Another gem from the p2p foundation blog, in a piece about resilient communities they talk about the infrastructure needed for these communities to exist. The gem, "products can be improved by vast global tinkering networks." That to me sums our wildest dreams up perfectly. A vast network of global tinkerers. 

Hack your guitar is a blog about hacking, changing and modding guitars. DJ Dual Core, runs us through his efforts at using Google Sketch Up to do solid modeling. Some of this will seem all to familiar to our members who have tried to use Sketch Up as a solid modeling tool. It's a good run through for anyone that wants to try use Sketch up to create functional 3D printed parts.

The mass customization and open innovation weblog tells us about indi, company dedicated to making custom jeans. Their slogan is fittingly, "fits your style and your genes." It seems to be a great idea, I know a lot of people that take the fit of their jeans very seriously and that are very loyal to jeans that fit well. If you could completely customize them why would you ever buy anything else? I got stuck on page three of the ordering process, all sizes are US and there was no conversion tool present. Also, some questions were confusing, "what is your seat shape?" and "what is your thigh shape?." I might have to ask my girlfriend about the answers to those. Be it as it may I think the idea is wonderful and it should work if they get those boo problems sorted. 

Image credit: Variable 1979

We're going to a bunch of conferences this year but sadly not Breeding Objects, it sounds amazing.

SCUTA is a research project out of Loughborough University, who do a lot of rapid manufacturing research projects. SCUTA looks at how protective sportswear can be personalised so that athletes are more comfortable and safer.

That video is on John Winsor's blog, he wrote "Spark: be more innovative through co-creation" which is a nice book to get you started on the subject and was written in 2005. So pre-history in the co-creation world.

This video is also about co-creation and innovation, it is much more in documentary form but the examples and discussions in it are great. The video is told from a big company perspective, can corporations innovate? The examples in the video m&m's, WD40, Bailey's really explain the dilemma's for big companies well. Via Herd.

Image credit: Sorn, Creative Commons Attribution

Fabbaloo, a 3D printing weblog, has an article about 3D printed art being used in the Museum of Modern Art in New York!

Stratasys the 3D printing machine manufacturer that makes some of the machines we use has just hired a new VP of Business Development in Direct Digital Manufacturing. Jeff Degrange is a former Boeing tech manager will "accelerate Stratasys’ development and marketing of DDM applications." Yawn, right? It is a telltale sign though of the increasing push of the machine manufacturers away from just prototyping and towards actual production.

George Hart has a nice set of models on his site. The great thing about his models is that he lets you download his STL files and use them, as long as you give him credit. His rhomball(pictured above) is very pretty and if you print it out in SLS you can bounce it off walls.

Image credit: George Hart

A helpful post for freelance designers: do you need a contract?

To my surprise there are people out there that do not yet know about PostSecret. PostSecret started out as a simple art project where people could make postcards detailing secrets they have. A lot of it is sad, some of it is funny but it all feels very pure. A good friend somehow completely missed one of the few actual user generated content sites in existence, so I thought I'd post it here just in case someone also missed it. 

This Virtual Goods Summit video details, "the comming boom" in the virtual goods market. The VC's and business people in the video feel that those virtual roses you can give to people in Facebook will make the next wave of billionaires.    

Image credit: Ezola, Creative Commons Attribution license

TED is a conference and sadly I've never been able to go. From what I've seen and heard it should be quite the experience. They have a lot of videos on their site. These videos are some of the most inspiring, awesome and exciting things you can find on the internet. And I do not think I am overselling them. They are all presentations, sometimes by politicians but also by doctors, other academics and regular people. They are aboutoutlining research, stories of people's experiences and a lot of them are simply mindblowing.

To kick off, "Theo Jansen is a Dutch artist who builds walking kinetic sculptures that he calls a new form of life. His "Strandbeests" walk the coastline of Holland, feeding on wind and fleeing from water." If you want to see just what is possible with Shapeways, look at what he has made with standard plastic tubing and think what you could make.

Think poverty and data visualisations are boring? This is amazing. You will also not believe the end of the video, it is ridiculous, in a good way.

This is an awesome hack where Johnny Lee makes some simply stunning stuff using a Wii.

Philippe Starck, the namesake of one of our servers, has a very funny presentation here titled, "Why design?". It is also a wonderful look into design.

Dust as art.

A chart outlining why someone chose to be a designer.

A tap should not be that hard to design but even tap UI-design could be broken.

Chernobyl matroesjka dolls, or how to turn something whimsical that tourists buy into art.

Design and art nowadays seems to be very much about the here and now. This is a great video about designing things for the future. It is the story of the Oxford oak beams. Via ThoughtWax.

A great post jampacked with lots of art and architecture links and stories. My favorite part, "Next summer, artist Adrian Kondratowicz, with Miuccia Prada's patronage, will cloth the homeless with green ready-to-wear, thus “beautifying urban parks and calling attention to human waste.” Green ready-to-wear clothes on the homeless brought to you by Ms. Prada. Sometimes I feel that I really could not make some of this stuff up if I tried.

We've been talking a lot lately about hackers or makers turning technology on its' head by making their own things. For most makers its about changing their own items and adding functionality to them. Some people however change other people's technology. This is a rather evil hack where someone has hacked the airplane seats of the people sitting in front of them so that they can not recline their seats.

Shapeways is all about designing unique objects, personalizing the world around you. What we hope to do for a lot of 'things' in the future people are doing now with mash-ups of music and web applications. In an age of ever present media and advertising clouding our world people are also increasingly re-mixing branding and marketing messages put out by companies. The most famous of these groups is AdBusters. They have a hilarious and at the same time thought provoking gallery here.

It is interesting to note how similar the work of AdBusters is to some of the Worth1000 Photoshop contests. I loved the bad ads one.

Graffiti Research Lab is also doing some amusing and cutting edge stuff in this field, such as their laser projection of the NSA logo on the Verizon building.

This is food for thought for consumers but poses interesting problems for brands. Unilever won a lot of awards and attention with their Dove real beauty campaign. If you watch the movie it squarely blames the beauty industry for a lot of self-image problems women have. It promotes Dove as the brand that cares about women. The campaign website is all about making a difference and The Dove Self-Esteem fund. This, “was developed to help free the next generation from self-limiting beauty stereotypes.”

The campaign is a fantastic one, way ahead of the curve. But, in a connected world where everyone has a lot of information as well as the tools to re-mix any message it also sets them up for a fall. You see, Unilever also owns the deodorant brand Axe. Those of you familiar with the Axe campaigns will probably know that the way that Axe depicts women might not exactly be in line with the lofty values outlined by Dove and its' Self-esteem fund. It was only a matter of time really until someone juxtaposed Axe footage alongside Dove footage to chilling effect.It seems that in connected world with few limits to information one person with a little leisure time can take on a corporate giant.

The whole Open-source, make, hack, re-mix and mash-up movement, as disparate as it is, stands to redress the balance in a lot of industries, advertising is just one of these. If advertising is about getting your message out to as many eyeballs as possible open source tells us that “given enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow” the plane where those two intersect will be one of the most interesting one's to watch in the coming years. Will consumer empowerment crush corporate communications like a bug? Or will the eyeballs themselves become shallow?

Photo credit: marissaorton

We have a brand new contest for you guys!

This time we're doing a contest for the Dutch Design Week(site is in Dutch). This is the Netherlands' premier design event and we're proud to be a part of it.

Together with TNO(a large Dutch research institution) and five designers we will be organizing Virtual Making. This will be an exhibit along with series of lectures and master classes about the possibilities of rapid manufacturing. It will showcase the 3D printed art and design object made by the designers and give people the opportunity to see a 3D printer and a fearsome looking CNC machine. We hope that the technology showcase coupled with the inspiring work from the designers really show what is possible with 3D printing and other direct to digital manufacturing technologies.

The talented designer's who will be exhibiting at Virtual Making are: Studio Thol, Kocx Ontwerpen, PeLiDesign, Wouter Scheublin and Design Drift. All these designers are industrial or product designers and this is also the focus of the Dutch Design Week. We're in awe of their products and success but think that we might have the raw talent in our community that could make a 3D printed work that could comfortably sit along side theirs at the exhibition.Could you be that talent?

So the theme for this contest is: Every Day Design. A completely unique every day object. Something in your home, in your hands that no one has ever considered. Would kitchen cutlery be different if it were 3D printed? Would a new object find its' way into the home because of these new manufacturing techniques? We hope this gets you guys thinking and designing.

To enter simply upload your design to Shapeways and add the tag DDW to it. You can submit designs to the contest until Sunday the 21^st of September 12:00 CET. The winner will be design with the highest rating on Shapeways and will be announced on the 30^th of September. The winner's model will be printed out and exhibited at the Dutch Design Week for thousands of designers and the design-curious. After DDW it will be shipped to you so you can have it. In addition the winner will receive $250 in free 3D printing from Shapeways!