There’s so much news on the virtual worlds front that it can sometimes be difficult to keep up on the Design front. Fortunately there have been some interesting bits worth mentioning.

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First off is the awarding of a MacArthur Fellow “genius” grant to Saul Griffith. I caught word of the award over on the O’Reilly Radar site which has a nice entry (Link) on the man.
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Well, there’s been so much buzz about the possibility Google is creating a multi-user virtual world it’s kind of hard to miss. What’s equally hard for me to miss is the apparent surprise being registered by so many people. Hello? Are Google and Microsoft investing time and money in creating 3D representations of the Earth so that we can simply be impressed? so that we can download their applications and wander around them in social isolation like some modern version of The Omega Man… minus vampires? C’mon, already.

Well, here’s a short collection of links for anyone who somehow hasn’t been run over by this news truck: Continue reading →

I’m noticing some traffic to this blog by way of an old post over on Nussbaum (Link). I suspect his entry may be getting fed by something I read earlier in the day over on C|Net, “A designer as CEO: Should Jonathan Ive be Apple’s next leader?” (Link). That entry, written by frogdesign‘s resident marketing guy, Tim Leberecht, posits the headline question in response to an open letter/post on the bplusd blog (Link) and then answers it with interrogatives: Continue reading →

I recently came across a good thread started by Hiroshi Yoshii on the ZBrushCentral forum (Link) showing some nice images of his toy figurines going from 3D models to RP parts to molded and finished products. This is a nice companion to my earlier post (reLink) on using rapid prototyping technology to generate simple molds and crank out parts in limited batches.

Only question I have is: where do these toys live?

{Image Copyright © Hiroshi Yoshii}

I’ve been wanting to post an entry regarding an interview with luxury brands consultant, businesswoman and author Uche Okonkwo over on the Mass Customization website (Link), but as I’ve been out of sorts lately I’m only now getting back to it. It’s not a very long entry, but it introduces something I’d not considered an issue. From the post: Continue reading →