I caught this over on the Core77 forum a couple weeks back: UGS NX for Macintosh (Link). What makes that bit of news of interest to me is 1) there is, in most people’s opinion, no truly worthwhile CAD application for the Mac, 2) NX is about the most capable CAD application you’ll find on any machine and 3) take a good look at who’s behind this – UGS.

For those who haven’t followed along, UGS is the company I’d credit with currently being the most aggressive PLM developer in the world. And PLM is, in my opinion, a big part of the Metaverse future.

One of the links in that forum post took me over to a very cool blog called WorldCAD Access, which provided a link to something else of interest: a post over on Think Secret (Link). From that post:

UGS Corp. announced that it will deliver a Mac OS X version of NX and Teamcenter, marking the first product lifecycle management (PLM) software for Mac users. While the news is primarily of import only to companies that need such a solution which touches the “full range of development processes in product design, manufacturing and simulation,” according to the company’s Web site ”Apple played an unusual role in ensuring the product’s arrival on the Mac.
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Seems like a long time ago now, but about a week ago I received word from Paul Hemp, senior editor at the Harvard Business Review, informing me of a virtual discussion scheduled to take place inside Second Life. Some of you might recall Mr. Hemp’s recent article, “Avatar-Based Marketing”, about which I posted last month (reLink). Anyway, I made some time to attend and at least several other bloggers have since covered the discussion – most notably Ilya Vedrashko over on the MIT Advertising Lab/Brands in Games blogs (Link), and Wagner James Au over on the New World Notes blog (Link).

A couple of things I’d say at this late point is that the transcripts I’ve read aren’t actually complete; they’ve been cleaned up and parts have been removed. That’s the problem with texting inside a simulation: not everyone knows to what it is that someone else might be referring when a comment is made out of order (and most are). I suspect the raw log is posted somewhere, but I didn’t read everything all that closely since I was at the thing and don’t need the rehash. The bigger issue, however, is communication. And I mean communication on a much broader scale. Think internationally; think culturally. In a virtual world that spans global borders, communication on a variety of levels – including marketing – becomes a different and more complex endeavor.
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I probably could have simply titled this one “Wired. Regina.” and most people would know that this is an entry linking back to a Wired News story about cybersex (Link). However, I’ve noticed a number of visitors that I’ve not had before, so I have to expect that not everyone who stops here is familiar with Regina Lynn’s articles.

This latest one by my favorite (okay … only) cybersex reporter isn’t as sinsational as some earlier ones; it’s more about the practical issues of developing for that particular brand of entertainment and those particular users. For anyone into virtual worlds, however, it’s worth the read. So head over and give it a few minutes. Personally I really like the fact that these are virtual worlds being developed and maintained by individuals or small teams. Very niche. And that’s also very much a focus of my interests.

Although I’ve not posted many entries lately, I have tried to follow some of the news out there; tough to do with so much going on. One of the things I caught was BusinessWeek‘s coverage of the IDEA competition. You can read their words (Link) and see their gallery (Link), but be sure to do a little background work. One of the winners that intrigued me was the da Vinci S surgical system (Link). From the BW blurb on the device:

The da Vinci S Surgical System is a state-of-the-art tele-operated robotic device used to perform minimally invasive surgery. It consists of an ergonomically designed surgeon’s console, four interactive robotic arms and a vision system that provides a 3D view of the surgical field.

No surprise that got my attention. Some day people may be leveling up to “Surgeon” in a videogame (though don’t expect me to be ready to go under their tele-robotic knife).

I also surfed over to the designer’s website (from where I pulled the above image, btw – not sure exactly to whom the copyright goes). Ricardo Salinas has done much of the work that I’ve enjoyed from design firms like IDEO and Bridge so be sure to take a look at his portfolio of work (Link). Nice stuff.

{Image source: Ricardo Salinas Industrial Design}