I caught the above item for sale on Etsy, Gameboy Color Cufflinks (Link) via Wonderland this morning. And I see it’s also being advertised on Boing Boing.

My first thought is: I bet this isn’t a licensed product.

My second thought is: I wonder if Sega is still around to protect this other game-related product, Sega Saturn Cufflinks (Link) (for sale by the same individual)?

My third thought is: Can repurposed Micro Machines toys be turned into “Micro Machines Toy Car Cufflinks” (Link) and sold using the “Micro Machines” name (as are the other two products)?

I don’t know. The one thing I do know is that one person has decided it’s easier to make a living leveraging other brands than develop their own. And as people become increasingly empowered to fabricate products just as they now have the power to make perfect digital copies of music, movies and software, trademarks and other intellectual property are going to be under serious siege.
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Seems like there’s a bit of a race on to integrate real life with game/virtual life. According to a new article over on C|Net, this is what the developers of Entropia Universe are doing. From the C|Net article by Seth Schiesel (Link):

The makers of “Entropia Universe” plan to introduce a real-world ATM card that will let players withdraw hard cash automatically converted from their virtual game treasury.
…
With around 250,000 players, “Entropia” is the leader of a small but growing group of online computer games with virtual economies explicitly based on real-world money, and today’s announcement is the most ambitious step yet to meld an in-game economy with the real global financial system.

The game’s maker, MindArk, based in Gothenburg, Sweden, estimates that “Entropia” players generated $165 million (or 1.65 billion PEDs) in total economic activity last year.

There’s definitely something surreal about the idea that players who chase alien animals around a virtual preserve collecting animal sweat could trade that unreal commodity for hard currency. It really points out the virtual nature of real world monetary systems (and makes me want to dig out my old copy of “Cryptonomicon“).

There’s more interesting bits in the article.
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This is kinda interesting. The Mixed Reality Lab has word of a project that starts to approach being less about augmented reality and more about what I keep calling transreality (though I’ve recently learned that may not be the best word). Well, let’s say it could be. The discussion is centered around augmented reality. Anyway, from the website (Link):

Free Network Visible Network is a project that combines different tools and processes to visualize, floating in the space, the interchanged information between users of a network. The people are able to experience in a new exciting way about how colorful virtual objects, representing the digital data, are flying around. These virtual objects will change their shape, size and color in relation with the different characteristics of the information that is circulating in the network.

There’s a video, but to be honest it’s not all that interesting imo; the images on the site look nicer. To be fair, I think this program has just kicked off. Which has me hoping that someone will get the idea to rip some 3D data and fab it. Now that would be a kick.

via information aesthetics

{Image Copyright © 2002 MXR – though I think that’s a mistaken date since the project claims to make use of the MXR Toolkit which was released in 2005 according to the site’s history}

There’s a provocative post over on the always-excellent Terra Nova blog called “What’s Next?” (Link). I caught it when it only had a few responses and expected many more. I was right. It’s gotten plenty of love since my last visit.

Unfortunately, that means I’m not likely to get caught up in my reading anytime soon. So rather than wait until I have something to say (which probably wouldn’t have been of any additional worth anyway), I’ll just point anyone who happens in here over to it and say you’ll probably be glad you surfed over.

From the Designspotter blog (Link):

Entropia is manufactured in laser sintered nylon, SLS.
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Entropia is produced and marketed by Kundalini of Milan, a company synonymous the avant garde. Kundalini are the first recognised manufacturer other than a Rapid Prototyping bureau to adopt this technique for volume manufacture. This represents a significant milestone for the design industry as Digital Manufacture becomes increasingly viable for niche to medium volume manufacture.

I’m curious what the cost is. Also curious how much post-processing is done on the SLS part; I’d venture next to none since a lighting product can leverage the texture the process leaves behind. Disadvantage becomes advantage.

The question is: What other products can mix everything this way – cost, (relatively-unfinished) process, durability, perception of value, aso? Not many at the moment. At least not many that come to my mind. I need to give this some more thought (although I’ve already given it plenty).

via MoCo Loco

{Image source: Designspotter.com}