Hacking has traditionally been an activity whereby people tried to break into computer systems and networks. They either did this with malice(to steal credit card information) or good intentions(to improve the security of the system or to lean how it works). The former spawning the term black hat and the latter spawning the term white hat. Hacking initially started with phone phreaking and went via the era of Kevin Mitnick to the script kiddies of today. Kevin Mitnick himself by the way went from a hacker who was imprisoned to a well respected security consultant and speaker with probably the world's coolest business card pictured above.

Hackers were brought to us through such cinematic gems as 'The Net' and 'Hackers.' The former should be especially entertaining if watched now. Ever notice how the movies and TV always seem to get computers wrong? Look at this nails on the blackboard cringing clip from CSI New York for a good example. Of course there were good hacker movies too, such as the impeccable true to life portrayal presented in War Games. Despite this computer hacking culture is very much alive and well today present in such awesome things as the Black Hat Conferences.

The term hacking is now however under threat. From all sides it is being stretched into all directions much like Oprah's pants. Sites, such as LifeHacker give you tips on how to make your life more efficient. Other sites show you how to hack every day objects such as coke machines. Hacking is now turning into a term that means, “experimenting playfully with technology.” It is becoming a synonym for make. Even though many “hacking sites” now talk about Hacking Furby rather than the intricacies of computer security the spirit of hacking is still alive in them. A curious group of pioneers exploring, learning about and experimenting with new technology: hacking if you will.

People are even hacking Ikea, with this niche instructional post Hack-a-Lack, a tool for people who have to put together a lot of Ikea Lack tables.

A World of Warcraft treadmill, so you walk as much as your avatar walks anyone?

The original hardware lifehacker was of course MacGyver and here is a complete list of problems solved by MacGyver, oh wikipedia font of knowledge will you never cease to amaze me. (via Kottke.org)

Ever wanted a touch screen PSP?

Or want to see a Roomba being controlled by a Wii balance board?

Photo credit: Nathan Y under Creative Commons share alike.

We're working hard at comming up with new tutorials for you guys so that it becomes easier to upload models to Shapeways. We have a number of regular tutorials on site but are experimenting with video too. Bart, our in house modeling guru, made this video describing how you can fix non-manifold meshes.

Watch it here.

Non-manifoldness is something a lot of modelers and designers really don't encounter untill they start designing something that has to be 3d printed. The explanations of manifold and non-manifold is rather complicated but we will give you some more background in a future post. For now, Bart can show you how to solve it.

We really like the idea video tutorials but want to know if you do too. Is the video useful? Did it load quickly? How was pausing and replaying parts of the video? Would you prefer a video tutorial or would you like it a lot more if we just did screenshot tutorials as we have been doing? Please let us know!

A lamp made out of plastic drinking cups. That goes straight into the: why didn't I think of that file.

We've all wanted to live in cargo containers, now we have a handy resource telling us how to design and build our very own cargo container homes.

Another installment in my "I love LED lights" series: easy to make temporary LED garden lights. Take twenty minutes do do this for your next garden party or bar b q and you'll be the envy of all your friends. Making does not get any easier than this.

There has been a lot of hype lately about Banksy and street art. This to me is a simply stunning work that although it is decidedly contemporary in its' social commentary proves that there is real substance to the street art hype. I think I can hear a collective sigh of relief from all the hedge fund managers collecting street art. Or was it the last vestiges of that pretentious sentence rushing out of me?

The thumbnail above by the way leads to a hilarious picture that you too can take if you're in Barcelona(last time I checked anyway). To me it has a much more left leaning and anti-establishment feel than most of the contemporary street art stuff. Could it be that street art went from being something practiced by rebels who positioned themselves against society to court jesters who ridicule it from within?

A slideshow of Santiago Calatrava buildings on the New Yorker site. Is he getting boring or is it just me?

Sculpture based on graphs. For example: "Consumer Confidence, 2006-07, brass, wood." A cute intersection of art and statistics via Gulfstream. 

A public sculpture slideshow showing some nice work by Koons and Anish Kapoor on the NY Times site.

At Shapeways we have quite a few community members working on printing out their avatars. Artist Marc Owens ups the ante by making a life sized avatar-like suit. The suit was initiated because of this fun statistic, "54 percent of all males and 68 percent of all females "gender swap"--or create online personas of their opposite sex." This suit will allow you to do this in real life. Marc Owens does lots of other interesting stuff on the cusp of virtual worlds and art and he's a sure-fire guy to watch.

We're thrilled by all the people that are trying out our Creator. Just in case you missed our launch of it: the Creator is a tool that lets people without 3D modeling experience customize and create designs. Using the Creator you can make a unique and personal object within two minutes.  You can check out the movie here.

The first design that people can customize is the LightPoem. Most of the people that have made their own LightPoem either write inspirational sayings or something romantic as a gift for someone else. If you want to read a light poem by the way, the easiest way is to click "view in 3D" and then slowly turn it on its' axis. You have to log in first before doing this. What really caught us by surprise is the sheer variation in LightPoem designs. People really seem to be experimenting with painting using words. We're really excited by this and can't wait to see what you guys will do with them in the future! 

A while ago Jochem our CMO was playing with one of our Monkey Babies. They're the cute little models that we use to help you compare our materials. During Jochem's playing/testing of this particular money, he broke off its' tail. This was both sad and really fitting.

The Long Tail has gone from a little idea published by Chris Anderson to a huge one that determines a lot of corporate strategy and business thinking nowadays. There are a lot of businesses springing up operating in the Long Tail. They are not going for blockbuster hits but rather lots of small successes with niche products for small groups of customers.

At Shapeways we allow people to upload or modify any design and then have it 3D printed. A lot of people might think of us as a typical Long Tail business. Potentially however we are actually a non-tail business. Since every design on our site is unique and made by one single individual for themselves or as a gift for someone else, typically we sell just one printed out copy of each design.

Of course crowds bring crowd-like behavior and in future some of our designs will become popular. For now however the blockbusters are things like earrings or bookends where people print two copies of the design. In the future there might be a lot of businesses out there where every product has a market of one.

I believe that for cultural products such as movies and books the blockbuster model coupled with the Long Tail will be prevalent. But, in the world of manufactured consumer goods will a market of one not make more sense? 

At SIGGRAPH we unveiled the Shapeways Creator. The Creator is a way for someone to create a 3D model in a few minutes without any 3D modeling experience. With the Creator you can resize a model, determine its' contours and shape or add text to it. The model you start with is called a Shapeways Shape and this is a template especially prepared for the Creator. Initially we only have one Shapeways Shape, the LightPoem.

     With the LightPoem you can pick a font, type in whatever text you want and your words will form the actual LightPoem. Do you have a favorite inspirational saying? Would you like to make one for a specific occasion? It can be a unique gift or personal item. If you want to see it in action you can either try it out here or watch the video.

      You can save the resulting designs and share them with people. It will probably also not be a great surprise to you that if you want you could have us print out the design for you and ship it to you within ten working days. In a mass produced, mass manufactured one size fits all world world you can now hold a unique machine made object in your hands in ten days.

     The planet just became mashable. We've always...

SIGGRAPH was in a word: overwhelming. I had never gone and so was surprised at the size of it. The companies that are there range from DreamWorks to Autodesk to Intel and some people put on an amazing show. Our booth was tiny in comparison to the big boys(it was a bit bigger than the cupboard that Pixar used to store its snack food) but we were busy the whole time talking to members and met lots and lots of people. We got a lot of questions about the materials, durability and cost of printing but most of all people loved to touch the materials and get a up close and personal look at the designs.

GasGuy got a lot of...

Perhaps you're more interested in a pocket Bar-b-q? For those I'm on the move and need meat moments. The awesome early 90's house music that comes with the clip alone make the video worth watching. (Via Make:zine)

DIYDrones is an extensive site with lots of information on Do It Yourself Drones. As in DIY Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Stop and think about that for a moment..as a hobby nowadays you could make a unmanned self-flying airplane from the comfort of your own home.

The webpage Build Your Own Clone is sadly only about DIY guitar effects kits though. 

Around the office we've been talking about this Dirty Harry rendering. It is by Harsch Borah, and we're thrilled that he's running around on Shapeways.

Sparklines are a wonderful thing. In my opinion they're just about the best ways of displaying information in a text. I'm sad to see that they aren't as widespread as they should be.

An innovative car park design?

A search for the word beautiful on flickr will brighten anyone's day. And if that doesn't work you can always look at all the smiles.

One might think that seminaries might all be stuffy and boring, and you would be wrong.

For some reason, I adore this picture. Bluejake has a lot more great photos on the rest of his site.

(image credit:Decor8)