RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper. It is the practical self-copying 3D printer - a self-replicating machine. This 3D printer builds the component up in layers of plastic. This technology already exists, but the cheapest commercial machine would cost you about €30,000. And it isn't even designed so that it can make itself.
So what the RepRap team are doing is to develop and to give away the designs for a much cheaper machine with the novel capability of being able to self-copy (material costs are about €400). That way it's accessible to small communities in the developing world as well as individuals in the developed world. Following the principles of the Free Software Movement we are distributing the RepRap machine at no cost to everyone under the GNU General Public Licence. So, if you have a RepRap machine, you can make another and give it to a friend !
Time lapse video of Adrian Bowyer building the first RepRap Darwin machine:
http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome
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Monday, 30 June 2008
RepRap - DIY 3D Printer for a few hundred dollars
Book: Lego for Adults
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/300024185X?ie=UTF8&tag=xuborcom-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=300024185X
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The Triangle’s Advanced Learning and Technologies Summit
We all know that serious games mean serious business. Companies like IBM, Hilton, Humana and Cisco are discovering what the military learned long ago- that contrary to what our mothers told us, games can boost productivity. NCALTA is a serious games organization based in RTP, North Carolina. NCALTA held their first serious games summit last month in which companies from a wide variety of industries and respected academics in the field of games and instructional learning attended. The Triangle area is not a stranger to the game industry. In fact, according to the Wake County Technical Development Authority, the triangle serves as the country’s second largest gaming center in the US and the locale for the world’s number one game engine hubs. Virtual Heroes is one of several local serious game studios that have made their mark here in North Carolina. Jerry Heneghan, the CEO of Virtual Heroes, is one of the co-founders of NCALTA.
The Advanced Learning and Technology summit was expertly moderated by Tony O’Driscoll, most recently heralded by his astounding report on Leadership and MMORPGs. Other literati who spoke at the summit included Bill Sawyer of Digital Mill, and Merrilea Mayo of the Kauffman Foundation as well as many other leaders in serious games. Visiting enthusiasts flew in from as far away as Europe to attend.
The main themes from the conference included ROI, Web 2.0 integration, academic initiatives, game production cycles and budget showcasing a plethora of examples of how companies were adopting very different approaches to the medium. The examples included everything from Cisco’s short online Flash games that teach students binary to Proton Media’s immersive 3D world complete with Web 2.0, WebEx, full app sharing, and programmable bots for corporate learning.
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Sunday, 29 June 2008
Virtual Adultery and Cyberspace Love
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Monster Hunter Series Helps Sony's PlayStation Portable Take Off in Japan
Sony Corp.'s PlayStation Portable videogame player, which languished in Japan after it was introduced in 2004, has turned into a strong seller here over the past year.
The reason: a videogame series called Monster Hunter that allows groups of friends to band together to kill monsters, collect material to build weapons or armor -- and socialize -- without letting any unknown players join in.
more ...
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Building Web Based CRM Apps On Salesforce.com
http://www.salesforce.com/
http://www.salesforce.com/platform/
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Saturday, 28 June 2008
Intelligent armed vehicles that use GPS, laser and heat-recognition technology are close to being deployed
At a desert test site in Texas, a street battle rages between US soldiers and local "insurgents". It's much like any other training exercise, except the soldiers are accompanied by a Mule (Multifunctional utility/Logistics & Equipment), an armed robot the size of a Humvee. The insurgents are positioned overlooking an intersection, a potential kill zone. The commander pulls out what looks like a PlayStation gamepad and the Mule is sent forward.
more ...
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5 Sites To Play Old Computer Games
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-sites-to-play-old-computer-games-once-again/
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Will a Computer “Symbiote” be Implanted in Future Human Brains?
Will future humans have computers implanted in their brains? Researchers are developing a neural implant that can think independently—just like the human brain does. Creepy? Yeah. Cool? Definitely. Scientists at the University of Florida aren’t just creating a neural implant that can translate human brain signals, but one that can act independently to increase its efficiency and synergy with the brain as it learns new things.
more ...
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Thursday, 26 June 2008
LOLcats ARE the internet !
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Study: Teens dropping rags, radio for web, games, and TV
Digital and electronic media consumption are up across the board. Teens spent an average of 12.5 hours online in a single week, up from 10.7 hours last year. Tweens are up to 6.5 hours from 5.2 last year.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080620-study-teens-dropping-rags-radio-for-web-games-and-tv.html
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BlackBerry Thunder - the iPhone has spooked even RIM
http://blackberrythunder.net/
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How did a small Finnish company create an online world with more users than WOW?
Based on publicly available data, it looks like an Internet milestone will be passed by the end of next month: World of Warcraft will lose its undisputed status as the most popular massively multiplayer online world.
more ...
http://gigaom.com/2007/09/08/howhabbo-hotel-got-this-big/
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Dual-display e-book reader lets you flip pages naturally
http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2008/06/dual-display-e-book-reader-lets-you.html
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Wednesday, 25 June 2008
FriendFeed Interview
http://friendfeed.com/
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More Than One Million Wild and Wonderful Life Forms Created Using the Spore Creature Creator in One Week
The internet has been invaded by walking pears, giant dragons, impossible-to-describe aliens and everything in between! Maxis, an Electronic Arts Inc (NASDAQ:ERTS - News) studio, today announced that fans have created and shared more than one million creatures using the Spore™ Creature Creator in the first week of availability. Anyone can download their own copy of the Spore Creature Creator or check out hundreds of thousands of amazing creations from around the world in the Sporepedia™ at www.spore.com.
more ...
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Cisco: Chambers on Virtual Worlds
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Amazon's Bezos Invests in Twitter
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/amazons_bezos_invests_in_twitt.php
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Not the Usual Game Application
One of these days, the thinking goes, some positive lesson learned in a game's virtual world might just inspire young people to go out and change the real world for the better.
That's the hope behind a new wave of serious-minded games in development, which aim to educate audiences about issues like the environment and the death penalty. Former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor is overseeing one in-the-works game that puts players into the shoes of a judge charged with sorting out the First Amendment issues raised when a school tries to discipline students for wearing T-shirts with provocative messages.
more ...
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Tuesday, 24 June 2008
IMVU - Big Numbers
Flying under the proverbial radar for the last four years, the web-based virtual world chatroom IMVU has released new jawbreaking data: since April 2004, they’ve amassed 20 million registered accounts, with 600,000 of those active monthly users.
more ...
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Shocker ! Nearly all degree courses in video gaming at British universities leave graduates unfit to work in the industry
Leading figures in the video games industry, which is worth about £500m to the economy each year, are unhappy with the 95% of degree courses at UK universities that are unaccredited and fail to equip graduates with the necessary skills to build a career in the industry.
A new campaign - Games Up? - which is backed by most of the UK's gaming companies, urges the government to address a serious skills shortage in the sector that could see the industry move abroad to find more talent.
more ...
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Nokia buys Symbian and open sourses it - scared of Android and iPhone ?
Nokia have today announced that they will be acquiring the remaining 52% of Symbian they don’t own and will be releasing the complete Symbian platform under the Eclipse open source license.
more ...
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Lego Secret Vault Contains All Sets In History
http://gizmodo.com/5018990/lego-secret-vault-contains-all-sets-in-history
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Monday, 23 June 2008
Takayoshi Sato Interview: Silent Hill and Serious Games
http://tale-of-tales.com/blog/interviews/interview-with-takayoshi-sato/
http://www.satoworks.com/
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Warner Bros Virtual World
In 2008, Warner Bros. Entertainment will launch T-Works, a brand-new broad-appeal immersive animation experience which, for the first time ever, brings together all of the key characters from the Studio’s core animated properties in an expansive, rich online environment.
more ...
http://tworks.com/
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Sunday, 22 June 2008
Is buzzword the best online productivity app ?
https://buzzword.acrobat.com/
The first time I used buzzword it blew me away. Google docs gets all the attention but adobe's flash technology seems way ahead.
There are big advantages in using a runtime (like flash, silverlight or java) to deliver rich online productivity apps. The question is can open 100% javascript solutions like sproutcore, cappuccino and google web toolkit compete ? Clearly Apple and Google do not want to touch proprietary runtimes from Adobe, Microsoft or Sun. However is JavaScript on its own up to the task ?
For instance, could you build a complex video editing app (see the silverlight example bellow) with just AJAX ?
Surely Apple and Google need to hedge their bets and collaborate to create an open source runtime to compete directly with java, silverlight and flash/AIR.
see also:
http://seriousgamesblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/sproutcore-gets-competition-from.html
http://seriousgamesblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/building-flash-game-on-adobe-air.html
http://seriousgamesblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/promise-of-sproutcore-online-and.html
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Sproutcore gets competition from Cappuccino
see also: http://seriousgamesblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/promise-of-sproutcore-online-and.html
Another framework for creating rich (100% JavaScript) web applications:
http://ajaxian.com/archives/an-interview-with-280-north-on-objective-j-and-cappuccino
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/05/280-north-launches-its-online-keynote-280-slides/
http://280slides.com/
http://twit.tv/natn57
http://objective-j.org/
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LEGO is full of WIN: presentation at Interesting 2008. 21st June 2008.
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serious games
The first truly mobile office: the Walkstation
http://www.steelcase.com/na/walkstation_products.aspx?f=30670
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