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RepRap x 2

Posted: October 1st, 2008, 4:53pm PDT by admin

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RepRap has a child and it looks nearly the same as its parent.
The comments on the RepRap site are euphoric about the begin of a new era.

“Think of RepRap as a China on your desktop.” - Chris DiBona, Open Source Programs Manager, Google Inc., 8 April 2008.

“The promise of advanced fabrication technology that can copy itself is a truly remarkable concept with far reaching implications.” - Sir James Dyson, 17 April 2007.

“[RepRap] has been called the invention that will bring down global capitalism, start a second industrial revolution and save the environment…” - The front page of The Guardian, November 25, 2006.

It’s also a great day for open source product design, because this project like “fab at home” could really open product design to every social stratum. Let’s stay tuned for further clones on maybe other parts of the world.
A great chance for every student that can use the rapid prototyping printer of his university, to get a own 3d printer - and then one for his friend and his friend and so on…

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Mass Customization & Open Innovation News

Posted: August 2nd, 2008, 12:14pm PDT by admin

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Frank Pillers site ( [www.mass-customization.de] ) is a great news source for mass customization and open innovations.
Since 1997 he is blogging about this topic ( [mass-customization.blogs.com] ). You are also able to download his books and the knowledge base is offering amount of links and literature recommendations.

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Open Source Festival

Posted: July 16th, 2008, 5:24pm PDT by admin

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The festival season here in europe is in it’s heyday of this summer. Music is one of the most popular copy right topics in the days of internet and mp3. Creative Common was first successfully applied in this topic*, so it’s a chain of reasoning, why the first open source festival was created.

[www.open-source-festival.de]

*The newest example is the music video of the Radiohead song “House of Cards”

[www.youtube.com]

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philippe starck aint no designer

Posted: May 7th, 2008, 9:45pm PDT by admin

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It’s an old thread, nearly everybody blogged about it: philippe starck will quit in two years he said to the german ZEIT ( [www.zeit.de] ) and continue with nearly the same work, but call it consulting.
Most bloggers and normal people in the business had expected something like that, either of philippe, karim or ron, or some other designer-rockstars. Pretty similar like famous rock-stars do, he announces the dead of his profession “Es wird keine Designer mehr geben” (There will be no more Designers).

I doubt that prediction, rather i think, the designer will change totally by the growing influence of movements like web 2.0 and so on.
But he got what probably intended - a design-scene screaming and yelling.

(more…)

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open source food

Posted: April 29th, 2008, 8:02am PDT by admin

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Its probably an unwritten law that you don’t ask a chef cook how exactly he made a delicious meal step by step unless you offering him enough money. OpensourceFood offering now open source instructions for fantastic looking meals. Also it has a really nice platform check it out: [www.opensourcefood.com] (more…)

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Safari Browser Vectorized!

Posted: April 22nd, 2008, 3:17pm PDT by mueller-j

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Hi all,

TodayI would like to present you some goodie to download.

For presenting website designs I rebuilt the Safari browser as a vector EPS file. You can open it in Illustrator and change the Url and so on.. After that, insert yout website design. Now you have a perfect browser Window, which is printable aswell. The current resolution is 1024×768. Change it if you like to.

Have fun!

Download the Safari Browser Vectorized

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open source domains

Posted: April 11th, 2008, 1:02pm PDT by admin

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If you don’t have friends who supply you with web-space, because they like your project, the monthly domain fee shouldn’t keep you from starting your own open source project. OpenDomain is offering a bunch of open source related domain-names for free, all you have to do is: send a request to Ric Johnson who is offering this service end some interesting background information about his motivation.

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design errors

Posted: March 22nd, 2008, 2:26pm PDT by admin

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On the german net / technology section of spiegel online there is an article about design failures. As mentioned in the article, it all began with the caps lock key on the new apple keyboard (engadget), spiegel ask their readers to vote for or against this feature. As a result of this survey, allot readers reporting other design errors - not only about computers, but as you can see on the bottom on this article there are 7 more articles with full of not so good designed products… about too many different power supplies, and so on…

via: http://www.spiegel.de/

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Core77 One Hour Design Challenge

Posted: March 19th, 2008, 5:26pm PDT by admin

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Last call for the Core77 one hour design challenge

Core77 has launched a one hour design challenge. You can win a 200$ gift certification at Harris Cyclery. Its intended that the board user participate at the jury’s choice.
“Doors Open:
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
7 AM PST (2 GMT)

Last Call:
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
1PM PST (8 GMT)

Theme:
Theft Proof Bicycles

JURY:
Winner will be selected by the Core77 Admin. Community discussion is encouraged to help ensure the best design wins.

thanks to ip_wirelessly for settin’ this up!”

via: http://boards.core77.com/

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design approach visualizations

Posted: March 17th, 2008, 5:06pm PDT by admin

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Tina Roth Eisenberg from Swissmiss is planing to start a collection of design approach visualizations of design studios and other institutes - we would support this project. Beside the way of process visualization it would be interesting to compare the parallels and uniqueness of each design process and so find a more general understanding of it.

All with the aim of making design/creativity and innovation a more calculable tool for economy.

Nice examples are linked in her article:

the ingredient

this one

via: http://swissmiss.typepad.com/

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ikea hacking

Posted: March 16th, 2008, 7:02pm PDT by admin

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IKEA offers nice harmonised products. It seams that this pre selection prevents the most customers from a horrible chaos of styles. But, it reduces also the customisation aspect, IKEA products are meant to be mass products - sometimes with the charm of extraordinary arts and crafts products.

Some people doesn’t prevent this fact, for reuse/redefine/redesign this products for a new use. This highly creative people are blogging their modification / hacks on: ikeahacker.blogspot.com and make their ideas available for the masses. Hopefully IKEA will not request its cooperate identity depending copyright. Anyway this would be a nice example for progress of open designed products - with a never ending product developing / improving process - benefiting a production and customer optimised circle.

“WANTED: your ikea hacks. whatever they may be - a funked up klippan sofa, an ingenious idea for your pax wardrobe, a creative twist on your kitchen countertop, or even advice on how to finally stop forby stools from wobbling, i’d love to see your ikea hacks. email me at ikeahacker[at]gmail[dot]com”
via: [ikeahacker.blogspot.com]
via: http://www.designaddict.com/

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OScar.. the open source vehicle

Posted: March 7th, 2008, 10:52am PST by mueller-j

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Dear Readers,

i want to point your attention on the Project OScar. Check out the website and perhaps take part if you have any accelerating ideas.

So, here a short preview..

It is the goal of the OScar Project to develop a car according to Open Source principles. In our opinion, a car is not a vehicle full of high-tech gadgets. Instead, we are looking for a simple and functional concept to spread mobility. Form follows function.

Apart from that, OScar is not just a car. It is about new ways of mobility and the spreading of the Open Source idea in the real (physical) world. On this website, you will find a great community of developers and drivers who want to invent mobility anew and together.

..more on theire website

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eol goes online

Posted: February 28th, 2008, 7:33pm PST by admin

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Encyclopedai of Life goes officialy online and offline again, at the moment you could have luck and get linked to the official side or you’ll only see the demo site. Because nearly everyone wants to explorer the animal species, they have a traffic overload.

“In the first 24 hours (minus the approx. 3-4 hours we were completely down) there were:
18.5M hits, 13.3M page views, and 940GB of data transferred.” (more…)

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cc how it works

Posted: February 27th, 2008, 3:54pm PST by admin

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The CC comic book is now available as a PDF on the website of creative commons. It discribes in easy words and pictures how the normal copyright law works and what the benefits of the creative commons license are.
(more…)

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design philosophy politics

Posted: February 24th, 2008, 7:48am PST by admin

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Design philosophy politics is a related project to design philosophy papers and discribs its position like this:

“The objectives of Design Philosophy Politics are to:
• widen the constituency that recognises the importance of the relation between design and politics;
• create a global community of critical, politically informed designers, design thinkers and critics.

Design Philosophy Politics is an extension and development of Design Philosophy Papers, a refereed online journal established in 2003. The political implications of design are frequently addressed in Design Philosophy Papers in theoretical and scholarly ways. Contributors have engaged design in relation to concerns such as: ethics, user-centredness, technology; otherness; dematerialisation; aesthetics; sustainability; urbocentrism; homelessness; politics and the political. The kind of radical thinking being developed through Design Philosophy Papers informs the briefer, more hard-hitting content of Design Philosophy Politics.

Design Philosophy Politics aspires to be rigorous in its criticism of the unsustainable and affirmative in its embrace of potentially effective actions towards sustainment.”

It’s interesting that, design research theorie philosophie and so on, mostly focusing on social ecological related design issues. Sure there a even as many papers about mainly consume focused design, what makes the main part of the design profession. But, it seams that the main progress is done in the more objective seemingly sustainable design.

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ponoko jewelry design challenge

Posted: February 23rd, 2008, 10:42am PST by seidel-s

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we mentiont ponoko earlier in a post about the diploma thesis of David Bizer and his jewelry customicing concepts and theoretical background about the change of industrie.

so, hard competition for jewelry designer, ponoko makes it easy to customice your bling. now they make it even more affordable. i’ve your design is good enough you might make it under the top 25 of their design challenge and get your jewelry produced for free, otherwise it wouldn’t be worth the trouble.

via: Ponoko Blog

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DeinDesign

Posted: February 21st, 2008, 4:42pm PST by admin

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This german company, the name means “your design” (DeinDesign), produces stickers which let’s you customize your gadgets/furnitures. So you can personalise your devices without damaging it as many times you want - just rip of the sticker and stick a new one.

via: newsmadeingermany

via: deindesign

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design philosophy papers

Posted: February 19th, 2008, 7:33am PST by admin

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“the need
Design Philosophy Papers (DPP) comes from a longstanding desire to gain greater recognition for the study of design by the intellectual community at large, as well as our frustration with the market-driven conservatism of design publishing. It aims to break away from the idea of design as a specialist interest, as well as rejecting the simplistic and debased way design arrives before the public via both old and new media — frequently merely as style or technics. It also comes with a passion to communicate, share and argue for a much, much greater general recognition of importance of design and ‘the designed’ as managed and unwitting agents of force and power.on design
The idea of design informing DPP is very broad: it gathers architecture and products, images and information, the aesthetic and the technical. It also engages process and practice, object and structure, economy and politics, human agency and the agency of designed things.
Design is viewed with status in its own right — it is neither subordinated to the arts or sciences. …”

via: [www.desphilosophy.com]

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Toshiba surrenders!

Posted: February 19th, 2008, 2:31pm PST by mueller-j

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Ok, it is not really a design theme but for open source movement as an opponent on monopoly i think it is relevant blogging.

Toshiba, leading developer on HD DVD surrenders the fight. Neither will they develop any further HD DVD technology, nor continue to produce players. Because of that I think all other Companies ever dealt with HD DVD put down arms. The game seams to be over. Another monopoly is born. From now on Sony will be the king of the high definition world.

I’m a bit surprised of these changes. In the past Sony never had luck with their forced developments. Remember MemoryStick or MiniDisc. But this time the global players of the entertainment industry are responsible for this, after all almost everyone recently told to release on Blue Ray. That broke HD DVD’s neck.

If I were Toshiba, i would go the same way. Just like: “Nobody likes to play with me, so do I!”

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RFID - Think of Possibilities!

Posted: February 18th, 2008, 11:01am PST by mueller-j

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RFID chips are known for some time already. But there are no really interesting aplication areas for designers yet. Perhaps we could force that a bit and support some ideas.

There is a very interesting Company named PolyIC from Germany, that develops and produces RFID chips fast and Cheap. The clue is, that the circuits get printed directly onto a carrier material, like polyethylene.

Please visit the site for a second and think of the possibilities. It is a nice site with many details to lern more about how the chips are produced and the general functions of RFID.

PolyIC website

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