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"  Quirky, a company that rapidly develops and markets products invented by an online community of tinkerers and visionaries, held its 262nd weekly idea evaluation last night. This time they invited me to join as a juror. The job entails sitting on a panel with high-energy, brilliant Quirky staffers while the crowd votes whether to take invention submissions into the next design and prototyping stage. If the room deadlocks, online participants vote. We saw 13 products and chose three great ones: a citrus-fruit processing tool that bartenders will love, an alternative to a contractor-style tool belt, and a redesign of the ratchets used to secure loads on trucks. (I don&amp;#039;t know if PopMech&amp;#039;s presence tipped the scales toward DIY products or not. It would be nice to think so.)  It was fascinating to see what wasn&amp;#039;t picked, too. Someone had proposed a self-charging wireless keypad\u2014the tapping of the keys would be enough to charge the device. The engineers and retailers in the room had practical reasons for voting it down. I voted against it myself, but with mixed feelings, knowing that every tech blogger and magazine would&amp;#039;ve put that thing in their holiday gift guides, no matter how unnecessary and expensive it turned out to be.  The saddest missed opportunity, however, was a rapid-reload slingshot with long range and soft ammunition. Maybe it will be resubmitted. Quirky is marking its fourth year in business this week. It&amp;#039;s currently housed in an awesome old industrial space on New York&amp;#039;s 28th Street, a block from the High Line and so far west it&amp;#039;s practically in New Jersey. The space has a well-equipped workshop for prototyping and loads of workstations for engineers, designers, and marketers. If you want to see how the new launch-it-now culture of product design combines with a devoted online community, join the site. Better yet, join the site and submit an invention. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/startups/a9070/how-quirky-launches-3-inventions-a-week-15539114/>