The Kymera Wand is featured prominently as gift-bag item of this years TED Global 2010, which started today in Oxford, UK.

The WandMakers Chris and Richard were happy to provide 800 Kymera Wands as gift to the TEDsters. Here is their warm, welcoming note:

Technology Entertainment Design

TED started out in 1984 to bring people together from these three worlds. Today, these fields have been combined in many fantastic ways, so we were honored when the nice folks at TED invited us to participate in this gift bag. We’ve taken a little of todays technology, applied creative design, and developed a product which has already entertained customers in more than 50 countries around the world.

It’s been a great start for our fledgling company, and we’re really excited about the future possibilities with help from people like you. That’s why we’re delighted to present you with your very own Kymera Magic Wand, and would love to hear your comments, thoughts and ideas – so please drop me a note at chris.barnardo(at)thewandcompany.com, or visit our website here: www.thewandcompany.com

Chris Barnardo, CEO

They created a great looking package specially designed for TED. The same kind of packaging is available for corporate customers that want to give away the Kymera Wand as a gift – to customers, partners or employees.

There are already the first tweets about it:

@PaulRieckhoff
Best gift bag item of #TED: a Kymera Magic Wand-”not a toy, a finely tuned instrument of control” http://twitpic.com/24okbb

Kymera Wand @TEDGlobal2010 by @PaulRieckhoff

@whiteafrican: #TED Fellows can practice their quiddich with their new wand in the Harry Potter dining room. #Oxford http://twitpic.com/24b8xh

Harry Potter dining room by @whiteafrican

@freeworldmedia: Opening up the famous TED Gift bag. The highlight is the magic wand that controls anything from the TV remote to… http://fb.me/CgZcExin

@paulrieckhoff: @thewandcompany Thanks for the cool gift. After some drinks, there will be TEDsters running all over Oxford screaming “Abracadabra”! #TED

@gregorymiller All but the floating candles & white owls at #TED. http://twitpic.com/24×3xl

TED Magic Lunch by @gregorymiller

@giorgiotedx TEDxDubaiLive – TED Magic Wand ,inside delegates bags. Will need to try it on a couple of folks back in #DXB http://twitpic.com/24wcbs

@rodrigocvc: Refeições a la Hogwarts no TED Global. http://bit.ly/a2ECOR (expand) #ted [afichacaiu]

Hogwarts at TEDGlobal

Gift bag contents

Look out for TED content anyway. These are the worlds best presentations on various topics online, collected for more than 25 years and available for free (Creative Commons).

Wishing all TEDsters much fun at the event.

I just noticed that the wandmakers moved to a new twitter account @thewandcompany. So if you want to follow the news from their workshop just add them to your list of daily updates.

The old account @The_WandCompany is discontinued.

I already changed the twitter widget of kymera-wand.com to point to the new account. So you also stay informed if you visit us regularly.

The Winner of our March drawing is @atomicjonas. Congratulations! Please send us your address details via DM or email.

For all others, don’t be afraid there will be many more drawings throughout the year.

Of course you could also just buy a wand for this incredibly magical price of 57,75 EUR with free worldwide shipping.

Just tweet why you’d like to have one and add the #kymera tag, you can also include a link to this post: http://bit.ly/9f5WQg.

As I sadly can’t visit QCon London this year and add the Kymera Wand as drawing price there, I’d like to do a virtual drawing for a Kymera Wand until the end of March.

That is also a chance for all other people who were not able to attend QCon London this month to enter one of the popular exhibition drawings.

The Kymera Wand is a truly magical device. It allows you to control many of the apparatuses at home using invisible beams of light. It recognizes up to 13 gestures of control to cast spells of all kinds to differnt devices.

(read: It’s a universal gesture based infrared control in the form of a magic wand.)

Just tweet why you’d like to have one and add the #kymera tag, you can also include a link to this post: http://bit.ly/9f5WQg.

One special note: You will enter the drawing as often as your twitter follower count is on the log10 scale.

Examples:

• 1..9 followers = does not qualify
• 10..99 followers = enter once
• 100..999 followers = enter twice
• 1000…9999 followers = enter 3 times
• etc.

Depending on the amount of tweets, I’ll add them to this post’s comments, with the tweet text and your follower count, then I’ll draw from this list.

The winner will be notified by mail or DM and posted here.

Good Luck

Michael

I am happy to announce the winner of the January competition. Fortunately Fortuna drew the one that made me start this competition at all. Paul posted the original list of incantations that make your Kymera Wand magic spells much more impressive. Thanks for the idea.

Everyone else – thanks for participating. I hope you had fun devising your incantations and will take part in future drawings.

Accio Kymera!

Michael

Happy New Year to all of you.

We’ll start a new giveaway promotion in January, this time on twitter.

Please either retweet my initial tweet or do a tweet of your own.

The condition this time is to include the tag #kymera and a reference to this site http://kymera-wand.com that is not shortened. To be eligible you also MUST include a sensible incantation that can be used to perform magic with the Kymera Wand. For instance "Quietus" for muting.

Forum User Grymmditch did a great job listing some unique incantations in this post that we thankfully published in this blog entry.

Wishing you all much luck in this drawing. It ends January 31st.

Please Retweet.

Happy Casting

Michael

• eliram: Just added the The Wand Company Kymera Magic Wand to my want list on @gdgt! http://bit.ly/5DF2Zu
• ToatsMcGBlog: @palomagrace you know first thing you’re buying is the Kymera wand!!!
• TheNerdyBird: Early birthday present. I now own the remote comtrol Kymera wand.
• SweetSoaps: I got my husband coolest gift. It us a Kymera magic wand, turns off tv/stereo like Harry potter style #kidatheart
• dappjuice: For the Harry Potter Fan: Kymera Magic Wand Universal Remote: Definitely on my wishlist: This universal remote is… http://bit.ly/4zKMjr

From the wandmaker Chris Barnardo via Twitter:

Talking with guys who want to introduce the wand to a big Hollywood studio…drum roll… hold on to your hats ladies and gentlemen

Despite only being launched three weeks ago, the wand is already beginning
to get noticed on the conference circuit. The Kymera Wand has been selected
by PopTech, (the world’s premier innovation and new thinking event) to be
one of the handful of technologies that gets present to delegates as
products that will make a difference in the world next year. PopTech 2009:
America Reimagined runs from October 21 – 24 in Camden, Maine, USA.

Update:

Wandmaker Chris Barnardo is currently on his way to Camden where the Wand is being showcased.

The wand was shown and got great attention,

So many people came up to me and after about two minutes chatting suddenly said… “Ahh you’re
the Wand Guy!” I must have had that aha moment about 30 times and always
followed by a warm hearty handshake.

here are some tweets:

• The_WandCompany: What a great few days; PopTech 2009 is over now, but the wand has made a load of new friends and in lots of ways I’ll be sad to leave
• CostaVidaFred: @The_WandCompany I want a wand #PopTech
• The_WandCompany: The wand presented to PopTech, lots of support, outside gorgeous late afternoon New England sunlight is filtered through maple leaves
• bastholm: Read more about the mad wizard universal remote control on www.wand-control.com #poptech
• kevinrussell: @valeskaUX re: chimera wand http://bit.ly/QDp8z (expand) ( @PopTech live on www.livestream.com/poptech ) http://ff.im/anGOJ
• poptech: RT @dickrowan: “Magic” wand for controlling radio frequency devices like your TV remote. Seen at #poptech. http://bit.ly/2FO08h (expand)
• dickrowan: “Magic” wand for controlling radio frequency devices like your TV remote. Seen at #poptech. http://bit.ly/2FO08h (expand) . Got to get one of these.
• valeskaUX: @poptech where do I get one of those awesome magic wand?
• innoceansedge: who Doesn’t want one?? RT @barkwheats: @poptech what was the name of that wand you’re giving away?
• bastholm: Someone actually developed a wand that you can teach to control your home electronics Harry Potter style. So, so awesome #poptech
• RafeFurst: @poptech where do we get one of those magic wand home remote controllers?
• barkwheats: @poptech what was the name of that wand you’re giving away?