More than 20,000 visitors packed the Shanghai East Asia Exhibition Hall during an annual education fair by overseas schools. Read More…

Looking back over his long career, architect Moshe Safdie delves into four of his design projects and explains how he labored to make each one truly unique for its site and its users. Read More…

In this presentation, Camille Moussette explores the opportunities and challenges related to developing new multimodal interfaces specifically based on the touch sense. It will present various methods, techniques, tools and processes that interaction designers can use to assess, sketch, create and evaluate dynamic haptic and multimodal interfaces. Read More…

In 2009, driven by the stimulus package for auto consumption by Chinese government, China’s auto sales increased by 18 percent and China became the world’s largest automobile producer with the world’s largest automobile market. Read More…

The world’s largest online community is grappling with challenges it faces in protecting intellectual property rights (IPR), says an expert. The US Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus on held recently listed China as one of the world’s five-worst offenders in violating copyright. Read More…

Ars Technica has an article about the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) annual Special 301 report (PDF) released recently, which discusses the adequacy and effectiveness of IP protections by US trading partners. As usual, China, Russia, Chile, and India topped the list when it came to concerns over piracy. But this time, the USTR gave some extra love to United States’ neighbors to the north by elevating Canada from the regular Watch List to the Priority Watch List for the first time. Read More…

Autodesk has signed a definitive agreement with Avid to acquire substantially all of the assets of Avid’s Softimage business unit for around US$35 million. This will mean that Autodesk will own three of the main 3D suites: 3ds Max, Maya and Softimage|XSI.

The company says that it intends to continue developing and selling Softimage’s core product line, while integrating certain Softimage technology into future versions of Autodesk solutions and products. Autodesk plans to acquire and continue developing the core Softimage|XSI suite, the Softimage|Face Robot facial animation software, the Softimage|Cat character animation plug-in for 3ds Max and the Softimage|Crosswalk ‘interoperability solution’ – which will be integrated with Autodesk’s own sharing technology.

“As we have demonstrated since the acquisition of Alias in 2006,” said Marc Petit, senior vice president, Autodesk Media & Entertainment, “we’re committed to giving our customers choice when it comes to their 3D tools. We plan to maintain and grow the Softimage product line, and through Autodesk FBX provide better interoperability between Softimage products, 3ds Max and Autodesk Maya. FBX also provides interoperability between Softimage products and our specialised applications such as Autodesk Mudbox, Autodesk MotionBuilder, Autodesk ImageModeler and Autodesk Stitcher, as well as numerous third-party applications.”

Softimage was founded in 1986 by Daniel Langlois and is headquartered in Montreal, Canada. Softimage|XSI is used by leading VFX houses and games companies including Digital Domain, Ubisoft, SEGA Corporation, CAPCOM, Animal Logic and The Mill. Over the last few years, XSI has become more focussed on larger workgroups of animators and modellers, dropping the entry-level Foundation version when XSI 7 was released in August.

Bill Buxton, in his keynote during for the opening of IxDA | Interaction ‘08 Conference, asks us: “How Can We Design Great Products if we don’t First Design our Environment?” Great ideas are not enough. In many ways, they are the easy part of design. The hard part is seeing those great ideas through to reality. But the weight of that hard part can be significantly lightened if one has the right tools, the right team, and is working in the right physical and cultural space. While this sounds obvious – banal even, the reality is that in the technology sector, the eco-system in which much design takes place is not conducive to the task. Designers are generally significantly out-numbered by technical staff. Unless proper attention is paid to details, the resulting physical and cultural eco-system will be determined by those with the larger numbers. The end result pays the price.

This result is not due to any sinister objectives, rather than to human nature. The objective here is to point out the dynamic, what gets lost in the process and provide some thoughts on how to bring about change that benefits all.

Bill Buxton is a designer and a researcher concerned with the human aspects of technology. His work reflects a particular interest in the use of technology to support creative activities such as design, film-making and music. Buxton’s research specialties include technologies, techniques and theories of input to computers, technology mediated human-human collaboration, and ubiquitous computing

In December 2005, he was appointed Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research. Prior to that, he was Principal of his own Toronto-based boutique design and consulting firm Buxton Design, where his time was split between working for clients, lecturing, and trying to finish a long-delayed book on sketching and interaction design. He is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, where he still works with graduate students.

Buxton began his career in music, having done a Bachelor of Music degree at Queen’s University. He then studied and taught at the Institute of Sonology, Utrecht, Holland for two years. After completing an M.Sc. in Computer Science on Computer Music at the University of Toronto, he joined the faculty as a lecturer. Designing and using computer-based tools for music composition and performance is what led him into the area of human-computer interaction. From 1994 until December 2002, he was Chief Scientist of Alias|Wavefront, (now part of Autodesk) and from 1995, its parent company SGI Inc. In the fall of 2004, he was a part-time instructor in the Department of Industrial Design at the Ontario College of Art and Design. In 2004/05 he was also Visiting Professor at the Knowledge Media Design Institute (KMDI) at the University of Toronto. And from January through April 2005 and 2006, was a Visiting Researcher with the Computer-Mediated Living Group at Microsoft Research, Cambridge England. He currently splits his time between Redmond and Toronto.

Buxton has always maintained a strong connection to both pure research and applied work. He has consulted to a number of technology companies and had a long association as a consulting research scientist with Xerox PARC. He has also lectured at, and collaborated with leading research labs and universities around the world.

In 1995, Buxton became the third recipient of the Canadian Human-Computer Communications Society Award for contributions to research in computer graphics and human-computer interaction, and was given the New Media Visionary of the Year Award at the 2000 Canadian New Media Awards. In 2002, he was elected to the CHI Academy and Time Magazine named him one of the top 5 designers in Canada. In 2001, The Hollywood Reporter named him one of the 10 most influential innovators in Hollywood. In October 2005 he and Gord Kurtenbach received the ‘Lasting Impact Award’ from ACM UIST 2005, which was awarded for their 1991 paper Issues in Combining Marking and Direct Manipulation Techniques. In June 2007 he was named Doctor of Design, Honoris Causa by the Ontario College of Art and Design.