Kickstarter, one of the most popular crowd-funding services, is hosting an innovative product: Consumer's physics SCiO Pocket molecular sensor targeted at the main public. This tiny device (it looks like a nomral size USB Key) allows you to obtain in a few seconds data about materials or physical objects. Show it an apple, it will give you various info such as calories, fats, carbohydrates, proteins,  etc. If you show it a medicine, it will most likely give you its name and manufacturer.

The initial goal of $200,000 it wished to raise on kickstarter was reached in 24 hours.  The campaign has gathered (at time of writing this note) almost $1.5 million. Both technical and general public press has been praising the invention:

In the demo I saw on an Android smartphone, a ring fills up with circles on your smartphone screen to deliver the proper info, and it takes a matter of seconds to recognize something.

Tim Bajarin, Time

Zack Miller writes in Forbes: Like social-driving app, Waze built its maps by having them crowdsourced by users, Consumer Physics is in the early stage of building a Database of Matter. A database of this sort could change the way we understand the world around us and interact with materials. It literally is the 6th sense: Touch + See + Hear + Taste + Smell + Understand…and that’s where Scio comes in. And this is something even non-Trekkies would appreciate."