I very recently posted this comment over on the 3pointD blog (Link):

I’m waiting for aircraft structural components that look like bird bones whose cross-sections are both beautiful and amazingly efficient. Those could only be “grown”.

I’ve been interested in bird bones for a long time; ever since seeing a microscopic photograph of a its interior structure. So I was pleasantly surprised to see these Bone Lamps over on the Inhabitat blog (Link). They’re a long way from being rapid manufactured, but they’re still nice.

{Image source: Inhabitat}

A bit late, but wanted to get something posted about an article in Adweek titled “Virtual Worlds Let Advertisers Mingle” (Link). It’s not a bad piece – mentioning the usual suspects and adding a couple of things of which I was unaware. Worth a read.

The usual suspects are of course Second Life coupled with both Wells Fargo for their “Stagecoach Island” effort (which I followed closely – reLink) and the BBC for their recent Radio 1 event (something I checked out but didn’t think worth a post since it was all over the net).

The article also mentions the PCD Lounge which I checked out a couple of weeks ago (reLink). Adweek clarifies that Interscope is behind the effort as I suspected. No real surprise since the Interscope logos inside the club (by the music listening stations) had me thinking they were, but other reports credit the band and not the label.

The big thing of which I was unaware was the Adidas “Impossible Team Online” effort (Link). I’ll need to find time to check that out. Plus, I like the comment associated with their mention:

“The challenge here is, if they’re interacting in less traditional ways, we have to evolve the ways we engage with consumers,” said Sabrina Cheung, an Adidas rep.

I do wish Adweek would have gotten the Wells Fargo parts correct though. There’s no mention of the move from Second Life to Active Worlds (reLink). That omission leads to some incorrect conclusions when reading the article. I seriously doubt that virtual birthday party Adweek mentions happened in SL. If it did, someone please correct me.

A few days ago I happened across a mention of Andrew Schulman’s cool found-object lights (Link) and wanted to find a few minutes to browse his site. Well, now that I’m back up after some storms rumbled through knocking out power, I thought I’d take a peek before I got back to work. Glad I did. It reminds me of the reasons why I put time into creative endeavors.

via boing boing (I think)

{Image Copyright © 2006 Afterglow, LLC}

I’ve mentioned this sort of thing previously – my favorite being the post on artificial fish inside the Second Life virtual simulation (reLink). Now comes news via the 3pointD blog of something a bit different: an artificial world for only artificial people (no jokes please). According to 3pointD’s source, an article on Science A Go-Go (Link), it’s much more ambitious than most AI projects. From the article:

A fascinating experiment into personality and social interaction in which millions of software agents will potentially evolve their own culture is about to be switched on by five European research institutes. The NEW TIES project will be a virtual world populated by randomly generated software beings, capable of developing their own language and society.

Food for thought. But this is a buffet:

The computer scientists on the other hand want to develop and study machine collaboration, with an eye on future applications in robotics,” he added.

Imagine if one of these artificial creatures fabs itself. Will it be a classified as a “living” thing? If not, could it split into a kirkyan? Interesting stuff.

What will tomorrow’s parties bring?

It took me some research and a few emails to learn how Bathsheba Grossman makes her metal sculptures. She was wonderfully generous back then so it’s no surprise to see her now explaining the process on video to the boys at Make: (Link). Go watch it. Then go to her site (Link) and read more. Then, if you’re still interested, you might want to do a search here for more examples (like this one – reLink). There are some very cool things happening in the rapid prototype/rapid manufacturing arena.

via 3pointD

{Image source: Make: Blog}