Thglimited - Heavy Industries

This is beautiful, stunning, computer-aided mechanical art. See your face in blocks of wood. This one's my favorite video, but check out all of Daniel Rozin's mechanical mirrors and other cool interactive art.

I wish I'd always have my camera at the ready when I see something that's "not in the manual" so that I could document my tiny everyday findings and put all these observations together in a book. Unfortunately, I do not carry my camera with me 24/7 or am just not ready to 'fire away'.

Sometimes though, I manage to catch the moment. The images below show Peter working, while being in the waiting loop of a telephone support line (his phone resting on his shoulder) and my former colleague Diego, talking to a customer, having his mobile phone neatly tucked in between his hat and ear.

People 'subconsciously' tend to adapt to their environments or find workarounds for problems that are not even identified as such. I find, that observing these behaviors is of incredible value for both engineering and design, as it often points straight at the most intuitive of solutions and I am always thinking about the kind of implications that these behaviors could have for the product development process: Should there be a piece of velcro on the back of a phone?

What kind of design ideas come to your mind looking at the above photos?

Actually, a book similar to the one that I will never write has already been published by IDEO's Jane Fulton Suri (check out this Business Week article). While her publication "Thoughtless Acts" obviously doesn't contain photos that are as good as the ones that I never took, "Thoughtless Acts" can serve both as a source of inspiration and a reminder to look at our world with curious eyes - I would suggest to buying a copy for our library.

Asus has been one of the IT-industry's most avid second-rank brands for a decade or so, but emerged a few years ago as a trendsetter in manufacturing, engineering and design, most prominently manifested in the introduction of the leather-clad S6 notebook series and the presentation of numerous IT design studies sporting casings made of bamboo.

While it took more than a year after the release of the S6 for a competitor - namely BenQ's R45 - to enter the arena,...

... the market will be quite crowded with products sporting wood veneer by the time that Asus will start shipping the bamboo-versions of its S6 and U6 notebooks in June.

MSI is having its take at the product category around that same timeframe and Fujitsu is showing off its Wood Shell concept notebook.

Manufactured in Taiwan, it seems Dell's bamboo-clad small form factor desktop computer will also come in a more common plastic flavor.

Last but not least, Korean manufacturer Cowon has introduced its N3 media player which comes with a walnut veneer.

With all these "new applications of old materials", promising products that will age beautifully in a similar way as a pair of jeans does, I am asking two questions:

In terms of design, to me leather products always speak of portable items (think "wallet" or "filofax") while the use of wood mostly suggests stationary objects, e.g. furniture.
For this reason, I am wondering whether all the veneered gadgets above will be accepted by customers in the same way as the leather-clad S6 notebook (not really a retail success due to its high price) was. What do you think?

Secondly, Asus's original bamboo notebook was touted "Eco-Book" and deserved this name through the use of easily removable "wooden skins" that would be used as decoration to an inner structure made of plain, easy to recycle plastic.
While this could be considered an eco-friendly alternative to the layers of spray-paint applied to common IT products, the devices above feature veneers that are permanently attached to the products' plastic/metal structures. The resulting composite materials are - from an environmental standpoint - probably a worst case scenario and I wonder, if the market will be able to see this through the marketing stunt of "natural materials"...?

I read this very interesting article, that introduces new “micro-mesoscale machine tools" (mMT). A proprietary technology by Microlution, these mMT milling machines are 1/10 the size and 25% to 70% the cost of traditional machine tools and can be used for prototyping and low-volume production of parts smaller than 2 cubic inches.

Building prototypes, micromachining uses a broader range of materials than are possible with SLA, and generates parts that are 5 to 10 time more accurate.

In manufacturing, mMT milling machines can produce parts that would traditionally be micro-injection molded, thus avoiding the purchase of expensive intricate molds, while providing a faster and higher-quality alternative.

Do you think, it is worth exploring mMT for some of the products that we are developing?

How about some cocktails with your sermon?  In Sidney, Ohio, the Country Rock Church is now holding services in a local pub. Their website promotes: “Top regional bands, pizza, wings, rowdy fun and a short message.” I’ve never known a sermon to be short, but if I’m drunk I don’t care. The ten commandments say nothing about getting loaded during church services. Now that I recall didn’t Jesus drink wine? Wow, a match made in heaven. Their first Sunday night service brought around 100 attendees. I expect it perked up a slow night for the bar. The first sermon compared life with the bar’s mechanical bull. Yee, haw, Ride ‘em cowboy. I bet that idea came after a couple of shots of tequila. Rev. Chris Heckaman says people really seemed to enjoy themselves. Chris, they were drunk. That’s the idea of getting drunk. Now I’ve always understood there are two taboos in a bar. You never talk about religion or politics. But then again, taboos are made to be broken and apparently the Reverend is a live on the edge kind of guy. I wonder if he tried the bull? Do some of the offerings go to tip the barmaids? Can you get up to go pee in the middle of the sermon? Beer can create awfully urgent situations. Do they rename the food for the evening? Fire and brimstone hot wings. The Good God Super Deluxe Pizza. Does the band work up a couple of hymns for the night or do they just stick with the old standards like Ghost Riders in the Sky and Free Bird. I can see where a little Stairway to Heaven could work. The Reverend says they are going to be meeting there every week. So remember, be kind, tip generously, and the Jello shots are on special.  Next week’s sermon – eight ball in the corner pocket!

Check this out! Click the link below for the church website:

http://www.sidneyfirst.com/Discover/CountryRockChurch/tabid/140/Default.aspx

To read the news article about this click this link:

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/WeirdNews/2008/04/21/5348111-ap.html

Since the Intel Atom Processor became official in early April, both industry and consumers seem to be eagerly waiting for the technology to hit the market. The Atom package consists mainly of the Intel's smallest chip plus an integrated graphics processor and has has a thermal design power range of below 2.4 watts (versus 35 watts for today's typical laptop), meaning there is much less heat dissipation on Atom-powered products.

In brief, Atom enables PC-like capabilities, an uncompromised Internet experience and long battery life for smaller, pocketable devices. A flood of Intel-hyped MID (Mobile Internet Devices) have surfaced, most of them bound to be released when the Atom platform becomes available in mid-2008. Here's a little video of what Intel envisions Atom-products to be:

BenQ introduced its take on the "MID" at the Intel Developers Conference in Shanghai

Sharp will be starting to sell what might be the smallest QWERTY device capable of running Windows Vista - OEM Manufacturer Willcom's D4 device.

Lenovo's Ideapad U8 does not only look like a solid and mature product, it also features a pretty sweet user interface.

Last but not least, Asus is prepping up its UMPC line with a duo of Atom five and seven inchers and will - inevitably - be releasing an Atom-based Eee PC.

With all this, I am still wondering if the devices will really have that much of an impact. They neither fit into the front pocket of your Levi's nor into a shirt pocket and thus they will not be able to replace a smart phone. On the other hand, the lack of a (full-sized) keyboard decreases the average MID's usability by a large amount, when compared to your everyday notebook...
Then, I am also a bit surprised that the five leading notebook brands have yet to show up to take their share of the market. HP is selling an Eee-type PC , Dell and Acer have announced these kind of products to be released later in 2008, but the three of them plus Fujitsu Siemens and Toshiba are nowhere to be seen on the "pocketable" side of mobile computing.
Are they still evaluating, do they have killer products up their sleeves or is it that they just don't buy into the whole UMPC/MID thing?

Immediate hire for Maintenance Mechanics excellent pay with OT. Have several  postions  in East Houston and Northwest Houston.

  Performs electrical and mechanical maintenance as required. Performs preventative maintenance and troubleshooting as required.  Minimum five years experience of previous electrical maintenance. Must have knowledge of basic math skills. Must have least a min of high school or  GED. 

Yesterday I had the privilege to listen to Steven Levitt, author of the book Freakonomics.  Like all good lectures, it took a few hours for his words to really sink in.  So while driving to school this morning his comments on consulting and morals really sunk in.

Elaboration.  From my perception of his story, he used to be a consultant for a pharmaceutical company.  For every day sooner that he could get a new drug to market was essentially worth 1 million dollars.  Long story short, his supervisor did not let him give a recommendation to their client that would shave weeks off of development time.  This recommendation was not given in the best interest of the consulting company, as to not upset another client.

Levitt stated that this hurt him on a moral level.  He didn't like knowing that his client spent millions needlessly.  This did not bother me when I first heard it.  The natural assumption was that spending more money is bad, and morals are essentially what one finds good or bad.

Upon deeper inspection though, should money be a part of ones morals?  Life should be lived to its fullest emotionally and spiritually.  Money is a necessity of our society.  It is a motivational tool for us to work and should be a measure of who deserves the goods and services that they desire.  Sadly this is not how it really works, but that is my theory on the moral component of money.

So should one really be morally anguished at one company spending an extra few million.  That money was just transferred to another company, where it was hopefully spent on employees salaries.  Hopefully these employees took the money home, and feed their children, payed their mortgage, etc.

I don't really have a conclusion, but that's OK.  One should always be evaluating their morals, and hopefully changing them for the better.

I still think, pico processor technology becoming widely available is one of the coolest things in the geek-world in the past years and just a few days after writing about projectors from our neighbors at Microvision, two related products have been released in the past weeks:

While the Micro SD Card Projector is a simple display device,...

... SunView is the the world's first commercially released pico projector-packing portable media player comes from an unlikely source, SunLink, and is powered by technology from iView Display.

Let's just see how long it will take for the big brands to jump on the bandwagon...

What's new in the wonderful world of mobile communication?
German weekly Der Spiegel talks about Motorola's shift to design in order to get its mobile business out of the slump it is in. Interestingly, Moto seems to mistake "cosmetics" for "design" and fails to see that their biggest (and probably only) success in recent years the RAZR was just an amazing engineering feat... in terms of asthetics, I always felt the product was not well thought through with its random use of details.
Anyhow, it doesn't look too rosy for the US phone maker, as Motorola is planning to lay off 2,500 employees.

And speaking of American brands in a slump, Palm is trying to recover from their losses on the market with a new device which - leaked in Bill Gates' CES keynote - seems to enter a heavy testing phase at present.

Sony's Mylo 2 could be one of the coolest phones out there... if it could just make phone calls...
While it still does not accomplish this feat, the latest software update adds WMV playback capability and shoutcast support to the device.

Interesting things are happening in the mobile devices OS sector. With Palm OS, Windows Mobile and Symbian dominating the market over the past few years, Apple has generated quite some buzz with its ported iPhone-OS X, but has been criticized for locking it down pretty much.
After Apple announce its iPhone SDK and Google's anticipated Android software platform is just around the corner, there also seems to be a release of the first open source Linux Mobile platform imminent in late 2008.

And speaking of software: the iPhone keeps on getting better and better, just by new (and unauthorized) software being available: Fring is a mobile chat client, that finally allows me to make Skype calls to Germany via VOIP for only 2.4 cents per minute or use Skype's newly released unlimited international call feature for just US$9.95 (!!!) per month.
Another addition of capabilities comes from China: HWPen is a handwriting recognition software that recognizes both the Roman alphabet and Chinese characters - albeit not the Traditional characters used in Taiwan... :-(

Microsoft on the other hand is obviously exploring opportunities to counter the iPhone's interface. In a literal twist of technology, a recently revealed Microsoft patent shows an alternative user interface that uses a technology that allows users to apply force to their portable device in order to carry out on-screen actions, such as flip a page in a document or switching between applications.

Verizon is the first mobile communication service provider that addresses the needs of the growing market of elderly people.

And to end this post, here's something funny.
We have recently purchased the book "Transmaterial 2" (check it out!) and Fernd pointed out the "artificial meat-like material" in it. A clever Japanese businessman has finally found out an obvious use for this: for ¥7,000 (or about US$69) you can wrap your iPod in a tasty layer of artificial Grade A beef... yummy!