In a post titled ‘3D Printer Brings Vision to the Poor‘, Mark Proffitt looks at how digital manufacturing technology is being used to provide eyeglasses to people in low-income countries, where the conventional optician service would be far too expensive for those that need it. Mark Proffitt notes that: There are two obstacles to providing [...]

The Discover magazine website has an article about Behrokh Khoshnevis, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California, who has made a ‘contour crafter’.  This machine is a type of digital wall builder, where a robotically controlled nozzle squeezes a ribbon of concrete. When the nozzle completes a circuit, it tops the previous ribbon [...]

Webpronews.com staff writer Mike Sachoff reports on customized music provider Orpheus, which allows media producers to create customized music that will fit the specific needs of their projects. It uses a web-based software engine that allows the user to create custom music cues tailored their specific needs. According to the article: “Users can control the [...]

The latest edition of academic publication ‘International Journal of Manufacturing Technology’ is a special issue on e-Manufacturing and Mass Customization. The issue is guest-edited by Dr. Pingyu Jiang, of the State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engineering, part of the School of Mechanical Engineering at Xi’an Jiaotong University in China. In his editorial, Dr. Jiang [...]

A number of product configuration system suppliers will be exhibiting at the SolidWorks World 2007 Conference, being held from February 4 through February 7, 2007 in New Orleans, USA. The ninth annual SolidWorks World Conference brings together designers, engineers, managers, and partners to discuss ideas, trends, and the technology shaping the future of mechanical design. [...]

The New Scientist magazine website carries a feature on the Fab@Home project being developed by Cornell University.  The Fab@Home project involves the creation of a cheap self-assembly device capable of fabricating 3D objects.  The researchers, Hod Lipson and PhD student Evan Malone, hope the machine could kick start a revolution in home fabrication – by [...]

+ Dash Navigation Inc. has made a deal with search engine Yahoo! that allows Dash Express users to search Yahoo! Local for nearby products, services or businesses from their cars. Dash Navigation is located Mountain View, Calif. and is funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Sequoia Capital, and Skymoon Ventures. The company says that [...]

The IEEE has begun work on a standard to create a comprehensive personalized health informatics system.  The working group creating this standard will hold a workshop in London, UK, on 24 and 25 January 2007 to form an action plan for developing the standard. The meeting, the IEEE 2407 Personalized Health Informatics Workshop, will be [...]

Business and innovation website Springwise has compiled ‘Top 10 Business Ideas in 2006′ under various categories. These lists are an interesting review of the best and most innovative business ideas of the year, but some are of particular interest to this website due to their association with mass customization, outside innovation, crowdsourcing and so on. [...]

As the worlds of television and the Internet converge, writers and television producers are developing new forms of interactive and personalised television. On 27 December, the world’s first ‘ShapeShifted’ romantic comedy was broadcast, as “Accidental Lovers” (page in Finnish language) was shown on Finnish national television station, YLE TV1 (page in Finnish language). Using original [...]

Xerox Corporation and its newly acquired subsidiary XMPie have teamed up with print industry trade publication Graphic Arts Monthly, to digitally produce customized colour covers for its December issue, currently on its way to more than 70,000 subscribers of the magazine. The personalized cover features outer space-themed artwork with the subscriber’s first name written in [...]

Three-dimensional imaging company Direct Dimensions was provided with an interesting opportunity to demonstrate their technology recently. While attending NextFest 2006 in New York City, talk show host Kelly Ripa stopped by to visit the Direct Dimensions booth and participated in the 3D face scanning process being offered as a demonstration of new technology. The data [...]

Andrew Kantor, a columnist for USA Today, notes that the falling price of technology has allowed mass customization and personalization to become established across a wide variety of industries. Kantor notes that the lowering of technology costs has made personalized everyday products far more affordable that would have been the case a few years ago. [...]

Networking giant Cisco recently expanded the video and IPTV delivery capabilities of its Internet Protocol Next-Generation Network (IP NGN) architecture with the introduction of the Cisco Content Delivery System (CDS). Cisco says that this solution offers both cable and wireline providers a highly-extensible platform for the delivery of video-on-demand and time-shifted video services. The Cisco [...]

In the last few weeks, a couple of interesting articles have been posted which focus on efforts in the development of digital manufacturing. The first, by Erick Schonfeld, editor-at-large for Business 2.0 magazine, concerns startup digital manufacturing company EoPlex in ‘The Next Net’ blog. The article describes how EoPlex “has figured out a way to [...]