Interesting bit of news over on the 3pointD blog. It appears that a group of Amazon employees are attempting to link Second Life to Amazon. From the 3pointD entry (Link):

Well, that was an eye-opener. Amazon.com’s Werner Vogels just told the Supernova conference that the shopping site [well, some of its employees, anyway] is considering a move into the virtual world of Second Life. “There is a group of Amazonians in Second Life,” Vogels said, “and we are building a bridge between Amazon Web services and Second Life so you can go into Second Life and actually try things on there and buy them.

Of all the companies I expected to try linking to SL, Amazon was near the top of the list… just below eBay (the top runner, for obvious reasons). And while this is apparently extracurricular, if it works the experiment could prove extraordinarily interesting.

Y’know, they sell the jar opener on which I did the industrial design on the Amazon site. Wonder if they need an SL model? Mine is rotting in inventory.

There’s a nice post over on Design Observer (Link) that’s very much worth taking the time to read… both for designers and for those who hire them. The pay off is towards the end, so be sure to read the whole thing. At that point, the title for this post will make some sense I hope. And perhaps some of my comments over the past year where I’ve talked about “context” and “framing” will also start to make sense to those who didn’t understand me.

The post also raises the “control” issue; something about which I’ll be posting in the future. It’s most definitely something at the heart of most everything I discuss here.

Also be sure to read the comments over on the Design Observor post. The one comment discussing “Microsoft” as a name made me smile.

There’s a good entry on the Mass Customization blog titled “Open Source Footwear — bringing customer co-design to a traditional industry“(Link). I’ve been trying to make some time to read (and digest) it; I’m glad I found that time (in the middle of the night) as it touches on a few issues I follow here.

I found this small snip particularly noteworthy:

One way to do so is to install internet platforms (innovation toolkits) where users can evaluate new designs, give feedback or even create totally new designs.

While not exactly the best example for doing these things, I couldn’t help but think of Nike’s association with the videogame NBA 2k6 in which players can mod their own shoes in-game similarly to how they customize the shoes on the Nike ID website (I’ve posted several times on it over the past year or so – reLink). I’ve not heard if Nike and the developer have linked the game to the website yet, but if they haven’t either they or someone else will do so very soon. The way in which work is fusing with play is especially interesting to me.
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And they won’t design the products. Or author the books. Or develop significant new ideas. Not when the culture in which they’re living thinks it’s okay to copy. And that’s the cultural issue/problem being reported over on the BBC today (Link) and it’s something about which I’ve also expressed concern. From the short report:

Many of the new generation of students raised on the internet see nothing wrong with copying other people’s work, says Professor Sally Brown.

If I had to guess I’d say we’ll have a creativity peek in the short term as artists/musicians/writers/designers use the tools now available to them to do some interesting things. But after that, if there’s no change in the Copy Culture, I expect a long slide into Boring. So stock up on exciting, innovative stuff now.

This one is of real interest to me obviously. The above image is from the virtual store for American Apparel. After reading about this over on the 3pointD weblog (Link) a few days back, I thought I’d take a peek for myself and found some time early this morning to see it (the opening was last night so I wasn’t stuck with using someone else’s images).

There are plenty of interesting things to discuss but much of what I’d have to say on the subject of real brands inside virtual worlds I’ve said before in older posts. The one thing that struck me about this particular case was Continue reading →