Back in November I wrote an entry about Nissan entering Second Life (reLink) and how they were being compared to a virtual world competitor… and effectively getting their butt kicked. I wrote a long draft for that entry but it was taking too much time to finish off; there were lots of things to discuss and I was too busy to do it justice. The gist of that draft, before I stripped it to nothing and posted the result, was that it appeared Nissan was trying to use Second Life as a marketing platform (for their real world Sentra) and not as a brand-building platform (and the article I read yesterday about Nissan’s real world situation {Sorry… link has died.} suggests they could use some help in that department). In any event, I thought theirs was a mostly worthless idea because, as some of you know, I’ve been arguing for some time that SL isn’t ready for marketing primetime and shouldn’t be treated like other media. Furthermore, people – most especially people immersed in these virtual environments – don’t aspire to own an “average Joe” car; they aspire to own luxury cars, tricked out street racers, customized hot rods… and the concept cars that the automotive manufacturers show but almost never mass produce.
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C|Net posted an article yesterday (Link) discussing efforts to create an open source framework for the sharing of hardware designs. For those of you interested, a draft proposal for what’s called the “TAPR Open Hardware License” is available for review (Link to PDF).

I’ve just read the current draft (version 0.9) and I confess to wondering if author John Ackerman has given sufficient thought to how this thing will be used/abused in the tangible world. I’ve not given this sufficient thought, but it seems to me that software receives significantly more protection than hardware from the simpler and less expensive Copyright system. I could be wrong, but if that’s the case, then basing an open source framework for hardware on a similar system used for software might not be appropriate; assuming that’s what they’re doing here (and based on the main player, Bruce Perens, I am making that assumption).
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Earlier this week like a lot of people I’d heard about the Doritos “Crash the Superbowl” competition (link) which asked aspiring filmmakers to make a 30-second commercial, submit it to Jumpcut for judging, and then have the “crowd” vote on the best entry (you can see all the entries here – Link). Anyway, I looked through the submissions and as it happens my favorite, “Checkout Girl”, just aired.
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Interesting if not entirely unexpected news courtesy of the Second Life Insider (link) that CafePress is establishing a presence inside the Second Life virtual world. I’m unsure of their source, but I got a chuckle out of a comment apparently attributed to whoever is talking this up:

Until a Real Life teleportation system is developed, however, product fulfillment will continue to rely on traditional shipping methods.

I guess the people at CafePress or whoever is working with them aren’t paying much attention to the kinds of things going on in the world of manufacturing. Considering their rather limited product catalogue, I’d say CafePress stands a good chance of being either an early adopter or an early casualty. Time will tell.

I happened to be surfing around and via the Clanking Replicator project website I found a decent – though old – article over on AGORAVOX (link) discussing open source fabrication devices (in general) and RepRap (in particular) and the overall importance of these developments on the manufacturing world… especially China. There isn’t much explanation for why rapid manufacturing technology threatens China’s manufacturing dominance {it should be obvious, but at least in the U.S. there’s a whole lot of people who have no clue how things get made}, but I don’t need one since I’m already on record making the same observation. However, I’m also on record as saying it’ll be a long time before fab-on-demand has an appreciable impact; perhaps not until after my time on this rock has expired. Even so, it’s worth a read. And for those who aren’t familiar with traditional manufacturing and need some questions answered, feel free to post a comment.