Shapeways – The 3-D Printed Object Shop

Last month we highlighted the revolutionary move by piratebay to allow the downloading of physical objects via pirated 3D print designs. This time it’s all legal and consumer friendly via the NY start-up shapeways. Shapeways is a shop for 3D objects and an instant route to market for, well, anyone.

In their own words:

“With a growing online community and marketplace, we’re a NY start-up that harnesses 3D printing to help you make, buy and sell anything you want.By providing a platform for our community members to share ideas and gain access to cutting edge technology, we’re bringing personalized production to everyone—whether you’re already designing in 3D or are just looking to buy something completely unique. We print everything on-demand, which means that every order is customized and personalized.

We’re working to democratize creation by making production more accessible, personal, and inspiring.”

Shapeways recently ran a competition for 3-D designs inspired by SIRI and here’s the winner:

Amazing to think you could get hold of this by simply sending it to print..

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A little Google+ experiment

A Google+ experiment where you can meet some of Australia’s most provocative characters, just  add them your circles.

The Death of Social Media?

Most morbid social media campaign yet? The gist: Take a photo of yourself DEAD and you could end up in next year’s horror movie Redd Inc. According to the company there have been a few ‘inadmissable photos’ so far.

Above: User generated death.
http://www.reddincthemovie.com/Submissions/Art/Fake-your-own-death/Page2/Art225

 

 
The website: http://www.reddincthemovie.com

It’s making the news… Article about it in the Daily Tele.

Criticker is the social thinking man’s IMDB.

The IMDB business is almost 20 years old (true, just 10 days to go) and although we all love it the site hasn’t changed much or matured beyond its web 1.0 status. Yes it has 57 million visitors every month but it’s not without flaws. Indeed I think there are some interesting lessons to be learned in how to utilise social and crowdsourcing from the little movie recommendations site Criticker.com especially when it comes to movie rankings – read on:

 
Aliens – only 8.5/10 ? Pffft come on it’s a 9.1 easy!

So here’s the problem (and I will bet this has happened to you at some point): You watch a movie, love it only to find IMDB users gave it a crummy 6.5 out of 10 (or vice versa – a crap movie gets a good score on IMDB). The issue of course is that movies are rated by everyone INCLUDING people who also hate the sort of movies you love. In short IMDB does nothing more than merely aggregate the mass opinion of everyone. In the real world we make many choices based on trusted opinions, not just those of the many.

Enter Criticker…
Criticker calls itself a ‘movie recommendation engine’. How does it work? It calculates ratings by analysing movies that YOU like/dislike then it finds OTHER PEOPLE with the same likes/dislikes and then gives you a Probable Score Indicator (PSI) based on the result. In short it ranks movies based on scores from people just like you.

The outcome is that when you search for a movie, your Criticker predicted score is much more likely to be the score you would actually give it. Here’s an example: The film I searched for here is Clockwork Orange. My PSI (probable score) on Cricketer is adjusted to 79/100 (that rating is based on other ratings of people like me). On IMDB it is rated en masse at 8.5/10. The reality here is that Cricketer is much closer than IMDB (I’d probably give it a 75).

Social web 2.0
I’ve been using Criticker for 18 months, I’ve scored about 230 movies and I find the more data I give it, the better it becomes at predicting my scores. Bottom line – this is a truly intelligent and useful crowdsourcing tool and it works. I love it.

BTW: Here’s my profile on Criticker… feel free to hate the movies I ❤ 😉
http://www.criticker.com/profile/eunmac

Oh PS: If you like it, pop them a donation – this is a startup run by a couple of movie buffs and they need support.

WIN an exclusive Razorfish iPhone cover

We’ve been asked to submit an A4 image for the Digital Who’s Who of Australia. It would be boring if we just submitted the image so in true socialist media stylee, we thought we’d throw it open to you to pick an image.

Here’s the brief:

‘Lastly, please provide a single A4 image (at 300dpi) that you feel most effectively communicates your strengths to prospective clients.

The content is absolutely up to you, as long as we can print it on an A4 page.’

Submit your entry in the comments below.

Best image wins one of these snazzy Razorfish iPhone covers:

@handypearce

User-generated electioneering

Every election these days is called ‘the internet election’, and not surprisingly since each election brings new innovations in social media. Howard Dean did really well out of e-campaigning in 2004, although he was probably less enthusiastic about it once ‘the scream’ appeared all over YouTube. MyBarackObama.com was a cracking success, expanding into a SMS programs, 2,000 YouTube flicks, 3 million online donors, 5 million ‘friends’ across Facebook and other social sites. In Australia, Labor claims a lot of its success is due to marshalling support through digital, and the Coalition admits they didn’t make the best use of it, falling before the bold and youthful Kevin07 brand.

There’s one month of furious electioneering to go in the UK before folks head to the polls, and we’ll see how the parties make best use of digital and social in particular in these next few weeks. Already, my Facebook news feed has changed. Status updates allow everyone you know to see your opinions, comment, and get notifications of others’ comments.  It wasn’t that long ago that these were about X Factor, but political conversations are taking their place – people are linking to opinion pieces on the economy and social policies, and the same political discourse is all over twitter too.

But what I’ve found most interesting is how user-generated content has already made a big splash. Following the launch of (Conservative leader) David Cameron’s much mocked airbrushed billboard campaign, Tory-bashers are giving those ads an amusing PhotoShop once-over at mydavidcameron.com.

Labour had an official crowd-sourcing poster competition won by a 24 year old’s entry depicting ‘Nice Dave’ sitting on a 1983 Audi Quattro (below), recalling a character from recent BBC drama Ashes to Ashes in which a police officer inexplicably wakes up in 1981.

The ad was launched last Saturday by Labour’s agency, Saatchi & Saatchi, but immediately repurposed by Euro RSCG (the Tories’ ad agency) to great effect (more on this here).

Clearly crowd-sourcing hasn’t paid off in this example (more of an own goal really), but I’m looking forward to more UGC in the coming weeks.

Kleinmania hits Threadless

Our very own Michael Kleinman presents (another) sequel to the most amazing shirt in the world.

What started as a bit of a laugh could end up as a 4-color screen print with plastisol ink and a chino additive for softness.

Mike is too proud to ask for votes, so I’m asking you to go check it out and get clicky on the 5 if you like it!

The Internet Built My Cable Organiser

Something that has always bothered me about my MacBook Pro is the power cable. Sure, it has those nice little hook things to wrap the “small” end around, but what if you use the extra long power cable? You know, the other that it actually EARTHED so you don’t DIE? That can only be wrapped loosely around the power pack so it can later uncoil and suffocate the contents of your laptop bag.

Happily, I saw the PowerCurl on an Apple blog the other day and ordered it immediately.

Even more interesting than the product itself is the site that birthed it.

Quirky is a “social product development” community. Users can pay to submit an idea for a product which is then evaulated and refined by a larger community. If the product gets enough love, then it goes into manufacture with a percentage of profits going to all the users involved.

Check out  the “quirky in 30 seconds” video:

So I’d like to thank Jeff Scholen of Atlanta, Georgia (and a cast of several dozen others) for the PowerCurl.

People Power Keeping Wikipedia Alive and Well.

A note posted by Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales recently (here) speaks for itself. Whilst Brin, Page, Zuckerberg, Stone, Dorsey (Google, Facebook, Twitter founders) are the corporate internet rock stars, Jimmy along with Larry Sangar and others can stand proud seeing the results of recent fund raising for Wikipedia which is a non-profit organisation and currently the 5th largest site in the world.

Wikipedia stands tall above all others as the ultimate proof of concept for crowdsourcing – a model few would have considered possible 15 years ago, but now commonplace in most social media and digital strategies. Congrats to Wikipedia on continually proving everyone wrong 🙂

“Thank You from Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales

Wow. What can I say? Thank you.

We’ve just ended the most successful fundraiser in our history, $7.5 million USD raised in less than 8 weeks.

Incredible. But I’m not surprised.

In 2001, I took a bet on people, and you’ve never let me down.

You have created the largest collection of human knowledge ever assembled: 14 million encyclopedia articles in 270 languages, still growing and getting better every day. You have supported, funded and protected it.

Advertising doesn’t pay for Wikipedia. You do. Wikipedia is the fifth most visited website on earth – 340 million people last month – and we run our servers and pay our lean staff entirely with donations.

Your donations keep Wikipedia free to use and free of ads. Your donations keep spreading free access to knowledge all across the earth.

Thank you for everything you give to make Wikipedia a reality. I’ve been inspired by your comments, and feel privileged to witness your passion for Wikipedia.

• “When I’m at a loss for answers in life, you are always here to rescue me!” – Lauren Sierra

• “To my 6-year-old son, Wikipedia is a wonderful window into the world’s knowledge.” – Pilgrim Beart

• “Wikipedia é muito importante para todos. É uma conquista da humanidade.” – Fernando Borba

• "Wikipedia is all about fulfilling one simple need: immediate access to high quality information on any topic you can think of. That is why I’m glad to support it." – Joao Nunes

It’s an amazing story. There’s nothing else like it.

And if you haven’t yet made a contribution to support Wikipedia, it’s not too late. You can still make a gift to support the free and open sharing of knowledge. Just click here.

I also encourage you to support our friends:

• Creative Commons makes it easier for anyone to share and build upon the work of others. Make a donation to Creative Commons.
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation defends the rights of all Internet users. Make a donation to the EFF.
• The Free Software Foundation promotes the development of free software and supports the rights of computers users. Make a donation to the FSF.

Thank you again.

Wikipedia forever,

Jimmy Wales

Founder, Wikipedia”

Sour Japanese Music Video does it with Webcams

This breathtaking video was made by coordinating dozens of fans of the Japanese music group Sour. The only way I can think of describing it is “webcam synchronised swimming”. Watch it. It is pure genius.

Posted by @eunmac

Best Buy Crowdsourcing staff expertise to answer Tweets

It’s a simple concept from Best Buy. Customers ask questions on Twitter about products… Question sent to chosen staff member who has opted in for the subject matter… Staff member answers on Twitter.

Of course the beauty of Twitter is you get to see what people are asking as well. At time of writing the last question submitted was “Why does my dog keep leaving a poopy in front of my room.” Be interesting to see how they reply to that one.

http://twitter.com/Twelpforcehttp://twitter.com/Twelpforce

Sample of questions sent to Best Buy Twelpforce
(Note: I just copied and pasted whatever was on screen at the time (last 15 Qs) as a live sample, they have not been selected)

KaggyFriggle: @twelpforce Why does my dog keep leaving a poopy in front of my room? 8 minutes ago

csturner89: @TWELPFORCE I have a laptop with a T2060 processor and 2 gig ram.. i want something better in the 500 range what would you have? 31 minutes ago

jamiah93: @TWELPFORCE So does touch-screen depend completely on the monitor or does the computer itself has anything to do with it? 37 minutes ago

pwebbiz: @twelpforce Looking for netbook recommendations. Something for business on the go use. 41 minutes ago

NakedBoyNews: Doing a story on cell phones. Advice: Whats better LG Dare or LG enV Touch? and is the enV Touch just the LG Voyager? @twelpforce 42 minutes ago

NakedBoyNews: Doing a stpry on cell phones. Advice: Whats better LG Dare or LG enV Touch? and is the enV Touch just the LG Voyager? @twelpforce 42 minutes ago

pwebbiz: @twelpforce @agent3012 Thanks for helping me solve a week long problem! #twelpforce is great! 50 minutes ago

queen90018: @TWELPFORCE Maybe a free incentive with purchase, but not a $10.00 with a $500.00 that’s extreme in this economy. 54 minutes ago

CherryKitten68: @twelpforce I’m looking for a car radio for under $200 w/ ipood and bluetoof 4 my ’95 honda chivic 54 minutes ago

ohsqrrlgrrl: @twelpforce need a cheap cell phone plan contract with sim card capabilities for internat’l and nat’l use. ideas? about 1 hour ago

ayylaurenn: @TWELPFORCE which laptop has the fastest processor? about 1 hour ago

xDeathReaperx: @TwelpForce Do you have a MacBook? about 1 hour ago

nunonunonuno: @twelpforce How many HD SLRs are out there. Can you help. about 1 hour ago

CappyT1982: @TWELPFORCE To join twelpforce do we need to cut off your head with a sword thus quicking oursleves, or is it when one of you bites us? about 2 hours ago

bernierjohn: @twelpforce TIP If you’re reading this and wondering when you should jump in, read WIKI first, and get going! Don’t be afraid to fail… about 2 hours ago

HT http://creativity-online.com/work/view?seed=b92d638e
Posted by @eunmac