Interesting piece on Wired titled “Bye Swarmbots, Hello Swarmanoids” (Link). This seems to be an alternative approach to polybots (reLink). From the article:

A team at the Free University of Brussels in Belgium is embarking on a 42-month research project to build and test a 60-strong swarm of small, autonomous robots — the swarmanoid — capable of collaborating in 3-D environments.

I like the division labor approach:

The three types of bots will join forces to create a swarmanoid and perform various jobs. The footbots will transport objects on the ground level, while handbots with specialized climbing and grappling features take to the walls. Some eyebots equipped with visual sensors will operate attached to the ceiling, overseeing the action below and feeding information to their robotic colleagues; others will fly.

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Via Blue’s News I surfed to a short article on futurelooks.com (Link) discussing niche PC case manufacturer NZXT. There are some interesting bits in the write up that includes some back-and-forth with designer Johnny Hou. I have to admit my idea of a custom computer case is more radical than what they’re offering, but I like the approach; especially their setting up a forum to facilitate discussion with their customer base. Worth reading.

{Image Copyright © 2006 NZXT}

By luck I happened to surf through O’Reilly Radar early last week and catch a number of interesting posts (he had a good week). One in particular, “The Significance of Threadless” (Link), needed more attention than I could give it at the moment and so I decided to return to it (I’ve been watching Threadless for a while and have previously posted about it – reLink). In the meantime I noticed that the Mass Customization blog also noticed it and responded (Link); and also points to another couple of relevant posts.

So having now gone back and reread both entries, here’s my rather long response posted on O’Reilly (with a couple of minor grammatical corrections):

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While I find what Threadless has done interesting, it’s a long haul from 2D graphics to articulating 3D forms. And while my own blog is very much about the collision between real and virtual product design and development (due in large part to RM), I’m not so sure there aren’t some potentially difficult speedbumps along the way. Here are a few to consider:
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There’s something really odd about the idea of Pontiac donating the proceeds from sales of its virtual Solstice in Second Life to the Electronic Frontier Foundation as reported in Pontiac’s new Motorati Life blog (Link). I mean, Second Life’s economy functions almost entirely because of the integrated Digital Rights Management (DRM) tools. Circumvention methods (e.g. CopyBot) have made that sufficiently clear. Meanwhile, many EFF supporters usually take the position that all DRM – not just some of it – is bad.

So what exactly is Pontiac doing? Is GM seeing the error of their conservative, profiteering ways? Not likely. My guess is that this is an intellectual property embrace akin to Cronenberg’s metal-n-flesh moments in “Crash“: it doesn’t make any sense, but at the moment of impact someone got excited.

Via Raph Koster’s blog I made my way over to Venture Beat to read his contributing piece (Link) discussing CopyBot (reLink). As I said earlier, this has been a nice mess. It’s good that people outside the circle of virtual world navigators get a sense of what’s happening. That way, hopefully, when rapid manufacturing takes off and economies begin to shift and settle, there will be some better understanding of the potential problems. I’m all for people understanding the issues now because to me this isn’t a technology issue anymore, it’s a social issue.