We've deployed a small change to our site to clarify a model's visibility and for-sale status settings. This change will appear within the the model visibility control on the Product Detail Page and the Model Upload page.

To start, we changed the label to "Display and Sale Options", and the new UI works as follows:



The first checkbox controls whether a model is displayed publicly in the user's shop, galleries, etc. If the box is checked, it will appear in these places for site visitors. If not checked, it will only be visible to its creator.

The second checkbox controls whether it's for sale or not. If not for sale, it will appear as "not for sale" in galleries.

The way to let a user share his model privately with a hidden link still exists. The user should not select the box for "Listed on site?", but should select the box for "Allow others to purchase?"

Default behavior is for both boxes to be selected.

The Shapeways web development team has been hard at work on new features and site improvements. A lot of our recent work has been under-the-hood, which means we don't get to show it off. But we've also implemented some new features that are visible and will improve the site experience for lots of Shapeways members. Specifically, I'm referring to the new "My Shapeways" section of our site. My Shapeways consolidates and reorganizes your personal profile, designs and shop page into a more clearly-structured section of the site you can find at

www.shapeways.com/me. From here, you have immediate access to configuring your profile information, your designs and shop, and your ordering information. We released it last week with an announcement on our forum, where you can join the discussion and let us know what you think. On top of that, we've been on a roll this week with smaller improvements and fixes.

Shapeways friend Kin Lane has recently been mulling cloud printing and 3D printing, and the intersection of the two technologies.

Naturally, he's looking into the possibilities offered by the Shapeways API.

This has come at a time when we're seeing a surge of interest in the API, with users building desktop, mobile and web apps that take advantage of the ability to upload models to Shapeways, where we then handle shop display, printing and order fulfillment.

Interesting questions and discussions are happening in the Shapeways API forum, and our dev team is following along closely.

If you have API questions, suggestions or ideas, please get in touch--it is my goal to support your creativity wherever it may lead.

Cloudscape 3D III / Luis Argerich / http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/

If you've got your own domain and want to use it for your Shapeways Shop, you might think you're out of luck. But, you're not--because although we don't have an official feature to support this use, there is a small hack that several shops have implemented already.

Just create a frameset on a webpage hosted at your domain, and place your shop inside. I've already stumbled across two clever shops doing this:

• http://no-limit.com/
• http://www.nulogia.com/

The HTML on your domain should skip the body tag entirely, and use a frameset tag instead. It will look something like this:

<frameset rows="100%,*" border="0">
<frame src="http://www.shapeways.com/shops/yourshopname" frameborder="0" />
<frame frameborder="0" noresize />
</frameset>

If your html is a little rusty or you weren't around during the height of the frame era (late 1990s, if I recall), just view the source on one of the above pages, and you'll find the code you need.