Happy Christmas from Ireland to all MadeForOne.com readers, where ever in the World you may be.

2009 has been a difficult year economically for many, we can only hope that the lessons learned from past mistakes will help to make a better future for all.

Best wishes

Donal

Since then, I’ve looked again at the Bloglines site, and have found that it allows public blogrolls to be downloaded as OPML files, something which was unavailable on Share Your OPML. Therefore I’ve added the MadeForOne.com blogroll to Bloglines. You can save a list of all the items in the blogroll to a file (usually called ‘export.opml’) by selecting the ‘Export Subscriptions’ button, and saving the file on your PC.

You can then add all the items in the MadeForOne.com blogroll to your own feed reader by importing the ‘export.opml’ file to it.

I’m slowly re-designing the homepage to act as more of a ‘portal’ to the information contained in the various sections of the site.

If you are involved in organising an event that you think should be included in the calendar, please contact me with the details.

An interesting aspect of the Spore game is that it allows players to design their own characters that they can use. In addition, to quote a Business Week article, they may also be able to get a personalized model of the character they have designed:

It may not be there in the same form in the final game, but you could also hit a menu item and send your creature to Maxis’ 3D printer, which automatically creates a model of it. It is likely that a model-making service (which will probably require payment) will be available when the game appears.

The role of GIGPAD is to carry out research on how an IT department can accelerate genetic and genomic science from discovery through to clinical care. According to the article:

“GIGPAD supports both research and clinical processes on the same platform so that research processes can be easily adapted when a clinically relevant breakthrough occurs. This allows a smooth transition from discoveries to translational medicine and provides IT support for new diagnostics sooner.”

While ForTheFit.com is not a mass customizer, the article also looks at developments in mass customization technology for the apparel sector, such as Archetype’s success with own-brand retailers. It also includes comments by B. Joseph Pine, author of the landmark 1993 book ‘Mass Customization’. He is quoted as saying:

“Mass customization will be to the 21st century what mass production was to the 20th century. The apparel industry is at the leading edge because garments have few pieces (16 for a pair of shorts) and lend themselves to modular assembly.”

A large amount of research has been carried out in recent times on scanning a person’s shape to determine their sizes for various types of clothing. However, the St. Petersburg article notes that precision laser scanning can take twenty minutes. This is an inconvenience that most casual shoppers would reject.

One possible solution to this issue is the idea of a customer getting a body scan once, and being able to use that repeatedly, a sort of virtual representation of physical attributes. The Higgins Project, which Frank Piller outlined recently, may be a roadmap to achieving this goal.

One interesting quote from the article:

“The aerospace and automobile industries now see themselves as system integrators; their role is not to manufacture all of the underlying parts and components but to purchase them from a global marketplace. In this new context, managing variety and providing mass customization have become the driving forces in organizing design and manufacturing organizations.”

There are also a few that are couldn’t be categorized as relating to mass customization, but are likely to be relevant to readers of this site.

I have found that there are other blogs that I would like to include in the blogroll, but it would take up more space than is available if I were to list them all.

So, I have recently registered on Share Your OPML. This site allows anyone to register and upload their blog reading list as an OPML file. I have recently uploaded my reading list, and I will be adding to it on an ongoing basis. I’ll be adding a link from the site to the blogroll on Share Your OPML.
An OPML file is basically an xml list of blog subscriptions. Unfortunately Share Your OPML doesn’t yet have a facility to download other subscribers’ OPML files yet, but you can still browse around and see if there is anything that you might want to add to your own blogroll.
Enjoy!