As we announced at CES, the inclusion of the CD quality  microphone in the marker means we’ve finally reached a point where all our product design elements are locked. We are proud of the microphone and response has been very positive.

Now that the design is locked, we have to take a hard look at the costs involved. It’s become clear that we’re going to need to adjust our ultimate retail price. So starting on the 20th of February, we’ll be officially setting our retail price to $179.

Why? Because we want to produce the best product possible. Also now that design features are locked and past prototypes we have a bit more clarity. And the bottom line is that our costs are higher than planned. This is partly due to the inclusion of highly desired features like the CD quality mic and partly the nature of launching the first version of a new product.

Don’t worry, if you already hold a reservation, your price is still $159. In fact, we’re going to keep our reservation price of $159 available through the 20th of February to all comers.

So tell all your favorite YouTubers, video junkies, Vloggers, FaceTimers and really, anyone who shoots video, that now is the time to get a deal on a Swivl! www.swivl.com/reserve

Your vote really mattered!

But no trip to Vegas is all business…. We actually found the time to get away with Shay and get a little flight time in at Las Vegas Indoor Skydiving. For those of you interested, go to minute 10.

In the meantime, be sure to check us out on Facebook and Twitter for all things Swivl. Big things are just around the bend!

Last night, Swivl made it’s “official” CES debut at Pepcom’s Digital Experience. We hobnobbed with other great tech brands, some startups, some well established and all unique in their own way.

I say “official” because Swivl has actually been to CES before! Last year in 2011, we brought our not yet perfected prototype to Sin City and put in front of as many peeps as we could. Our garage built device was then known as Satarii Star and we heard exactly what we needed to hear; “Yes, this is awesome.” “Great Idea.” and “Who let you guys in here!”

We have returned to CES in a big way! A new design and brand name, an accompanying app, and we are one of ten finalists in CES’s Last Gadget Standing Competition! That’s right, Swivl is a finalist in Last Gadget Standing, a ten year tradition here at CES. We’ll keep you posted on how that goes. We are working on some surprises!

Speaking of surprises, at CES 2012. we are announcing the microphone that is in the marker.

That’s right, it has a microphone. (Some of you guessed that already)

A digital microphone is key for recording video at a distance and we worked hard to ensure that the experience was top notch. You see, our microphone is not a Bluetooth mic. Nope, Bluetooth is difficult for video recording because of the excessive time delay. So our wireless transmission is much better suited to shoot video so Swivl users using a iPhone 4 or 4s have the best experience possible.

So, you have the Swivl Base, add the Swivl app and the marker acts as a wireless microphone and remote control for your iPhone or iPod. We believe we have just made shooting hands free video much more than just easy. We just made it awesome!

Keep an eye here to find out how we fare at Last Gadget Standing this Thursday, January 12th. As always, you can pre-order your Swivl anytime!

For those of you without Internet, Swivl is a hands-free, sleek, mobile accessory that lets you track and record your actions with your iPhone, iPod Touch, Android phone, GoPro, or Flip. Swivl tracks you horizontally and vertically to keep you within the image frame at all times. It makes shooting video and Apple FaceTime a breeze.

Also, we just got our first units (just 5 of them!) from manufacturing, and we took them on a road trip to give our early supporters, partners, and the press their first hands-on look at the final product. It’s working great, and everyone has given us amazing, positive feedback. Reservations are ramping up and we have been receiving great feedback about how people will use Swivl.

Thanks again for all of your support, and we are excited to introduce the accompanying iPhone app, furthering the control of your device. Oh, and as you would expect, the app does work with the 4^th gen iPod Touch.

Be sure to keep in touch on Twitter and Facebook and reserve your Swivl today to be among the first people to go hands free while you shoot mobile video or FaceTime with your loved ones.

Reserve here

Stay tuned for more updates and features or look for us at CES 2012 -  Happy holidays!

When we share with people how Swivl works, we inevitably hear what they see as the killer app.  This is part of the whole startup experience that makes it worth it – seeing your dream ignite the imagination of others.  Often people want to use it with their kids.  Look, we all have been there – a missing dad or mom who is holding the camera and is never in the video.   Plus, if your kids are anything like mine, they never want to be filmed and want to be on the other side to see the recorded video immediately.  So Swivl makes sense – strap a marker on the kid and then join in the fun.  Let Swivl capture the action.

But from what I have seen there is more to it.  My youngest son got a small digital camera for his 5^th birthday.  One of those small inexpensive cameras with a user interface that makes no sense, has too many icons, gets stuck in multi-level options, etc.  Within days he was a master of it and in the last year he took many pictures, made stop animations, and generally uses it more than I use mine.   He took the technology and made it his – more so and faster than we could imagine.

When I brought the first prototype home to show my family, I did not have to explain much to my kids about how it works or why would anyone want one.  It was cool, funny, alive, and they just wanted to play with it.  Make it follow them; try to make it lose them.  Make it video them.  See what they look like. We all have some part of it in us – wanting to see what we look like doing things, but with kids it is more than that.  That is how they learn.  There is a great TED talk by Chris Anderson, about learning and innovation and how video is changing that process.  This is the same thing I see with my kids and Swivl.  They now have a tool to help them learn.

So what do they do with Swivl?  What important life questions get answered?  What do I look like beating up my little brother? (Tough)  How do I look like lip-singing and dancing to Avril Levigne’s “Sk8er Boi”?  (Cool)  Do my newly invented karate moves look radical? (Yes!).  And I am sure that more will be answered in the future.

Do you want my advice for when you get a Swivl and want to capture the birthday party action?  Don’t do the expected – clip the marker on you kid and see them blow out the candles.  Just give your kids Swivl and let them do what they want with it.  It is their tool, their technology.  Not yours.  They will give you video memories that are more precious and fun than blowing out candles.  If you’re lucky, perhaps your shy seven-year-old will serenade you with his rendition of “Sk8er Boi”.  Or perhaps when you see the video from that birthday party, it will look like footage from a safari.

It has only been eight months since our IndieGoGo campaign ended, and we began building a unique and useful new mobile video product. We wanted a device that lets you record yourself by following you wherever, and however you move. Today we are proud to introduce Swivl. Our community (you guys!) helped us decide on a new product name and great URL – that’s the hard part, trust us. We also had great support from UD+M and Studio Backs in creating an incredible new brand and industrial design. New name, new look and a shiny new website at www.swivl.com where you can reserve your Swivl right now.

The Swivl gives you a hands free, sleek, in pocket design that lets you track and record your actions with your iPhone, iPod Touch, Android phone, GoPro, or Flip. Swivl follows tracks you horizontally and vertically (yes, we have added tilt!!)to keep you within the image frame at all times. It can move faster than you can, at least we’re building it that way. This is our online debut but you’ll be able to see a working prototype this January at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show.

Our vision has always been to deliver a compelling experience through Swivl’s unique user interface, amazing (and smart) design, and by listening to our most important influencers, the users. We heard all of your wants and concerns when it comes to mobile video in your lives, and we listened.

We expect to ship Swivl in early 2012 at an estimated $159, and we encourage you to Reserve Yours Now, this ensures you’ll be on of the first to receive Swivl at launch.

Here’s to a new era of mobile video!

The second press we picked up was with Inc. Magazine. They were running an article on how to crowdfund a business and used us as a success story.

The only bummer is that they ran within weeks of some major announcements we have brewing this week. So we couldn’t unveil all the cool new stuff. But we’ll take what we can get. And memorializing the garage is good timing since we’re starting to think about going legitimate and getting an office!

Stay tuned this week for more big news!

The good news is that we continue to make good progress, are quickly reaching this milestone and are putting together some really cool new prototypes.

The naming survey we did  was a great experience for us. We got nearly 1200 responses in a few days. It’s a great reminder of why we’re doing this.   There was a clear winner was selected with over 50% of the votes. In addition, we also got lots of other great feedback on the design and use cases we should be designing for.

One item we want to clarify from the survey is that the new name will not replace Satarii. Satarii is our company name and that won’t change. What it will change is the name of the product. Most people don’t even remember that our product was named the “Star”.  Which was part of the problem. The name didn’t stand out enough.  So our plan has been to rename the product to get a more iconic and memorable brand. And we’ve enlisted the support of some great design and branding resources in UD+M to help us do that.

The best part about the study, in our mind, is that it continues what we started with our crowdfunding campaign. This is a product that has been developed with heavy influence of its ultimate users, from the start.

We’re not quite ready to announce the results of the naming survey. But it won’t be long and we’ll be sharing some other cool stuff along with it. So stay tuned.

Thanks for your support.

The Faire is Saturday and Sunday (May 21st & 22nd) and the panel is at 3pm on Sunday.

I (Brian) will also be in attendance. And we’ll both be wearing our Satarii t-shirts. Feel free to come by to connect with us (and don’t forget to wear your Satarii shirt!).

We’d love to meet interested supporters in person, share more details about our development status, answer your product questions and even have you play with our prototypes!

Since the announcement came out last week that Cisco was killing the Flip video camera and its entire consumer business unit, we’ve had lots of questions directed our way about its impact on Satarii. And we thought it was worth providing a general response.

In case you missed the announcement, here’s Gizmodo’s post on the subject.

The answer to the question of whether this affects our product is, no, our focus is on mobile phone cameras.  We’ve seen this coming for a while. And while its hard to predict the timing of these things. The overall trend was inevitable. We actually started our discovery process over 2 years ago with the premise that we wanted to develop products that wouldn’t get replaced by what was in your pocket.

The answer to the question of whether this affects our company is more complex.  Like our company, Flip can be categorized as consumer hardware company. Unfortunately, for the better part of 10-15 years, there have been very few company success stories in this category from an investment standpoint.  Flip was one.  Sling was another. There are also a variety of others still playing out in one successful form or another.  That list can include Livescribe, Aliph, EyeFi and even companies like GoPro.

However, when compared with the number of successes found in software, the consumer hardware successes are rare.  And this makes raising money to create consumer hardware products hard.

Interestingly, the Flip was not widely regarded as a successful model to follow. Most people knowledgeable in the space thought the return on investment was a fluke.  Something that couldn’t be repeated.   So its demise has made things worse necessarily.  But it certainly hasn’t gotten any easier.

Thankfully, we’ve been able to make some recent progress and we still remain confident we can make it happen. But it will never be as easy for us as it is for the next Twitter, Instagram, etc.

We’re posting this Techcrunch interview about whether Flip could have survived on its own. Its a more thoughtful piece on what could have been.  Certainly, if we had seen this coming 2 years ago, they could have too.  And with the resources they had, its hard to believe they couldn’t have made some adjustments to remain viable in one way or another.

http://www.techcrunch.tv/watch?id=dheXhkMjoDs-U2nWC6E99HLKVNUeE94s#ooid=dheXhkMjoDs-U2nWC6E99HLKVNUeE94s