3D Printing: From Small Business Production to the iPhone Shoe

 

By Abbey Peschel

 

English: RepRap v.2 ‘Mendel’ open-source FDM 3D printer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

3D printers may be changing the world of production forever. According to “Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing,” these devices offer on demand production to people in a huge variety of fields. From doctors and professional designers to students and small business owners, users across the economic spectrum may soon see their work becoming easier and more customized.

 

While many have posited that cheaper, easier to build 3D printers would result in heavy home use, “Fabricated” suggests a different hypothesis. Instead of a printer in every kitchen, authors suggest that the world will see greater individualization in marketing and promotion fields, medical fields, and even every day consumer products. Most people won’t create their own specialized objects: instead they’ll have them printed by a specialist, then purchase them through an ordinary store or online retailer.

 

Many industries have already seen some of these effects already. For instance, custom-printed prosthetics have been targeted as a way to make these devices more comfortable to wear and more effective for their individual owners. Marketing companies are experimenting with printing three-dimensional logo images and other promotional products in substances ranging from chocolate to resin.

 

One designer in Amsterdam has even printed a shoe designed to hold an iPhone. According to Alan Nguyen , the shoe was created as a legal test. While the design is wholly original in itself, its purpose is to hold a device that has been fiercely defended by intellectual property lawyers. The iPhone shoe also includes elements of other case designs for the Apple product, as a mash-up and tribute to their original designers.

 

This type of printing also poses other potential quandaries. With designers creating and uploading the plans and instructions for all kinds of devices, anyone with a printer could potentially create one of those objects. When this is applied to scans of copyrighted or patented items, home and small business fabrication suddenly poses a much greater intellectual property risk. The possibility of 3D printed weapons and other black market items adds to many experts’ concern.

 

No matter what issues arise in relation to three-dimensional printing, however, it’s certain to expand horizons and change many people’s idea of how manufacturing works. The days of identical mass-produced objects may be giving way to a world of exciting new custom-created products.

 

Abbey Peschel is a Boston-area printing and marketing specialist. You can find her on Twitter @Abbey_Peschel

 

 

 

Using LinkedIn for Contact Management

LinkedIn has been on a roll in the last year, tweaking its services and recently, I got my first look at the changes they have made to Contacts.

The social networking site has now made it easy to bring together all of your address books, emails and calendars and keep them up to date in one place. It’s designed to help improve how you stay in touch with your LinkedIn connections. For instance, you’ll get notifications when someone changes jobs, or has a birthday, so you can send them a greeting right away.

The change is especially noticeable when you visit your contacts’ profile pages. Directly underneath their profile picture, there is a new box that indicates your relationship to the person, and includes areas where you can write a note, set a reminder, and indicate how you met. This is priceless for keeping track of prospects that you meet at a networking event. Even though you’re adding this information underneath someone else’s profile, the information is visible only to you:

LinkedIn has a new contacts app available on iPhone, but there’s no mention of Android yet. I hope they will come up with one soon, because I would love to try it out on my phone!

Watch your email for the invite from LinkedIn. I almost missed mine, since the subject line contained the number “2” and nothing else! (I’m sure this was a mistake.) I think these new features are an excellent enhancement to the service.

Apple Preparing to Bite into Geolocation Social Networking

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I just read an article in Information Week that Apple has filed a patent for technology that would let it create a geolocation social network similar to Foursquare.

This is a pretty interesting development, since I just wrote about Foursquare yesterday, and what its service could mean for marketers.

According to the article, the patent application describes a service called iGroups that would enable people to share geographic location data in order to connect using an iPhone or other mobile device. People who agree to join the network would be able to broadcast information in real-time through text and instant messaging and also share files, such as pictures or video.

People who don’t have iPhones could still use the service too. It’s not mentioned in the patent application, but it’s possible Apple’s MobileMe service could be used to add mobile phones without GPS to a group.

The application says, “Concert attendees in a group can be sent coupons to purchase music or other items related to the concert or invited to join a fan club of the performer, etc.”

Just because Apple filed the patent, doesn’t mean it will launch iGroups, and the company has a strict policy about not commenting on future products. But, there are signs Apple means business with this product. Last year it bought a mapping company called Placebase. And it has thwarted rival Google’s attempts to leverage the iPhone for location-based services – refusing to let Google offer Latitude, a Google Maps location-sharing service, thru the iTunes App Store. As a result, users can only access Latitude thru iPhone’s Safari Web browser.

Apple iPod and iPhone Users May be Forced to Listen to Advertising

[picapp src=”0600/a0f3aea6-389e-48fb-943d-9a7ef5a5c14d.jpg?adImageId=7606739&imageId=608009″ width=”234″ height=”160″ /] Marketers may soon have a new captive audience for their advertisements: iPod & iPhone users.

A British newspaper reported Tuesday that Apple has filed a patent for an “enforcement routine” software.  It’s believed that the technology for this application would force users to watch or listen to commercials, which they would be unable to skip past.

The report said that users could be required to answer questions about the advertisements to make sure they listened and fully understood them. In addition, iPod users could be asked to press certain button combinations to allow them to continue listening to music.

This software would be a boon for Apple, since it could help cut the costs of some of its best selling products. And it would certainly be a golden opportunity for advertisers, since the iPod and iPhone are such popular items.

My knee-jerk reaction to this news as a consumer was, “Oh, no. Not more advertising.”  But then I remembered that I’m in the business of helping companies make money online so, “Way to go, Apple! Whoo-hoo!”