Arno, our Software Development Manager tipped me about the Pandora. This is not the awesome music service, nor is it some kind of doomsday device in the possession of a Bond villain, it is rather an open source handheld game console. 

It has a touch screen, a 600 Mhz ARM CPU, a keyboard, game controls, wifi, Bluetooth and ten hours of battery life. It was originally meant to be the ultimate portable open source gaming tool for hard core gamers to run old emulated games as well as home designed games.

A small distributor took on the task of designing the device from the ground up as well as taking on the financial risk. They listened to the input of thousands of forum users and funneled this into their design. The small group of seven people coded, designed the boards, designed and selected all the parts and sourced all the materials from companies the world over.

That such a small group could come up with, design and source an impressive device such as the Pandora is really a sign as to how "flat" the world is because of the Internet and access to manufacturing capacity. The device hasn't shipped yet(indeed Arno has been waiting for one of the first 3000 for a year or so). But, once it does it would be a huge achievement.

You can check out a video of the interface below(it is narrated by EvilDragon who has a German accent and totally makes me think of Bond movies once again).

The device itself sells for about $330 and if it lives up to the promises could be a credible alternative to Eee PC's or the Iphone as far as a portable communication and Internet device goes. It runs Ubuntu and you can run FireFox and Open Office on it also, this coupled with its portability, the hug me I'm open source factor and the extra gaming capability make it a very interesting choice.

Of course the history of PDA's, smartphones and portable internet tools is littered with a lot of things that showed a lot of promise but died. My dad loved his Psion 3, a friend of mine swears that the Nokia Communicator is still the ultimate device even though it is a gray brick, the Apple Newton is a well remembered flop and I personally have a box around here somewhere with some Palms and Handsprings in it.

I currently use a 9 inch Eee PC(coupled with a Nokia) as my portable connectivity tools but the battery life is annoying, the start up is not fast enough and it is just too big to take absolutely everywhere. I did take the Palms everywhere but I can not surf the internet on such a small device. The Kindles look are too wide. Blackberries are annoying to surf with. As for a regular smart phone: I've rarely ever held one for more than a few minutes without wanting to chuck it against a wall in frustration. I could opt for an Iphone but somehow I'm turned off by the 50% gross margins on the devices and I don't like the fact that when I touch the touchscreen it doesn't give me any feedback. So I guess that with regards to portable devices I'm rather fickle and hard to please.

I think I'm typical in that respect. Something that accompanies you everywhere makes for a much more difficult choice than any other regular consumer electronics device. This is what makes this "portable communication device" market so hard to crack. But all sorts of devices are converging and improving and maybe soon there will be another gadget for me to try out. I'm really rooting for Pandora and hope it will be as promised. And I'll totally get one too(if they add a GSM chip, start making it in different colors, surround it with Kevlar, etc.)  

A few weeks ago I went to Zürich and while there visited the Museum für Gestaltung and their exhibition Head to Head political portraits. I found it fascinating. They had a series of Angela Merkel portraits that showed her throughout her political career. They also had a series of Arnold Schwarzenegger film posters flanked by his gubernatorial portrait. Going from that to the Conan the Barbarian poster was quite the contrast.

They also paid attention to Che Guevarra and Yulia Tymoshenko, who you can see on the scan of the exhibition brochure to the left(by the way you need to go to her trippy site). The commonalities between all the political posters and what they wanted to convey: purpose, dedication, vision and trustworthiness was very interesting to see. Certain images and ideas stayed the same no matter what the time period or political persuasion.

Amidst all this propaganda it was amazing to see just how iconic the Obama poster has become in such a short time. The hope image closely resembles a Kennedy portrait in the steadfastness and vision it promotes and I think also looks a lot like the famous Che Guevara photograph seen on posters and t-shirts everywhere.  There are a lot of explanations and articles online about the Obama image along with this really good photograph of a photograph but why does this image appeal to us so?

Once I left the exhibition I looked around me at all the t-shirts stores and small alternative shops and was amazed at just how many of them were selling Obama t-shirts. Back in Amsterdam I noticed it also. They seem to be everywhere. I asked a few of the vendors if the t-shirts were selling and one commented that that were outselling the Che Guevara t-shirts 4 to 1 while another said they were doing very well. That just amazes me. So, we know the Kennedy portrait, the Guevara one and now the Obama one. How would one go about making an iconic portrait of ones self or someone else? How do you design something iconic?

Shapeways member Paulo Rebordao used a lot of home made tech and skill and ten months of his time to create his Oil Rig Turntable. He has a great story on his blog detailing the design and workings of his awesome machine. We're really happy that he also used Shapeways along with Google Sketch Up to design and make the tangential tonearm for the Oil Rig. He has a post detailing it on our forum but his blog tells you the whole story as well as lets you hear and see it on a video.   

Can you make the best moving part? Something with an axle or flexibility or even gears perhaps? Something akin to these cars?

Or something completely different?

The contest for the next month will be our moving parts contest. It will start today and run until the last day of March. To enter into the contest upload a model and add movingpart as a tag. Community votes will decide the winner. The winner will recieve $300 in 3d Printing from us. We have a blog post here that shows you some moving parts that have already been made with 3D printing. We also have a mini-tutorial here that shows you how to make some basic moving parts.

We would suggest that you guys design for White, Strong & Flexible since it enables you to have wall thicknesses of 2mm(or less 1mm but only make a small portion of your model this thickness), since the support material for it is a powder it also allows for better clearances and thinner parts. Another reason to use WSF is that it is flexible so you could do things with that also. Good luck!   

And the winner of our Valentines Day modeling Contest is Daddymack with Infinite Love Trinity.  In second place is ReedCSY with Celtic Heart Pendant.  In third place is Daddymack again with Infinite Love. We saw a lot of great entries once more for this contest.You guys chose Daddymack as the most inspiring Valentine's worthy gift and so he wins $300 in 3D printing! Congrats to Daddymack and thank you so much to everyone for entering and voting! P.s., I also loved Gr8dsn's Picture Holder and drakedrake's Heart Earrings.

It is great to see Shapeways members blogging about their Shops.

Mackz, has some great photographs of his Gödel Escher Bach model. This model is based on a Pulitzer Prize winning book by Douglas Hofstadter titled Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. If you want to give your mind a serious work out I would recommend it. My brain tends to turn to mush whenever a number is mentioned but the book gave me real insight into some really complex concepts and it is actually funny too. It is about artificial intelligence, learning, meaning and is one of the most intricately well constructed things I've ever read. Or you could simply buy the two models, put them on your desk and look wistfully at them from time to time to get chicks.

 Sculptor Dimitrios Fotiou({ D F } on Shapeways) also blogged about his sculpture Pillows. What I love about Pillows is that the sculpture is of pillows, the sculpture is eventually going to be a 1.5m marble statue and now he's made it in White, Strong & Flexible.      

Image by Fabio, Creative Commons Attribution   

Good design, inventing and creation to me is often about the obvious. I don't mean this is a demeaning or negative way at all. Discovering the obvious, seeing what is in plain sight is a special skill. 

Take the bicycle lamp as an example. Traditionally these have come in two varieties: battery powered or dynamo powered. Batteries cost money, are bad for the environment and have to be replaced(often at inconvenient times). The dynamo powered bicycle lights are human powered and so do not have any of the drawback of batteries but they do make the cyclist work harder and go slower(albeit a little bit). How obvious exactly is a wind powered bicycle light? This is an invention that each of us could have come up with.

My favorite example of this is the invention of Velcro. Again, something a lot of people could have done, but only one did.

Funnily enough one of the main criteria for being able to patent something is that it is non-obvious.

In that light, your creation might have to be semi-obvious.

Photo Credit: Jeremy Burgin and Michele Ryan, Creative Commons, Attribution.