This week’s Spotify-powered SolidSmack Radio Playlist brings an entirely new face-smack of great music to help propel you through those laborious, tedious design tasks for the next few days. This week we’re dusting off some our favorite records from the 1960s starting with The Stooges and then work our way through everything from Dusty Springfield to Van Morrison and The Ronettes to the Rolling Stones before wrapping up with a Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra classic.
Hike up your pantlegs and show off that multilingual ‘I collaborate’ tattoo you mistakenly got on your calf last summer, SpaceClaim is providing good reason to get behind the possibilities of collaboration in the CAD space. SpaceClaim piqued our interest with wisps of whiteboarding in October. Now, they’re showing just how Collaboration inside SpaceClaim works, and all without any requirement for that fluffy server space in the sky.
We’re always talking about the future of design, the future of technology, the future of MAKING. In a world where we can interact with empty space, a world where we can 3D print our own shower curtain rings and bionic ears, a world where we’ll be sending people to space for vacation, how do we find the next ‘big thing’? Maker Galaxy is a show that explores the crossroads of Design, Technology, and the Future of Making.
This week our special guest definitely fits the mold of somebody who beats to her own drum: Alice Taylor of MakieLab. Alice left her career at the popular Channel 4 in the UK to launch her own 3D printed toy company Makies. With a background in gaming and all things hip, Alice has turned her popular Makies toys into a soon-to-be launched gaming experience that encourages users to create 3D printable objects within an iOS game. We’ll talk with Alice about how her idea came about, how she put her concept into action, some of the challenges of manufacturing-on-demand, and most importantly, her favorite brussels sprouts recipe.
These days I increasingly find myself asking “where was this when I was a kid?” when it comes to new toy designs ranging from electric inks to Arduino kits and iOS apps to the ability to ‘design your own shoes’ with NikeID. The latest comes in the form of an AMAZING Simpsons LEGO set that belongs on your desk somewhere between that LEGO Back to the Future DeLorean and that pile of white bricks from the LEGO Architecture Studio. Here’s a closer look at what you’ll likely be playing with in between marathon work sessions in 2014.
It’s been awhile since we’ve heard from our favorite paper-based 3D printing friends over at MCor Technologies. The proud Irish (they offer cans of Guinness at their booth during trade shows if you ask nicely FYI) company has reported annual sales of their eco-friendly printers up over 600% and are showing no signs of slowing down. As one of the fastest growing 3D printing firms, it was only a matter of time before some Silicon Valley venture capitalists came knocking…and they recently did to the tune of over $20M to help push the $45K paper-based 3D printers further into the market.