Talk about giving new meaning to the phrase “this is a dynamite book”. From the New Scientist (Link):

A very unusual ink-jet printer cartridge, containing explosive ink, has been patented by Qinetiq, the commercial spin-off of the British Ministry of Defence.

And to think people are worried about guns and armor. Now we can just print explosives directly! And next up it’ll be something far deadlier: Invisible exploding ink! OMGBBQ! (note: I’ve never used that exclamation, but I just couldn’t resist)

Okay, now that the obvious is out of the way, here’s something cool that can be done:

Ganging hundreds or thousands of fuses together could even make a miniature rocket engine capable of precisely adjusting the orbital position of a spacecraft, the company says.

Oooooooo.

Oh. Wait. Guess we’ll need to be on the lookout for miniature warheads. I’d suggest keeping an eye on that quiet, reclusive little neighbor boy from here on out.

via Engadget

I caught this earlier over on AtariBoy (Link) and the more I think about it the more I think it’s relevent to design and 3D content. From the post:

Earlier today the guys at songbird released 0.1 alpha preview of songbird, the firsthint at what is hopefully gonig to be a great new music player. Its more of a proof of concept model rather than a full program, just to prove to the many doubters that songbird does exist. Its no-where near a finish produce, so you cant do any strict comparisons yet, but so far its looking good, and has a lot of potentional.

And I see that there’s also now an interview over on Boing Boing (Link) with former Winamp team member and the guy leading this effort, Rob Lord. It’s very much worth reading imo. Here’s a few of excerpts:

Instead of connecting to one locked store full of DRMmed goods, it can connect to any and all available music (and video) on the internet.
…
Songbird can connect to any a la carte media store — downloadable music, radio, video, P2P networks, and classes of services that haven’t been created yet. Services like iTunes — where everybody has to shop from the same store — are like walled garden online services back in the early days.
…
As we say in our FAQ, “We don’t steal music and you shouldn’t either. We support DigitalConsumer.org’s Bill of Rights as the best means to a burgeoning, diverse and lawful digital media market.”
…
The possibilities for networked services are totally untapped. For instance, [Winamp co-creator] Justin Frankel created a collaborative jamming service, and you can’t do that inside any commercial media player now.

I like the jamming functionality. I’ve been wondering when we’ll see a truly virtual band get some attention in the media… any media (not like the Gorillaz) . A band comprised of people who meet inside a virtual space, form into a group inside that virtual space, and write/practice/perform their music in that virtual space. The Gorillaz don’t cut it afaic.

And btw, forgive me for asking this rhetorical question, but doesn’t that interactive jamming functionality sound a lot like PLM?

Yesterday I received an email from a large, well-known corporation asking if I’d be interested in discussing a job opening they needed to fill. Crafting a response to what would be for many Industrial Designers an excellent opportunity took some thought; how does one explain what I’m working toward? This is a piece of what I wrote:

The offer to discuss the opening you have available is very much appreciated, however the kind of position that might tempt me would need to be in tune with the cutting edge things I’ve been pursuing related to our profession’s future; which, from my conversations with other designers, aren’t even on most corporate radars at the moment.

I can only imagine the puzzled look on the recipient’s face. How can someone casually dismiss such an opportunity? What “cutting edge things”? What does “related to our profession’s future” mean?

It’s too bad I didn’t have Wired’s article (Link) to perhaps explain some – not all – of what I see coming. Right now the people in Second Life aren’t really doing the kinds of things I think we’ll be seeing in the coming months and years; truly leveraging the power of an immersive 3D space. The closest I see them currently getting are projects like Kimberly Rufer-Bach’s work for UC Davis Medical Center mentioned in the Wired story (btw, I’ll ask Kim to share more pictures of her work which I can post here in some future entry). However, there’s no reason that either Second Life, or perhaps the soon-to-be-released Croquet v1.0 application, cannot be used as PLM software. That’s what I see coming and which I believe will have a profound impact on … a whole lot of things.

I’ve not posted anything from the world of niche products in a while and thought these bird feeders crafted by St. Louis artist Joe Papendick fit the bill (no pun intended). You can see those and other pieces of functional art on his site (Link).

via MoCo Loco

{Images Copyright © Joe Papendick}

…and you can make those tools increasingly easy to use, but don’t expect them to want to make anything as a result.

I just noticed over on the IGN website that console versions of Lionhead Studios’ videogame The Movies have been canx’d due to… get this… poor sales of the PC version. This reminds me of two things:

– Paul Jaquays’ comments some time back on the Map-Center forum that increased availability of oil paints hasn’t increased the number of Rembrandt’s and Picasso’s in the world (True).

– the comments I made yesterday (with the above comment in mind) over on the MIT Convergence blog that “free” content may not save the day (Link).

You can read the IGN announcement for yourself – Link. A shame. I was looking forward to a flood of “French Democracy“-style machinima videos.