BusinessWeek posts an article today discussing the Designing the Taxi project (and book) organized by Design Trust For Public Space, a NYC-based non-profit. I recall hearing about this some time ago – probably on one of the design sites I frequent. I also dimly recall the situation, but fortunately it’s all archived on their website so we can just go there. Here’s an excerpt from their archive on this project:

As the hundredth anniversary of the New York City taxi approaches in 2007, the Design Trust for Public Space, in cooperation with Parsons School of Design, is investigating how to improve this iconic mode of transportation. To jump-start the process, we invited the taxi industry, New York City’s taxi regulators, and some of the nation’s finest designers to begin rethinking the taxi system and the vehicle itself.

To generate innovative – but feasible – ideas, the Design Trust program took the form of two half-day workshops, held at Parsons School of Design, where participants could share expertise and experience. Participants included fleet owners, drivers, landscape architects, urban planners, vehicle and industrial designers, graphic artists, medallion holders, representatives of City agencies, including the Taxi and Limousine Commission, and others. In total, over 50 designers and taxi stakeholders took part in a spirited discussion of all things taxi

What’s new news as far as I can tell is that BW also has a slideshow to go with their article so we can see what solutions people – and designers – finally came up with.

Well, all I’m going to say is that I think some solutions are nice, but also that there are some proposals that for me go beyond disappointing – especially considering the firms associated with them. I can only guess that the money (assuming there even was any) didn’t sufficiently motivate some people to put in the kind of effort in which the design community as a whole could take pride. It also reminds me of a thought I had when I first heard of this project: closed source (i.e. closed network; the kind of buddy-buddy network that designers discuss when some firms get design awards that most everyone questions). Whenever I hear about these “closed source” public design efforts, I wonder how much of it is serious design and how much is promotion. I’m still wondering.

So I’m surfing C|Net and come across an article called “Making the virtual world a better place“. Okay. So I’m reading down the page and while scrolling down with the mouse I accidently hit what I initially took to be the visual for an ad (see above image, on the right). Well, it’s not an ad. And it’s not just a visual. It’s an interactive map of links to relevant articles. Yeah, I know, I’ve seen this sort of thing before too… but not one lying in wait in the sidebar (how long have I missed this?). Most of the time they’ve been centerpieces, and for some reason it just felt different. Check it out, and the article too. There’s a couple of interesting bits in it:

With that in mind, Schubert urged those gathered for his talk to focus the design of their virtual worlds around the creation of smaller game zones where players don’t feel alone. He said that would enable them to feel social even when there aren’t a huge number of other players around. The alternative, he said, is large game spaces where players feel lonely unless many others are nearby.

and

A designer at Dragon’s Eye Productions who called himself Dr. Cat for the panel, agreed, noting that while publisher-created content will likely be more polished than that made by users, content created by users–such as clothing, buildings, vehicles, weapons and the like-–can have more value to players because they recognize it was built by people they know.

The first quote is interesting taken relative to some of the comments made by judges for the State of Play architecture competition (see earlier posts here and here). And that second quote brings to mind the presentation made by Will Wright which included similar thoughts of his on user-created content (I think it’s the video link in this earlier entry).

Caught a curious article, “3-D Design Software Helps New Aircraft Take Wing“, over on the Los Angeles Times website. First off, “3-D” sounds like a mix of 3D CAD and 3D visual systems; there’s mention of 3-D glasses, a “3-D program to create the machine tools” and a virtual 3D simulation to lay out the factory similar to what UGS has advertised in their PLMware (which I’ve discussed here).

Second, and more interesting, is that there’s no direct mention of Dassault’s computer program (which certainly appears to be their PLMware) facilitating this rapid development of their new aircraft. What is emphasized is the process itself – bringing together a variety of tools to speed development. It’s that last part that reminded me of this interface experiment. And that has me wondering what it really means when the article says that the “Dassault engineering team continues to modernize the 3-D software”.

The past few days I’ve been following an interesting entry by Terra Nova blogger Thomas Malaby titled “Class Begins in…“. It started out with so much promise in it’s discussion of class systems but now the discussion appears to be on it’s last gasp. A shame considering how some of what is being discussed dovetails with some of my recent comments (1, 2). I’d have liked to seen where the discussion might have gone. Oh well. I don’t doubt the topic will resurface, so I’m thinking that some of you might want to give this a look.

Recently, while discussing Google’s latest moves into the realms of free wireless internet service, I mentioned that I expected the “free” business model would increasingly become the norm. After all, Google has shown that seemingly insignificant ads can bring in a ton of revenue. And only yesterday I posted that the virtual world There has also made their basic account free of charge (similar to Second Life, Project Entropia, and others). And now it appears Sony is joining the freedom movement.

Blue’s News has posted notice that Sony intends to release a free MMORPG next Fall. From the Dow Jones Newswire story to which they link:

Sony Online Entertainment, a division of consumer electronics giant Sony Corp., expects to more than make up for the lost subscription revenue by selling optional add-ons, such as extra weapons or game levels.

Earlier this year, Sony Online introduced a Web site, called Station Exchange, where players of some of its games can auction off characters or game items to other players for real money.

The move was designed to give Sony Online a cut of an activity already happening on unauthorized sites.

Smedley said Thursday that Station Exchange is paying off.

“It’s a real business,” he said. “It has a very meaningful revenue stream, and it’s growing.”

Do I even need to link back to posts where I’ve discussed how big the virtual market is going to become?