From UGS’s Monday press release (Link):

Tecnomatix 7.6 leverages a natural extension of the Teamcenter PLM backbone, enabling tight collaboration across the design/build process where manufacturing and design engineers can create and plan production processes concurrent with product design. Moreover, with Tecnomatix 7.6 manufacturers can virtually create, plan, validate and execute production processes, for workcells, machines, production lines and entire plants before purchasing and commissioning a single piece of physical equipment.”
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Extending the knowledge capture, management and distribution features of Teamcenter into process planning and the production environment provides a virtual ‘manufacturing backbone’ to support the world-class functionality of Tecnomatix.
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The result is a more complete PLM solution that shares data models between product and process design and manufacturing execution with feedback loops that facilitate continuous process improvement and support global innovation networks.

If you’re familiar with the robot factory in The Sims, this starts to sound like that kind of capability. Only the robots on the screen are getting built in some factory … somewhere. Parts of it may even be fabbed. Continue reading →

I’ve more or less ignored the recent news regarding Cyworld U.S. I suspect that’s because I’m interested in 3D environments – or potential 3D environments. That would explain my interest in Hive7 (reLink) even though it’s currently only a 2D space and not even an isometric.

Fortunately, Mashable has an excellent post discussing Cyworld U.S. (Link). Thank you, Pete.

For a little background, Wired News had a nice article last Fall (Link).

Via Wired News (Link):

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt … said. “We now have a solution that we believe enables advertisers to offer a digital product on the Web so that when people click on it, through a credit-card mechanism, it is automatically taken care of.”
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Matt McMahon, vice president of marketing services for Fathom Online … it would give a previously unknown advertiser a look at what could be seen as a Google seal of approval. “By using the quality of another company’s brand name, you get clout,” he says. “Buys on the web are anonymous, so they need that trust.”

Something new to which I should give some thought. On the surface everything looks good for the little guy … until someone figures out how to manipulate the system.

WorldChanging.com has posted notice (Link) that “the European Space Agency has kicked off a competition, open to students at European universities specializing in aeronautics and/or space technologies, asking them to come up with a design plan for a UAV best suited for exploring the planet Mars.” How cool is that?

A shame it excludes people. Other European students … other Europeans, period. That makes no sense to me.

Howard Rheingold was in Second Life tonight. If you don’t know who he is, you can visit his website (Link) or plug his name in a search engine and get plenty of returns.

The event was well-attended (considering the limitations of the platform, that is). No surprise. Net celebrities always bring a crowd. Plenty of Lindens were there too. A few SL Future Salon regulars. Some fresh newbies in only to hear him talk.

Streaming audio seemed to work better than usual. I do like that small lectures can be held in Second Life. However, the event itself just didn’t do anything for me. I guess I was expecting too much. So if you want an in-depth recap, try the SL Future Salon website (Link). You’ll doubtlessly find a chat log and, eventually, a link to a podcast.