CloudFab.com is  a new distributed fabrication service that connects buyers who need digital fabrication (3D printing, laser cutting/etching, etc.) to the sellers who have the capacity.  The goal of the project is to provide a central marketplace to connect buyers and sellers in the digital fabrication sector.

The ethos (if that is the right word)  behind CloudFab is that a vast reservoir of spare capacity exists in digital manufacturing resources, waiting to be tapped by latent demand.   Similarly, many people have ideas, and design skills for individualised parts and products, but lack the means to produce them.  Therefore the CloudFab platform has been developed to enable those with the fabrication equipment to share their machines with the greater public.

The founders of CloudFab are Nick Pinkston and Steve Klabnik.  I asked Nick to tell me the story of the founders backgrounds and how CloudFab came into existence.  This is his response:

“My background is  more in making physical things. I started out with Lego, moved to rocketry and when I last had free time I loved developing / tuning automotive turbocharger systems.  My car hobby showed me how difficult / expensive it was to access the equipment that I needed to complete my projects.

Steve has been programming for the vast majority of his life.  He’s used to building digital products as both the current maintainer for the Hackety Hack project and director of the open source operating system XoMB.  When I told him about the digital fabrication scene, he was blown away by the future that the movement was ushering in.  He’s excited to be able to use his computer skills to facilitate “physical compiling” “.

On the origins of CloudFab:

“We started out trying to build something like TechShop in Pittsburgh, but we quickly found that the numbers don’t work very well.  That’s why we started HackPittsburgh – Pittsburgh’s hackerspace – so that we could get a shared workspace up and running locally.  We wanted to tackle the problem on a broader scale though, so we looked into how we could better utilize existing equipment to make it more accessible for the rest of us – the idea was born.

We received some financing from a State program funding technology to give us money to develop the original concept and later were accepted into the AlphaLab program, Pittsburgh’s version of Y-Combinator.”

Now, it’s fair to say that the easiest part of an online venture to match buyers and sellers is the design of the website.  It’s the business of convincing enough of each to register that is the difficult part.  The founders of CloudFab haven’t simply built a website in the hope that business will come.

Beyond the website, they’ve started by forming a local microcosm of the market by signing up all the local fabrication shops and design firms in their local area of Pittsburgh USA, as well as talking to local hobbyists and artists.  Nick Pinkston says:

“In the beginning, we’re focusing on 3D printing processes, and will soon be moving into laser cutting, CNC, etc.   Also, we’ve been building a lot of relationships with others in the industry and maker community.

Now that we’re going into private beta, we’re opening it up for both sides.  We’re excited to hear back from people and interate from there.  Also, there will be some new features and services coming in the following months.”

CloudFab, like any other marketplace matching buyers and sellers, earns income from trade through the website.  It’s current advertised rates are determined by total gross transaction cost, following this schedule:

• $0 – $100: No commission charge.
• $101 – $300: 6% of cost
• $301 – $1,000: 5% of cost
• $1,001 – $3,000: 4% of cost
• $3,000+: Flat rate of $90.

It’s remarkable that two separate services have appeared within a few weeks of each other, linking buyers of digital fabrication services with providers of those services.  Whereas the 100kGarages.com joint venture between Ponoko and ShopBot (see previous post) initially links buyers with providers of CNC routing services, CloudFab’s current focus on 3D printing services means that the two will not be going head-to-head in direct competition for the present.

So, the new age of online trade continues to gather pace.  It could be argued that the inclusion of Microsoft Internet Explorer with the Windows 95 operating system was the tipping point for the explosive growth in the World Wide Web that occurred from the mid-1990′s.  The big question is, what will be the tipping point for digital manufacturing?  It may be the growth of online marketplaces like CloudFab, but no-one really knows.  That’s the thing about tipping points, they only become obvious after they happen.

First off, Objet Geometries launched the Alaris30 Desktop 3D Printer, which can create smooth surfaces, complex geometries, small moving elements, fine details, stand-out text and whatever else the design demands.

The Alaris30 is based on Objet’s Photopolymer Jetting Technology, and the company says that the strong model material and highly accurate printing enable thin walls and small moving parts.

The Alaris30 3D printer by Objet Technologies (picture via Manufacturers Monthly (Australia))

The Alaris30 operates as a network printer, allowing multiple designers in the office to send their files to be printed. The 300 x 200 x 150 mm (11.81 x 7.87 x 5.9in)  build tray enables large models or many small parts to be built simultaneously. As can be seen in the picture, the Alaris30 is (relatively speaking when compared with some 3D printers) small and lightweight enough to fit in any office, on a desk or with the stand Objet offers with the printer. It uses sealed 1kg cartridges of resins and the printed models are fully cured on the build tray.

In January, The Dimension 3D Printing Group, a business unit of Stratasys, Inc. launched the uPrint Personal 3D Printer (priced at $14,900 USD).

Like the Alaris30 described above, the uPrint is designed for the desktop,  requiring only a 25 x 26 in. footprin, and features an 8 x 6 x 6 in. build envelope.

The Dimension Printing uPrint

Stratasys developed the rapid prototyping process known as fused deposition modeling (FDM).  The process creates functional models and end-use parts directly from any 3D CAD program using ABS plastic, polycarbonate, PPSF, and blends. Using FDM, uPrint builds models with Stratasys ABSplus — a material on average 40 percent stronger than the company’s standard ABS material, making it ideally suited for testing the form, fit and function of models and prototypes.  uPrint also features a soluble support removal system, allowing for hands-free removal of the model support material.

uPrint is being targeted as an alternative to using external prototyping services – the company says it makes 3D printing “immediate and convenient through every design iteration, with no waiting in queue for a shared printer and no waiting for models to arrive from an outside service”.

In an article on the uPrint in MCADCafe, editor Jeffrey Rowe asked

“Does the announcement of the uPrint Personal 3D Printer finally usher in the era of 3D printing for everybody? At $15,000 it’s still a bit out of the price range of casual users, but might be the start of the 3D printing revolution that has been promised for a several years now by some vendors and industry pundits.”

He goes on to describe some of the other projects aimed at developing low-cost 3D printers, including RepRap, Fab@Home, and the somewhat troubled Desktop Factory (of which more later).  It is clear that 3D printer with a price of €15,000 will never be a consumer product, but it continues a general downward trend in hardware prices.  It is this trend, rather than the current generation of 3D printers themselves, which fuels the belief that commercially produced 3D printing hardware will eventually become accessible to consumers.

The RepRap and Fab@Home projects are, of course, already accessible to individuals in terms of cost, but the requirement that the customer assemble their 3D printer is likely to be an obstacle to their mass-market adoption.

Meanwhile, Desktop Factory has encountered difficulties with its technology and financing.  In March, Desktop Factory CEO Cathy Lewis issued a statement that the company was “forced to reduce our spending and focus on just the most vital activities to preserve our cash”.  This followed a period from October 2007, during which the company had to deal with major technical issues.  Assessments of this issue pointed to the need for a redesign of the company’s imaging sub-system.  Work on this continued during 2008, and the re-design was ready for customer acceptance testing in February 2009.

The Desktop Factory 3D printer

The statement went on to describe issues with  investor financing:

“From a macro view we have done well with $2M raised and another $1 million needed to finalize the round. However, we had not planned for the extreme deterioration of the financial markets and need to comply with an important ‘contingency’ from the venture capital firm. The contingency stipulates that no monies go into the round until all monies are available, which is the crux of the problem. We still need $1M and sufficient time to find the third investor in this difficult economy.

While we continue to aggressively work this issue we have judiciously delayed the customer beta. We need to make certain we have the right resources available to meet with our investors and that we are able to fully support our customers during a rigorous beta process.”

The Desktop Factory 3D printer, which has a list price of $4,995, uses an inexpensive halogen light source and drum printing technology to build robust parts layer by layer from composite plastic powder.  Notwithstanding its current difficulties, it appears to be lowest-priced commercially produced 3D printer to date.  The outcome of these current difficulties may have a bearing on the future direction of the 3D printing hardware sector as a whole.  If Desktop Factory does manage to get a 3D printer to market at the price indicated, it would be a significant step towards consumer accessible commercially produced 3D printing hardware.

The development of more affordable 3D printing hardware continues to gather pace, and the 3D printing concept is being expanded to materials beyond metal and plastics.

A perfect example of this latter trend is Mcor Technologies.  This Irish-based company, founded in 2004 by brothers Dr Conor MacCormack and Fintan MacCormack, has developed 3D printing technology called the Mcor Matrix, that uses ordinary paper as the raw material for the creation of three dimensional objects.  This company has received a wave of media attention in Ireland and elsewhere.  The Irish Independent newspaper reported in December how:

The Mcor Matrix prints physical 3D models from digital data using A4 paper, water based adhesive and a tungsten carbide blade. Models have the appearance of a wood-carving and are “tough, durable and eco-friendly”. The final models can be treated to give them a smooth, shiny finish and make them more durable. The Mcor Matrix is currently installed in several universities in Ireland and the UK, and the company has received sales enquiries from Dyson, Nintendo, IBM, Stanford and Cambridge.

The Mcor Matrix’ consumables consist of ordinary A4 paper, adhesive and blade.  It uses a special commercially available water based PVA adhesive, and the blade is made from cemented tungsten carbide.  In an attempt to reduce the capital cost of the machine, it was decided at the conceptual stage to use blade technology instead of lasers.

The Mcor Matrix 3D paper printer (image via Fabbaloo.com)

The Mcor Matrix has a patented adhesive dispensing system that deposits very small dots of adhesive onto the paper substrate.  It applies the adhesive selectively, depositing higher density on the part cross sections and lower on the waste. This enables easy weeding (separating off) of waste material.  It then uses the blade to cut out the part profile.

The finished parts have similar tactile characteristics to a wood carving – perhaps not surprising given that paper is derived from wood.  Media reports state that the price of a Mcor Matrix about USD25,000.  However, the running costs of the machine are extremely low, at €0.01 per cubic centimetre of production – said to one fortieth of other leading 3D printing solutions.

An article in the Vancouver Sun, ‘One-size-fits-all no more‘ provides an interesting overview on the topic of personalized medicine, explaining the topic everyday language, and decoding some of the terminology used in this area.

Scott Duke Harris, writing in the Mercury News, includes personalized medicine as a ‘Tech trend to watch in 2009‘ and summarises some of the examples that have made the most progress towards widespread usage.

In addition to technological developments, the increasing affordability of current personalized medicine technologies such as genomic sequencing will advance their use in the healthcare market, which John Carroll describes in the Fierce Biotech blog.

Personalized medicine is frequently concerned with diagnosis – analyzing whether a particular existing treatment is compatible with an individual patient’s genetic makeup. The New York Times looked in detail at this area in a recent article titled ‘Patient’s DNA may be a Signal to Tailor Medication‘, focusing in particular on changes to the U.S. legislative environment to reflect advances in science. It also raises the question as to whether major drug companies will be enthusiastic about personalized medicine technologies that may reduce the sales of existing drugs, by identifying patients for whom they are likely to be ineffective.

It should be borne in mind that the current trends in personalized medicine are mostly concerned with the development of more effective diagnostic techniques, something which is evidenced by all the articles referenced here. It is likely to be many more years before personalized treatments, that combat diseases with unique solutions based on individual patient genetics, become a reality.

The DK travel customized travel guide website

They are similar in concept to Offbeat Guides, which were covered on this site recently.

The Inventorspot article considers the DK Travel customized travel guide to be a superior offering to the Offbeat Guide, although it should be pointed out that the Offbeat Guide is still in a ‘beta’ stage, to allow it to be evaluated by customers before launch, a method more commonly used with computer software.

The first of these blogs is called Complex Selling Made Effective, with articles written by contributors from Cincom, principally Louis Columbus and Dale Wolf of Cincom Manufacturing Business Solutions. While some companies use blogs as little more than a press release service, Complex Selling Made Effective is populated with genuinely interesting posts. While this blog is in existence since June 2008, I only became aware of it recently and am catching up on the posts to date.

The second, Product Configurator Blog, is a product blog for Cincom Acquire sales and product configurator, which highlights and discusses the technology options and features to speed up sales in a complex manufacturing setting. This blog is more commercial in nature and the content is somewhat comparable to ‘White Papers’ – documents written by IT companies to that analyse a particular business challenge in a quasi-academic fashion, but are ultimately aimed at selling the company’s products.

Following a number of consolidations over recent years, Cincom is one of a smaller group of independent software suppliers specialising in products for complex selling. The contributors to Complex Selling Made Effective have an opportunity to become ‘technology evangelists’ for their company, emulating the likes of blogger Robert Scoble, who was the public face of Microsoft to many in the technology community during his spell working for that company.

Offbeat Guides create personalized, up-to-date travel guides that cover over 30,000 travel destinations, using a combination of search technology and curation by both amateur and professional travel experts.  The Offbeat Guides website states that their guides scour the web to find the best, most up-to-date information about each destination.  Customers can personalize the information they want, based on their travel dates, preferences, and destination.  The guides come with local maps, festivals and events going on during the customer’s period of visiting, exchange rates, key phrases in the city’s language, weather forecasts and other relevant information.

The key selling point of Offbeat Guides is that standard guidebooks are often 12 to 18 months out of date as soon as they are available on bookshelves.  Offbeat Guides claims that its content is the most up-to-date because they have an enormous technology base of spiders and crawlers that find the best information out on the internet, and combine it with information from established authors and thousands of locals who are always updating the information about where they live.

Offbeat Guides is also a strong believer in Creative Commons, in which users can share, create and build information that is available for mixing and remixing into unique new applications. As well as Creative Commons licensed information, it also use proprietary content and professional authors, which it says makes for accurate and authoritative information in our guides. The customer can get their guide in electronic format for printing at home, or Offbeat Guides can create and ship a printed guide before the time of the customer’s trip, with all the latest information packed inside.

According to David Sifry, the company is run by obsessive technologists who happen to travel a lot, rather than being drawn from the travel industry. In order to create a personalized travel guide, they ask the customer just five questions:

• Where are you going?
  When will you be there? – So that they can include information about local festivals, events, club meetings, sports teams, concerts, and other timely information
  Where are you coming from? – With this information, Offbeat Guides will give the customer contextual information, like timezone differences, embassies and consulates for their home country, language guides, exchange rates, electrical adapters needed, and so on.
  Where are you staying? – Offbeat Guides uses this to localize the maps that go into the personalized guide, and put the customer’s hotel right at the centre of things.
  The Traveler’s Name: – They can put the customer’s name ron the book cover, and this can be used for gift purposes.

The website indicates that the pdf version (for downloading and printing at home) of an Offbeat Guide costs US$9.95, and the print edition costs US$24.95 plus packaging and delivery.

In his blog post, David Sifry notes:

You get full control over your guide – so if you already know where you’re staying, you can click to deselect all of the information about hotels, for example. You can add customized chapters and fill them with information that you gather from your friends, or from around the internet.

This reflects an interesting point – that mass customization of products can also refer to the omission of elements that are not needed by the customer.  Mass customization is often described only in the context of a customer adding features or elements to a basic product.  However, there may also be the potential to develop opportunities in the area of allowing customers to omit elements or features from even the basic specification of a product, if these are not needed by the customer.  However, in the case of Offbeat Guides, it does not appear that omitting a chapter results in a lower price.

The personalization of information, whether on travel or any other topic, is normally viewed only in the context of delivery over the web.  If the Offbeat Guides proposal is successful, it will possibly generate a new level of interest in personalized book publishing.  Personalization in this context refers to the content of the book, rather than the more cosmetic types of personalization (such as putting someone’s name on the cover or at various places in the content).

I think that the Offbeat Guides idea could become a success, as there is still a lot to be said for a printed travel guide that is not dependent on an internet connection, or a suitable power supply to recharge a PDA.  Printed documents can be carried around a city stuffed in a jacket or backpack, do not need batteries, can be generally thrown about, and will still work afterwards.

One critical issue for Offbeat Guides is delivery times for printed versions – the company will need to carefully analyse actual delivery times, rather than the claimed delivery times of the various providers.  This will ensure that customers are correctly informed as to whether there is sufficient time to deliver a printed version of their Offbeat Guide before their planned departure date.  Getting this right could prevent a great deal of hassle for the company from disgruntled future customers.  The worst thing for the company would be having to deal with irate customers who do not receive their personalized printed travel guide on time.  Perhaps delivery times, though outside the direct control of Offbeat Guides, could form a useful part of the beta testing.

According to Delcam’s CAD Product Marketing Manager, Chris Lawrie, “Tribrid Modelling offers a better way of working for all companies developing new variants from existing designs, especially those making products that need to be personalised for a particular customer. The combination of solid modelling, surface modelling and triangle modelling provides a unique design system for these companies. Having all the different modelling techniques in a single package reduces the need to transfer data between multiple programs and so streamlines the whole product development process.”

Delcam has developed this approach through the integration of its PowerSHAPE surface and solid modelling functionality with the reverse engineering and triangle modelling options that were in earlier versions of CopyCAD. This means that designers can move data captured with reverse engineering into the design environment more easily and so incorporate additional features into any reverse-engineered design more quickly. The new combination software also incorporates a wide range of enhancements to many of the key operations.

Delcam has developed this unique design approach through the integration of its PowerSHAPE surface and solid modelling functionality with the reverse engineering and triangle modelling options that were in earlier versions of CopyCAD. This means that designers can move data captured with reverse engineering into the design environment more easily and so incorporate additional features into any reverse-engineered design more quickly. However, the new combination is not just a simple bolting together of existing functionality. It incorporates a wide range of enhancements to many of the key operations.

For example, major improvements have been made to the sculpting and model repair tools previously available in CopyCAD to edit triangle files. These tools allow high-quality models to be produced from poor quality reverse engineering data, or from damaged or defective physical components. For example, uneven surfaces can be smoothed out, gaps in the data can be filled and extra points can be added in areas where only sparse data has been collected.

Also, the availability of functionality from PowerSHAPE in CopyCAD Pro has enabled easier, faster and more accurate creation of CAD surfaces from triangle data. The user still retains total control over the way the complete data set is divided into the component features and surfaces. However, each area can now be converted into CAD data by generating a network of curves and then projecting it onto the mesh of triangles. A single surface is generated within the complete set of curves using the Smart Surfacing functionality from PowerSHAPE. This automatically analyses the curves and determines to most appropriate way to create the surface.

Analysis tools are available in Copy CAD Pro to display the differences between the triangle mesh and the resulting surface. This might show, for example, that a closer spacing between the curves would be needed in some areas of the model to keep the surfaces within the required tolerance.

Delcam says that the other key benefit of the integration into CopyCAD Pro of modelling options from PowerSHAPE is the ability to create “perfect” geometry, in areas where any reverse engineering system would give only approximate results. For example, the design might include one extruded surface, which could only be described by a series of individual surfaces in traditional reverse-engineering software. With the added modelling tools, it is easy in CopyCAD Pro to reproduce the original design intent, by replacing the required area with a single surface. Similarly, a reverse-engineered fillet area can be replaced with a consistent, smooth fillet, rather than existing as a set of complex, free-form patches that may have varying radii.

Tribrid Modelling also allows Boolean operations to be carried out between triangle models and either surfaces or solids. For many years, PowerSHAPE has been one of very few CAD systems able to perform Boolean operations between solids and surfaces. The ability to perform similar addition, subtraction and merge operations with triangles as well will make CopyCAD Pro even more flexible.

There are many examples where a combination of different techniques is needed to create a complete design. A typical example would be in the plastics industry, where initial hand-modelled prototypes are often produced in solid material. Reverse engineering from such models will only produce the external surfaces of the component. However, by using CopyCAD Pro, these surfaces can be offset by the material thickness to generate the internal surfaces. Extra geometric features, such as reinforcing ribs and bosses for fixing, can then be added with the extra solid modelling tools from PowerSHAPE to complete the design. The finished model can then be subtracted from a solid block to give the core and cavity shapes needed to mould the product.

Delcam claims that its introduction of Tribrid Modelling provides the optimum software solution for the mass customisation of designs. It notes that consumers are increasingly moving away from mass-produced products. This can be either because they want designs that are more individual or because they want an element of bespoke design, for example, for medical reasons or for increased comfort. This can only be achieved by incorporating reverse engineering alongside computer-based design methods.

Tribrid Modelling in CopyCAD Pro allows users to build up CAD models quickly and easily with data from different sources. It makes it easy to design the main outline of a product with CAD but to use hand models for complex details or decoration, or to capture specific data from a customer or patient. The extra data required can then be collected with a scanning device and combined with the main CAD model in the computer.

A similar approach can be taken when developing “new” parts that are, in fact, variations on existing components that were developed without CAD data. It is often quicker to digitise the existing part and limit the CAD work to the desired modifications, instead of completely recreating the whole part with CAD. This approach is particularly useful for companies, for example those in the ceramics industry, which update historic designs into modern reproductions.

Meanwhile, Geomagic, which provides software for digital shape sampling and processing (DSSP), has received an $8 million investment from Valhalla Partners. The funds will be used to develop innovative products and software platforms in engineering and medical markets, accelerate growth rates, and build a scalable business infrastructure.

Since its inception in 1996, Geomagic, based in North Carolina, has developed a range of award-winning products for DSSP, which describes the process of digitally capturing physical objects and automatically creating accurate 3D models for downstream design, analysis and inspection. Current Geomagic products include:

Version 10 of Geomagic Studio (for digital reconstruction of complex physical objects) and Geomagic Qualify (which enables fast, 3D graphical comparisons between CAD models and as-built parts for first-article inspection, inline or shop-floor inspection, trend analysis, and in-depth assessment), released earlier this year, were the most successful new product launches in the company’s history, coming at a time when DSSP is being acknowledged as a key to greater productivity and cost savings. Geomagic quotes a recent study by the Aberdeen Group stated that best-in-class companies are 2.7 times more likely to use DSSP in design and inspection than are less-successful companies.

Other software products in the Geomagic range include Geomagic Fashion for quickly extracting design intent of physical objects and creating CAD-ready surfaces for mechanical design; Geomagic Blade, the first inspection tool based on unique requirements from leading turbine-machinery companies for automatic dimensioning of turbine blades; Geomagic Review, free software for inspection analysis and collaboration; and Geomagic Piano, a dental CAD/CAM software platform that can be customized for dental equipment manufacturers.

“The support of Valhalla Partners is another validation of our technology and the growing acceptance of the DSSP market category,” said Ping Fu, Geomagic president and CEO. “We think the time is right to use our dominance in the early adopter market as a springboard into broader professional markets.”

It quotes Jane McCann, director of Smart Clothes and Wearable Technology at the University of Wales, who predicts that, in the next 10 years, clothes will have all kinds of functionality.

“A garment might have devices on it to help you find your way somewhere, or to tell you how fit you are. It could tell you where someone is to help you meet them, or tell you what’s on at a museum or club.”

Other new developments referred to include the use of thermochromic inks, that change colour when you touch or breathe on them, and a shape-memory alloy called Nitinol, produced by Montreal’s XS Labs, that can alter the shape of clothes while they are being worn.

So, here goes:

The website of Colby College in Maine, USA, carries a profile of Marybeth Luber, CEO of Archetype Solutions, a San Francisco company that offers consumers customized clothing based on their body sizes and preferred styles.

The Internet Retailer website reports that Personalized gifts e-retailer Personal Creations has implemented personalization technology on its website, including product recommendations, to improve the customer experience and meet its goals. The article states that the company has found that average order value is 45% higher for customers who click on product recommendations versus those who do not, and items per order is 68% higher. The article appears to be derived from a press release by Certona, which provided the technology to implement site personalization for Personal Creations.

A new startup based in New York called Proper Cloth offers high-end, customizable men’s dress shirts. The company has been founded by Seph Skerritt, an electrical engineer and recent graduate from MIT. In addition to the many design options, the Proper Cloth configurator appears to offer a very high level of flexibility regarding the size measurements for shirts.

The makers of the Flip Video family of camcorders have teamed up with online marketplace Cafepress.com to offer personalized Flip Mino camcorders on a purpose-designed website called TheFlip.com. Consumers can add their creations to the open marketplace and earn commissions for each camcorder sold using their designs. Users can also elect to have their designs earn commissions for non-profit causes.

That’s it for today!

Yerzies has been founded by Scott Killian and Tim Brule. The press release announcing the launch of Yerzies refers to the founders also having “helped pioneer online apparel mass customization with FanBuzz in 1996″.

Beyond printed tee shirts, Yerzies enables the creation of stitched sweatshirts and mixed-media designs that include metallic foils, glitters and other processes to create apparel which more closely resembles the design trends seen at retail. This includes printing on dark garments, metallic foils, flocks, glitters, glow-in-the-dark materials and stitched processes.

When they’re finished, users can purchase a single piece or set-up shop at Yerzies and sell their creations to other users. Where Yerzies, to my knowledge, has gone one step beyond the other players in this marketplace, is through a feature called “Make it Yerz”, that allows users to mix and match product options and in some cases, even make modifications to the content created by other users. This is very much a reflection of the ‘remix’ culture that has been present for some years in the area of user-generated content in areas such as music and film. It is probably a natural progression for this culture to migrate to the apparel sector, which is already characterised by a high level of creativity.

A quick road test of the Yerzies website shows that they even refer to designs which can be modified as a “Mashable design”, meaning that the original designer has decided to allow other users to modify their original design to create something entirely new.  However, mashed up designs cannot be re-sold by the person who uses this facility.

The configurator uses the concept of ‘layers’, which will be familiar to anyone that has worked with photo editing software. Users can upload their own images to a new layer, or use layers to add extra features from Yerzies range of options. Each design element can be saved as a separate layer within the Yerzies configurator and modified independently of the others. Therefore, if the user wants to go back and modify some part of a design, they can select the layer in question and work on it without disturbing the other aspects of the overall design. It’s a very clever adaptation of the layers concept,

While users can re-size or re-position the original design, and add additional elements to it in new layers, it appears however that there is not the option to actually change the ‘core’ of the original design. For example, I experimented with one design called ‘Rock God’, and found that it was not possible to change the colouring of the text or vary the text itself.

Yerzies says that it is also rolling out a series of robust tools for users to share and market the content they create including widgets that can be placed on their website, blog or favorite social networking site without any programming expertise. In the press release, Scott Killian is quoted as saying: “We allow anybody to create and sell their own designs. Each user decides how much they want to mark them up and they keep the profits.”

In addition to providing a platform for user-generated content, Yerzies has also licensed content from third-parties including typefaces from designers such as Ray Larabie which users can incorporate into their designs. “Helvetica and Times Roman might work nicely for writing a novel” said Killian, “but they don’t necessarily look great on a hooded sweatshirt. We’ve licensed trend-right typefaces that will actually look cool on a tee shirt or hoodie.”

Last year, Yerzies also engaged The Wildlfower Group, a New York-based licensing agency to assist the company with securing licenses with various entertainment and lifestyle properties. In addition to creating their own apparel, users will also have the option to purchase licensed apparel bearing the trademarks of various brands. “Over 20 properties have granted licenses to Yerzies including lifestyle brands David & Goliath, Ripple Junction, ODM and Changes, entertainment and media brands Pink Panther, Planet Earth and Speed Racer and consumer products brands such as Dubble Bubble and Jolt Cola.

The facility to re-use and modify existing designs certainly gives Yerzies an unique selling point compared with other online marketplaces for custom clothing.  Although very new, the website seems to have no difficulty in attracting members.  One to watch.

“Imagine nanoscale particles that work together, that adhere to one another or don’t adhere to one another under software control.  They can move and change shape.”

The process is contrasted with three dimensional printing (also called digital fabrication).  Whereas digital printing creates a static object with no intelligence, “with dynamic physical rendering  one can imagine this blob sitting on the table that responds to wireless commands, configures itself into different shapes, is capable of locomotion and can draw power from ambient energy.”

What this means is that an object could actually change it’s own shape in real time – science fiction made real.  PC Plus suggest that it will be at least a decade before this research becomes a product.

It almost seems that every month there is some new announcement or development that shrinks the gap between the physical world and the software world.  Now it seems that our most basic assumptions about physical products may need to be re-built from scratch.

The book opens by telling the story of Goldcorp Inc., a mining company that was on a downward slope due to strikes, lingering debts, and an exceedingly high cost of production. The company’s fifty year old mine in Ontario was presumed to be nearly exhausted. Goldcorp CEO Rob McEwen, a newcomer to the mining sector, approved $10M of investment in additional exploration. Results were positive, with test drilling suggesting large new deposits of gold, but pinpointing the exact locations of the gold was proving to be an insurmountable challenge for Goldcorp’s employees. By coincidence, McEwen attended a conference where the subject of Linux, the open source computer operating system, came up for discussion. McEwen had an epiphany – why not adopt the open source model for Goldcorp’s mining activities? This is exactly what he did. In March 2000, the “Goldcorp Challenge” was launched with $575,000 in prize money. All of Goldcorp’s geological data was published on the company website, with an invitation for anyone to contribute their knowledge on how the gold might be located within the 55,000 acre property.

By the time the process was completed, entries arrived from geologists, graduate students, consultants, mathematicians and military officers. The contestants had identified 110 possible targets on the property, of which over 80% proved correct. Since the challenge was inititated, eight million ounces of new gold deposits have been found, and Goldcorp has moved from being a $100M company to being a $9Bn company.

Goldcorp is perhaps one of the best examples of how a business can benefit from breaking down the walls which exist between it and the outside world. The traditional thinking has always been that research is secret, and only trusted employees should be involved. However, the success of community-based activity for non-commercial projects like Linux and Mozilla has presented new possibilities and a new outlook for many companies, who are re-thinking their traditional viewpoints on how they interact with customers, competitors, and the world at large.

Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, the authors of Wikinomics, build a convincing case for the benefits of breaking down barriers between business and potential outside sources of competitive advantage. They highlight the growth of new movements that are both a cause and a reflection of this new thinking. Firstly, the Peer Pioneers, most typically associated with free software projects such as Linux, but who have applied open source principles to create a multitude of products made of bits – in other words, information products. These include the many millions of contributors to open encyclopedia Wikipedia, and collaborative projects in many different areas of software development and scientific research.

Another development gathering pace is the ‘Ideagora’ – a marketplace for ideas, where questions can find solutions and solutions can find questions. Williams and Tapscott suggest that it is comparable to a classifieds site like craigslist.com, except rather than job ads and personals it posts a list of ideas and inventions that are ‘for sale’ or ‘wanted’. Examples of ideagoras are Yet2.com (which was new to me) and Fellowforce.com (featured on this site here recently (and again).

The next trend highlighted in Wikinomics is the growth of ‘Prosumers’. This term will be familiar to anyone who has studied mass customization. Originally the term was coined by Alvin Toffler in his book ‘The First Wave’, and referred to the ‘producer and consumer acting in concert’. It was sometimes used to label those customers who sought out mass customized products. However, Williams and Tapscott use the term differently, to describe the growing number of customers who are prepared to ‘hack’ products and adapt them in ways never envisaged by the producers. Wikinomics notes that the idea of amateur innovation goes back many years.  A perfect example is the story of how hot-rodding of cars developed in the late 1940′s and 1950′s.  Today’s amateur innovators have the advantage of the web where, instead of just sharing an idea with their neighbour, they can share it with thousands of fellow product hackers through online communities.

Examples of prosumerism today include communities that have grown around platforms such as Lego Mindstorms, the Apple iPod, and the Toyota Prius.  In many cases, after initial reluctance, the producer has engaged with these communities and involved them in the official innovation process.

Next up in this gallery of trends are a group of people called ‘The New Alexandrians’.  The original Great Library of Alexandria is reputed to have contained volumes on all the scientific knowledge then known.  Now, in the period of the fastest and broadest accumulation of human knowledge ever known, there is a new generation of Alexandrians who are again collating all the knowledge that exists.  These Alexandrians range from Google to librarians at institutions such as Harvard, Oxford and Stanford, who are scanning thousands of books and turning them into bits.  Along with media of all varieties, these digitized books will be sewn together into a universal library of knowledge and human culture.

This Alexandrian culture is also giving rise to a new age of collaborative science.  As Tapscott and Williams state:

“The emergence of open-access publishing and new Web services will place infinite reams of knowledge in the hands of individuals and help weave globally distributed communities of peers.  The rise of large-scale collaborations in domains such as earth sciences and biology, meanwhile, will help scientific communities launch an uprecedented attack on problems such as global warming and HIV/AIDS.  All considered, leading scientific observers expect more change in the next fifty years of science than in the last four hundred years of enquiry.”

Many different examples of scientific collaboration projects are described in the book.  Projects like the Human Genome Project, and Bioinformatics.org all use collaborative open source techniques to advance biological and medical research.  In  documenting this trend for a wider audience, Tapscott and Williams are providing a very effective rebuttal to those who have suggested that participants in open source initiatives are only interested in electronic gadgets.

Wikinomics also examines the ‘Platforms for Participation’ – the technical environments that have been developed to facilitate user innovation and interaction.  In many cases, these are application programming interfaces (API’s), developed by the likes of Google, Amazon and eBay, that enable small businesses and individuals to build innovative applications never envisaged by the companies themselves.  Such platforms do not just exist in the commercial sector.  Many not-for-profit organisations have built systems that examine publicly available data (in the U.S. at least) on pollution, crime and social cohesion.

The book also looks at what the authors call ‘The Global Plant Floor’.  This examines the possibilities for digital fabrication.  It also examines the possibilities for open architectures (i.e. an open basic design to which components of various kinds can be added, such as that used in personal computers) to be used in many other industries.  The book profiles the Lifan motorcycle company, that uses an open basic architecture on its motorcycles, which means that components from many different sources can be used without changing the basic design.  Tapscott and Williams use the example of Lifan to dismiss the idea that peer production is only suited to creating information-based goods.  They note that if physical products are designed to be modular, then, theoretically at least, large numbers of lightly co-ordinated supplies can engage in designing and building components for the product, much like the thousands of Wikipedians add to and modify Wikipedia’s entries.

The book rounds off with an examination of the ‘Wiki Workplace’.  This, as you can imagine, is a working environment which places far greater levels of reliance on staff to contribute towards organisational development and innovation in business process.  It is very hard to argue with the ideas put forward, especially when one reads the the account of how Geek Squad, an IT home-assistance service, has applied them to its business.

Personally, I have found books that deal with the trend towards peer production and open collaboration models to be interesting, but sometimes lacking in flow and not always easy to read.  Wikinomics is both informative and entertaining – it’s actually enjoyable to read.  I must admit that I got a little bit of satisfaction from the account of Lifan’s use of open architectures on motorcycles, as I had suggested something similar for the auto industry a few months ago.  Of course, few would believe me when I say I hadn’t read the book first.

Business books tend to go out of date quickly.  However, I expect that Wikinomics will be read for generations to come as a chronicle of how many of the existing assumptions about business fell away to be replaced by a new, distributed and collaborative approach  in the early 21st Century.
The authors and publishers of Wikinomics have adopted the open collaborative strategy themselves:  An addition to the book, called the Wikinomics Playbook, has been compiled using peer production techniques and is expected to be published shortly.

Jeff Crites, Fellowforce.com Director in North America, explained: “We started our platform for Open Innovation two months ago, and since then we’ve received ideas and suggestions for leading brands worldwide. The idea for this new service is due in large part to a submission in our own innovation box. A Fellowforce ‘Fellow’, Marcel Heinkens of the Netherlands, suggested we offer an Open Innovation widget for websites. Today, four weeks later, we’re introducing the ‘Innovate Us’ button, enabling any business to welcome ideas from a global force of innovators”.

FellowForce describes the ‘Innovate Us’ button as being like a ‘Digg-this’ application for innovation, empowering and encouraging consumers to submit ideas to company controlled (Fellowforce enabled) innovation boxes. “We prefer to call them Innovation Boxes because consumer participation is more than just a feedback tool”, adds Crites, “it’s a driver for innovation. And for companies, this is like having a souped-up RSS aggregator to manage idea feeds.”

The basic ‘Innovate Us’ button is free of charge, but companies can also upgrade for full facilitation, customization and complete open innovation box solutions. Consumers can see status reports on their submissions, so the process is transparent between parties. Fellowforce says it will soon launch an Innovation Forum, giving companies the option to take ‘Innovate Us’ ideas into the open for feedback from Fellows – adding an important social networking element to the innovation process.

Among the early adopters of the widget are FloorWindo International, the Mindtrek Conference, Telme Clothing and BizzFlip, described as a niche Craigslist for business.

Companies can post ‘innovation challenges’ on the FellowForce Challenge Board, and the  ‘Innovate Us’ button will be connected to their ‘Innovation Box’.  This means that users of the companies’ websites, who might never otherwise be aware of open innovation, have a means to propose innovations to the company in question through the FellowForce system.

With this new widget, FellowForce can bring open innovation to a potentially huge audience of visitors to the websites of other companies.  It reduces somewhat the need to spend large resources on publicising the FellowForce website.  The marketing focus is likely to shift towards persuading as many companies as possible to adopt their service and use the FellowForce widget on their websites.

CreateSpace was originally founded as CustomFlix Labs, Inc. in 2002 and acquired by Amazon.com Inc. in 2005. Prior to launching the Books on Demand service, CreateSpace was already providing inventory-free, physical distribution of CDs and DVDs on Demand, and video downloads via Amazon Unbox.

In addition, the company is no longer charging setup fees for books, audio CDs and DVDs. Authors, filmmakers and musicians can now offer their works on Amazon.com, CreateSpace.com and via their own free customizable eStore without any inventory, setup fees or minimum orders.

“The new CreateSpace Books on Demand service removes substantial economic barriers and makes it really easy for authors who want to self-publish their books and distribute them on Amazon.com,” said Jeff Wilke, senior vice president, North American Retail, Amazon.com. “The service will also give millions of Amazon customers access to an even greater selection of books, just as CreateSpace’s DVD and CD on Demand services are adding significant selection to our movie and music catalogs.”

Books on Demand works the same way as CreateSpace’s DVD and CD on Demand offerings. CreateSpace books sold on Amazon.com are printed on demand, display “in stock” availability on Amazon.com and can be shipped within 24 hours from when they are ordered. The books are automatically eligible for Amazon programmes such as “Search Inside!”, “Amazon Prime”, “Super Saver Shipping” and so on.

There are no setup fees or minimum orders for the CreateSpace on-demand service. Members are required to purchase and approve a proof copy of their book, CD, and/or DVD before titles can be produced on demand. Books published via the CreateSpace Books on Demand service are printed with high-quality, full-colour paperback covers. Black-and-white or color interiors in multiple trim sizes can be selected as options. Members can also order high-quality copies of their book, DVD or CD at competitive wholesale prices.

An important aspect of the CreateSpace service is that the creator of the work retains the rights to the work. There is no attempt to ‘muscle in’ on the future earning potential of the work, should it become successful.

The scope of the CreateSpace service certainly provides plenty of options for content creators, especially in video. They can sell in DVD, HD-DVD or video download. Blue-Ray is due to be added to the roster in the near future. Additional services include assistance with cover artwork, conversion of videos to DVD’s, high definition capture and authoring to HD-DVD, and high volume disk replication.

Steffen Hoellinger, writing on the Openeur website, compares the retailer’s share of a commercial DVD sold on Amazon.com with that for a DVD sold on CreateSpace. The content creator retains a much higher percentage of the selling price when the product is sold through CreateSpace. For example, a 100 page black and white book with a list price of $25.00 sold through a CreateSpace E-Store would earn the author a royalty of $14.85 per sale. This raises the possibility that CreateSpace might become a distribution channel of choice for authors, film makers and musicians. If a writer or artist already has a public profile, is it necessary for them to contract with a publishing company to publish their work, if they can sell directly to end users and keep a much higher portion of the retail price for themselves?

The CreateSpace on-demand publishing service is not the only one of its kind – Lulu.com also offers self publishing services for books, digital downloads, CD and DVD. If CreateSpace provides publishers with an effective level of access to Amazon.com users (in other words, items available on CreateSpace show up in the search results on Amazon), then Lulu.com may find itself being squeezed out unless it can form an alliance with another heavyweight such as a mainstream search engine or social network.