SHADOW, a New-York based startup attempting to build the world’s largest dream database, has smashed its funding goal on Kickstarter thanks to 2,758 backers with almost one month remaining.
With total funding secured, SHADOW can now finish building its mobile application, an alarm clock that helps users remember and record their dreams by placing them in a cloud-based, global dream repository.
Founder Hunter Lee Soik said: "Some of humanity’s best scientific discoveries begin in dreams, yet most of us forget 95% of our dreams within minutes of waking up. Thanks to our Kickstarter backers we can now build an app to capture all that lost dream data, and we are absolutely astounded by the positive response we’ve had so far. A massive thank you to everyone who has backed, supported and given us your feedback, we could not have done it without you."
SHADOW is an alarm clock with advanced features. Simply tell it when you go to bed and the time you wish to wake up, and come morning it will use a series of escalating alarms. The gradual increase in volume not only makes the waking up process easier, but helps you better remember your dreams by taking you through your hypnopompic state (the transition from asleep to awake) much slower than a standard alarm clock.
Once you are awake, SHADOW immediately prompts you to record your dreams. You can speak or text your dream into the app and if you opt for audio SHADOW will transcribe the text and pull out the key words. From there it will push the dream to a secured server where data can be anonymously organised to identify major themes and trends.
For the times when remembering dreams is tricky, you can opt to answer a series of 5-10 questions designed to jog your memory. The whole process takes less than five minutes, and once the data is recorded you decide how far and wide to share it.
SHADOW Co-founder Jason Carvalho said: "Tying the dream capture process into the sleep daily cycle makes it easy to visualise dream life and tap into dream patterns trending across the world.
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Early Backers will receive the app beginning around December, and anyone can still back the project from as little as $2 on the Kickstarter page until the campaign ends at 11:11am on November 2.
