Link-O-Rama 06/02/10: Fake Porsche, Lego Printer, and Sifteo

by Joseph Flaherty on June 2, 2010

Poor Mans Porsche

It is a a story as old as the internet. An engineer gets a crazy idea, spend years developing it, and shares it with the internet. First it was the guy who built himself a Lamborghini in his basement using real materials. Now we have a guy who built a cover for his recumbent bike, in the shape of a Porsche, out of tape. It is a weird gimmick, but this guy, with no major design training, built a reasonable facsimile of a Porsche. That’s pretty impressive. Now imagine when it is someone with commercial savvy, a 3D printer, and CNC Mill. This project is great blog fodder, but I think it is the harbinger of something very cool.

Sifteo – Digital Toys

The Foundry Group has invested in digital toy company called Sifteo which makes a product that combines Game Boy functionality in a form factor similar to a child’s alphabet blocks. Foundry is unique in the VC world in that this is their second toy investment in a year, the first being Seattle’s Smith & Tinker.

Sifteo’s product is neat, but it seems a bit crazy to create a new electronic platform when the GameBoy and now iPod touch are so widespread among kids. The play patterns demonstrated in this video are neat, but the cost structure of the product will be critical. The video shows tables full of the blocks, but can kids have fun with four or five? It seems like a smarter play would be building toys on top of the iPod platform. Build novel accessories and utilize the rich sensors, display, and processors for the computation power. In any case, good luck to team Sifteo in combining the world of bits and atoms.

Redesigning the Disney Store

Disney’s retail unit, with direction from Steve Jobs, is rethinking its stores to provide an experience similar to the Apple store, but aimed at 7 year olds. The stores will be outfitted with sensors, displays, customizable interactive elements that make the retail stores more like theme parks with hopes that a trip to the Disney store will be the highlight of a kids day. It’s a neat development, but more exciting when you realize how most of these technologies are available off the shelf and could be applied to even a small retailers store in the near future.

Lego Printer

Enthusiasts have made Lego robots that print in 3D via chocolate and replicate pick and place technology, but there aren’t many examples of 2D Lego printers which is kind of odd. This glaring omission in the Lego canon has been rectified with a great felt tip/minifig powered printer.