[rmason]

Doing hardware is hard. Protean's CTO, Henry Balanon, spoke at the Code Michigan civic hackathon on that very subject:

http://www.slideshare.net/balanon1/code-michigan-without-com...

Its not always the first product to ship that wins, its the best product that ships. I've seen the product evolve and the echo card is worth the wait.

[unfletch]

I didn't mean "it hasn't launched" as a knock. Just pointing out that, like Coin, it's announced but not yet available.