Orbotix Works Through Challenged of Virtual UI

What happens when you combine a smartphone and a robotic ball “game”? The folks over at Orbotix share some of their insights on designing for a Bits and Atoms game platform. I don’t like Sphero’s chances if their main product is a $99 cat toy, but if these interaction design patterns are broadly applicable they may have a nice head start on the market.

The Great Ephemeralization

A great article written in response to Tyler Cowen‘s “Great Stagnation” essay. The thesis is that it is hard to measure we get out of invisible innovation e.g. the way most smartphones now offer turn by turn GPS navigation a feature that once manifested itself in a $300 stand alone device, but is now a tack on feature like custom ring tones. a sample:

“But the real lesson here may not be that the American economy is stagnating, but rather that the government is bad at measuring improvements in our standard of living that come from the software industry.”

Dual Chambered Slurpee Cup = Real Time Beverage Customization

Proving once more that America is out of real problems, 7-11 has introduced a new Slurpee cup that allows you to achieve real time customization of your beverage by switching the valve to one side or the other.

Want to ROCK the San Diego ComiCon? Have $7,000? Buy this amazingly detailed, life sized, replica costume of one of the Halo villians on Ebay. An interesting revenue stream made possible to custom manufacturing enthusiasts. It does run afoul of many copyright laws though.

In addition to having a brillian logo I <3 Robotics has an interesting post about working out the engineering kinks when building 3D printed enclosures for robots.

I wonder when we will see the first O’Reilly book on the subject?

Curious how various 3D printing techniques stack up against a well known benchmark? Flickr user Don Solo was as well so ordered custom Lego bricks from 3D printing service Shapeways to see for himself. Thankfully he shared with the rest of the community.

StickyBits is one of the more interesting location based social networks that provides “A fun and social way to attach digital content to real world objects.”  Basically, if you like a product you can scan it, add a note/photo/voice recording to it. You can also make your own barcodes. If you were packing boxes for a move you could photograph the inside, slap a bar code sticker on the box, scan it, and have a digital inventory manager. There are lots of neat potential applications, but the service needs more users to be effective. Check out a full review or download it for free.

The Boston Globe has an interesting photo feature on the present day state of robotics, from war machines to educational bots. Equal parts inspiring and terrifying.

The Build-a-Bear Workshop funded a startup that allows young customers to build unique cars rather than bears, called “RideMakerz”. The service has slowly been growing its retail presence, but opened a large store in youth tourism mecca of Orlando Florida. It will be interesting to watch how a “clicks and mortar” strategy plays off in arguably the best retail location imaginable for a company like this.

French Mass Customization Blog

Unfortunately I speak no French so I can’t judge the content, but the design of this Unsigne looks promising for Gallic fans of Mass Customization.

Arduino Time

The Atlantic give Arduino some love. It is basic info, but nice to see hardware hacking getting mainstream attention. The author of the article, William Gurstelle, has an interesting looking book called “Absinthe and Flamethrowers“.

Bits and Atoms and Paisley

The NYT covers ModCloth a start up that sells vintage clothes online. Not customized clothing, but an interesting intersection of design and tech.

6,000 Hour Model of a P-51 Mustang

A dentist spent the equivalent of 3 working years crafting this exquisite model of a fighter plane. Click through to get a sense of the detail and scale in this masterpiece.

I’ve never seen anything this large/meticulously crafted.

Wooden Warfare (and other mechawood creations)

Continuing with the  crafted carnage, this wooden tank is just one of many hardwood contraptions on display. Click through to see a Jenga pistol, Wooden gear maker, and other cool projects.

50 Wooden CNC Joints

Tools like ShopBot are enabling craftspeople to dramatically increase their “toolbox” and do things that would be prohibitively time consuming otherwise. These joints are an example of the trend.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Tweeting photos with an Arduino (makezine.com)
• The DuinoTagger and Talcapult (crunchgear.com)

There has been an abundance of interesting news related to customization and personal manufacturing over the last couple weeks. The following are a few projects that stick out.

Laser Mario

Chris Maguire (@revolvingdork) who was a co-founder of ETSY and now is working on a new start up called Waffl has etched his laptop with the level maps of the original Super Mario Brothers. Thanks to @Make. Would be a masterpiece if not for the “Eee” logo in the upper left hand corner.

Spore Asymmetry

Spore is powerful CAD capable of producing cybernetic insects and models of Charles Darwin in addition to video game characters it was designed to create. This power has been expanded with the new ability to make asymmetric features. Previously, if you added a feature it would automatically be mirrored, now you can have wonkier designs. I might have to do another review of their 3D printing service in the name of science. Thanks to @pahlkadot.

Hacking Health

Peter Semmelhack, the founder of the open source hardware company BugLabs, has turned his attention towards Hacking Health. He is working on a new kind of continuous glucose monitoring tool for people with diabetes that would alert a friend or family member in case of a medical emergency.

A German startup has launched a service called MyMelade that manufactures customized marmalade. Food customization services like MyMelade, YouBars, or MixMyGranola are certainly cool, but it seems like it would make more sense to develop retail solutions if they want to go mainstream.

ZCorp has released a new composite material “zp150″ which increases the functional strength of their parts by 40% as well as improving color and removing the need for a chemical curing process. This is a big deal for ZCorp since the only real weakness in their printer line is the strength of materials. I haven’t played with the new part material yet, but this could make ZCorp 3D printers competitive with Stratasys and 3D Systems machines in the durable part market.

Ponoko has opened up a US headquarters in San Francisco making it possible to ship orders faster and less expensively.

Roque is a jewelry company that allows you to preview jewelry using augmented reality technology. It is a cute feature, but is somewhat limited to the “chunky” jewelry style they sell. It would probably be tough to get a Tiffany style setting to look right.

Holition is the company powering Roque and the demo video on their site shows the technology being used to greater effect with wrist watches. The renderings are very nice and move smoothly. This could be huge if Swatch ever wanted to make a comeback. The challenge is to hide the wristband that allows the rendering to be overlaid. Notice the black watch band under the projection of the silver watch in the picture above.

Manual Labor Chic

The New York Times Magazine ran a great article called The Case For Working With Your Hands about the rewarding nature of manual labor in our modern, information-based economy. Having worked in the building trades I agree with much of it, though I think his account of manual labor is overly glamorized while knowledge work is given its darkest treatment outside a Douglas Coupland novel. This article is an analytical take on the subject specifically whether our societal focus on college degrees is healthy.

In the same vein, the Boston Globe has a short article on Boston area makers and the organizations that have grown up around them.

An Aesthetic Algorithm

I wrote yesterday about how lack of training is one of the reasons mass customization has yet to reach the mainstream. This brief article on color theory does a great job explaining why certain color combination works in entirely empirical and objective terms. More tutorials like this, packaged correctly, could do a great deal to help people feel comfortable designing.

Too often art and design are treated like mystical endeavors only open to those visited by the muse. In reality, the principles of aesthetics are as concrete as principles of computer programming or mathematics. They are largely based in biology, rule based, and teachable. As with anything the creative application of these frameworks is where the real magic happens.

XL 3D Printer

This is the largest thing I’ve ever seen made with a 3D printer and the scale is very impressive. Though, I don’t understand why you would spend that amount of time and money and not make something a little nicer looking? Or at least something that better accentuates the 3D printer’s capabilities? This just looks deformed. Photo Credit

Hacker Space

Fun documentary video of a Hacker space in Montreal. It does a good job of highlighting the kinds of people who are drawn to these spaces, the types of projects they work on, and the spirit that drives them.

Artful 3D Printers

Boing Boing Gadgets has a nice roundup of projects where 3D printers are being used by artists. This sintered phone holster shows off how 3D printing tools can create “preassembled” parts. In this case all the links are formed together and are removed from the 3D printer fully assembled with all the properties of a chain mail product. 3D printers are an amazing technology and this kind of project demonstrates their most impressive capabilities. via Boing Boing Gadgets

Legos + Transformers + Crazy Fan = Awesome

A Korean Lego enthusiast has built a large model of the Transformers character Barricade that amazingly, actually transforms. Lego is in an interesting position with a sectionally modular building system, specialized CAD software, and a rabid fanbase. If they could work out the licensing it would be amazing to let these crazy fans design models and offer them for sale via Lego’s mass customization service. The community is already doing amazing things for free so an affiliate payment program could only help Lego broaden their offering.

Makerbot_Status…Replicating

The MakerBot project reached a fun milestone when Bre Pettis used the $750 “Cupcake” 3D printer to create an upgraded component for itself. However, the award for “coolest machine approaching self replication” has to be this hexapod that can mill parts. Fortunately, it can only handle styrofoam at this point so the human race is safe. For now…

Speaking of Terrifying Robots…

This robotic snake looks like an early ancestor of the droid outside of Jabba the Hut’s lair and the Sentinel from the Matrix. Using Objet 3D printers, researchers were able to increase the speed of development and improve their design substantially.

Laser Engraved Lunch Meat

A student at Carnegie Mellon has embarked upon a project to remind carnivore’s of where their meat comes from and used a laser cutter to engrave humble slices of bologna with images of animals. The artist’s statement:

“Ultimately, I would like to show the entire process from animal to ambiguous pink slice of meat over the course of a package of lunch meat, beginning here with bologna. This neat packaged disc of food has always seemed so far removed from its source.”

Via Neatorama