The site Kickstarter offers a unique method of crowdsourcing venture capital. Instead of expecting money from big firms to distribute products, there's a timed auction to help individual entrepreneurs raise money, one buck at a time.

An recently featured item, the Automatic Aluminum Can Crusher, is pretty much the Roomba with attitude. It will operate on AC or power-tool batteries, and will make much more space in your recycling bin by beating down your empties. We think it would receive funding much quicker if the flattened output was launched out at high velocity.

For this rager of a Roomba to make it to market, the inventor needs to raise $4,500 within the next 85 days. Then again, if this mad scientist just returned 90,000 cans instead of crushing them, he could build this thing with the refunds alone.