Kickstarter hits $1 billion in pledges- David Gilinsky

Funding on Kickstarter is skyrocketing. More than half its $1B was pledged in the last 12 months alone.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Kickstarter says it surpassed $1 billion in pledges on Monday
• The money helped bankroll 57,000 creative projects
• The crowdfunding site launched in 2009

(CNN) -- The crowdfunding model, in which entrepreneurs seek online pledges to finance their pet projects, appears to be alive and well.

Kickstarter, the platform that has helped launch the Pebblesmartwatch, the Oculus Rift gaming headset and the upcoming"Veronica Mars" movie, said it surpassed $1 billion in pledges on Monday. Although Kickstarter has been around for almost five years, it said more than half of the money was pledged in the past 12 months.

"$1 billion means that people care about new ideas," said the company in a special page announcing the milestone. The money helped bankroll 57,000 creative projects, from films and comic books to tech gadgets and video games.

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Pledges came from 5.7 million people in 224 countries, most commonly the United States ($663 million), the UK ($54 million) and Canada ($45 million).

That's a far cry from Kickstarter's first day -- April 28, 2009 -- when a grand total of 40 people pledged $1,084 to seven projects.

Kickstarter's top 50 projects: When they shipped

The site requires project creators to choose a deadline and a target funding goal, with financial backers typically receiving preferential access to their product. Kickstarter takes 5% of all successfully funded projects. Investors are only charged if the project reaches its stated goal within the alloted time for fundraising -- otherwise no money changes hands.

If you're wondering, Wednesday is the day of the week when backers have pledged the most money, while pledges usually drop off on weekends.

Kickstarter is part of a growing number of crowdfunding sites that include Indiegogo, RocketHub and Crowdrise. Last month Kickstarter urged users to change their passwords after revealing it had been hacked.

The cost of flight delays from wild weather: $2.5 billion and counting- David Gilinsky

Flight delays and cancellations have already left millions of passengers stranded this year, costing them $2.5 billion

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Bad weather has caused an historic number of flight cancellations and delays in and out of U.S.
• Cancellations and delays cost passengers $2.5 billion in 2014 so far
• They've cost airlines an additional $75m to $150m

(CNN) -- Though we're still in the early stages of 2014, it is already proving one of the most expensive years for the travel industry.

According to masFlight, an enterprise software company that crunches big data for the transport and logistics sectors, January's bizarre weather patterns have already cost passengers flying into and out of the U.S. $2.5 billion, and airlines between $75m and $150m because of canceled and delayed flights.

"It's not easy for an airline to recoup losses resulting from an aircraft being delayed or canceled," says Tulinda Larsen, masFlight's vice president of business development. "The cost of pilots that don't take off, the crew overtime, reimbursing tickets -- those costs aren't easy to make up."

For passengers, a plane stuck on the tarmac can cost more than aggravation and the price of a ticket. Even with a refund, stranded fliers are stuck with the bill for hotel rooms, taxis, rental cars, food and other unanticipated expenses.

Load factor is the highest it's been in history
Mark Duell, FlightAware

DESIGN: INEZ TORRE/CNN

DESIGN: INEZ TORRE/CNN

"On average, a canceled flight takes a passenger an additional 18 hours of travel time to get to their destination," Larsen explains.

"During that time, they're going to incur costs they weren't anticipating, costs the airlines don't have a responsibility to cover, so that passengers are going to be out of pocket."

According to flight-tracking website FlightAware, this has been the worst year on record for cancellations in the US. Since December 1, 2013, nearly 90,000 flights have been canceled.

"Domestically, it's been a terrible year. By the end of January, we've has as many cancellations as we usually see through mid-April," says Mark Duell, FlightAware's vice president of operations.

DESIGN: INEZ TORRE/CNN

Regional airlines were the most affected by the weather, though none as severely as JetBlue, which saw its revenue for January reduced by $45 million.

"While we generally have a strong ability to recapture revenue when we cancel flights during weather events by re-accommodating, our re-booking options for our customers during this high-traffic period were very limited," admits JetBlue spokeswoman Tamara Young.

According to Larsen, however, the weather in-and-of itself wasn't what grounded millions of flyers, but the airline's capacity to handle them.

Larsen blames two government regulations for the issue, the first issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation delaying the amount of time a plane is allowed to stay on the tarmac to three hours (and imposing $27,500 in fines for carriers that don't comply), and the second is a restriction on how long pilots can remain on duty.

"Those are two artificial policy restraints that airlines are working with operationally," she says.

Another issue is airlines stuffing planes to capacity, meaning when there are cancellations or delays, there is less flexibility in booking passengers on an alternative flight.

"Load factor is the highest it's been in history. It's not easy to re-accommodate passengers a couple of days later," Duell notes.

Given the likelihood that this year's bizarre weather patterns are possibly a result of climate change, and could become less of an anomaly and more the norm, one wonders how airlines are prepared to adjust in future years. Duell recons one bad winter won't be enough to spur airlines to action.

"No one will look at one winter and decide to spend a lot of money they don't have," he says.

"But I think if we see a lot of bad winters in a row, airlines will invest in more tools, processes, and procedures to help them recover.

#Busted: Ellen's Oscars selfie switcheroo- David Gilinsky

Although Samsung was an Oscars sponsor, host Ellen DeGeneres was tweeting backstage from an iPhone, as seen at right.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Ellen DeGeneres tweeted pics via phone from Oscars sponsor Samsung
• But backstage, DeGeneres was also tweeting from an iPhone

(CNN) -- Ellen DeGeneres, #Busted.

The Academy Award host broke Twitter with her Oscar-night group selfie using a mobile phone built by Samsung, a major sponsor of Hollywood's big night. It generated a record 2.7 million retweets -- a coup for her, the Oscars telecast and the Korean electronics maker.

But some sharp-eyed observers noticed something a bit different when viewing the talk-show host's backstage tweets. Several of them, such as a photo of DeGeneres with actor Channing Tatum, were sent not from a Samsung Galaxy handset but a rival iPhone.

The best Oscars moments in 2 minutes

The source of the photos and tweets can't be seen on DeGeneres' Twitter page, but is visible when they're viewed on another platform such as TweetDeck.

Samsung did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNN. Several other photos DeGeneres posted were sent using an Android device, most likely the Samsung phone she used to pose with Bradley Cooper, Meryl Streep, Brad Pitt and a handful of other A-list stars.

A similar faux pas occurred in 2012, when after weeks of talking up Microsoft's Surface tablet, talk-show queen Oprah Winfrey sent a Twitter message touting the product to her 14.8 million followers. However, Winfrey -- or whoever managed her Twitter account --sent the tweet from an iPad.

Some bloggers came to her defense, noting that no official Twitter app existed for the Surface's operating system at the time.

And singer Alicia Keys claimed she was hacked after she was caught tweeting from an iPhone last year while serving as a "creative director" for BlackBerry.

Key trends from the world's biggest mobile technology show- David Gilinsky

The Samsung Galaxy S5, with heart rate monitor and some new, high-spec features.

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Top trends from Mobile World Congress

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Connecting the two-thirds of the world without access to the internet is a major theme in Barcelona
• The recent trend for the use of smartwatches and fitness trackers looks set to go into overdrive
• From now on, if your device doesn't have a 5-inch screen (or bigger), you're out of date. Findlater says
• The future holds developments in tactile feedback, augmented reality, and multiple screens, he predicts

(CNN) -- Mobile World Congress spans the full spectrum of untethered gadgetry, from the next generation of mobile phone networks to wireless charging technology.

But it's always the consumer technology that's the star. We askedStuff Magazine Editor-in-Chief Will Findlater to analyze the top trends from the show.

Trend 1: Getting the whole world connnected

Mark Zuckerberg used his keynote address to wax lyrical aboutInternet.org, "a global partnership dedicated to making internet access available to the two-thirds of the world not yet connected."

Will Findlater

By striking deals with telecommunications companies in emerging markets, Internet.org plans to get basic web services - weather reports, Wikipedia, messaging and Facebook (naturally,) to people at no cost, in the hope that it will inspire them to explore the rest of the web and reap the benefits that it can provide. And there was plenty of hardware at MWC that should help along the way.

Given the deep relationship with Microsoft, many were surprised to see Nokia's mobile division adopt Android for its new devices, but Android is a platform more suited to the emerging markets at which these three devices are aimed. The X series lacks superstar specifications but do feature dual SIM slots, expandable memory and swappable cases, all of which Nokia's Windows Phone devices lack, and all of which it says the developing world wants.

Mozilla's Firefox OS might not be making huge waves in the developed world, but it could be the platform that helps spread smartphone use through emerging markets.

The company showed off a prototype of a $25 smartphone running Firefox OS, with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, camera, and access to HTML5 apps, at a price similar to budget feature phones.

Trend 2: Wellness and wearables

The recent trend for the use of fitness trackers looks set to go into overdrive as vendors add features that allow them to harvest even more data about how we go about our daily lives. All for our own good, of course.

Samsung's flagship Galaxy S range is second only to Apple's iPhone in the popularity stakes, but it has been accused of peddling gimmicks in place of meaningful innovations. This year's device majors on robustness, and its ability to get to know you better than you know yourself.

It is water resistant, and round the back is a heart rate sensor that in conjunction with the S Health app can help build a more complete picture of your fitness. Like the iPhone 5S, it'll also scan your fingertips via its home button to provide an extra layer of security, and it can be used to seamlessly authorise PayPal payments.

It is also a powerhouse device with a 4K video-recording, 16 megapixel camera, super-fast quad-core processor, next-generation 802.11ac Wi-Fi and a vast 5.1-inch 1080 pixel screen. Despite that, Samsung reckons its new Ultra Power Saving mode can give 24 hours of standby from a 10% battery charge.

Sony's take on the fitness band takes a few cues from smartwatches, providing notifications via haptic feedback and allowing control over the music you're playing on a connected Android device. However, it's the Lifelog companion app thats the big news - it doesn't just track your activity, but it measures how you sleep, where you've been (and how fast you went there), how much you browse, play music, watch movies and game, and even more besides. Could be a bit of a wake-up call (it'll do that too.)

Samsung introduced three wearable devices, the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo smartwatches (the latter minus a camera,) and the Gear Fit fitness band. Like the Galaxy S5 smartphone, all three came with the new ability to constantly monitor your heart rate, making them far more useful as training aids.

Trend 3: Go big or go home

Smartphone screens get bigger every year, but the new normal is now so big that the "phablet" category seems obsolete. From now on, if your device doesn't have a 5-inch screen (or bigger), you're out of date. And the trend will only continue as companion devices such as smartwatches give us fewer reasons to fish the whopping gadgets out of our pockets.

From now on, if your device doesn't have a 5-inch screen (or bigger), you're out of date.
Will Findlater

The LG G Pro 2 has a 5.9-incn 1080-pixel screen, a 13 megapixel 4K video-recording camera and huge power, making it an intriguing (and very, very big) gadget - but its key innovation is how it reacts when you wrap your knuckles on it. A custom combination of taps to lock and unlock the device, replacing Android's standard PIN and Pattern unlock. Combinations with up to 8 taps can be created, and there are 80,000 possible combinations of knock according to LG. Crucially, it works when the screen is off - no need to seek out the power button.

Trend 4: The future

Tech shows are always a good opportunity to find out what's on the horizon, and MWC 2014 didn't disappoint. The best technology demonstration at the show came courtesy of Fujitsu. The prototype Sensory tablet has ultrasonic inducers on its screen that allow it to vibrate at different frequencies, creating an almost magical level of tactile feedback - it mimics different levels of friction and even creates the illusion of raised surfaces. It works wonderfully, and it should come to market in 2015. Imagine the difference it could make to mobile gaming.

Blippar is a British company that's been working on augmented reality technology in smartphones for years, but using Google's smart eyewear, it can now provide real-time recognition of objects and faces in the real world, and display relevant data to the wearer in real time. This could give rise to an "annotated world" - pass a landmark and immediately be furnished with its history, look at a restaurant and immediately access relevant reviews. But it could also allow rich media marketing to be pumped directly into your eye.

Like the one before it, the second generation phone from Russian smartphone maker Yota has two screens. At the front is the usual color LCD touchscreen, but at the back is a secondary E-ink display (similar to that on an Amazon Kindle) that only uses power when it refreshes.

Via an app, you tell the secondary display what you want it to show you -- a book, a Twitter feed, notifications -- and it sits there updating from time to time without you needing to waste time and energy switching your phone back on. It's ingenious, and this year, it's a good deal slicker than it was.

Spider lessons: How to mend your body with silk- David Gilinsky

Can spider silk help you self-heal?

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Is this knee implant really made from spider's silk?
• Dr Nick Skaer has created FibroFix implant that allows cells to "grow into" it
• It could help thousands of people to avoid knee replacement surgery
• Eventually, the material could help repairall varieties of human tissue -- including nerves

Oxford, UK (CNN) -- If you ever try your hand at farming spiders, you'll very soon discover it's no easy task.

Penning in a bunch of golden orb weavers -- the queens of the web-spinning world -- will earn you only a few milligrams of ultra-tough spider's silk.

That's if they don't eat each other first, explains Dr. Nick Skaer. And they will.

Bug catcher

As a boy, Dr Skaer loved hunting for creepy crawlies -- but was never a fan of spiders.

Dr Nick Skaer

Today, Skaer's day-job involves persuading people to implant the creatures' silky secretions under their skin -- with the promise that the fiber will weave together damaged tissue.

It's a "quantum leap," admits Dr Skaer, but his creation could one day relieve agony for millions.

Watch the video above to see how the Dr Skaer created the FibroFix implant.

Thread of life

Skaer, now the CEO of biomaterials producers Orthox explains that silk produced by spiders is not just naturally tough -- 25 times the strength of steel -- it is also "biocompatible."

The close similarity between molecules in the spider silk and proteins in the human body means human cells can grow into the fiber.

When implanted in the human body, a device made from spiders silk would encourage the surrounding cells to "repopulate the device with actual human living tissue," Skaer says.

"If you've got a very strong, resilient material which also has a lot of similarities to tissues in the human body, it's a great place to start for trying to make a medical implant."

Watch: 'The night I invented 3D printing'

A silkworm

Saved by the silkworm

Instead of fighting the spider's cannibal instinct, and meager rate of production, Skaer's team set about creating fake spider's silk -- made from the same fibers that go into high class scarves.

The team took silkworms, which produce 1000 times as much silk as a spider, and broke it down to the basic molecules.

Re-spinning this so that all the proteins are closely aligned -- just how a spider does -- creates a far stronger fiber than the silkworm can.

Or -- when Skaer presents their finished product -- a rubber-looking crescent-shaped implant.

...we hope to have this available for patients within the next two to three years.
Dr Nick Skaer

Friends in knees

The FibroFix implant is soon destined for knee joints, where Skaer believes it can help people with damaged cartilage to regrow the shock-absorbing tissue.

Without this implant, millions of people have no option but to resort to total knee replacement surgery.

As of 2010, over 600,000 total knee replacements are performed annually in the United States alone, and estimates suggest that this figure will increase 6-fold by 2030.

This marks a $13 billion-per-year cost for Americans, which is set to rise as the ageing Baby Boomer generation battle age-related conditions such as osteoarthritis, but demand to stay active.

The first round of trialists are set to start receiving FibroFix implants this year, and Skaer hopes they will pave the way for others to avoid knee replacement:

"If the clinical trials go well, we hope to have this available for patients within the next two to three years."

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Beyond the knee

Skaer sees future applications in other joints -- "the hip, the shoulder, ankle, all of these suffer osteoarthritis" -- as well as in the cartilage discs between the bones in the spine.

It doesn't stop there, either:

"If you've got a technology that integrates very well with the body -- which allows cells to grow down into it -- then bones and joints certainly aren't the only tissues in the body that you could look to address."

In the long term, Skaer imagines silk platforms being used to patch up intestines, hernias, and muscles -- including in the heart.

There's even the suggestion that -- one day -- it could fix a severed spine:

"Is there the potential for nerve repair? Well, the chaps [research scientists] at Oxford University have certainly started looking at nerve repair as an interesting further application of this technology. And they've got some promising early results certainly."

"That obviously is far, far earlier than the stage that we're at..."

Watch: The technology bringing Sinatra, Tupac back to life

Spider thread revisited

For now, relieving the agony of knee pain is motivation enough.

And all this has given him a new perspective on the crawling spider:

"Spiders I suppose are very different from when I was turning over rocks and looking underneath them and when I was a kid.

"I don't so much see the eight legs crawling around and the sharp pair of fangs -- I see something that can spin me a remarkable material, and that's very exciting, as a scientist."