I’ve previously mentioned (most recently in this post and this one) that we can expect to see virtual constructs crossing over into the real, well here’s a tool – the first I’ve seen – for translating 3D models over into Google Maps: Screampoint’s 3dsMax to Google Earth Exporter v1.0 . It’s not much, but it’s a start. Just imagine when Google Earth includes the 3D data their real world scanning trucks have been collecting.

That’s my way of suggesting we may be getting excited over nothing. I’ve just read a pretty good critique of the now infamous $100+ laptop. It raises points I either mentioned in my post yesterday or started to mention (but then decided against), and then raises more points. Wish I would have seen that post earlier as I could have just quoted it and saved myself the time.

Now here’s the kicker: while looking for a permalink so I could once again update that earlier post of mine, I accidentally hit the link to the next post on the subject. And it’s a doozy. From that more recent blog entry:

A day or so after my post on “Problems with the $100 laptop” an interesting event happened. I’m posting from the World Summit on Information Technology, where OLPC is introducing the laptop. They have a balsa model with a keyboard and an LCD with a thick cable attached to a box under the counter, and Mary Lou Jeppsen, the LCD designer and the chief engineer right now, makes no bones about it not being ready yet. They seem to have added a crank about 6 inches long, made of flat balsa wood pieces.

Now I realize that it’s almost certainly not a “balsa wood” model. Design firms don’t often bother with balsa anymore. Not really. There are other, better options. However, I do know what the uninitiated take for balsa… and like balsa, it’s also not anything close to “prototype” material. So that pretty model is very much only that – a pretty model. Which also means that the way this project is being managed is, to me, a little odd.

Truth is, this story is looking more and more like the kind of thing I expect to hear from some political organization – half-truths and spin. Something is wrong here.

{* Well, this was a quick update. I’ve just read another follow-up post from author Lee Felsenstein, and it’s a beauty. Finally, someone who has put into technical terms how many industrial designers see product development. Bookmark this one.}

The past few days have been busy and as a result I missed an interesting press release from in-game advertiser Massive Incorporated, reported over on the GamesIndustry.biz website yesterday. The meat of the release isn’t anything special – Massive is going to start running real life ads in “The Matrix Online” videogame (just as they do in other MMOGs). The twist here is that Massive appears to be entertaining the idea of allowing player-created advertising. From the GamesIndustry site:

The inclusion of Massive in-game advertising opens up the possibility of something many community members have been asking for, player advertising around Mega City. We will be looking into the idea of running contests for selecting player-generated ads in the future as a way of incorporating these ads into the game. Once we have confirmed we can do this, we will make an announcement on Data Node One. Stay tuned and we will keep you updated on our progress over the next few weeks.

I wonder if Massive and their clients are thinking they might learn a thing or two from the players themselves. If I were getting the kind of feedback they apparently get for the ads they’ve been shoehorning into these games, I might be looking for some guidance too. Then again, I wouldn’t stick contemporary ads showing current products and services in science fiction-based videogames. Can someone remind these people why they have a Brand?

via Blue’s News

{*For more discussion, check out Betsy Book’s post over on Terra Nova}

There’s lots of press floating about (including this piece with pictures over on C|Net) announcing the recent unveiling of the “$100 Laptop” prototype. To be sure, I like the idea of giving kids low-cost computers that connect them to a world of information. Only there seem to be issues that have not been particularly well-resolved; problems that could sink the whole program and potentially sour support for similar future endeavors.

Furthermore when I read that this $100 laptop may wind up being $115, and when I read that “quantities of at least 1 million as an initial order” are required of participating governments, I start to wonder about priorities. I wonder because the feeling I get is that this price increase – $15/laptop – is treated rather nonchalantly (kind of like that “disconnect” solution to the secondary market problem which Negroponte mentions in the article). Well, I think $15/unit is a big deal. A $15,000,000 deal.

Which brings me to something I saw recently over on the Inhabitat site: the relatively low-profile work of a team called HyBrid. Their project, Cargotecture, seems to have miniscule support compared to that laptop. This once again raises the issue of priority. Because I can’t help but wonder how many kids could have a decent roof over their heads for just that $15/laptop price difference.

{*Wired has somehow managed to break through the crowd to reach Negroponte and get a fairly decent interview with their founder(!) which you can read here. Note that the minimum order per country has gone from 1 million units to “$1 million orders”. Think I’ll just wait til some reliably solid facts are reported.}

I’ve just read Bruce Nussbaum’s latest blog entry (and along with it a recent entry over on Innoblog) and it seems to me that in all the academic innovation-as-algorithmic-process method-list madness that’s being hyped, packaged and sold to companies nowadays, someone has forgotten something. It’s that mysterious missing ingredient from Nussbaum’s hypothetical “secret innovation sauce”. And it’s omission is troubling.

If I see one common ingredient among innovators like Apple’s Steve Jobs, Ikea’s Ingvar Kamprad and now Google’s Brin and Page that isn’t listed in either blog entry, it’s that these people are passionate. And this fact is important.

Industrial designers understand this passion. How can they not? Industrial Design is mostly a dead end career often undertaken in spite of pleas from worried parents to pursue “safer” studies. It’s because of passion that I would argue designers more often connect with consumers than other product development team members (yes, even marketing types). Consumers frequently make purchase decisions based on desire, not need. Well, Industrial designers have just as much concern for connecting with consumers on that level as they do manufacturing product within the company’s cost and manufacturing constraints.

Unfortunately, as a general rule, passion doesn’t really win many points in most rigid corporate hierarchies. Ever wonder why some companies segregate designers from the rest of the workers? And then others make a big point to integrate them? I have. I still don’t understand it. I’ve known companies that can’t make up their mind and move their designers back and forth every couple of years or so. Sometimes they want to cloister designers away to let them do their mysterious thang, and other times they want to rub all that unfathomable, bewildering creativity over the rest of the company cube farm. It’s both sad and laughable. More importantly, this odd behavior on the part of senior management indicates some level of confusion or conflict. Or both. How on earth can there ever be any of either in this situation within a truly successful, forward-thinking company?

Remember the old Edison quote, “Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration”? That perspiration is usually fueled by both passion and an expectation of reward. Seems everyone’s got the Reward part figured out, but they’ve somehow forgotten the Passion. Maybe because it can’t be quantified and is as bewildering to management (and listmakers) as the designers hired to give companies some kind of competitive edge.

Which brings us back to Google, a company lauded for its catalytic effect on innovation (both inside and – in some ways more importantly – outside the company) and for founders who inspire legions with their “Don’t Be Evil” mantra. A company known for opening up their software to “hooks” which allow people – some motivated by reward but very likely an equal number motivated by passion – to experiment and feed their ideas back into the system for the good of all. But as Richard Epstein so brilliantly argued last June (discussed previously), our highly-successful economic system is based on Reward. How far will Passion fuel innovation without it?

Interesting to me that the element that’s been so misunderstood and marginalized is now the thing that may fuel so much upheaval. And all we need, imo, is some balance.