time, the device unlocks your computer when you approach, and locks it when you leave (you can also set the GK-Chain to require a key and password).

How it works? All you have to do is to sync the device with your smartphone and attach the key fob to your valuables -bags, purses, dogs. What is even more interesting is that Gatekeeper GK-Chain also allows you to use it for different scenarios. For instance, parents can be warned if their children go out of a certain range. The project has been successfully funded on Kickstarter and is now available to pre-order.

What Sparks our Fire: A useful device can help us save time in our daily lives.

Do you think The GateKeeper GK-Chain is a revolutionary idea? Share your thoughts.

While reminiscing about your childhood I’m sure you have fond memories of digging through the biggest Crayola box to find that perfect color. Now, as an adult, you may not be digging through that same crayon box, but if you’re a designer we’re sure you wish you could.

Scribble is the pen that changes how we interact with color. All you do is hold the back of the pen up to a surface and the pen will scan and reproduce the color within seconds. Most graphic designers would love this capability to be digital in order to replicate the color onto their computer rather than paper. No problem, there is a scribble stylus that functions the same way to easily translate the colors from the world around you, digitally. This pen makes designing and recreating colors easy. The scribble also has an associated app where you can find colors you previously scanned to use again, or share with others.

The Scribble recently started funding on Kickstarter, so if you’re ready to bring some more color into your life, go ahead and contribute.

What Sparks our Fire: A great design tool that is fun and easy to use.

What’s your favorite color?

A few weeks ago we wrote about The Coolest, a cooler that does just about everything you’d imagine a cooler could do. Well, we were wrong. The IcyBreeze cooler doesn’t have all of the features of The Coolest, but it does have one that sets it apart.

This cooler doesn’t just keep your drinks cold, it also cools you with a built in air conditioner. Now when you’re enjoying your summer weekend on the beach you can easily cool off without having to get wet. Simply fill the cooler with two quarts of water, ice, and beverages and the rechargeable battery will keep you cool for up to seven hours.

This summer the cooler really seems to be the center of everyone’s attention. The Coolest is now the third most funded Kickstarter project ever hauling in over $7.5 million dollars as I write this with 31 days left. The IcyBreeze isn’t fundraising and is the basic cooler ($279) is available for pre-order.

What Sparks our Fire: Even more innovation in an area that has lacked for decades.

Which do you prefer – The Coolest or The IcyBreeze?

Wearables are popping up left and right as accessory devices to help interact with your phone better than you could before. But, not everyone wants to wear a smartwatch on their wrist in order to be further connected to their phone. Qblink is a remote control for your phone and raising money on Kickstarter now.

Misplace your phone? You can set off a ringing noise by pressing the device. By connecting to your phone over bluetooth it can also notify you of emails, text messages, and other alerts you receive to your phone by just blinking on this separate device. Through the Qblink app you can easily customize what each color light notification means. Additionally, it tells local temperature and the battery lasts up to a year.

What Sparks our Fire: Even better and simpler ways to interact with our smartphones

Would you use a remote for your phone?

You already know about our loving relationship with coffee. You also know we love innovation that makes our coffee drinking experience better and more convenient. So don’t act surprised that we’re posting about yet another Kickstarter doing just that – improving our morning ritual of consuming caffeine.

Smash Cup is the essential coffee cup for traveling coffee connoisseurs. Nobody enjoys lugging around a big mug with them, enter Smash Cup. Once you’re finished drinking your morning cup of joe, smash the cup and watch it collapse into a pocket sized disk easy to carry around. The Kickstarter has already surpassed it’s goal of $10,000 and ships this fall.

What Sparks our Fire: Coffee. Coffee. Coffee.

How else could our experience with coffee be improved?