Two or three weeks ago, after a rather long absence, I surfed aimlessly over to Chris “Long Tail” Anderson’s blog. As someone who was contemplating the same “Long Tail” potentials in the early part of the decade (and who shot emails containing a link to the original Wired article out to former co-workers exclaiming, “This is what I was talking about. Read this!”), I got tired of the repetitive entries being posted around the time his book was published and drifted away.
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About a week ago I was lucky enough to get myself logged into Second Life to attend a question & answer session with representatives from Steelcase, the office furniture manufacturer. Unfortunately there won’t be an audio posted online, so I thought I’d post a couple of things I wrote down at the conclusion of the meeting and share them here; mostly for the benefit of any Industrial Designers that might surf through. But don’t quote me, eh? I went in assuming an audio file would be made available. So here goes:
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A few weeks back I wondered if Philips was going to get more involved in the Second Life community (reLink). Well, it just so happens I caught word that they’re conducting a discussion group later today inside the virtual world to discuss, interestingly enough, “SKIN: Tattoos” (Link).
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Now this is interesting. From the SLNN site (Link):

The Fashion Research Institute (FRI) in conjunction with IBM is developing a product lifecycle management solution for the fashion industry that specifically addresses the industry’s unique needs, cutting time to market. Designers will be able to access 3-D tools from within SL or Open Sim to create their fashion product. The 3-D models of the design can be shown in a virtual showroom. Everyone who has a share in the product will be available to review the design: product managers, designers, design directors, merchandizers, costers, executives, sales staff and show room managers. After the creative vision has been finalized, factory specifications are created that will enable the item to be manufactured in real life.

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Here’s a quick note to call attention to something that might be of interest: Another avatar fabbing outfit has set up shop. Most of you are probably already aware of Fabjectory, the service that’s been “3D printing” Second Life avatars and objects for the last year or so. Well now there’s a service available for fabbing World of Warcraft game characters. The company is called Figureprints (Link) and from the artwork on their website it appears they’ve licensed the content from Blizzard (I was actually more interested in what Blizzard would do if Figureprints were offering the service without getting clearance. Guess I’ll have to wait.).
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